from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Nick Wilkins wrote:
>> [[WCCF]] is now a disambig, and World Club Champion Football is now at
>> least comprehensible.
>>
>> Steve
>
> And up for deletion, as well.

This is why I'm often hesitant to actually name the articles I'm
referring to when discussing interestingcruft on this mailing list, and
don't add much to [[Wikipedia:Unusual articles]]. Attention from lots of
editors can be a bad thing sometimes.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jossi Fresco

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Oops (or,
	be careful when quoting Wikipedia in your newspaper, part 2)

body:
On Mar 15, 2007, at 1:10 PM, Earle Martin wrote:

> I just hope that people realise the error was on their part, not ours.
> (Probably, considering that they also had a story today titled "Jolie
> Adopts Fourth Child", which began "Angelina Jolie today adopted a
> third child...")

So much for "fact checking" by newspapers. Aint' so.

-- Jossi


from_name: Christiano Moreschi

subject: [WikiEN-l] An Open Letter to Mr. Wales

body:
Hm. As a rule, checkuser doesn't lie.

How about hopping back under the bridge?

Moreschi

_________________________________________________________________
Get Hotmail, News, Sport and Entertainment from MSN on your mobile.
http://www.msn.txt4content.com/


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is editted by PAYED professionals and
	experts

body:
On 3/16/07, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
> I wish my reaction to this could be something simple, like, "You tell
> 'em kid! I stutter!" But that "PAYED professionals" part disturbs me.
>
> How many other Wikipedia readers think this?

Yeah. We should start a campaign to teach them to spell it properly.

Steve


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Why cutting'n'pasting from Wikipedia is not a good
	idea

body:
On 3/15/07, Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> Or possibly a sidebar stripe in the margin?
>
> The idea of the paragraph as the semantic unit for changes is excellent.

It's tidy, yes. And yeah, the idea of just alerting the reader to read
this paragraph with a bigger grain of salt than normal is appealing.

> We'd also need to do something to show the removal of paragraphs.

Yep.

Want to send a proposal to wikitech? I suspect there will be some
possibly unsurmountable implementation hurdles (like to do with
caching), but it doesn't hurt to suggest it.

Steve


from_name: Nick Wilkins

subject: [WikiEN-l] Most Baffling Articles Award 2007

body:
On 3/17/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Looks like you were referring to this:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=World_Club_Champion_Football&direction=prev&oldid=108404067
>
> [[WCCF]] is now a disambig, and World Club Champion Football is now at
> least comprehensible.
>
> Steve

And up for deletion, as well.

-- Jonel


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] An Open Letter to Mr. Wales

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Christiano Moreschi [mailto:moreschiwikiman at hotmail.co.uk]
>Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2007 07:05 AM
>To: wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] An Open Letter to Mr. Wales
>
>Hm. As a rule, checkuser doesn't lie.
>
>How about hopping back under the bridge?
>
>Moreschi

Checkuser doesn't lie, but results can easily be misinterpreted. I think there have been a number of instances of troublesome users seizing on an inaccurate interpretation of checkuser to contest remedies which are directed at the troublesome behavior shared by both accounts in question. If both accounts are making the same kind of trouble...

Fred


subject: [WikiEN-l] An Open Letter to Mr. Wales

body:
On 3/16/07, Sharon, Lois Bram <oneelephant at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sir, if this is how your administrators behave then it is no wonder the
> project no matter how noble its goals is failing.

Is there any evidence it's failing?

Steve


list: foundation-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Foundation-l] Commons Picture of the Year 2006

body:
Bryan Tong Minh wrote:
> How cool :D
>
> Tim: Did you also contact him? Because I tried but have not yet
> received any response.

No I did not. I'll give you his current email address offlist.

>
>>-------- Original Message --------
>>Subject:        POY
>>Date:   Fri, 16 Mar 2007 08:40:47 -0800
>>From:   Strang Joshua P SSgt 354 CS/SCBV
>>To:     Tim Starling
>>
>>
>>Hello,
>>I stumbled across the post that my photo won Commons photo of the year
>>and your comment about had anyone contacted me. No I had not heard a
>>word but when I found it, I was floored. Thanks for recognizing me and
>>please pass my thanks on to the Wikimedia Commons. Thanks again!
>>SSgt Strang
>>
>>Joshua P. Strang, SSgt, USAF
>>354 CS/SCBV
>>Photography NCOIC
>>[Phone number removed]
>>
>>"The brave ones shoot the enemy; The crazy ones shoot photos."
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>


list: wikimedia-l


subject:
[WikiEN-l] OT (was Re:  Fwd: Oops (or,
	be careful when quoting Wikipedia in your newspaper, part 2))

body:
On 3/17/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Not long ago I bought a new stepladder manufactured in the United
> States.  It is full of stuck on labels warning people about dangers of
> misusing the product.  For a few of us it would seem sensible not to
> attempt to change the blade on a table saw while the motor is running,
> but there are people who would win handsomely in court because the
> manufacturer had failed to post a label warning them of an obvious
> danger.  One can never underestimate the power of unfathomable stupidity.

Totally off-topic, but I notice that many of those squeezable mops
have a huge sign saying WARNING: WET MOP BEFORE WRINGING OUT.

I don't understand:
a) how it's possible to wring out a dry mop
b) why you would want to wring out a dry mop
c) what harm could result.

But obviously it's important for some reason.

Steve


from_name: NSLE (Wikipedia)

subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation

body:
Hi. I'm user Chacor on the English Wikipedia (formerly NSLE), user NSLE at
the French Wikipedia, and user NSLE-Chacor at commons. However, this morning
I was notified that user "Meteoroid" on the English Wikipedia (now " Z.E.R.O.")
created new "NSLE-Chacor" accounts around wikimedia projects, like at meta,
and at wikia, and at mediawiki.org (that I know of, there may be more),
clearly impersonating me. He knows what he's doing, because "NSLE-Chacor" is
not used anywhere else, and is used only by me (the name comes from
"NationStates", an online nation simulation game, as well as my nations on
that game). There is no possible way anyone would suddenly come up with
"NSLE-Chacor".

The accounts on meta and mediawiki.org have been blocked (by Angela and
Titoxd, respectively), while the one at wikia is under investigation pending
a response from Meteoroid. However I sense a pattern, and there could be
more such accounts. However, Interiot's SUL username tool is lagging right
now, so it does not return any.

I do not appreciate being impersonated like this, and it should not be
tolerated. Is there any possibility of a wikimedia-wide ban on this
character for this impersonation? I'm feeling frustrated and harassed right
now, that this user has gone out of his way to make me feel so
uncomfortable. He even edited my Commons userpage to say "NSLE-Chacor
elsewhere is not me", a clear sign he knows what he's doing.

This should not be tolerated.
Please help.

NSLE/Chacor


subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation


from_name: Philip Sandifer

body:
On Mar 17, 2007, at 2:36 PM, Bryan Derksen wrote:

> Nick Wilkins wrote:
>>> [[WCCF]] is now a disambig, and World Club Champion Football is
>>> now at
>>> least comprehensible.
>>>
>>> Steve
>>
>> And up for deletion, as well.
>
> This is why I'm often hesitant to actually name the articles I'm
> referring to when discussing interestingcruft on this mailing list,
> and
> don't add much to [[Wikipedia:Unusual articles]]. Attention from
> lots of
> editors can be a bad thing sometimes.

Which is, we should note, appalling. The idea that interesting
articles that nobody seriously doubts the accuracy of and are in no
way inflammatory or going to cause anyone any problems to anybody
should be deleted is ridiculous.

The bias against "I like it" as an argument remains one of our
stupidest positions. That people like an article is a good sign that
the article is worth trying to fix, keep up, and get to some sort of
acceptable standard. Providing information that people want is our
job, folks.

-Phil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary schools - notability

body:
On 3/17/07, Erica <fangaili at gmail.com> wrote:
> What's the going consensus on the inherent notability of primary schools?

Notability is a horrible concept. The rational, reasonable question to
be asking here is "How much should we write about individual primary
schools? Should we create an individual article for each individual
school?"

A reasonable response devoid of the history of notability might be
something like "For most primary schools, a paragraph in a larger
article about primary schools in some given area ought to be
sufficient. Very few primary schools would make good subjects for
whole articles."

Whereas what we will probably end up with is some primary schools
having long articles of very low quality, and most primary schools
will have nothing *at all* written about them.

Steve


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary schools - notability

body:
That is practice by some but not neccesarily the opinion of the community at
large.
I would recommend looking closely at the article subject. If you can write
nothing more than a paragraph, group them together.

Mgm

On 3/16/07, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/16/07, Erica <fangaili at gmail.com> wrote:
> > What's the going consensus on the inherent notability of primary
> schools?
> >
> > E.g.: see [[Category:Primary schools in Buckinghamshire]]
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Primary_schools_in_Buckinghamshire
> >
> > My understanding was that high schools were contentious, but it was
> > generally agreed upon that middle/primary schools were not inherently
> > notable. But I might be behind the times.
>
> I believe current practice on AfD is that if the word "school" appears
> in the name, it's notable.
>
> --
> Mark
> [[User:Carnildo]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: [WikiEN-l] Primary schools - notability

body:
On Mar 17, 2007, at 2:52 PM, Oldak Quill wrote:

>
> Notability is a human concept - "notability" doens't exist
> objectively, in the world. All of the things you list are
> intersubjectively notable, not inherently or integrally notable.

Exactly. Notability is determined by a set of standards that people
have adopted. Yes, virtually everybody accepts that Nobel laureates
are notable. But it's still notable because people want to read
articles about it.

Which is, in fact, "I like it." It's just that everybody likes Gandhi.

-Phil


from_name: Casey Brown

subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation

body:
Currently, the only thing that is available to you in response is to have
the accounts blocked.  On sites where usurpation is allowed, I recommend
having those accounts usurped.  Unfortunately I believe that usurpations are
only being used on the English Wikipedia.  I recommend that you contact this
person and ask him to hand the accounts over to you, in which case you can
then change the passwords and the e-mail addresses.  This seems the best
course of action.

The user is not being very... nice, but I think a ban is a little over the
top.  (Even though what he did was quite rude and looks purposeful.)
However, if he does it again, a ban would be a pretty good solution.

I'm sorry that you had to go through this and hope it gets solved soon. :(
(However, it looks like it can only be solved currently with "Meteoroid"s or
"Z.E.R.O."s support.)

Cbrown1023

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Oldak Quill
Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:48 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation

On 17/03/07, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi. I'm user Chacor on the English Wikipedia (formerly NSLE), user NSLE at
> the French Wikipedia, and user NSLE-Chacor at commons. However, this
morning
> I was notified that user "Meteoroid" on the English Wikipedia (now "
Z.E.R.O.")
> created new "NSLE-Chacor" accounts around wikimedia projects, like at
meta,
> and at wikia, and at mediawiki.org (that I know of, there may be more),
> clearly impersonating me. He knows what he's doing, because "NSLE-Chacor"
is
> not used anywhere else, and is used only by me (the name comes from
> "NationStates", an online nation simulation game, as well as my nations on
> that game). There is no possible way anyone would suddenly come up with
> "NLE-Chacor".
>
> The accounts on meta and mediawiki.org have been blocked (by Angela and
> Titoxd, respectively), while the one at wikia is under investigation
pending
> a response from Meteoroid. However I sense a pattern, and there could be
> more such accounts. However, Interiot's SUL username tool is lagging right
> now, so it does not return any.
>
> I do not appreciate being impersonated like this, and it should not be
> tolerated. Is there any possibility of a wikimedia-wide ban on this
> character for this impersonation? I'm feeling frustrated and harassed
right
> now, that this user has gone out of his way to make me feel so
> uncomfortable. He even edited my Commons userpage to say "NSLE-Chacor
> elsewhere is not me", a clear sign he knows what he's doing.

My sympathies: someone used created an account with my username
(again, obviously intentional) at Welsh Wikipedia and used it to
vandalise. I'm not sure how this is going to be dealt with when SUL is
being implemented.
--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)

_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] An Open Letter to Mr. Wales

body:
> "I started editing your encyclopedia two weeks ago. I have epilepsy
> and tourette's syndrome and accidentally typed some mild profanities
> (like 'MARK RYAN IS A DICKHEAD') on the talk pages of several users.

I missed that - tourette's in typed form? Convenient excuse...


subject: [WikiEN-l] An Open Letter to Mr. Wales

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Thomas Dalton [mailto:thomas.dalton at gmail.com]
>Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2007 09:33 AM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] An Open Letter to Mr. Wales
>
>> "I started editing your encyclopedia two weeks ago. I have epilepsy
>> and tourette's syndrome and accidentally typed some mild profanities
>> (like 'MARK RYAN IS A DICKHEAD') on the talk pages of several users.
>
>I missed that - tourette's in typed form? Convenient excuse...

Do you know? Sounds plausible...

Fred


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for a policy

body:
On 17/03/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

> That's what I propose to change.  No restrictions or complications for
> those doing other CU request cases, but if someone choses to take
> action based on a CU done elsewhere, they are required to log it
> somewhere connected to WP:RFCU.  Just make the RFCU page a
> one-stop-shop for finding the info.

No. The logs are not available because people will get having had a
checkuser done at all used against them.

> We've had too many zombie checkusers, where it's noted in passing in a
> block log note or talk page comment and there's no other on-wiki note
> or evidence for anyone who comes along later to figure out what
> happened.

The block message should be sufficient - that's what the block message
is there to log. There are *lots* of open proxies, 0wnz0r3d machines
or zombies being abused by our most persistent vandals. However, lots
of innocents get checked along the way (because you don't know until
you look). What do we gain by making a public list of their names
available?

- d.


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary schools - notability

body:
On 3/16/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> Nothing has inherent notability.

Heads of state
Nobel-laureates
Wimbledon winners
Academic disciplines
The Millenium Problems
Countries
Popes/Caliphs
Roman emperors
Wars
Continents
etc.

There are lots and lots of things that are inherently notable. It's
ridiculous to say otherwise.

--Oskar


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for a policy

body:
On 17/03/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

> I only ask that the request be logged if you block someone, not just
> because it was done.
> The block messages have by and large not been nearly sufficient, which
> is why I'm asking.

Ah, ok :-)

> Again, summary of policy: If you take user restrictive action (block,
> ban, propose ban) on a CU done by a request or mechanism other than en
> WP:RFCU, you or the checkuser who ran it need to log that it was done
> and by whom.  That's all.  If you don't block the policy has no effect
> whatsoever.  Don't log anything that didn't result in a
> block/ban/proposed ban.

Hm, could be useful. Need to put something into the checkuser code not
to make it a PITA. It was only recently a "reason" field was added to
the checkuser tool itself (cheers to VoiceOfAll) and it's a damn good
thing but also easy not to fill it.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for a policy

body:
On 3/16/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> Feedback?

First off, all CU requests are already logged, but only other people
with CU creds can see them (for obvious privacy reasons). Meaning that
you can't just checkuser whoever the hell you want.

As for an on-wiki log of checkusers that have resulted in sanctions,
is [[Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case]] not sufficient? If I hear
about anyone objecting to a checkuser, that's the first place I check.
All of the RFCUs are archived there.

Or was there something else you were looking for?

--Oskar


from_name: Oldak Quill

subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation

body:
On 17/03/07, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi. I'm user Chacor on the English Wikipedia (formerly NSLE), user NSLE at
> the French Wikipedia, and user NSLE-Chacor at commons. However, this morning
> I was notified that user "Meteoroid" on the English Wikipedia (now " Z.E.R.O.")
> created new "NSLE-Chacor" accounts around wikimedia projects, like at meta,
> and at wikia, and at mediawiki.org (that I know of, there may be more),
> clearly impersonating me. He knows what he's doing, because "NSLE-Chacor" is
> not used anywhere else, and is used only by me (the name comes from
> "NationStates", an online nation simulation game, as well as my nations on
> that game). There is no possible way anyone would suddenly come up with
> "NLE-Chacor".
>
> The accounts on meta and mediawiki.org have been blocked (by Angela and
> Titoxd, respectively), while the one at wikia is under investigation pending
> a response from Meteoroid. However I sense a pattern, and there could be
> more such accounts. However, Interiot's SUL username tool is lagging right
> now, so it does not return any.
>
> I do not appreciate being impersonated like this, and it should not be
> tolerated. Is there any possibility of a wikimedia-wide ban on this
> character for this impersonation? I'm feeling frustrated and harassed right
> now, that this user has gone out of his way to make me feel so
> uncomfortable. He even edited my Commons userpage to say "NSLE-Chacor
> elsewhere is not me", a clear sign he knows what he's doing.

My sympathies: someone used created an account with my username
(again, obviously intentional) at Welsh Wikipedia and used it to
vandalise. I'm not sure how this is going to be dealt with when SUL is
being implemented.
--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation


subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary schools - notability

body:
On 17/03/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/16/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Nothing has inherent notability.
>
> Heads of state
> Nobel-laureates
> Wimbledon winners
> Academic disciplines
> The Millenium Problems
> Countries
> Popes/Caliphs
> Roman emperors
> Wars
> Continents
> etc.
>
> There are lots and lots of things that are inherently notable. It's
> ridiculous to say otherwise.

Notability is a human concept - "notability" doens't exist
objectively, in the world. All of the things you list are
intersubjectively notable, not inherently or integrally notable.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


body:
Looks like you were referring to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=World_Club_Champion_Football&direction=prev&oldid=108404067

[[WCCF]] is now a disambig, and World Club Champion Football is now at
least comprehensible.

Steve

On 3/17/07, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
> Here's a candidate...
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WCCF
>
> --
> 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:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary schools - notability

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 3/17/07, Erica <fangaili at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>What's the going consensus on the inherent notability of primary schools?
>>
>>
>Notability is a horrible concept. The rational, reasonable question to
>be asking here is "How much should we write about individual primary
>schools? Should we create an individual article for each individual
>school?"
>
I have no objection to there being an article on each and every such
school.  For the most part it is not a matter of _we_ creating it, but
of some individual having a specific interest in doing so.  It's not a
matter of having some collective compulsion to write an article for each
school, but letting individuals go ahead when they are interested.

>Whereas what we will probably end up with is some primary schools
>having long articles of very low quality, and most primary schools
>will have nothing *at all* written about them.
>
In the long term that too will be overcome.  There are many elementary
schools so we can't expect a blanket coverage in anything less than two
years.  We really can't predict what the quality will be like, but my
guess is that it will be uneven for quite some time.  That would just
show that the universe is developping as it should.

Ec


from_name: Avi

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 44, Issue 140

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
  That is because:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Biography does say Note: This category is articles relating to the genre of biography, not necessarily for biographies themselves :) .

  - --Avi
  "Oskar Sigvardsson"  wrote:

PS. I was attempting levity with that whole
[[Category:Biography]]-thing. Turns out, joke's one me! Neither
[[William Shakespeare]], [[Fibonacci]] or [[Augustus]] is in
Category:Biography :)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32) - WinPT 1.2.0
  iD8DBQFF/MDXy6A/RnheoikRArLxAJ93EmCQwf2rx9okb+EKgXCoRLO0kwCfZtxX
bq5KK8CjLHZbrexgjeHw9Pc=
=wU+X
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

----
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

---------------------------------
No need to miss a message. Get email on-the-go
with Yahoo! Mail for Mobile. Get started.


body:
On Mar 17, 2007, at 6:57 PM, Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:

>
> While I do agree with you on this article, your general point I find
> very questionable. When did it become such a ridiculous idea that
> subjects of articles in an *encyclopedia* should meet some criterion
> of notability? That is the way encyclopedias always have been.
>

Argument from tradition seems to me difficult with Wikipedia.
Encyclopedias, after all, have always been written on paper, by
experts. Notability, in that case, was a factor of including only the
most important information - after all, if you add an article on
chicken hypnotism, you have to remove another article.
> There are of course very pragmatic reasons for requiring notability
> (maintainability, privacy and original research, amongst others), but
> there are very convincing philosophical arguments that convinces me
> that it is a Good Thing. We are an encyclopedia first, everything else
> second. With every decision we make, that should be our number 1
> consideration. If we let non-encyclopedic topics in we will be a worse
> encyclopedia, and therefore we shouldn't do it. How is that not all
> that matters?

But see, this is where the argument gets strange - what's
"encyclopedic" is a factor of a restriction on paper encyclopedias
that we don't have. Since Wikipedia is vastly larger than any paper
encyclopedia, we've already clearly abandoned any standard of
encyclopedicness that can be derived from an external standard having
to do with "what encyclopedias are." The standards thus become very
much subjective - we delete articles, essentially, because a lot of
people don't like them, and describe this dislike in terms of whether
the article is encyclopedic.

The useful description is "if we let topics in that it is impossible
to write a good article about." But that has nothing to do with
notability as such.

-Phil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary schools - notability

body:
On 17/03/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> From the wiktionary entry on "notable" (
> http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Notable ):
>
> As an adjective:
> "Worthy of notice; remarkable; memorable; noted or distinguished."
>
> As a noun:
> "A person or thing of distinction"

You believe that distinction is objective?

> Nobel laureates are, objectively speaking, "worthy of notice",
> "remarkable", "distinguished" and "a person or thing of distinction".
> As are heads of state, popes and winners of Wimbledon. These aren't
> subjective opinions, these are *facts*. While there are many things
> whose notability is entirely subjective, to suggest that there are no
> categories of articles that aren't inherently notable is ludicrous.

There is no objective, but that's a matter of philosophy and
epistemology and is starting to go off-topic. You think winners of
Wimbledon are notable to the general indigenous New Zealand culture?
What about in 300 years time - say tennis is a dead sport - will it
then be no longer objectively notable? Surely something objectively
notable cannot become non-objective based on changes in culture? In
which case, things can only be intersubjectively or collectively
notable.

> The "philosophy" of wikipedia invites all sorts of debates about what
> exactly notability is, and that can easily lead to these lines of
> thinking. However, if the encyclopedia are to function at all, you
> have to remain at some level pragmatic with your opinions. And the
> fact is, both pragmatically and philosophically, there are categories
> that are, objectively speaking, inherently notable.

I don't think the proselytisers of notability are being pragmatic. The
fact is that disk space is "cheap" and we are not paper. As far as I
know, it wouldn't be too much of a burden to be several times the size
we are now. So what if an article about a school is only of interest
to people who come across it in real life? That's still a potential
audience of thousands. If we can easily verify information about that
school (so hopefully being factually accurate), why not include it?
That article would make Wikipedia very useful to thousands of people
(assuming there are few other broad, objective sources on that
school).

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary schools - notability

body:
On Mar 17, 2007, at 6:39 PM, Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:

> Shakespeare lived 500 years ago, Fibonacci 800, and Augustus Ceasar
> more than 2000 years ago. Their notability has nothing to do with
> culture, not only our culture but the entire world has changed
> dramatically since then.
>
> Let's say that these three guys are completely forgotten in a century.
> Would that take away their notability? Of course not. Their influence
> on the world has been so dramatic that they have forever earned their
> place in the pantheon of greatness that we call
> [[Category:Biography]].

The last paragraph is, of course, ludicrous - if they're completely
forgotten in a century then the Wikipedia of 2107 shouldn't have an
article on them. We should, because they are very much remembered.

The important thing to recognize here is that notability is still
socially determined - as is clearly evidenced by the tendency to use
"notable" and "encyclopedic" as synonyms. Surely encyclopedicness
isn't objective - it's the very definition of subjective, in that it
depends entirely on the judgment of encyclopedias, and thus, by
extension, on subjective human judgment.

It's easy to reject this as needlessly philosophical, but I don't
think it is. Quite the contrary, I think it's absolutely vital to our
understanding of how the selection of articles for encyclopedias is
done. There's not a standard that's external to encyclopedia-writing
for these things. It's a judgment call. To claim that there is some
external and objective source from which notability derives is to
remove human judgment from the equation.

-Phil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary schools - notability

body:
On 17/03/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 17/03/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > From the wiktionary entry on "notable" (
> > http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Notable ):
> >
> > As an adjective:
> > "Worthy of notice; remarkable; memorable; noted or distinguished."
> >
> > As a noun:
> > "A person or thing of distinction"
>
> You believe that distinction is objective?
>
> > Nobel laureates are, objectively speaking, "worthy of notice",
> > "remarkable", "distinguished" and "a person or thing of distinction".
> > As are heads of state, popes and winners of Wimbledon. These aren't
> > subjective opinions, these are *facts*. While there are many things
> > whose notability is entirely subjective, to suggest that there are no
> > categories of articles that aren't inherently notable is ludicrous.
>
> There is no objective, but that's a matter of philosophy and
> epistemology and is starting to go off-topic. You think winners of
> Wimbledon are notable to the general indigenous New Zealand culture?
> What about in 300 years time - say tennis is a dead sport - will it
> then be no longer objectively notable? Surely something objectively
> notable cannot become non-objective based on changes in culture? In
> which case, things can only be intersubjectively or collectively
> notable.
>
> > The "philosophy" of wikipedia invites all sorts of debates about what
> > exactly notability is, and that can easily lead to these lines of
> > thinking. However, if the encyclopedia are to function at all, you
> > have to remain at some level pragmatic with your opinions. And the
> > fact is, both pragmatically and philosophically, there are categories
> > that are, objectively speaking, inherently notable.
>
> I don't think the proselytisers of notability are being pragmatic. The
> fact is that disk space is "cheap" and we are not paper. As far as I
> know, it wouldn't be too much of a burden to be several times the size
> we are now. So what if an article about a school is only of interest
> to people who come across it in real life? That's still a potential
> audience of thousands. If we can easily verify information about that
> school (so hopefully being factually accurate), why not include it?
> That article would make Wikipedia very useful to thousands of people
> (assuming there are few other broad, objective sources on that
> school).

Oh, and if you were to twist my hand, I'd say that a subject which is
of use to thousands of people now is notable.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


body:
Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:

>On 3/17/07, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Which is, we should note, appalling. The idea that interesting
>>articles that nobody seriously doubts the accuracy of and are in no
>>way inflammatory or going to cause anyone any problems to anybody
>>should be deleted is ridiculous.
>>
>>
>While I do agree with you on this article, your general point I find
>very questionable. When did it become such a ridiculous idea that
>subjects of articles in an *encyclopedia* should meet some criterion
>of notability? That is the way encyclopedias always have been.
>
We have no need to be strict about notability.  Having stray articles
that escape some subjective criterion for notability does no great
harm.  If these stubby articles are so lacking in notability it is
unlikely that anyone will look at them anyways.

>There are of course very pragmatic reasons for requiring notability
>(maintainability, privacy and original research, amongst others), but
>there are very convincing philosophical arguments that convinces me
>that it is a Good Thing. We are an encyclopedia first, everything else
>second. With every decision we make, that should be our number 1
>consideration. If we let non-encyclopedic topics in we will be a worse
>encyclopedia, and therefore we shouldn't do it. How is that not all
>that matters?
>
None of your so-called pragmatic reasons is strong enough alone to
support support deletion.  If the articles are so short there is nothing
to maintain, and the other two "reasons" can be invoked in their own
right without having recourse to notability.

Your conclusion is not logically sound.  The fact that A implies B does
not support the conclusion that not-A implies not-B.  Having
"non-encyclopedic topics" (whatever that means) does not make us a worse
encyclopaedia.

Ec


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary schools - notability

body:
Oldak Quill wrote:

> Ok, more succinctly put: will the subject still be notable after the
> destruction of humanity? No, notability is a human concept and isn't
> objective.

Well, for that matter, grammar and language are also entirely human
concepts, so I guess we need to also eliminate grammar and language
from Wikipedia if we wish to follow Oldak's reasoning (which itself
relies entirely on human concepts, however ridiculous).

ALL concepts of which we are capable of speaking are human concepts.
(It may be philosophically possible to imagine "non-human concepts,"
but we cannot _speak_ of them other than through human concepts, and
as Wittgenstein observed, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must
be silent.") How can anyone seriously think that Wikipedia's content
should be created according to some standard of "objectivity" that is
NOT based on "human concepts"?

As for whether an objective standard of notability can be adequately
defined for the purposes of Wikipedia, that's easy: Notability can be
defined as the condition of having been noted publicly. For example,
Shakespeare's biography and writings have been noted in numerous
books, essays and so forth. The life of my uncle Roger, by contrast,
was so little noted publicly that it would be impossible for anyone
other than his immediate family and friends to write an article about
him. This does not mean that my uncle Roger was in any way inferior
to Shakespeare. He was a wonderful human being, and those of us who
knew him were better for it. However, there is a clear difference
between the two in terms of notability, and that difference warrants
having an article about Shakespeare and not having an article about
my uncle. It's as easy to "objectively" establish that difference as
it is to objectively establish the difference between salt and pepper.

--------------------------------
|  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
--------------------------------
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--------------------------------


subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary schools - notability

body:
Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:

>On 3/17/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I think it would be ashame for us to allow law to prescribe our content.
>>
>>
>I actually kinda agree with that, but that's not really the point. The
>point (which I could have made much clearer, in hindsight) is that
>non-notable people deserve their privacy. It would be wrong of us to
>add stuff about people who isn't "in the public sphere".
>
Privacy has nothing to do with it; we are talking about schools.  Public
schools are in the public sphere.

>My point is that
>wikipedia is fundamentally an encyclopedia. That should be in our
>minds every time we decide something. It's the Prime Directive, so to
>speak. There are certain things that define what an encyclopedia is
>(short articles, broad coverage, neutrality, etc.) and I firmly
>believe that notability is one of them. Therefore, to leave the
>notability-criterion behind would make us less of an encyclopedia and
>therefore, by definition, a Bad Thing.
>
>This might sound strange to many people, but you know what, it has
>worked pretty damn well so far. If we blindly follow this principle
>(be more like an encyclopedia==good, be less like an
>encyclopedia==bad), and accept it a priory, the better wikipedia will
>be.
>
We'd be better in a monastery? ;-)

We may not then fall in your restrictive definition of an encyclopedia
Not all encyclopedias limit themselve to short articles, and neutrality
is a characteristic of Wikipedia that need not apply to others.  Broad
coverage applies, but it prefers a broader understanding of what is notable.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary schools - notability

body:
On 3/17/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> Notability is a human concept - "notability" doens't exist
> objectively, in the world. All of the things you list are
> intersubjectively notable, not inherently or integrally notable.


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] MediaWiki 1.9.3 WG Posted

body:
MediaWiki 1.9.3 WG has been posted to:

ftp://www.wikigadugi.org/wiki/MediaWiki/mediawiki-1.9.3.WG-20070316.tar.gz.bz2

This MediaWiki version has the extensions included for Parser Logical
Operators, Wikihiero, ImageMap, and Cite, and and has been tested
against the enwiki-20070206 XML dumps.  This version also includes
updated php scripts which enable wider support for mwdumper, mwimport,
and importDump, as well as updated sql scripts which support all
Fondation interwiki sites contained in the enwiki-20070206 XML dumps.

Tidy Lib is included as well as compiled versions of texvc rendering for
<math> expressions.

This release is posted under the same license as the original MediaWiki
1.9.3 release.

Jeff


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.9.3 WG Posted


subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary schools - notability

body:
On 17/03/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/17/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> > There is no objective, but that's a matter of philosophy and
> > epistemology and is starting to go off-topic. You think winners of
> > Wimbledon are notable to the general indigenous New Zealand culture?
> > What about in 300 years time - say tennis is a dead sport - will it
> > then be no longer objectively notable? Surely something objectively
> > notable cannot become non-objective based on changes in culture? In
> > which case, things can only be intersubjectively or collectively
> > notable.
>
> I think that winners of the most prestigious tournament in a sport
> played by hundreds of millions of people worldwide will be objectively
> notable whatever the culture of the world may be.
>
> Shakespeare lived 500 years ago, Fibonacci 800, and Augustus Ceasar
> more than 2000 years ago. Their notability has nothing to do with
> culture, not only our culture but the entire world has changed
> dramatically since then.
>
> Let's say that these three guys are completely forgotten in a century.
> Would that take away their notability? Of course not. Their influence
> on the world has been so dramatic that they have forever earned their
> place in the pantheon of greatness that we call
> [[Category:Biography]].
>
> However, I do agree with you that we are getting way off-topic and
> into epistemological territory. Let's just agree to disagree on the
> philosophical part :)

Ok, more succinctly put: will the subject still be notable after the
destruction of humanity? No, notability is a human concept and isn't
objective.

> > I don't think the proselytisers of notability are being pragmatic. The
> > fact is that disk space is "cheap" and we are not paper. As far as I
> > know, it wouldn't be too much of a burden to be several times the size
> > we are now. So what if an article about a school is only of interest
> > to people who come across it in real life? That's still a potential
> > audience of thousands. If we can easily verify information about that
> > school (so hopefully being factually accurate), why not include it?
> > That article would make Wikipedia very useful to thousands of people
> > (assuming there are few other broad, objective sources on that
> > school).
>
> There is a certain pragmatism to the notability-criterion. I mean, if
> we let just anything in, how many more Seigenthalers will we have? How
> many more Daniel Brandts, threatening to sue us at every step?
> Notability serves to keep the encyclopedia under control and it gives
> us a handy excuse when people complain about privacy ("Don't blame us!
> You're the one that's notable!")

I think it would be ashame for us to allow law to prescribe our content.

> Of course, the primary reason for having a notability-criterion is
> philosophical: encyclopedias shouldn't have biographies of non-notable
> people.

Tautological. An arguement for the existance of something (here
notability) cannot necessitate that thing existing in its premise
("encyclopedias shouldn't have biographies of non-notable people.")

> Seriously, this discussion is getting way off-topic. Maybe we should
> go be productive and go write articles or something :)

OK, I'll try to stop now. :)

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary schools - notability

body:
Oldak Quill wrote:

>On 17/03/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>The "philosophy" of wikipedia invites all sorts of debates about what
>>exactly notability is, and that can easily lead to these lines of
>>thinking. However, if the encyclopedia are to function at all, you
>>have to remain at some level pragmatic with your opinions. And the
>>fact is, both pragmatically and philosophically, there are categories
>>that are, objectively speaking, inherently notable.
>>
>>
>I don't think the proselytisers of notability are being pragmatic. The
>fact is that disk space is "cheap" and we are not paper. As far as I
>know, it wouldn't be too much of a burden to be several times the size
>we are now. So what if an article about a school is only of interest
>to people who come across it in real life? That's still a potential
>audience of thousands. If we can easily verify information about that
>school (so hopefully being factually accurate), why not include it?
>That article would make Wikipedia very useful to thousands of people
>(assuming there are few other broad, objective sources on that
>school).
>
One way in which articles on elementary schools can be very useful is to
parents who are considering a move to that city.  The schools to which
their children will be going can be a decisive factor in choosing the
neighbourhood in which to live.  They want as much information as
possible about the schools in the community.

Ec


list: commons-l

from_name: Platonides

subject:
[Commons-l] Getting our content out there
	(openstockphotography.org)

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> http://www.openstockphotography.org/
> Anyone seen this? This site seems to do NOTHING but mirror Wikimedia
> Commons! (plus add fancy gadgets and drop the technical-license speak)
>
> I found it by accident during a vanity search when it claimed these
> two photos were mine:
> http://www.openstockphotography.org/user/Pfctdayelise (apparently
> pictures on your userpage  must be BY you...)

They are predating our content. Not even knowing how it works (eg licenses).
"All images listed at Open Stock Photography come from Wikimedia Commons
and as such "can be used by anyone, for any purpose[1]""
but they include {{CopyrightByWikimedia}} :P

On the bottom of each page
? Open Stock Photography. All rights reserved.

> anyway click on the coloured graph and try out the 'find
> similar-coloured pictures' - now that's pretty cool!

Yes, it's nice.
Their tools (resize, crop) are links to external sites, so fair easy to
add them to Commons.

> the 'popular searches' are quite amusing, because 99% of them must
> have 0 results.

Seems the typical "internet crap". Would be interesting to know what
does people search on commons.

> their search also seems quite shit in general.
> really weird stuff.
>
> mostly I take this as a sign that Commons is suffering because of the
> limitations of the current MW implementation, which has no fancy
> gadgets for images and no easy handling of them. Goddamit, it is
> frustrating to have all this fantastic content and feel that no one
> knows about it because it's too hard to access. GRRRRRRRRR. This site
> should not be able to exist because WE should be able to do the fancy
> stuff.
> some of it at least.

We should make a list of that features. Then we can get things like
mayflower.
-On browser image edit (adding a link)
-Color search
-<Add your requested feature here>


subject:
[Foundation-l] Advertising; leading; advocacy; propaganda;
 advocacy; usernames on Wikimedia wikis.

body:
Mohamed Magdy wrote:

>This might sound off-topic; but I had to ask here first before starting
>on-wiki discussion in order to create a new official policy on the
>Arabic wikipedia. also because the user who is the reason for this
>requested no farther conversation with him/her until she/he gets a word
>from the foundation about it.
>
It makes no sense to have this settled at the foundation level.  What is
objectionable in a user name is very much dependent on the language and
culture involved.  It is not for us English speakers to rule on the
subtleties of the Arabic language.

>Simply, the issue is a case of advertising using a username, as you all
>probably have seen it before.
>
>
>More detailed: a user of ours in ar.wp have choosen to contribute to the
>  Arabic wikipedia and a three another wikimedia wikis(as s(he) mentions
>in my talk page) under the name of ??? ???????, as you can see; this
>name is translated as "Vote for Petraa", you can see here the imperative
>form in 'Vote' and the advocacy/propaganda of saying Vote for
>Petraa..for those of you who might haven't heard; there is currently a
>project/event called the new 7 wonders of the world[1], the Petraa is
>one of the nominees in this event[2]..I have nothing againest new 7
>wonders or what so ever.. but I wondered, "Wikipedia isn't for these
>kind of things" and "the users should not use such nicknames or it will
>be a good tool for advertising whatever they need" and "Wikipedia isn't
>a front to tell people to vote for something" and "it is annoying each
>time I take a look at that nickname with its imperative nature" and such
>thoughts etc.
>
While I personally would be tolerant of such a name, and would tend to
allow him to keep the name, I am not a part of the ar:wp community.
This is yourcommunity's  decision in accordance with the rules that you
already have.  One point to be noted is that many people who start
editing by having a controvery over their user nanes tend not to stay
very long.  By the time you sort out your rules he may already have left
out of boredom.

>So, I'm simply asking; is such usernames to be tolerated? and if it
>isn't, can you please write something from the 'foundation' as
>"User:Vote for Petraa" or "??? ???????" says to say that? and if it is
>really tolerated(it would seem strange though), would a consensus on
>ar.wp of the active editors be sufficient to activate a policy so that
>users will use non-advertising titles etc. in their nicknames/usernames.
>
If those are your normal practices, yes.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation

body:
> On sites where usurpation is allowed, I recommend
> having those accounts usurped.  Unfortunately I believe that usurpations are
> only being used on the English Wikipedia.

Usurpation is only allowed on accounts with no edits. Vandalism still
counts as edits.


subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation


subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary schools - notability

body:
On 3/17/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> You believe that distinction is objective?
As in, "one who stands alone (or at least in with very few) in his
field due to remarkable skill or achievements", yeah I think it's
pretty objective

> There is no objective, but that's a matter of philosophy and
> epistemology and is starting to go off-topic. You think winners of
> Wimbledon are notable to the general indigenous New Zealand culture?
> What about in 300 years time - say tennis is a dead sport - will it
> then be no longer objectively notable? Surely something objectively
> notable cannot become non-objective based on changes in culture? In
> which case, things can only be intersubjectively or collectively
> notable.

I think that winners of the most prestigious tournament in a sport
played by hundreds of millions of people worldwide will be objectively
notable whatever the culture of the world may be.

Shakespeare lived 500 years ago, Fibonacci 800, and Augustus Ceasar
more than 2000 years ago. Their notability has nothing to do with
culture, not only our culture but the entire world has changed
dramatically since then.

Let's say that these three guys are completely forgotten in a century.
Would that take away their notability? Of course not. Their influence
on the world has been so dramatic that they have forever earned their
place in the pantheon of greatness that we call
[[Category:Biography]].

However, I do agree with you that we are getting way off-topic and
into epistemological territory. Let's just agree to disagree on the
philosophical part :)

> I don't think the proselytisers of notability are being pragmatic. The
> fact is that disk space is "cheap" and we are not paper. As far as I
> know, it wouldn't be too much of a burden to be several times the size
> we are now. So what if an article about a school is only of interest
> to people who come across it in real life? That's still a potential
> audience of thousands. If we can easily verify information about that
> school (so hopefully being factually accurate), why not include it?
> That article would make Wikipedia very useful to thousands of people
> (assuming there are few other broad, objective sources on that
> school).

There is a certain pragmatism to the notability-criterion. I mean, if
we let just anything in, how many more Seigenthalers will we have? How
many more Daniel Brandts, threatening to sue us at every step?
Notability serves to keep the encyclopedia under control and it gives
us a handy excuse when people complain about privacy ("Don't blame us!
You're the one that's notable!")

Of course, the primary reason for having a notability-criterion is
philosophical: encyclopedias shouldn't have biographies of non-notable
people. That's not what an encyclopedia does. However, I don't think
this is such a terrible argument. In fact, I agree with it. We are an
Encyclopedia first, everything else second. And encyclopedias do not
contain biographies of non-notable people (I do understand the
counter-argument, that we have have so fundamentally revised the
concept of the encyclopedia that any references to the previous
meaning of the word is nigh meaningless. I get it, I just don't agree
with it at all)

Seriously, this discussion is getting way off-topic. Maybe we should
go be productive and go write articles or something :)

--Oskar

PS. I was attempting levity with that whole
[[Category:Biography]]-thing. Turns out, joke's one me! Neither
[[William Shakespeare]], [[Fibonacci]] or [[Augustus]] is in
Category:Biography :)


subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation

body:
Yes, but I don't believe the Chacor stated that the accounts had edits.
Furthermore, that is only the policy on the English Wikipedia, other sites
may have different policies.

Cbrown1023

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Dalton
Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2007 7:27 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation

> On sites where usurpation is allowed, I recommend
> having those accounts usurped.  Unfortunately I believe that usurpations
are
> only being used on the English Wikipedia.

Usurpation is only allowed on accounts with no edits. Vandalism still
counts as edits.

_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation


subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary schools - notability

body:
On Mar 17, 2007, at 11:36 PM, Sheldon Rampton wrote:

> Oldak Quill wrote:
>
>> Ok, more succinctly put: will the subject still be notable after the
>> destruction of humanity? No, notability is a human concept and isn't
>> objective.
>
> Well, for that matter, grammar and language are also entirely human
> concepts, so I guess we need to also eliminate grammar and language
> from Wikipedia if we wish to follow Oldak's reasoning (which itself
> relies entirely on human concepts, however ridiculous).

Straw man - nobody is arguing for the removal of all human concepts
from Wikipedia's administration. Just for the recognition that
judgment needs to be employed - something that's true for grammar
(c.f. the British/American English debates) as well as inclusion. The
claim of objectivity is a claim, fundamentally, a claim that these
things can be decided without use of judgment - if it's objective
fact whether topic X is notable then we don't need to debate it.

That's nonsense. We absolutely do.

-Phil


body:
On 3/17/07, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> Which is, we should note, appalling. The idea that interesting
> articles that nobody seriously doubts the accuracy of and are in no
> way inflammatory or going to cause anyone any problems to anybody
> should be deleted is ridiculous.

While I do agree with you on this article, your general point I find
very questionable. When did it become such a ridiculous idea that
subjects of articles in an *encyclopedia* should meet some criterion
of notability? That is the way encyclopedias always have been.

There are of course very pragmatic reasons for requiring notability
(maintainability, privacy and original research, amongst others), but
there are very convincing philosophical arguments that convinces me
that it is a Good Thing. We are an encyclopedia first, everything else
second. With every decision we make, that should be our number 1
consideration. If we let non-encyclopedic topics in we will be a worse
encyclopedia, and therefore we shouldn't do it. How is that not all
that matters?

--Oskar


from_name: K P

subject: [WikiEN-l] An Open Letter to Mr. Wales

body:
On 3/17/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/17/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>
> > >Hm. As a rule, checkuser doesn't lie.
>
> > Checkuser doesn't lie, but results can easily be misinterpreted.
>
> Agreed. Many people still use ISPs that assign IPs dynamically. This
> is even true for many DSL and Broadband providers. In such cases the
> only thing a checkuser will tell you is that both accounts in question
> are (for example) Comcast users in Chicago or Bellsouth DSL users in
> Birmingham. A few years ago I was blocked for a month. So was every
> other user in Atlanta whose ISP used Level3 POPs all thanks to some
> dickhead called alberuni who was also an earthlink subscriber in
> Atlanta (or another ISP in Atlanta using Level3 POPs) . If someone
> suspected me of being a sockpuppet of user:alberuni, a checkuser would
> likely say I was.
>
> >I think there have been a number of instances of troublesome users
> seizing
> > on an inaccurate interpretation of checkuser to contest remedies which
> are
> >directed at the troublesome behavior shared by both accounts in question.
>
> > If both accounts are making the same kind of trouble...
>
> If user:foo and user:bar are both being wp:dicks, then unless you are
> 99.998% certain
> then one is a sock of the other, both should be judged solely on their
> own dickery. If you accuse one of being a sock of the other and it
> turns out they are 2 separate dicks, it makes you look like the dick
> and the dicks look like victims.

A lot of the rants from various unrelated users on this list complaining
about being blocked sound exactly alike.  I simply cannot tell one from the
other.   This is partly a function of boredom.

This is interesting though:

"I took the offending admin to WP:AN/I and instigated a WP:RfCU
against them. My RfC was closed early for some reason, apparently
because I violated WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA, in my edits to WP:BJAODN. But
WP:CIVIL is only a guideline, not a policy."

Couldn't it be from an experienced computer user rather than an experienced
Wikipedia editor?  I asked my son to get an account and edit an article on
Wikipedia that needed work.  Today he showed me how to do something so
embarrassingly newbie that I can't ever admit it--even worse than the four
months it took me to find the edit undo button.  I said, "oh, you've been
editing Wikipedia."  Nope, he only used it that one time to edit the article
I requested, then forgot all about it, but he learned what was what for the
few days he spent editing.

I think Wikipedia administrators are seeing what they want to see when they
look at something like this, and at check user.  My son grew up on
computers.  He rebooted his grandmother's op system when he was 7.  Learning
what all these things are for a user who spends time on the Internet, and is
computer savvy, or a computer gamer (like my son),  probably does not take
months of time.

Still, been editing for 7 months and I probably couldn't write that.

Sometimes I wonder though when I find two editors who occassionally cross my
path and seem just like another editor.  Today I ran across a new one who
reminded me of some other editor, and I found it.  Funny, how they appear to
have almost cloned each other's users pages.

A quote from User:Nesbit:

Why I do Wikipedia

Wikipedia is an excellent example of how knowledge can be socially
constructed. The editing and discussion tools constitute a collaborative
knowledge building environment that stands as an alternative model to
threaded asynchronous conferences, collaborative annotation systems, blogs,
and software development systems.

A quote from User:Sue Rangell:

Why I do Wikipedia

Wikipedia is an excellent example of how knowledge can be socially
constructed. The editing and discussion tools constitute a collaborative
knowledge building environment that stands as an alternative model to
threaded asynchronous conferences, collaborative annotation systems, blogs,
and software development systems.

They also are both have a discrete number (less than twelve) of right
justified, paragraph spaced rather than continually stacked,  user boxes
identifying both as native speakers of English, left handed, skeptical of
MBTL (whatever that is), users of Mozilla firefox browsers, they both
program in Pascal and HTML, and they both may, one day, become
self-proclaimed professional procastinators.

As for professional interests, they both have the exact same list:

My professional interests on Wikipedia include:

Cognitive psychology

Concept mapping

Knowledge representation

Educational psychology

Educational technology

Instructional design

Interaction design

Learning object

Multivariate statistics

Meta-analysis

Multimedia

Qualitative psychological research

Self-regulated learning

Among my recreational interests are:

Artificial intelligence

European history

Northumberland

History of technology

History of science

Science fiction

Music theory

Music Synthesizers

Jazz

Computer programming

See, *this* is what I call a sock-puppet.

*Interesting enough, in light of the Essjay scandal, they both claim to be
professors or educators at universities*, one a woman in the department of
education at DeMoines University (sic), the other a man at a university in
Canada.  Only the man links to his faculty page, whereas I assume the
spelling might be an issue with the woman's link--is there really a DeMoines
University?

I've run across a handful of pairs like this on Wikipedia, both active
editors, just like these two--Nesbit just editing a few days ago, Sue
posting a poorly written snowball of an article to FAC today.  They seem
more like socks, to me, than the random rantors that pop up on this list
every once in a while. They come up in unusual situations, like GA
nominations, FAC.  Sue Rangell's nomination for FAC was such a poorly
written article, ridiculously made into a series of lists, that I wondered
what else she had done.  Not much considering she only made her user page
and first edit a week ago, but has already been giving away barnstars like
crazy and getting awards, too.

I suppose there is some obvious explanation for this, so I'll just ask
User:Nesbit if User:Sue Rangell is his sock puppet.  But like last time I
asked this, I just got a denial, although the editor in question did stop
supporting him/herself on GA nominations.

Am I missing something?  Or is it just that some folks have two Wikipedia
accounts and are various things on different accounts (American
female educator on one, male Canadian professor on the other)?  I suppose if
the socks are not misbehaving it's not an issue, so maybe that's why
administrators are not commenting upon these.

But check user?  Similar whiney rants on this list?  It's not like whining
requires finese and originality, especially when angry.

KP


from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [WikiEN-l] An Open Letter to Mr. Wales

body:
Am I the only one who sees a pattern to some of these sorts of emails?

First, they start off in Newbie Mode:

"Dear Mr Wales Sir,

I think this is the right email address to use to contact you. It's a
bit strange to have to subscribe to receive all emails you get, just
to send you one!"

Then, they get a little less newb:

"I started editing your encyclopedia two weeks ago. I have epilepsy
and tourette's syndrome and accidentally typed some mild profanities
(like 'MARK RYAN IS A DICKHEAD') on the talk pages of several users.
Instead of being understanding and comforting me in my time of
distress, several of your administrators said I was something called a
'sock puppet', which as I understand it means I've been using multiple
accounts. I'm writing to tell you that you can't allow these
administrators to do their thing any more, because I didn't do it! I
trust you will remove them from their positions immediately."

And then they show their remarkably verbose knowledge of Wikipedia's
internal workings, despite only being around for such a limited time:

"I took the offending admin to WP:AN/I and instigated a WP:RfCU
against them. My RfC was closed early for some reason, apparently
because I violated WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA, in my edits to WP:BJAODN. But
WP:CIVIL is only a guideline, not a policy."

Finally, they turn nasty:

"I thought this project was good, but then this happened. I have lost
my faith in Wikipedia. I am going to Wikipedia Review, which I have
found to be full of exceptionally well-balanced people who all had
exactly the same experience as me! I hate Wikipedia now and want it
out of my life."

And they say the thing they always say, but never seem to put into action:

"Goodbye."

No? I'm the only person who sees that a lot in emails on this mailing list?

~Mark Ryan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary schools - notability

body:
On 3/17/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ok, more succinctly put: will the subject still be notable after the
> destruction of humanity? No, notability is a human concept and isn't
> objective.

I actually have a kick-ass answer to that, but it would take up two
paragraphs and I should follow my own advice and go do something more
productive :)

> I think it would be ashame for us to allow law to prescribe our content.

I actually kinda agree with that, but that's not really the point. The
point (which I could have made much clearer, in hindsight) is that
non-notable people deserve their privacy. It would be wrong of us to
add stuff about people who isn't "in the public sphere".

> Tautological. An arguement for the existance of something (here
> notability) cannot necessitate that thing existing in its premise
> ("encyclopedias shouldn't have biographies of non-notable people.")

That's a whole lot of big words, and I'm a little to tired to parse
them all, but I think you're missing my point. My point is that
wikipedia is fundamentally an encyclopedia. That should be in our
minds every time we decide something. It's the Prime Directive, so to
speak. There are certain things that define what an encyclopedia is
(short articles, broad coverage, neutrality, etc.) and I firmly
believe that notability is one of them. Therefore, to leave the
notability-criterion behind would make us less of an encyclopedia and
therefore, by definition, a Bad Thing.

This might sound strange to many people, but you know what, it has
worked pretty damn well so far. If we blindly follow this principle
(be more like an encyclopedia==good, be less like an
encyclopedia==bad), and accept it a priory, the better wikipedia will
be.

> OK, I'll try to stop now. :)

Yeah, me too, but it seems pretty futile :)

--Oskar


from_name: GerardM

subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation

body:
Hoi,
Given that you have probably a lot more edits than the impersonator, you
only have to wait for Brion to roll out single login. You will get to use
this profile on the strength of having more edits. This week Brion said he
hoped to have SUL real soon now. :)
Thanks,
     GerardM

On 3/17/07, Casey Brown <cbrown1023 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Currently, the only thing that is available to you in response is to have
> the accounts blocked.  On sites where usurpation is allowed, I recommend
> having those accounts usurped.  Unfortunately I believe that usurpations
> are
> only being used on the English Wikipedia.  I recommend that you contact
> this
> person and ask him to hand the accounts over to you, in which case you can
> then change the passwords and the e-mail addresses.  This seems the best
> course of action.
>
> The user is not being very... nice, but I think a ban is a little over the
> top.  (Even though what he did was quite rude and looks purposeful.)
> However, if he does it again, a ban would be a pretty good solution.
>
> I'm sorry that you had to go through this and hope it gets solved soon. :(
> (However, it looks like it can only be solved currently with "Meteoroid"s
> or
> "Z.E.R.O."s support.)
>
> Cbrown1023
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Oldak Quill
> Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:48 PM
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation
>
> On 17/03/07, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi. I'm user Chacor on the English Wikipedia (formerly NSLE), user NSLE
> at
> > the French Wikipedia, and user NSLE-Chacor at commons. However, this
> morning
> > I was notified that user "Meteoroid" on the English Wikipedia (now "
> Z.E.R.O.")
> > created new "NSLE-Chacor" accounts around wikimedia projects, like at
> meta,
> > and at wikia, and at mediawiki.org (that I know of, there may be more),
> > clearly impersonating me. He knows what he's doing, because
> "NSLE-Chacor"
> is
> > not used anywhere else, and is used only by me (the name comes from
> > "NationStates", an online nation simulation game, as well as my nations
> on
> > that game). There is no possible way anyone would suddenly come up with
> > "NLE-Chacor".
> >
> > The accounts on meta and mediawiki.org have been blocked (by Angela and
> > Titoxd, respectively), while the one at wikia is under investigation
> pending
> > a response from Meteoroid. However I sense a pattern, and there could be
> > more such accounts. However, Interiot's SUL username tool is lagging
> right
> > now, so it does not return any.
> >
> > I do not appreciate being impersonated like this, and it should not be
> > tolerated. Is there any possibility of a wikimedia-wide ban on this
> > character for this impersonation? I'm feeling frustrated and harassed
> right
> > now, that this user has gone out of his way to make me feel so
> > uncomfortable. He even edited my Commons userpage to say "NSLE-Chacor
> > elsewhere is not me", a clear sign he knows what he's doing.
>
> My sympathies: someone used created an account with my username
> (again, obviously intentional) at Welsh Wikipedia and used it to
> vandalise. I'm not sure how this is going to be dealt with when SUL is
> being implemented.
> --
> Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation


from_name: Ron Ritzman

subject: [WikiEN-l] An Open Letter to Mr. Wales

body:
On 3/17/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:

> >Hm. As a rule, checkuser doesn't lie.

> Checkuser doesn't lie, but results can easily be misinterpreted.

Agreed. Many people still use ISPs that assign IPs dynamically. This
is even true for many DSL and Broadband providers. In such cases the
only thing a checkuser will tell you is that both accounts in question
are (for example) Comcast users in Chicago or Bellsouth DSL users in
Birmingham. A few years ago I was blocked for a month. So was every
other user in Atlanta whose ISP used Level3 POPs all thanks to some
dickhead called alberuni who was also an earthlink subscriber in
Atlanta (or another ISP in Atlanta using Level3 POPs) . If someone
suspected me of being a sockpuppet of user:alberuni, a checkuser would
likely say I was.

>I think there have been a number of instances of troublesome users seizing
> on an inaccurate interpretation of checkuser to contest remedies which are
>directed at the troublesome behavior shared by both accounts in question.
> If both accounts are making the same kind of trouble...

If user:foo and user:bar are both being wp:dicks, then unless you are
99.998% certain
then one is a sock of the other, both should be judged solely on their
own dickery. If you accuse one of being a sock of the other and it
turns out they are 2 separate dicks, it makes you look like the dick
and the dicks look like victims.


subject: [WikiEN-l] What a sock puppet looks like to an amateur

body:
(sorry if I duplicate this post)

Sometimes I wonder though when I find an editor who seems just like another
editor.   Funny, how these two appear to have almost cloned each other's
users pages.

See, *this* is what I call a sock-puppet:

A quote from User:Nesbit/User:Sue Rangell

Why I do Wikipedia

Wikipedia is an excellent example of how knowledge can be socially
constructed. The editing and discussion tools constitute a collaborative
knowledge building environment that stands as an alternative model to
threaded asynchronous conferences, collaborative annotation systems, blogs,
and software development systems.

They also are both have a discrete number (less than twelve) of right
justified, paragraph spaced rather than continually stacked,  user boxes
identifying both as native speakers of English, left handed, skeptical of
MBTL (whatever that is), users of Mozilla firefox browsers, they both
program in Pascal and HTML, and they both may, one day, become
self-proclaimed professional procastinators.

As for professional interests, they both have the exact same list:

My professional interests on Wikipedia include:

Cognitive psychology

Concept mapping

Knowledge representation

?

Music Synthesizers

Jazz

Computer programming

*Interesting enough, in light of the Essjay scandal, they both claim to be
professors or educators at universities*, one a woman in the department of
education at DeMoines University (sic), the other a man at a university in
Canada.  Only the man links to his faculty page, whereas I assume the
spelling might be an issue with the woman's link--is there really a DeMoines
University?

I've run across a handful of pairs like this on Wikipedia, both active
editors, just like these two--Nesbit just editing a few days ago, Sue
posting a poorly written snowball of an article to FAC today.  They seem
more like socks, to me, than the random rantors that pop up on this list
every once in a while. They come up in unusual situations, like GA
nominations, FAC.  Sue Rangell's nomination for FAC was such a poorly
written article, ridiculously made into a series of lists, that I wondered
what else she had done.  Not much considering she only made her user page
and first edit a week ago, but has already been giving away barnstars like
crazy and getting awards, too.

I suppose there is some obvious explanation for this, so I'll just ask
User:Nesbit if User:Sue Rangell is his sock puppet.  But like last time I
asked this, I just got a denial, although the editor in question did stop
supporting him/herself on GA nominations.

Am I missing something?  I suppose if the socks are not misbehaving it's not
an issue, so maybe that's why administrators are not commenting upon these.

But check user?  Similar whiney rants on this list?  It's not like whining
requires finese and originality, especially when angry.

KP


from_name: David A. Desrosiers

body:
On Sat, 2007-03-17 at 22:46 -0700, Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
> This version also includes updated php scripts which enable wider
> support for mwdumper, mwimport, and importDump, as well as updated sql
> scripts which support all Fondation interwiki sites contained in the
> enwiki-20070206 XML dumps.

Can you explain exactly what this refers to? "wider support"? Update sql
scripts? What changes have you made to facilitate this?

--
David A. Desrosiers
desrod at gnu-designs.com
Skype username: setuid
http://gnu-designs.com
?Strive to silence the voices that oppose you."


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation

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

Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> On sites where usurpation is allowed, I recommend
>> having those accounts usurped.  Unfortunately I believe that usurpations are
>> only being used on the English Wikipedia.
>
> Usurpation is only allowed on accounts with no edits. Vandalism still
> counts as edits.

Don't be silly; this is the real world, where people make reasonable
decisions. Of course the proper owner can take the names.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFF/MmFwRnhpk1wk44RAv3PAKCycdZyefEem44hJdCi+4gSoRf/sgCgloNr
mk7pu/SyQNGlGY/+FDcNhZ0=
=mz2w
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary schools - notability

body:
On 3/17/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/17/07, Erica <fangaili at gmail.com> wrote:
> > What's the going consensus on the inherent notability of primary schools?
>
> Notability is a horrible concept. The rational, reasonable question to
> be asking here is "How much should we write about individual primary
> schools? Should we create an individual article for each individual
> school?"

As a mergist, I heartily agree.

In the example Erica gives, I haven't yet found any article longer
than a two-sentence stub, and what's more, they're all of the same
form, containing the same information. As such, I think the best
approach would be to merge them all together into a list. I can
picture a table with columns for the school name, location, age range
covered and enrolment.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Mohamed Magdy

subject:
[Foundation-l] Advertising; leading; advocacy; propaganda; advocacy;
 usernames on Wikimedia wikis.

body:
This might sound off-topic; but I had to ask here first before starting
on-wiki discussion in order to create a new official policy on the
Arabic wikipedia. also because the user who is the reason for this
requested no farther conversation with him/her until she/he gets a word
from the foundation about it.

Simply, the issue is a case of advertising using a username, as you all
probably have seen it before.

More detailed: a user of ours in ar.wp have choosen to contribute to the
  Arabic wikipedia and a three another wikimedia wikis(as s(he) mentions
in my talk page) under the name of ??? ???????, as you can see; this
name is translated as "Vote for Petraa", you can see here the imperative
form in 'Vote' and the advocacy/propaganda of saying Vote for
Petraa..for those of you who might haven't heard; there is currently a
project/event called the new 7 wonders of the world[1], the Petraa is
one of the nominees in this event[2]..I have nothing againest new 7
wonders or what so ever.. but I wondered, "Wikipedia isn't for these
kind of things" and "the users should not use such nicknames or it will
be a good tool for advertising whatever they need" and "Wikipedia isn't
a front to tell people to vote for something" and "it is annoying each
time I take a look at that nickname with its imperative nature" and such
thoughts etc.

I asked the user to simply ask one of our local fellows to change the
name to something else without the ad-sense in it, but s(he) simply told
me that I will have to bring something from the 'foundation' that agrees
to my suggestion.

So, I'm simply asking; is such usernames to be tolerated? and if it
isn't, can you please write something from the 'foundation' as
"User:Vote for Petraa" or "??? ???????" says to say that? and if it is
really tolerated(it would seem strange though), would a consensus on
ar.wp of the active editors be sufficient to activate a policy so that
users will use non-advertising titles etc. in their nicknames/usernames.

At last, sorry for the long message.

Mohamed Magdy~alnokta


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation

body:
On 3/18/07, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> The accounts do have edits, unfortunately. Thanks, everyone. Hopefully he'll
> admit that he's behind all this and apologise. :/

It doesn't look like it. He's just "retired" on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Z.E.R.O.&oldid=115878507

Angela


subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation


subject:
[Foundation-l] Advertising; leading; advocacy; propaganda;
	advocacy; usernames on Wikimedia wikis.

body:
We have a lot of similar names on the English Wikipedia -
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Listusers&limit=50&username=Vote

There's no policy specifically against it even there, and certainly
not one that applies across all Wikimedia projects. It's up to each
community to decide whether such names are appropriate and whether to
block them all or take them on a case by case basis. If someone is
otherwise making useful edits, perhaps it's not a problem, but if
they're only there to promote whoever they are advocating voting for,
it could be a problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Username forbids (on the
English Wikipedia only) names that promote a company, but not those
that promote a person.

Angela


from_name: wayne

subject: [Commons-l] Commons-l Digest, Vol 22, Issue 21

body:
At 07:00 AM 3/18/2007, you wrote:
>Send Commons-l mailing list submissions to
>         commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>
>To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
>         http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
>         commons-l-request at lists.wikimedia.org
>
>You can reach the person managing the list at
>         commons-l-owner at lists.wikimedia.org
>
>When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
>than "Re: Contents of Commons-l digest..."
>
>
>Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Re: Getting our content out there (openstockphotography.org)
>       (Platonides)
>
>
>
>Seems the typical "internet crap". Would be interesting to know what
>does people search on commons.
>
> > their search also seems quite shit in general.
> > really weird stuff.

I, for one wikisoul, use Commons quite often and mainly for
historical and botanical photographs, as well as the usual category
and article organizational thing. Many people I mention Wikipedia to
assume the photographs come from pedia and don't know media or
Commons actually exists. I think it's great and I tell everyone I
know about it all the time User WayneRay


subject: [WikiEN-l] An Open Letter to Mr. Wales

body:
On 3/18/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/18/07, K P <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > A lot of the rants from various unrelated users on this list complaining
> > about being blocked sound exactly alike.
>
> Of course because they all have something in common, they were all,
> justifiably or otherwise, blocked and they were all pissed off about
> it.

Yeah, Arbcom wrote something under the RfAR for an admin recently, that
admins should be above the being pissed off, mostly, I assume, because of
something somewhere else, a Wikipedia page where it says exactly what you
say: users get ticked off when they're blocked.

A "duh" moment if ever there was one.  I do think that's why so many posters
sound exactly alike and then get further accused of being sock puppets, they
have a DSL line, so it will be easy to find some banned user on the same
ISP.

Another duh moment, when I had not thought of the obvious, is that one user
is probably simply copying another user!  I suspect my other ones were the
same, where one user just copied another.  It seems so obvious in
retrospect, because copying is rampant in this day and age, why would I
expect Wikipedia users to be exceptions?  (Except of course for the pair
involved in the GA fracus who did cut it out.)

Now that I think of it, that's also a good way to learn where to go and how
to use Wikipedia quickly, look at the contributions of another editor, and
just follow their paths a bit.  Which could end up making you sound like the
other editor, or a more experienced editor.

Yes, always nice to wake up alerted to the obvious simultaneous with your
own obliviousness.

KP


subject: [WikiEN-l] An Open Letter to Mr. Wales

body:
On 3/18/07, K P <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:

> A lot of the rants from various unrelated users on this list complaining
> about being blocked sound exactly alike.

Of course because they all have something in common, they were all,
justifiably or otherwise, blocked and they were all pissed off about
it.


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation

body:
2007/3/18, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
> Hoi,
> Given that you have probably a lot more edits than the impersonator, you
> only have to wait for Brion to roll out single login. You will get to use
> this profile on the strength of having more edits. This week Brion said he
> hoped to have SUL real soon now. :)
>

Well, he said the same half a year ago, and similar things have been said
for years, so I won't be holding my breath...

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation

body:
Andre Engels schreef:
> 2007/3/18, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
>> Hoi,
>> Given that you have probably a lot more edits than the impersonator, you
>> only have to wait for Brion to roll out single login. You will get to use
>> this profile on the strength of having more edits. This week Brion said he
>> hoped to have SUL real soon now. :)
>>
>>
>
> Well, he said the same half a year ago, and similar things have been said
> for years, so I won't be holding my breath...
Hoi,
Well, even if Brion says it will be on-line this evening, I hope you do
not hold your breath.. Brion was a bit more specific as to the time.. I
am not holding my breath so I was not quoting that he said maybe end of
the month.
Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation


from_name: Skyring

body:
On 3/16/07, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
>
> On 15/03/07, Skyring <skyring at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Maybe instead of giving admins alone the power to confer "stableness",
> there
> > should be another class of Wikipedian,people who aren't necessarily
> admins,
> > but are steady, reasonable sort of folk. We could call them
> "stablehands".
>
> Implying that they spend most of their time shovelling manure?

No. I just like playing with words. Perhaps our minds run on different
tracks.

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: arfi Mohamed

subject:
[Wikitech-l] RE : Re: MediaWiki:<meta> Labels in dumps cause
	interwiki errors

body:
svp ne menvoyer plus de message et merci davance

"Jeff V. Merkey" <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> a ?crit :  Brion Vibber wrote:

>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>
>
>>The inclusion of MediaWiki:   pages in the base Article, templates,
>>etc. dumps, such as the English Wikipedia, cause major
>>problems if you are trying to import these dumps into a Wikipedia
>>enabled for another language. Many of the navigation menu's
>>get trashed and corrupted when these MediaWiki labels for the English
>>Wikipedia are included in the base article and template dumps.
>>
>>
>
>Please describe "trashed and corrupted" by giving specific examples.
>Also try to describe what "enabled for another language" means.
>
>

>From language/messages/MessagesChr.php

# Recent changes
'changes' => '?????????????????????',
'recentchanges' => '????????? ?????????????????????',
'recentchanges-url' => '????????????:Recentchanges',
'recentchangestext' => '?????
??
??? ?????  ???????????? ????????? ????????????????????? ?????  wiki ?????? ?????? ????????????.',

"recentchanges-url" and other utrl tags end up mapping to their
translated constructs as the internal representation. i.e.
recentchanges-url ends up rendering as "????????? ?????????????????????-url" as the page
link INTERNALLY rather than
"recentchanges-url", even though the internal variable is named
something else. This causes the page linking to
"????????????:Recentchanges" to end up pointing to a non-existent link. All of
the -url variables end up getting corrupted
this way.

>Does it mean you have configured the wiki to a language different from
>the language you are importing?
>

Yes.

>Can you explain why you would do this?
>
>
Translated Cherokee articles created from the English Wiki dumps.

>It sounds like a simple configuration error on your part. The obvious
>result would be that both articles and customized messages will appear
>in the language you imported (eg English) instead of the language you
>set it to.
>
>If you simply want to look at the menu in another language, you probably
>want to just change your user preference, not the wiki-wide content
>language.
>
>
Hmmm, not sure about this one, but I will investigate this one.

>
>
>>It certainly is ok to include them in the dumps which supposedly
>>contains "everything" (the .7z dumps) but they shoud be stripped out
>>of the base dumps which are supposed to just contain the articles and
>>templates for the articles.
>>
>>
>
>Will consider making that change.
>
>
Probably a good idea.

>Note that you can exclude a namespace from your import using mwdumper by
>using the namespace filter, for instance:
>
> --filter=namespace:\!NS_MEDIAWIKI
>
>(You can also use mwdumper to filter the XML and feed it into
>importDump.php or another tool to do the actual import, if you prefer
>using another tool.)
>
>
Thanks. I will update the database dumps page on meta with this
information on how to strip out
the MediaWiki namespace entries.

Jeff

>- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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>Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
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>WpHPz577YLDxODL1STIemsI=
>=ooPk
>-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>

_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

---------------------------------
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from_name: NSLE (Wikipedia)

subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation

body:
The accounts do have edits, unfortunately. Thanks, everyone. Hopefully he'll
admit that he's behind all this and apologise. :/

On 18/03/07, Casey Brown <cbrown1023 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Yes, but I don't believe the Chacor stated that the accounts had edits.
> Furthermore, that is only the policy on the English Wikipedia, other sites
> may have different policies.
>
> Cbrown1023
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Thomas
> Dalton
> Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2007 7:27 PM
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation
>
> > On sites where usurpation is allowed, I recommend
> > having those accounts usurped.  Unfortunately I believe that usurpations
> are
> > only being used on the English Wikipedia.
>
> Usurpation is only allowed on accounts with no edits. Vandalism still
> counts as edits.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation


subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation

body:
Erk. This user now [
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Z.E.R.O.&diff=115878507&oldid=115873027claims]
to have retired from WP.

On 18/03/07, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The accounts do have edits, unfortunately. Thanks, everyone. Hopefully
> he'll admit that he's behind all this and apologise. :/
>
> On 18/03/07, Casey Brown <cbrown1023 at comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> > Yes, but I don't believe the Chacor stated that the accounts had edits.
> > Furthermore, that is only the policy on the English Wikipedia, other
> > sites
> > may have different policies.
> >
> > Cbrown1023
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
> > [mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org ] On Behalf Of Thomas
> > Dalton
> > Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2007 7:27 PM
> > To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation
> >
> > > On sites where usurpation is allowed, I recommend
> > > having those accounts usurped.  Unfortunately I believe that
> > usurpations
> > are
> > > only being used on the English Wikipedia.
> >
> > Usurpation is only allowed on accounts with no edits. Vandalism still
> > counts as edits.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Help with impersonation


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary schools - notability

body:
On 3/18/07, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> In the example Erica gives, I haven't yet found any article longer
> than a two-sentence stub, and what's more, they're all of the same
> form, containing the same information. As such, I think the best
> approach would be to merge them all together into a list. I can
> picture a table with columns for the school name, location, age range
> covered and enrolment.

I would prefer something more flexible than a table, just in case
there really is something interesting to be written about the school.
But we're on the same page.

Steve


body:
On 3/18/07, Nick Wilkins <nlwilkins at gmail.com> wrote:
> And up for deletion, as well.

Yes, I don't really get that. Guy's argument seems to be "Someone just
wrote about an interesting game. Rather than leading to it from some
argument about its notability, like it being published in Johnsons
Hundred Most Notable Games Compendium or something."

Asserting notability is a bore. Particularly since we have no
definition of "notability" in most cases.

Steve


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

body:
Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:

>
> MediaWiki 1.9.3 WG has been posted to:
>
> ftp://www.wikigadugi.org/wiki/MediaWiki/mediawiki-1.9.3.WG-20070316.tar.gz.bz2
>
>
> This MediaWiki version has the extensions included for Parser Logical
> Operators, Wikihiero, ImageMap, and Cite, and and has been tested
> against the enwiki-20070206 XML dumps.  This version also includes
> updated php scripts which enable wider support for mwdumper, mwimport,
> and importDump, as well as updated sql scripts which support all
> Fondation interwiki sites contained in the enwiki-20070206 XML dumps.
>
> Tidy Lib is included as well as compiled versions of texvc rendering
> for <math> expressions.
> This release is posted under the same license as the original
> MediaWiki 1.9.3 release.
>
> Jeff
>
>
There was a question about the changes:

On Sat, 2007-03-17 at 22:46 -0700, Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
>/ This version also includes updated php scripts which enable wider
/>/ support for mwdumper, mwimport, and importDump, as well as updated sql
/>/ scripts which support all Fondation interwiki sites contained in the
/>/ enwiki-20070206 XML dumps.
/
Can you explain exactly what this refers to? "wider support"? Update sql
scripts? What changes have you made to facilitate this?

--
David A. Desrosiers
desrod at gnu-designs.com <http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l>

1.  Added creteBcrat.php which allows recreation of sysop and bureaucrat
accounts with a fresh database directly through mysql without needing to
run MediaWiki install.  See meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dumps. This is
a preferred environment for mwdumper and mwimport during XML import.
2.  Added over 40 missing language codes to wikipedia-interwiki.sql to
synchronize with the current enwiki XML dumps.
3.  Included a sample LocalSettings.php script with examples for
enabling tidylib, local HTML caching, and extensions necessary to render
the XML dumps as of enwiki-20070206.

Jeff


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.9.3 WG Posted


subject:
[Wikitech-l] RE : Re: MediaWiki:<meta> Labels in dumps cause
 interwiki errors

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

arfi Mohamed wrote:
> svp ne menvoyer plus de message et merci davance

(Has been unsubscribed.)

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] An Open Letter to Mr. Wales

body:
On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 00:05:56 -0700, "K P" <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:

>A quote from User:Nesbit:
>A quote from User:Sue Rangell:

I will look at their editing patterns, but straight copying of user
pages has happened before,

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