subject: [Wikitech-l] Lucene search

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> The
> machine either hasn't come back up or hasn't reconnected to the network,
> and it's either not on the serial console server or isn't responding
> (and its port isn't labeled), so it'll need to be checked out at some
> point.

Chad's fixed it; there's some funky difference in how the new kernel
uses the drives that caused it not to be able to mount the drives on
boot (SATA oddities).

The Lucene server is now running on vincent and avicenna to split the load.

> In the meantime, I'm setting up a second Lucene search server on
> Isidore, the other experimental machine which is running FreeBSD 5.3.
> The GCC build is slightly broken on FreeBSD so this required a little
> patching and pain, but we'll see how it goes.

I'm not sure what the cause was (GCC build, threading, disk, etc) but
Isidore seemed a bit sluggish. The index build was running about a third
as fast as it did on vincent, and I uploaded a test copy instead to run
from until vincent came back online.

The rate of service for the daemon seemed a bit slower than Vincent was
peaking out at.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: templates boxes: multiplying like rabbits

body:
Arwel Parry wrote:

> In this particular case, I'd say we could dispense with  the
> succession box for "T?naiste", whose data is put in better context by
> the "T?naistithe na h?ireann" template at the bottom, and the
> "President of Ireland" succession box, whose only improving feature
> over the infobox at the top of the page is that it actually shows
> pictures of his predecessor and successor as President.
>
I've consolidated all the succession boxes into one succession box
group, how's it look now? I think the redundancy is a price worth paying
for the standardization of succession boxes like this, it allows one to
quickly click one's way through the Tanaiste and Presidents in order
without having to search through the list each time.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Poland

body:
Hi,

Le Tuesday 12 April 2005 16:02, Dariusz Siedlecki a ?crit :
> I've wanted to inform everyone who isn't aware yet, that the Polish
> Wikimedia community started to plan the upcoming of the Wikimedia
> Poland community, which would act as a local chapter to the Wikimedia
> Foundation.

Welcome to Wikimedia Poland. ;o)

> Right now, we're gathering info and informing users on the good and
> the bad sides of having a more "legal" way of operating the Polish
> projects.
>
> We need at least 15 interested people to start the organization. We
> won't spend almost any money on start, apart from some basic
> registration fees (a few dollars) and a domain - Wikimedia.pl.
>
> The current list of people interested in founding the organization is
> listed over on meta, to be more precise, here -
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Polska#Lista_ch.C4.99tnych
>
> We haven't informed the local communities on anything yet. First we
> want to gather more info, and when we'll actually have the first real
> participants and some words of courage, we'll post the info on every
> local village pump in every project.
>
> Now, my only question is, what should we exactly do after registering
> our organization, to become a local Wikimedia chapter?

I think this has to be written in the bylaws.
Wikim?dia France is a legal representant of Wikimedia Foundation Inc. in
France, as defined in the bylaws.

AFAIK, Wikimedia Deutschland has chosen a less formal status.

> I'll try to inform foundation-l on any new progress as soon as it happens.

Regards,

Yann
Secretary of Wikim?dia France

--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Poland


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Protecting "Today's Featured Article"

body:
David Gerard wrote

> I think this is a bad idea. Most Featured Articles are greatly improved by
> being on the front page.

Agree.  And it is slightly anomalous if an article becomes Featured without
being watchlisted by a number of alert editors, I'd say.

Charles


from_name: Taco Deposit

body:
So is it time to remove "breaking news" from "What Wikipedia is not" yet?

TD

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org]
On Behalf Of Arwel Parry
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2005 9:49 AM
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia - first with the news

This item
[http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/internet/2005/04/12/wikipedia_fir
st_with_the_news.html]
from todays' Guardian notes that we had the correct details for [[Andrea
Dworkin]]'s death date over 24 hours before the mainstream media, and
also points to the discussion on the talk page when we weren't sure if
the rumours were true.


subject: [Foundation-l] Comment on Copyright Orphans

body:
Hi,

Le Tuesday 12 April 2005 16:35, The Cunctator a ?crit :
> We should be making an official comment on the issue of copyright orphans
> now before the U.S. Copyright Office. The deadline is May 9.
>
> From http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/:
(...)
> This is clearly something the Wikimedia Foundation should officially weigh
> in on.

I totally agree with this.

Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tomer Chachamu

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Show "You have new messages on your user-talk OR
	USER page", i.e. for changes any of these pages

body:
On Apr 11, 2005 10:02 PM, Thomas Gries <mail at tgries.de> wrote:
> I know of many users having asked for implementing this, but how do
> _you_ like this ?
> Shall we notify changes on both pages ?
>
> I have 1.4.1 code ready for allowing old or new behaviour (settable in
> DefaultSettings).
> Would be nice to learn, how you think about this.
> Tom

I'm just another user, but I would like that. Is there a bug report?


from_name: Matt R

body:
--- David 'DJ' Hedley <spyders at btinternet.com> wrote:
> The featured article will probably never be a current event, and as theres
> not much that can be added to it, I can't see any dis-advantage in
> protecting it on that day. As you can see from yesterday, there are a lot of
> reversions and yet next to no worthy contributions to Kasparov (see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Garry_Kasparov&action=history).
> Before I intervened at 21:18, vandalism had been standing for two and a half
> hours. Even the reverts of users were getting caught out due to the level of
> vandalism.

Equally, though, a lot of good-faith editors read (and add fixes) to the daily
Featured Article. It's quite possible for articles to be improved through the
fierce attention received, despite the vandalism. For example, today, on
[[Caesar cipher]], Ciaran_H corrected an error on one of the examples that
hadn't been picked up on before. Myself, I've made many minor edits to daily
featured articles in the past while reading them -- if I had to wait until the
next day, I wouldn't have bothered, and they would have been too trivial to
note on the talk page.

Matt

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Kevin Rector

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
Please see the discussion on [[Image:KateWinsletTitanic.jpg]] at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion#Apr
il_11.

Here's my reply to the whole deal:

Delete -- For the same reason as Nunh-huh and DreamGuy. This adds
nothing to the article except controversy. So the only reason to keep it
in the article is to reduce WikiLove, and to increase Wikistress. I hate
all these stupid debates about nudity. We exists to be an encyclopedia
not a bastion of freedom of speech. We are here to provide information
NOT to make political statements about censorship. Having nude and/or
sexually explicit pictures in our encyclopedia upsets enough people that
it detracts significantly from the task of making an encylopedia and
that is reason enough to delete this picture (and others like it). There
is a definite agenda by the nude-picture-pushers here and it has nothing
to do with creating an NPOV encyclopedia. Kevin Rector (talk) 22:04, Apr
12, 2005 (UTC)

Now to you the mailing list:

I've tried to stay out of the fray with all the nude/porn picture
debates that have gone on, but I've come to the realization that people
are searching out nude pictures to put in the 'pedia. They are looking
to stir up trouble, mostly to make a point.

The fact that the Wikipedia "community" won't resolve these problems,
and the fact that the community so proudly proclaims that "Wikipedia is
not censored" while ignoring the fact that "Wikipedia is quite
dysfunctional" has made me realize that I need to re-evaluate if this is
a project that I want to be a part of.

Plus the politics and partisanship are really annoying.

I'm going on WikiVacation - I may or may not return.

-Kevin Rector


from_name: Nicolas Weeger

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Poland

body:
> Welcome to Wikimedia Poland. ;o)

Greetings too.

> I think this has to be written in the bylaws.
> Wikim?dia France is a legal representant of Wikimedia Foundation Inc. in
> France, as defined in the bylaws.

This is written in the bylaws, yes, and we have two contractual agreements with Wikimedia Foundation, one for logo / trademarks use, one for legal stuff.

Regards

Nicolas Weeger

Acc?dez au courrier ?lectronique de La Poste : www.laposte.net ;
3615 LAPOSTENET (0,34?/mn) ; t?l : 08 92 68 13 50 (0,34?/mn)


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Poland


body:
--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> The best thing is for the Featured Articles Dictator to let substantial
> contributors to the page know it's coming up soon, and ask them to keep an
> eye on the page during the day.

Yes -- what would suffice is to drop a note on the article's talk page a couple
of days in advance: that would let everyone who cares know about it, without
having to research who the "substantial contributors" are. I only heard about
Caesar cipher's front-paging because someone added a "protected" template to an
associated image. Because of that, I've kept an eye on it more than I would
have otherwise.

-- Matt

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Expanding CheckUser permissions

body:
Hi,

Le Tuesday 12 April 2005 05:42, Angela a ?crit :
> Requests have recently been made to the Board asking for verification
> that a user is sockpuppeting on one of the larger Wikipedias. At least
> two of the developers felt this was a matter for the Board or for an
> arbitration committee (although that Wikipedia doesn't have an
> arbcom), and were therefore not happy to give out details about the IP
> address of this user. Checking IPs is no longer a developer-only task
> since a new feature allows sockpuppet checks.
>
> [[Special:CheckUser]] allows a user with "checkuser" permissions to
> find all the IP addresses used by a particular logged in user, and to
> show all the contributions from a given IP address, including those
> made by logged in users.
(...)
> I would personally like to see this feature be made available to more
> communities than just the English Wikipedia, but I am concerned about
> potential misuse of it, and the violation of privacy for users who
> have not been disruptive. I would appreciate any comments about this
> feature, and answers to the questions below, either here or on on Meta
> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CheckUser>.
>
> Do you think this feature should be made more widely available?

Yes.

> If so, who should be given access to it?

Stewards, bureaucrates.

> Should it be limited to stewards, or to wikis with arbitration committees?
>
> Does the privacy policy
> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy> need be adjusted to
> allow the use of this feature?

Can't say.

> Angela.

Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Internal Radio

body:
Wouter wrote:
> Suppose, by comparision, that I suggested for fun that orthodox Muslims were
> right in saying homosexuals should be executioned. I don't think that would
> make you smile; in your position, I would ask for immediate removal of the
> offender from the mailing list and permanent blocking on Wikipedia.

Why on earth should such a person be blocked?

-- Matt

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


body:
--- Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >Wouter wrote:
> > > Suppose, by comparision, that I suggested for fun that orthodox Muslims
> >were
> > > right in saying homosexuals should be executioned. I don't think that
> >would
> > > make you smile; in your position, I would ask for immediate removal of
> >the
> > > offender from the mailing list and permanent blocking on Wikipedia.
> >
> >Why on earth should such a person be blocked?
> >
> >-- Matt
>
> Because I would take it serious and don't want people with this and similar
> views to edit Wikipedia.

Why shouldn't people with such views edit Wikipedia? What about NPOV (Neutral
Point of View)?

-- Matt

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Talking about stewards

body:
I was pretty sure there were going to be elections, but I don't
remember anything about them being in March... I thought it was may or
july or something.

Mark

On 4/12/05, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> With all the talk about stewards ...... I thought the stewardcollection
> would be expanded in March? Either through election or by Jimbo's choice?
>
> Waerth/Walter
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
--- Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk>
> >Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Internal Radio
> >Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 17:54:44 +0100 (BST)
> >
> >--- Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > >Wouter wrote:
> > > > > Suppose, by comparision, that I suggested for fun that orthodox
> >Muslims
> > > >were
> > > > > right in saying homosexuals should be executioned. I don't think
> >that
> > > >would
> > > > > make you smile; in your position, I would ask for immediate removal
> >of
> > > >the
> > > > > offender from the mailing list and permanent blocking on Wikipedia.
> > > >
> > > >Why on earth should such a person be blocked?
> > > >
> > > >-- Matt
> > >
> > > Because I would take it serious and don't want people with this and
> >similar
> > > views to edit Wikipedia.
> >
> >Why shouldn't people with such views edit Wikipedia? What about NPOV
> >(Neutral
> >Point of View)?
>
> NPOV has its limits, Matt. Such persons would probably start modfiing pages
> like [[Homosexuality]], [[Sexuality]], [[Osama bin Laden]], [[George Bush]]
> etc etc, just because extremists cannot distinguish fact and opinion. Of
> course, they cannot be removed after a lot of such violations.

We should welcome extremists modifying such pages, as long as they follow our
policies (like NPOV). I don't see how we should exclude editors because of what
they think. We can exclude them if they edit in violation of our policies, of
course. But remember that it is quite possible for editors to hold extreme
views, even views that you may find obnoxious, and yet still be a moderate and
valuable Wikipedia contributor.

-- Matt

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 21, Issue 43

body:
Blair P. Houghton wrote

> And while you're tut-tutting a little vandalism, POV and fallacy are
> polluting the majority of the pages.

That would be majority as in 50%?  So we have at least 260000 pages with at
least a fallacy or a POV problem?

Clearly this is no time to be reading email.  To work, everyone!  The wiki
equivalent of the Fall of the House of Usher may already be on us!

Charles


from_name: Milos Rancic

body:
Even small community, Serbian Wikipedia has potentail for such need.
However, I don't think that we need to have person with such
privileges, but I would like to have possibility to ask some steward
for that, not some busy developer. Also, I suppose that larger
communities need persons with such privlieges.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Conflict between two Wikipedias

body:
Hi all,

I think it should be made internationally known (in the Wiki
community, that is - currently it's restricted to people who know
Romanian) that there is currently a problem between the Moldovan (mo:)
and Romanian (ro:) Wikipedias.

According to the Academy of Sciences in Moldova, the two languages are
identical. The Moldovan government says the languages are separate,
and about 1/3rd of the Moldovan population claimed on the last census
that they speak "Moldovan" rather than "Romanian".

For a long time there had been a possible pending addition of a redirect to mo:.

But there is another issue here: 10% of Moldovan people, and 1% of
Moldovan and Romanian people combined, use the Cyrillic alphabet to
write their language.

Cyrillic was the official alphabet in Moldova during the USSR, but
after independence the official script was changed to be identical to
Romanian with a few notable differences, mostly in spelling (the most
important one is that ? and ? in Romania are both ? in Moldova).

To add to the confusion, Cyrillic is still the official script for the
language in the de-facto independent nation of Transnistria, where
Moldovans are a minority. However, Transnistria is not recognised as a
sovreign nation by the UN or any of its members (and the government of
Taiwan), so it isn't generally considered on the same level in such
problems since it doesn't have de jure independence.

Cyrillic was in fact the first script ever used to transcribe the
Romanian language, and only in the past couple of centuries has that
changed mostly to Latin for largely political regions, and now
Cyrillic is seen by many Romanians and Moldovans as a "communist"
alphabet.

000---------------->The conflict is:

mo: has existed for a really long time, but until recently it had no
content whatsoever except a message in the Latin alphabet directing
users to ro:. I added the Cyrillic version of the message, but then
there was a small controversy between myself, OldakQuill, and Danutz
(from ro.wiki) over the situation and the message was first changed
and then deleted, as actual content was added to the Wiki in both
scripts.

However, after the joining of a second Cyrillic-capable user, it was
decided at mo: to get rid of all Latin-alphabet content since it was
identical to the same articles at ro:. The mainpage was moved to a
Cyrillic title, and a language list and welcome message in Cyrillic
were added. Existing Latin articles were changed to interwiki
redirects.

A few months later, I got a private message from Ronline (from
ro.wiki), who seemed to me much more logical and reasonable than
Danutz. I thought we would soon achieve consensus but there is one
sticking point.

Since the official alphabet of the "Moldovan language" is Latin, and
the majority of Moldovans use that alphabet, Ronline says that either
mo.wiki should be bi-scriptal, or a separate domain entirely should be
created like "mo-cyr:" or "mo-cyrillic:" for the minority Cyrillic
script.

My position was that since the Moldovan and Romanian languages are
identical, the Moldovan Wikipedia should only have Cyrillic content
since all Latin content would be a duplication of ro.wiki content.

A prominent message on the mo.wiki mainpage, in the Latin alphabet,
states "If you prefer to view content in the Latin alphabet, please
click here" (with a link to ro.wiki). Ronline says this is
unacceptable as it implies that Latin is a second-choice or minority
script for the language, while I say that a great deal of people
desiring separate "Moldovan" content would be searching for Cyrillic.

It is my belief that a seperate subdomain is not only inconvenient,
but also unnessecary because the current solution provides for all
visitors to mo.wiki - if they want to read content in Cyrillic, they
continue, and if they don't, they click a link.

There was some discussion of a biscriptal solution.

I am in favor of a biscriptal solution, if it is implemented on ro:.
At the same time as many of his Romanian compatriots insist that
Romanian and Moldovan are the same language (which I must say, I
largely agree with), he suggests that mo: host entire articles in the
"Moldovan language" written in the Latin alphabet. I suggest that, due
to the near-identicality of "Moldovan" and "Romanian", a biscriptal
solution should only be on ro: (remember, 1% of speakers of the
Moldovan/Romanian language[s] use Cyrillic, and some of them call the
language "Romanian") to avoid duplication of content. However,
according to Ronline this is unacceptable because "Nobody writes
Romanian in the Cyrillic script". Most of the other people at ro: will
agree: many will say (although Ronline has not, Danutz did) at the
same time that Moldovan and Romanian are one language called Romanian,
that some people write "Moldovan" in Cyrillic, but that nobody writes
Romanian in Cyrillic. Also, anti-Russian/anti-Communist feelings would
make it hard for Cyrillic to coexist on ro:, and there is some chance
that the existance of a Cyrillic version would drive potential
Wikipedians away.

As it is now, only myself and two others have made significant content
contributions to mo:, most of it has been in Cyrillic, and what was in
Latin was just identical to the article text on ro.wiki.

Mark


from_name: Wouter Steenbeek

body:
>Wouter wrote:
> > Suppose, by comparision, that I suggested for fun that orthodox Muslims
>were
> > right in saying homosexuals should be executioned. I don't think that
>would
> > make you smile; in your position, I would ask for immediate removal of
>the
> > offender from the mailing list and permanent blocking on Wikipedia.
>
>Why on earth should such a person be blocked?
>
>-- Matt

Because I would take it serious and don't want people with this and similar
views to edit Wikipedia.

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Webmessenger doet het altijd en overal http://webmessenger.msn.com/


body:
>From: Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk>
>Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Internal Radio
>Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 17:54:44 +0100 (BST)
>
>--- Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > >Wouter wrote:
> > > > Suppose, by comparision, that I suggested for fun that orthodox
>Muslims
> > >were
> > > > right in saying homosexuals should be executioned. I don't think
>that
> > >would
> > > > make you smile; in your position, I would ask for immediate removal
>of
> > >the
> > > > offender from the mailing list and permanent blocking on Wikipedia.
> > >
> > >Why on earth should such a person be blocked?
> > >
> > >-- Matt
> >
> > Because I would take it serious and don't want people with this and
>similar
> > views to edit Wikipedia.
>
>Why shouldn't people with such views edit Wikipedia? What about NPOV
>(Neutral
>Point of View)?

NPOV has its limits, Matt. Such persons would probably start modfiing pages
like [[Homosexuality]], [[Sexuality]], [[Osama bin Laden]], [[George Bush]]
etc etc, just because extremists cannot distinguish fact and opinion. Of
course, they cannot be removed after a lot of such violations.

_________________________________________________________________
Gebruik MSN Webmessenger op je werk en op school
http://webmessenger.msn.com/


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On Apr 12, 2005 6:58 PM, Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:

> NPOV has its limits, Matt. Such persons would probably start modfiing pages
> like [[Homosexuality]], [[Sexuality]], [[Osama bin Laden]], [[George Bush]]
> etc etc, just because extremists cannot distinguish fact and opinion. Of
> course, they cannot be removed after a lot of such violations.

And if their edits are POV, they can be changed or reverted. But we
should not pre-judge that. One's right to edit on Wikipedia does NOT
depend on the POV that is being held, but on one's willingness and
ability to not let that POV interfere with NPOV editing.

Andre Engels


body:
>From: Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk>
>Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Internal Radio
>Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 18:03:09 +0100 (BST)
>
>--- Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > >From: Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk>
> > >Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > >To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > >Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Internal Radio
> > >Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 17:54:44 +0100 (BST)
> > >
> > >--- Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > > >Wouter wrote:
> > > > > > Suppose, by comparision, that I suggested for fun that orthodox
> > >Muslims
> > > > >were
> > > > > > right in saying homosexuals should be executioned. I don't think
> > >that
> > > > >would
> > > > > > make you smile; in your position, I would ask for immediate
>removal
> > >of
> > > > >the
> > > > > > offender from the mailing list and permanent blocking on
>Wikipedia.
> > > > >
> > > > >Why on earth should such a person be blocked?
> > > > >
> > > > >-- Matt
> > > >
> > > > Because I would take it serious and don't want people with this and
> > >similar
> > > > views to edit Wikipedia.
> > >
> > >Why shouldn't people with such views edit Wikipedia? What about NPOV
> > >(Neutral
> > >Point of View)?
> >
> > NPOV has its limits, Matt. Such persons would probably start modfiing
>pages
> > like [[Homosexuality]], [[Sexuality]], [[Osama bin Laden]], [[George
>Bush]]
> > etc etc, just because extremists cannot distinguish fact and opinion. Of
> > course, they cannot be removed after a lot of such violations.
>
>We should welcome extremists modifying such pages, as long as they follow
>our
>policies (like NPOV). I don't see how we should exclude editors because of
>what
>they think. We can exclude them if they edit in violation of our policies,
>of
>course. But remember that it is quite possible for editors to hold extreme
>views, even views that you may find obnoxious, and yet still be a moderate
>and
>valuable Wikipedia contributor.
>
I guess you're right. As long as they write according to NPOV, it doesn't
matter. Actually my original point was not that people with certain
persuations /should/ be blocked, but that a joke like the one I sketched
earlier today would make me so angry that I would ask for the person's
immediate removal and blocking. This will do.

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
Gebruik MSN Webmessenger op je werk en op school
http://webmessenger.msn.com/


from_name: Pablo Saratxaga

subject: [Wikitech-l] Different alphabets for the same language

body:
Kaixo!

On Mon, Apr 11, 2005 at 07:06:19PM -0400, zhengzhu wrote:

> > - interwiki links should be handled as exceptions too (as the list
> >   of valid interwiki domains is known (eg, the possible xx in [[xx:foo]])
> >   it should be easy to implement
> > - it would be nice also to detect urls and not convert them
>
> The conversion happens at a rather late stage of the wiki parser at
> which the input should be largely (x)html. I have attempted to avoid
> converting them but may have missed something. Can you provide an
> example at the test site when this is not done correctly?

For interwiki links, the test site doesn't recognize them
as interwiki links, so I don't know if the code handles it correctly
or not...

For urls, I didn't tested enclosed urls (eg: [http://wa.wikipedia.org/ foo])
but plain text ones (eg: http://wa.wikipedia.org/ or pablo at walon.org in
the article, without square brackets around them).

I did some more tests, in order to have an url not translitered,
I have to write:

[http://wa.wikipedia.org/ -{http://wa.wikipedia.org/}-]

and for an email (which hasn't any special meaning in wiki syntax,
unlike the http url): -{pablo at walon.org}-

well, we can live with it, indeed.

> > maybe something like "blablabla ={Latn:Saratxaga|Cyrl:????????}= blabla",
> > that would be displayed as "blablabla Saratxaga blaba"
> > or "???????????? ???????? ?????????" but not as
> > "????????? ????????? ?????????"
> > maybe the Latn:/Cyrl: could be removed, as the script can be found
> > from the strings, syntax will then be easier for the editors:
> > "blablabla ={Saratxaga|????????}= blabla" or, if they write in cyrillic:
> > "???????????? ={????????|Saratxaga}= ?????????"
>
> This function is built in and is running at ZH. At the BE test site,
> you can use the following syntax (note how close it is to your
> suggestion:)
>
> -{be-cyrillics: Foo; be-latin: Bar}-
> This will show "Foo" in cyrillics mode, and "Bar" in latin mode.

It would be better imho to standardize on ISO 15924 script codes
(with possible site local aliases, same way as "Talk:" etc can
be translated, but "Talk:" always work in all wikipedias)

and I also think that "|" would be a better separator (as it is
used in a lot of other wikisyntax), and it would allow to have ";"
included in the -{ }- block.

an auto-detection of the script, so that there is no need
to explicitely tell it, will be the candy on the top (it is not
always possible for Hans/Hant, indeed; but for most other cases
of multi-sript needs there is no ambiguity at all), that is also
why use of "|" would be better: in -{Foo;Bar}- you can't be sure
that the ";" is used as a separator, while in -{Foo|Bar}- the
likelihood od "|" being part of the text is much, much smaller
(and in such odd cases, <nowiki>|</nowiki> could be used).

Is it possible to add a test case for a latin<->arabic site?
(Kurdish or Azeri are two likely candidates), due to the right-to-left
nature of arabic script, it could show some more problems that
aren't seen in a cyrillic<->latin case.

Thanks

--
Ki ?a vos v?ye b?n,
Pablo Saratxaga

http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/		PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466
[you can write me in Walloon, Spanish, French, English, Catalan or Esperanto]
[min povas skribi en valona, esperanta, angla aux latinidaj lingvoj]
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from_name: Richard Holton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
On 4/12/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> I was expecting to find a nude photo in the article about [[Kate
> Winslet]], which would be appropriate (out of context, misleading).
> However, the photo is a very tasteful nude shot from the film
> ''Titanic'', and is used to enrich that article's narrative about the
> movie - not to mention that it's a partial nude, with only a left breast
> visible.
>
> I don't know the uploader's motivation, and I share your suspicion that
> many people might try to cause disruption by uploading such photos.
> However, the best response to that, in my opinion, is to have clear
> policies on the matter. Then the trolls can do whatever they want, and
> we just decide quickly how to deal with the matter. Such policies might
> evolve out of precedents like Autofellatio and this photo.
>
> Erik

Frankly, I see nothing particularly offensive about the photo. I see
no need to have it deleted on the spot as pornographic or anything
like that.

However, I also believe that there is room for constructive discussion
about its use on any particular article. I'm one of the three people
in the US who have not seen this movie, so I cannot comment on this
particular scene's importance to the overall movie.

What does concern me is the tone that is used by some people on each
side in these conversations. One one hand we have people who want no
nudity in Wikipedia at all, and who seem to consider almost any nudity
as offensive. On the other hand, we have those people who consider
almost any discussion about such images as being extreme prudism or
attempted censorship. From both sides there is name-calling and
labeling.

I take it as a given that we don't want to encourage censorship on
Wikipedia. There is significant weight to the argument that "when you
go to an encyclopedia article about the penis, you should expect to
see a penis," though some "decency" advocates will insist otherwise.

On the other hand, I also take it as a given that we want to encourage
good editorial judgment on wikipedia. If I go to an encyclopedia
article about a kneecap, I don't expect to see a penis along with the
kneecap. I fear that, if some "free-speech advocates" have their way,
removing such a photo from the Kneecap article would be dubbed as
censorship.

Somewhere in between those two examples lie situations such as the
Winslet (partial) nude being used on the [[Titanic (1997 movie)]]
article. People of integrity, intelligence and good intention can
disagree about it.

Can we do so without hurling vitriol at one another?

-- Rich Holton

[[W:en:User:Rholton]]


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] TheWorldForum.org adds Wikinews logo

body:
Hi,

for the last couple of months, Wikinews and The World Forum
(www.theworldforum.org) have enjoyed a very productive cooperation. TWF
reposts Wikinews stories (allowing us to appear on the news.google.com
frontpage several times), and the editor, "Drog", has now also started
submitting his own stories to Wikinews as public domain.

I've given Drog the go-ahead to link to Wikinews using our logo on the
frontpage. I thought that given the recent discussions about logo
copyright & licensing, it might be a good idea to report this here.

(On a related note, I feel that David Vasquez has done an excellent job
refining the logo. It looks much more optimistic and welcoming than the
logos of most news sites.)

All best,

Erik


from_name: Sergey Samoylov

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki export

body:
Hi All!
Does everybody know how export from wikidb just only wikitext
(wikidb.cur_text table) to html files?
I've tried to use Text_Wiki module but now it doesn't support full
MediaWiki format.
Is any PHP classes which provide API for it?
Thanks
Sergey


from_name: Seth Ilys

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 21, Issue 44

body:
On 4/12/05, Blair P. Houghton <blair at houghton.net> wrote:
> Seth Ilys <seth.ilys at gmail.com>
> >On Apr 12, 2005 12:29 PM, Blair P. Houghton <blair at houghton.net> wrote:
> >> Seth Ilys wrote:
> >>> >We're a wiki. Why mess with success?
> >
> >> Interesting definition of success you have.
> >
> >
> >Are you denying that Wikipedia has been successful?
> >
> >What has made us one of the top 100 sites on the 'net if we aren't
> >doing *something* well?
>
> Now you're changing your definition of success from success as a reference to "doing something well".
>
> And you're applying the fallacy of Appeal to Popularity.

I wasn't sufficiently clear, I think. I'm defining success *as*
popularity, because I believe that the popularity of the site comes
from the fact that we are a generally reliable reference source.
Independent studies have found that the quality of writing and the
accuracy of our articles are comparable to, if not better than, most
published encyclopedias. I simply don't see the rampant errors and POV
that you describe; I believe that you're imagining a problem where
none exists.

However, if you have evidence that POV and vandalism are running
rampant and unchecked on the 'pedia, I'd love to see it. I rather
think you're being alarmist, Blair.

But I'm also a perpetual and incurable (and sometimes irrational)
optimist as well. :)

--
Seth Ilys
   email: seth.ilys at gmail.com
   IM (aol, msn, yahoo): JehanneDaix
   blog: http://somewhereindurham.blogspot.com/


from_name: John Fader

body:
On Apr 12, 2005 7:41 PM, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> I don't have any great strategies of my own, but I don't
> think we should just assume that everything is fine, and that
> we don't need to be thinking about new ways to keep the
> "free encyclopedia" part working without needing tireless
> vigilance by tired editors, because of the "wiki" part.

Ideally one could keep a browser tab open and occasionally reload
"recent changes linked" for the main page.  This works okay, but
doesn't get everything, due (I guess) to the various front-page
template expansions.

If we maintained a wikipedia:main_page_links page (which did have all
the links) this be a boon in watching all these vandal-faves in one
go, without having to manually add them all to your watchlist.

I don't know whether this could be done just with cleverer template
use, or whether a bot would be needed (visiting the various templates
comprising the main page periodically) to build that page.

--
John Fader


from_name: Viajero

subject: [WikiEN-l] templates boxes: multiplying like rabbits

body:
For example, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erskine_Hamilton_Childers

Five template boxes, and then of course the categories.

Are all these really necessary? Given the space they take up, the
template boxes appear more important than the text itself.

Does anyone else feel this feature is getting out of hand?

V.


body:
>But I hope you will agree that there is a huge difference between a
>joke about all homosexuals should be executed (I don't even get the
>joke there... where is it?) and a joke that includes some mild
>elements which might liken Jimbo to Jim Jong Il.
>
>While I don't personally believe Jimbo can be considered a dictator
>(and most certainly not a self-obsessed one), I think that there is a
>sort of personality cult about him, and certainly on IRC I have seen
>people who seem more interested in him than perhaps I would be
>comfortable with in Jimbo's position. Of course this isn't "approved
>by Jimbo" - on the contrary, AFAIK he doesn't like that sort of thing
>- but I have definitely seen some people who it would only be going a
>little bit further for them to watch a television broadcast of his
>birthday, and even I would watch his biography if it were on
>television.
>
>Mark
OK, that's enough. Let's quit. I can't get the joke either in the situation
I suggested, but I know people that could say things like these for fun (!),
and think of contexts in which it is more or less clear that they do so. My
point was: Kim Jong Il is a cruel dictator that famishes his people and
lives in exorbitant wealth himself. You sould think twice before you compare
someone to him, even for fun.

Good to be sure anyway that you have nothing against Jimbo. Finally: We in
the Netherlands know how to mock our leaders. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Peter_Balkenende and you'll understand what
I mean...

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
Direct antwoord op je vragen: gebruik MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Hoi,
There has been a lot of discussion about the use of this tool. When a
community does NOT have this tool available, you will get yourself into
funny situations as well. At this moment we have a person who has been
banned because everyone believes this person to have used a sock puppet.
He has been banned for a month. There is no willingness to have this
person unblocked prior to the end of this period. The person banned
insists that he is not the same person as the sock puppet.

The insistence of the primarily English oriented community to give it to
the arb comm or not all means that there is no solution for this
situation. The consequence is that either this person is correctly
banned or is not correctly banned. With the CheckUser permissions given
to Stewards or Bureaucrats, there are some selected people who can
discreetly check out these situations and say that yes/no two persons
are likely the same person.

As stewards are people who are explictly trusted to do right. Explicitly
as they are chosen for this role I do believe there is little reason to
make this more difficult by insisting on all kinds of auditing and
registration with its own inherent insecurity.

Conclusion: Without the potential to explore the likelyhood of two users
being the same, a user may suffer unjustly when a community is convinced
that two users are the same person. The person for whom this discussion
was started has been penalised with a ban of a month on the conviction
that two users are actually the same person. This person insists that
this is a false accusation and as much as I dislike this person, I do
believe we should be able to investigate the likelyhood that his claim
is true.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Jack Lutz

subject: [WikiEN-l] Trouble connecting

body:
>Anyone else having troubles?

No, but you can always check the "Wikipedia Status" page at
    http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=Wikipedia_Status


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] Mailing list admin question/request

body:
It seems that I'm listed as 'owner' of several mailing lists.  This is
suboptimal because I
just delete all the mail that comes to me.  This just overloads my inbox
with useless mail, but also it means that whatever it is that an actual
owner is supposed to be doing just isn't getting done.

I wonder if I could be removed as owner or administrator on all the
mailing lists?  It would be nice if I had access to the mmsitepassword
or whatever I might need to go in and bonk annoying people on the head
from time to time, but it seems unwise for official mail to be going to
me when I don't even look at it. :-)

I'm not even really sure where to direct this request, to tell the
truth. :-)

--Jimbo


from_name: Arwel Parry

body:
Viajero wrote:
> For example, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erskine_Hamilton_Childers
>
> Five template boxes, and then of course the categories.
>
> Are all these really necessary? Given the space they take up, the
> template boxes appear more important than the text itself.
>
> Does anyone else feel this feature is getting out of hand?

In this particular case, I'd say we could dispense with  the succession
box for "T?naiste", whose data is put in better context by the
"T?naistithe na h?ireann" template at the bottom, and the "President of
Ireland" succession box, whose only improving feature over the infobox
at the top of the page is that it actually shows pictures of his
predecessor and successor as President.

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


from_name: Stacey Greenstein

subject: [WikiEN-l] Trouble connecting

body: Anyone else having troubles?


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
I think we should try and make an effort to draw the attention of a
number of serious contributors to a current FA. The more we get to
watch it, the better the chance vandalism is quickly reverted.

I thought FA's were well looked after, but since it turns out to be
not so much the case as I thougth, I'll certainly be looking at them
closer from now on.

--Mgm

On Apr 12, 2005 8:41 PM, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> Seth Ilys wrote:
>
> >On Apr 12, 2005 11:32 AM, David 'DJ' Hedley <spyders at btinternet.com> wrote:
> >
> >>No-one seemed to care...
> >>
> >
> >Not quite true.
> >
> >You cared.
> >
> >And one person is all it takes. That's why we have succeeded thus far;
> >because it's easier to revert vandalism than to cause it.
> >
> This strategy breaks down when the number of vandals is
> considerably larger than the number of serious editors.
> A couple times I've caught front page vandalism and noticed
> that the vandalism had been up for several hours already.
> Likewise, I must be the only person watching some articles,
> because there's been a number of cases where the vandalism
> got by me when it happened, and I only noticed the *second*
> watchlist appearance when it was fixed by a kind anon, after
> several days of being in a trashed state. How many other
> articles have been trashed without any regular editor
> noticing?
>
> I don't have any great strategies of my own, but I don't
> think we should just assume that everything is fine, and that
> we don't need to be thinking about new ways to keep the
> "free encyclopedia" part working without needing tireless
> vigilance by tired editors, because of the "wiki" part.
>
> Stan
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikitech-l] download archive link does not work

body:
Besiki Stvilia (stvilia at gmail.com) [050412 11:45]:

> It would be greatly appreciated.  I'm running some experiments for my
> research - modeling the temporal dynamics of a set of articles.  I
> don't have enough disk space to download the whole old_table at this
> moment. If you could post temporarily the previous 2-3 dumps of the
> English datatabase that would help me a lot.

I have a copy of the March current en: dump here. I can upload it for you
if you have somewhere to put it.

- d.


from_name: David

body:
Chris O'Regan wrote:

>
>
>> From: Blair P.Houghton <blair at houghton.net>
>> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 21, Issue 44
>> Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 00:35:38 +0000 (UTC)
>>
>> Seth Ilys <seth.ilys at ...> writes:
>
>
>> > However, if you have evidence that POV and vandalism are running
>> > rampant and unchecked on the 'pedia, I'd love to see it. I rather
>> > think you're being alarmist, Blair.
>>
>> Go read some articles.  If you don't see the POV and fallacy,
>> question the depth of your own knowledge.
>
>
> This argument is rather fallacious. If POV and poor quality are as
> rampant as you suggest, it should be easy enough for you to provide us
> with numerous examples. It's not a basis for proof of your allegation
> that only you and certain others are smart enough or realistic enough
> to see that it is true.  Particularly, the idea that vandalism, in
> general, is unchecked, rather than in certain instances, would require
> some substantiation.
>
> --Lacrimosus.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
Please do not feed the troll.

-en:User:Humblefool


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [Wikinews-l] TheWorldForum.org adds Wikinews logo

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> I've given Drog the go-ahead to link to Wikinews using our logo on the
> frontpage. I thought that given the recent discussions about logo
> copyright & licensing, it might be a good idea to report this here.

Erik, you had absolutely no right to do this.  Please and politely let
them know that they do not have authorization to use the logo in this
fashion, and please acknowledge to us that you realize that you should
not have done this.

--Jimbo


from_name: James D. Forrester

body:
Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> We are looking for a negative colleration. The person has a bad
> reputation. Before he adopted a user profile he was known for
> doing his thing with any number of IP numbers. When he was blocked
> he was almost instantly back on another IP-number.

Who blocked him? Why? Based on what? Was this an official decision made by
one person, a small group of people, all sysops together, the entire
community? If either of the first two, you evidently have natural candidates
to form an official blocking group, of whom one might be appropriate to
grant access to such an easily-abused tool, no? What, exactly, is the
problem, then?

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

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


from_name: SPUI

subject: [WikiEN-l] Some people just have no sense of humor


from_name: Moritz von Schweinitz

subject: [Wikitech-l] wiki 2 html converter

body:
hi there, and sorry if this is a FAQ, but i couldn't find a clear answer
easily.

i was playing around with wiki2static.pl a bit last night, and heard a
rumour that it's not supported anymore. additionaly, the HTML it
produces is a bit sub-optimal, and it seems it only understands some
older wiki-syntax.
soi was wondering if anybody already tried to isolate whichever part of
wikimedia actually 'renders' the 'cur' column of the database to HTML,
and make a stand-alone app (or a perl module, or something) based on
that in a way that re-uses the latest wikimedia code, so that any
scripts that trry to create a static version of a wiki could easily be
kept in sync with the lates mediawiki syntax.

so: does anyone know whether this already exists, is feasible to do or
complete nonsense?

cheers,

Moritz von Schweinitz
(who didn't dig into the mediawii source to answer this)


body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> Ironically, the excessive templates create huge numbers of
> cross-links and may thus improve page rank for Google...

I guess this depends on whether Google gives weight to links *within* a
site. Is this the case?

Beyond that, what I found disturbing about the case I mentioned,
[[Erskine_Hamilton_Childers]], was the amount of redundancy, which I
assume Google politely ignores. ;)

For example,

* the information in the "President of Ireland" box at the bottom is
duplicated in the large template box on the right

* the "T?naiste" box duplicates the information in "T?naistithe na h?ireann"

Ok, the "Cabinet Minister" box isn't redundant, and provides lots of
(Google-friendly?) links, but does it really add anything essential?

The thing is, I like graphic elements, like images, lists, boxes,  which
break up otherwise visually boring, monolithic blocks of text, but they
have to be used with taste and clear purpose.

V.


body:
Angela (beesley at gmail.com) [050412 13:43]:

> Currently the only people with the necessary permissions to use
> CheckUser are Tim Starling (who wrote the code for this) and David
> Gerard (who uses it on behalf of the English Wikipedia Arbitration
> Committee).

I should also point out that I *barely* use it - its availability to the Ac
directly is somewhat controversial, but I've some experience of net-abuse
tracing and know what the results mean or don't, and I only use it when
there's clearly some important issue. (Last use was to check on an apparent
sock of Rienzo. Use before that was to check the zillion abusive socks in
the Baku Ibne arb com case.) I get a lot of people asking me to check
something casually and I have to say "no". Although if people on en: think
it's relevant to an arb com case, the "Requests for clarification" section
on WP:RFAr is the right place to suggest. The edit evidence had better be
there, though, I'm not going on fishing expeditions.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Expanding CheckUser permissions

body:
Jack Lutz (jack-lutz at comcast.net) [050412 14:10]:

> I think the log of CheckUser usage must be public; there is no otherwise no
> check on abuse.

Unfortunately, that will give everyone a damn good idea of what people's
IPs are. At present, all access show on the page, so Tim and I can see what
each other have accessed. (He's used it precisely twice, to test it ;-)

- d.


from_name: Timwi

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia

body:
Hi.

Following the example of the German Wikipedia, I have tentatively
created a page for a Spoken Wikipedia project on en:

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

We might need some ideas and discussion to get this going, but of course
the best way of getting it going is to start recording things. :-)

Have fun,
Timwi


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>> There has been a lot of discussion about the use of this tool. When a
>> community does NOT have this tool available, you will get yourself
>> into funny situations as well. At this moment we have a person who
>> has been banned because everyone believes this person to have used a
>> sock puppet. He has been banned for a month. There is no willingness
>> to have this person unblocked prior to the end of this period. The
>> person banned insists that he is not the same person as the sock puppet.
>
>
> Simply using a sockpuppet to circumvent the time limit on a ban should
> not give rise to the use of this tool.  If the sockpuppet edits
> responsibly he may not even be noticed.  In practice they tend to
> repeat their crimes, and it is this repetition that will give rise to
> just cause.  Simply suspecting that a person is reappearing before
> expiry of the ban is not enough.

This may be the practise on the en:wikipedia. It is not necessarily the
same on all projects. The sockpuppets were not responsible and they were
noticed, it led to a lot of bad blood and it is one thing to say what
the practice is on one project this may mean little on an other.

>> The insistence of the primarily English oriented community to give it
>> to the arb comm or not all means that there is no solution for this
>> situation. The consequence is that either this person is correctly
>> banned or is not correctly banned. With the CheckUser permissions
>> given to Stewards or Bureaucrats, there are some selected people who
>> can discreetly check out these situations and say that yes/no two
>> persons are likely the same person.
>
>
> A positive correlation will not always be definitive; a negative one
> will almost certainly exonerate the suspect.  In the latter case it
> should be enough to report back to the claimant that the inquiry found
> no match, and to do so without providing any further details.
>
> Ec

We are looking for a negative colleration. The person has a bad
reputation. Before he adopted a user profile he was known for doing his
thing with any number of IP numbers. When he was blocked he was almost
instantly back on another IP-number. Given this past behaviour and his
subsequent behaviour as a user there are many that would not mind to see
the back of this person. However as he claims that he is not the same, I
would not mind to give him the opportunity to give some credence to his
claim by having a negative colleration. In this case it will give
credence it will not exonerate. It will be the difference of allowing
him prematurely to end the blocking period or the insistence by many
that he waits out his entire blocking period.

Thanks,
   GerardM


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Expanding CheckUser permissions

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Jack Lutz (jack-lutz at comcast.net) [050412 14:10]:
>
>
>>I think the log of CheckUser usage must be public; there is no otherwise no
>>check on abuse.
>
>
>
> Unfortunately, that will give everyone a damn good idea of what people's
> IPs are. At present, all access show on the page, so Tim and I can see what
> each other have accessed. (He's used it precisely twice, to test it ;-)

I put the log in a flat file on NFS
(/home/wikipedia/logs/checkuser.log), partly to make it easy for
suspicious developers to check up on what the users have been doing with
it. So it's not just two people overseeing each other. I'd prefer it if
more people could view the log, but for privacy reasons we can't make it
public at this stage. If there's sufficient demand, we could probably
make partial logs available -- say, just the usernames but not the IP
addresses.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: templates boxes: multiplying like rabbits

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
>
> Ironically, the excessive templates create huge numbers of
> cross-links and may thus improve page rank for Google...

While it does improve the page ranks for the pages linked to, it
implicitly reduces the page ranks for all the other pages linked to.
Google's PageRank algorithm is designed so that a website cannot improve
(or reduce!) its overall page rank by linking excessively among its
pages; however, the links *do* influence the distribution of the page
rank available to the site as a whole among the constituent pages.

Does this make sense? I hope I have explained this well. I read an
article that explained this extremely well, but obviously, I haven't
bookmarked it or I would link you to it now.

Timwi


from_name: Richard Holton

subject: [Foundation-l] Did I just violate the GFDL?

body:
I just copied the contents of [[template:inuse]] from en:wikipedia to
meta, to a page of the same name. Do I also need to copy the edit
history? Or do I need to link back to the en page? Or just mention
that it came from the en wikipedia?

Should I sleep with my boots on in case the GFDL police come beating on my door?

--Rich Holton

[[W:en:User:Rholton]]


from_name: Ben Brockert

subject: [Wikitech-l] [[m:CheckUser]]

body:
On Tuesday, April 12, 2005, at 06:35  PM, David Gerard wrote:
> Special:CheckUser is the IP-to-username checker Tim Starling
> implemented
> for en:. Those able to use it are him and me, and I hardly dare touch
> the
> thing :-)

YA-feature request: how about making it more private for the users?
Instead of the utility taking one username and giving IP addresses,
have it take two usernames and have it say whether or not they are the
same IP? Or the same /24, to catch the dialup users. I don't think all
sysops should have access to all user's IPs (I say that as a sysop, not
as a tinfoil'd user), but I also think kicking sockpuppets should occur
well before arbitration.

Ben


from_name: Stephen Adair

subject: [WikiEN-l] VfD relisting time

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from_name: Nikola Smolenski

body:
On Monday 11 April 2005 22:27, Milos Rancic wrote:
> Chinese situation is almost clean: One set of characters should be
> changed into another set. If they use Latin (or Cyrillic) alphabet
> (for referencing) or Arabic numbers, they would not change it during
> transliteration.

AFAIK, similar problems can arise with Chinese: if an article has Japanese or
Korean citation, it should remain unchanged...


body:
On Tuesday 12 April 2005 15:16, Milos Rancic wrote:
> > Indeed. I have always anticipated that the Chinese system can be
> > generalized to other languages. Most of the code for the Chinese
> > system is not specifically tied to the Chinese language, and some code
> > refactoring can be done to provide better support for different
> > languages. Please watch CVS HEAD for the next couple weeks for this to
> > happen.
>
> I knew that Chinese have two alphabets, but I didn't have in my mind
> that problems are similar to Serbian :) Of course, I found it a couple
> of months ago...

Actually, Chinese doesn't have any alphabet ;)

Frankly, to me this entire conversation sounds like much ado about nothing.
Even on Serbian Wikipedia noone actually said that he actually needs Latin
alphabet, and a few people said that they are for Latin because maybe someone
would need it. So I don't see why introducing it. (Chinese situation is
clear, as there are people who can't understand one or the other script.) And
I can imagine that the situation is even clearer on Belarusian Wikipedia,
where I simply couldn't find that anyone even mentions transliteration to
Latin; frankly, it seems to me that Monk would want to introduce it secretly
without asking Belarusian users whether they want it (and whether they would
want not to have such a feature).


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
James D. Forrester wrote:

>Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>We are looking for a negative colleration. The person has a bad
>>reputation. Before he adopted a user profile he was known for
>>doing his thing with any number of IP numbers. When he was blocked
>>he was almost instantly back on another IP-number.
>>
>>
>
>Who blocked him? Why? Based on what? Was this an official decision made by
>one person, a small group of people, all sysops together, the entire
>community? If either of the first two, you evidently have natural candidates
>to form an official blocking group, of whom one might be appropriate to
>grant access to such an easily-abused tool, no? What, exactly, is the
>problem, then?
>
>Yours,
>
>
The decision to block and maintain this long block was done by an
official vote on the nl:wikipedia. There are two sides to the argument.

*There are some that want to unblock this person. This is possible when
the indication that this person and the user that is also a troll are
not the same.
*Second, this is something that is outside the English language
projects, it is a big project, many moderators that requests the use of
this analysis. Why can a project as big as the nl:wikipedia not be
trusted to request for the execution of this. Why should a substantial
group of moderators be denied this ??

The way the nl:wikipedia is ruled is subtly different from the other
projects. The nl:wikipedia has proven that it does do a proper job of
having a healthy atmosphere. Given the small size of the world
population speaking Dutch, we do a great job. Why should this tool not
be used in this instance when the object is to allow a person that many
are disgusted with to be deblocked sooner because his claim is true that
he is not this other troll as well ?? If anything it is in the intrest
of this person. If you do not understand this, please deny this
reasonable request. If you do understand this, you realise that this a
situation where it is in the intrest of the person involved that he is
likely NOT to be the same person.

This is similar to people in jail who claim to be innocent and are
denied a DNA test. You read that this happens a lot in the US justice
system.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Byortek wiki

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Re: unable to access my wiki
	outsidemy	privatenetwork

body:
From: "Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com>
> Byortek wiki wrote:
>> You'll see that when the client requests the public adress (smallpc.dyndns.org),
>> the apache server redirects it to the private adress (smallpc.home) and,
>> on next call, redirects it to the public adress (smallpc.dyndns.org) !!!

> Did you set the ServerName directive correctly in httpd.conf (or your
> <VirtualHost> section)?

I haven't set the ServerName nor any <VirtualHost> section.

However I placed a simple test.html file in the wiki dir and
apache returned that page immediately. There is not these two
redirections of the wiki main page.

That's why I thought the problem was coming from mediawiki.

Regards
Eric


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Expanding CheckUser permissions

body:
On Tuesday, April 12, 2005 10:38 PM, wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org <>
wrote:

> On Apr 12, 2005 10:41 PM, James D. Forrester
> <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
>
> > If either of the first two, you evidently have natural candidates
> > to form an official blocking group, of whom one might be appropriate to
> > grant access to such an easily-abused tool, no? What, exactly, is the
> > problem, then?
>
> The problem is that some of the sysops want to use the tool, but nobody
> has access to it.

Yes, I know - I'm trying to help the w:nl community select people to put
forward to have access to the tool. "All sysops" is far too broad (indeed,
"all bureaucrats" is, too). Thus we must find a singleton (or other very
small) set of people trusted sufficiently to be given access to the tool, as
it is a very powerful and very easily abused tool and should not be (and
will not be) given out wantonly.

Am I being confusing? Sorry.

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

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


from_name: Blair P.Houghton

subject: [WikiEN-l] nntp access to wikien-l

body:
I wrote:

>Sorry about the subject lines...this mailing list really needs to be turned
into a newsgroup.

Then Tony pointed out that Gmane.org has an NNTP mirror of wikien-l.  After
spelunking a bit (because Gmane.org is not very well organized), I found the
right place:

    http://news.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english

Thanks, Tony.  You're a lady and a gentleman.

--Blair


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On Apr 12, 2005 10:41 PM, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:

> Who blocked him? Why? Based on what?

The original blocking was made by one of the sysops, based on
reverting. After that the original block (which was 6 hours or 24
hours or something like that) was lengthened to a week, based on
repeated problematic behaviour (doing his own thing after a discussion
where everyone else had the opposite opinion, POV editing, and such),
with a request for some kind of mediation. This was done after a vote
on the village pump. Because he was believed to have edited during his
blocked period, the block was lengthened to 2 weeks then to 4 weeks,
which was retroactively approved by a vote of the community.

> Was this an official decision made by
> one person, a small group of people, all sysops together, the entire
> community?

The original block was made by a small group, the lengthening to more
than a few hours was made by the entire community.

> If either of the first two, you evidently have natural candidates
> to form an official blocking group, of whom one might be appropriate to
> grant access to such an easily-abused tool, no? What, exactly, is the
> problem, then?

The problem is that some of the sysops want to use the tool, but
nobody has access to it.

Andre Engels


from_name: Milos Rancic

body:
On Apr 12, 2005 11:51 PM, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk at eunet.yu> wrote:
> Frankly, to me this entire conversation sounds like much ado about nothing.
> Even on Serbian Wikipedia noone actually said that he actually needs Latin
> alphabet, and a few people said that they are for Latin because maybe someone
> would need it. So I don't see why introducing it.

This is not true. We voted about it last summer. One person explicitly
asked for Latin alphabet [[sr:????????:Sergivs]], two said that it
should be used, six voted against (seventh person voted after the
conclusion of voting). I asked about consequences of voting at
wikimeda-l list and answer was clear: if Latin alphabet wouldn't be
included into sr.wikipedia, it would be tyranny of majority. After
all, we can vote about it again and situation in this moment would be
more pro-Latin.

Nikola, your political reasons for obstruction of introduction of
Latin alphabet into Serbian Wikipedia are clear. But, Serbian
Wikipedia should be used by all Serbian speaking people, not only by
one political faction.


from_name: Chuck MATTSEN

body:
On Wed, 13 Apr 2005 13:41:02 +0930
Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> typed:

> Blair P. Houghton wrote:
>
> > Sorry about the subject lines...this mailing list really needs to
> > be turned into a newsgroup.
> >
> Newsgroups are not accessable to those without news servers. Email is
> available to anyone with Web access.

Aren't most of the newsgroups accessible, both for reading and posting,
via Google now?

--
Chuck MATTSEN / mattsen at arvig dot net / Mahnomen, MN, USA
MT Lookup: http://eot.com/~mattsen/mtsearch.htm
Mandrakelinux release 10.2 (Limited Edition 2005) for i586
kernel 2.6.11-6mdk-i686-up-4GB / RLU #346519

Random Thought/Quote For This Message:
     The only certainty is that nothing is certain.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] wiki 2 html converter

body:
Moritz von Schweinitz wrote:
> soi was wondering if anybody already tried to isolate whichever part of
> wikimedia actually 'renders' the 'cur' column of the database to HTML,
> and make a stand-alone app (or a perl module, or something) based on
> that in a way that re-uses the latest wikimedia code, so that any
> scripts that trry to create a static version of a wiki could easily be
> kept in sync with the lates mediawiki syntax.

Trying to create a separate program from scratch seems a bit silly, I'm
not sure why people keep doing it over and over when it's fairly trivial
to make a maintenance script for MediaWiki that runs the parser on each
page and dumps the output.

Tim's started a script for this, it's in the maintenance directory in
CVS. This is the development version of MediaWiki and is not directly
usable yet on current page download dumps as the database format has
changed.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject:
Web-based Usenet access (WAS: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest,
	Vol 21, Issue 44)

body:
On Wed, 13 Apr 2005 14:29:21 +0930
Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> typed:

> Chuck MATTSEN wrote:
>
> >On Wed, 13 Apr 2005 13:41:02 +0930
> >Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> typed:
> >
> >>Blair P. Houghton wrote:
> >>
> >>>Sorry about the subject lines...this mailing list really needs to
> >>>be turned into a newsgroup.
> >>>
> >>Newsgroups are not accessable to those without news servers. Email
> >>is available to anyone with Web access.
> >
> >Aren't most of the newsgroups accessible, both for reading and
> >posting, via Google now?
> >
> Really? How?

http://www.google.com/googlegroups/about.html

--
Chuck MATTSEN / mattsen at arvig dot net / Mahnomen, MN, USA
MT Lookup: http://eot.com/~mattsen/mtsearch.htm
Mandrakelinux release 10.2 (Limited Edition 2005) for i586
kernel 2.6.11-6mdk-i686-up-4GB / RLU #346519

Random Thought/Quote For This Message:
     The 1st rule to smart tinkering is to save all the parts.


from_name: Pablo Saratxaga

body:
Kaixo!

On Tue, Apr 12, 2005 at 10:51:57PM +0100, Nikola Smolenski wrote:

> Frankly, to me this entire conversation sounds like much ado about nothing.
> Even on Serbian Wikipedia noone actually said that he actually needs Latin

For Serbian maybe it isn't needed, for Belarussian I didn't even knew
there was anyone using latin alphabet; but there are languages
for wich such a feature is absolutely needed, like Kurdish, Azeri,
Uzbek, Amazigh, Punjabi, where there are very siezable communities with
different writting systems; possibly also Uighur, Uzbek.

--
Ki ?a vos v?ye b?n,
Pablo Saratxaga

http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/		PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466
[you can write me in Walloon, Spanish, French, English, Catalan or Esperanto]
[min povas skribi en valona, esperanta, angla aux latinidaj lingvoj]
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from_name: Erdal Ronahi

body:
Hi,

I am admin at the Kurdish Wikipedia, and for Kurdish I absolutely agree.
Both writing systems are used by millions of people, and we are trying
to keep them both in one Wikipedia. Any technical help is warmly
welcomed. :-)

Greetings,
Erdal

>
>
>>Frankly, to me this entire conversation sounds like much ado about nothing.
>>Even on Serbian Wikipedia noone actually said that he actually needs Latin
>>
>>
>
>For Serbian maybe it isn't needed, for Belarussian I didn't even knew
>there was anyone using latin alphabet; but there are languages
>for wich such a feature is absolutely needed, like Kurdish, Azeri,
>Uzbek, Amazigh, Punjabi, where there are very siezable communities with
>different writting systems; possibly also Uighur, Uzbek.
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
http://www.ferheng.org


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Talking about stewards

body:
I don't see what's so wrong with an election, so long as there isn't a
chance of a "bad" candidate winning (which of course there always is,
but the candidacy can be monitored and chances are such a person won't
win an election).

While I favour more community involvement in all areas of Wikimedia, I
think that matters in the actual projects, such as stewards, new
rules, &c, should all be democratically chosen by all Wikimedia-ans (I
believe Tim made a page about the difference between people who are
Wikipedians, Wiktionarians, Wikibooksians, Wikiquotians,
Wikisourcians, Wikispecians, Wikinewsians, Commonsians, and/or Metans
and people who are "Wikimedians" - that's why I use the term
"Wikimedia-ans" to refer to participants from all projects) and I
don't see a real excuse for not having this. (like the understandable
excuses for not having democratic votes for all foundation matters)

In matters of this sort (I keep wanting to call them "domestic
issues"), I believe the old maxim "VOX POPVLI VOX DEI" should apply
and that there are no plausible reasons for it not to. The CIVES
VICIPAEDIANI should be allowed to decide on such "internal affairs"
insofar as their/our decisions do not threaten the continued existance
of the Foundation or one of the projects, and do not go against the
general philosophies of Wikimedia and the open-source movement in
general.

But then that is just my opinion.

Mark

On 4/12/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/13/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I was pretty sure there were going to be elections, but I don't
> > remember anything about them being in March... I thought it was may or
> > july or something.
>
> No date was ever set. The issue has been brought up a number of times
> over the last year, and Anthere created a page about elections at the
> start of March. Shortly after this, Jimbo said he wanted to appoint
> all stewards himself (See
> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Stewards/elections_2005#No_elections.3F>)
> but never actually got round to doing so.
>
> Angela.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Seth Ilys <seth.ilys at ...> writes:
> I wasn't sufficiently clear, I think. I'm defining success *as*
> popularity, because I believe that the popularity of the site comes
> from the fact that we are a generally reliable reference source.

Then danni.com is a more successful encyclopedia.

> Independent studies have found that the quality of writing and the
> accuracy of our articles are comparable to, if not better than, most
> published encyclopedias.

Studies independent of common sense.

> I simply don't see the rampant errors and POV
> that you describe; I believe that you're imagining a problem where
> none exists.

Rather, I'm tiring of the persistence and pervasiveness of the problem.

> However, if you have evidence that POV and vandalism are running
> rampant and unchecked on the 'pedia, I'd love to see it. I rather
> think you're being alarmist, Blair.

Go read some articles.  If you don't see the POV and fallacy,
question the depth of your own knowledge.

> But I'm also a perpetual and incurable (and sometimes irrational)
> optimist as well. :)

The lifeblood of a substandard graffitopedia.

--Blair


body:
On 4/13/05, Pablo Saratxaga <pablo at mandriva.com> wrote:
> For Serbian maybe it isn't needed,

Huh... Maybe I can say that I can't belive. Around 50% of Serbs are
using Latin alphabet as their primary alphabet! I am using Cyrillic,
but my girlfriend and a lot of my friends use Latin as their primary
alphabet. Two of my bank cards are written in Latin alphabet and one
is written in Cyrillic. Almost all companies print their visit-cards
in Latin alphabet (in Serbian). A lot of people don't contribute to
Serbian Wikipedia because we are waiting for Latin implementation...
Come to Belgrade and see the situation.

In formal way, Cyrillic is official alphabet. So, if we have to chose
between that two alphabets, Cyrillic is "more equal". But, if we can
use both, we should use both.


body:
Kaixo!

On Wed, Apr 13, 2005 at 12:39:10AM +0200, Milos Rancic wrote:
> On 4/13/05, Pablo Saratxaga <pablo at mandriva.com> wrote:
> > For Serbian maybe it isn't needed,
>
> Huh... Maybe I can say that I can't belive. Around 50% of Serbs are
> using Latin alphabet as their primary alphabet! I am using Cyrillic,

I didn't say that it wasn't needed for Serbian, just that I didn't
knew if sr: users needed it (which is different of wanted; yes it would
be a welcome feature, but it isn't absolutely needed, as anyone litterate
in Serbian language can read cyrillic; the situation is different for
other languages where different communities use different alphabets
and may not be able to read the other).

What I wanted to point out is that, even if the latin/cyrillic
transliteration feature is not used in sr: or be:, the exploration
of it is still usefull, as there are other languages that would
benefit of it.

(btw, I wasn't aware that the proportion of latin alphabet users
was so high; yes I knew that anyone could write it, and probably used
it in thinks like sms or email, but thought than when it came to writting
with a pen on a paper most people used cyrillic)

> But, if we can use both, we should use both.

I fully agree (and there is no need to have a 50%-50% situation);
btw in my work (I'm responsible of localization for a software company)
I have long ago decided to provide the choice of both writtings
(by requiring translators to use cyrillic, then converting from
cyrillic to latin, as that is easy to do, while the conversion from
latin to cyrillic is painfull, due to the high amount of things that
must remain unchanged (urls, command names, file and path names,
email addresses, etc.))

--
Ki ?a vos v?ye b?n,
Pablo Saratxaga

http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/		PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466
[you can write me in Walloon, Spanish, French, English, Catalan or Esperanto]
[min povas skribi en valona, esperanta, angla aux latinidaj lingvoj]
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from_name: SPUI

body:
Alphax wrote:
> Blair P. Houghton wrote:
>
>> Sorry about the subject lines...this mailing list really needs to be
>> turned into a newsgroup.
>>
> Newsgroups are not accessable to those without news servers. Email is
> available to anyone with Web access.
>
Not necessarily; it could be set up on a Wikipedia server to which
anyone could connect.


from_name: Arwel Parry

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
> Arwel Parry wrote:
>
>> In this particular case, I'd say we could dispense with  the
>> succession box for "T?naiste", whose data is put in better context by
>> the "T?naistithe na h?ireann" template at the bottom, and the
>> "President of Ireland" succession box, whose only improving feature
>> over the infobox at the top of the page is that it actually shows
>> pictures of his predecessor and successor as President.
>>
> I've consolidated all the succession boxes into one succession box
> group, how's it look now? I think the redundancy is a price worth paying
> for the standardization of succession boxes like this, it allows one to
> quickly click one's way through the Tanaiste and Presidents in order
> without having to search through the list each time.

Looks neater - you've got rid of a lot of wasteful white space. I was
just thinking that maybe we need a [[Template:Uachtar?in na h?ireann]]
in the same style as [[Template:T?naistithe na h?ireann]]...

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Tim Starling (t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au) [050412 22:40]:
> David Gerard wrote:
> > Jack Lutz (jack-lutz at comcast.net) [050412 14:10]:

> >>I think the log of CheckUser usage must be public; there is no otherwise no
> >>check on abuse.

> > Unfortunately, that will give everyone a damn good idea of what people's
> > IPs are. At present, all access show on the page, so Tim and I can see what
> > each other have accessed. (He's used it precisely twice, to test it ;-)

> I put the log in a flat file on NFS
> (/home/wikipedia/logs/checkuser.log), partly to make it easy for
> suspicious developers to check up on what the users have been doing with
> it. So it's not just two people overseeing each other. I'd prefer it if
> more people could view the log, but for privacy reasons we can't make it
> public at this stage. If there's sufficient demand, we could probably
> make partial logs available -- say, just the usernames but not the IP
> addresses.

I can see the creatively antisocial trying to use that as a point against
other editors they are in combat with.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Expanding CheckUser permissions

body:
mbecker ? (wikimb at gmail.com) [050413 01:27]:

> I feel that this tool should be rarely if ever used to find sock
> puppets. If this tool simply tells you which accounts have been used
> from which ip address this is not enough evidence to prove the use of
> "sock puppet" accounts. I for instance access Wikipedia via a machine
> which has no real ip address but rather shares a real ip address with
> several hundred machines. I know for a fact that other people on my
> network use Wikipedia, and I have no doubts that some of them will be
> browsing similar pages as me. So, while this tool might be helpful, I
> feel that it provides far too much opportunity for abuse if it were to
> be allowed to be used by the general population. Admins already block
> IPs in similar ranges when fighting "vandals" often blocking
> legitimate users. Also, this tool could and would provide a huge
> invasion of privacy by potentially removing anonymity from the use of
> Wikipedia. Please let this tool be a last resort in serious cases.

Precisely. That's why anyone using it needs to have an awareness of these
issues and proceed with extreme caution.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Protecting "Today's Featured Article"

body:
David 'DJ' Hedley (spyders at btinternet.com) [050413 01:31]:

> It may sound non-sensical, but as images on the front page are protected, I
> think Today's Featured Article should be next.
> Yesterday [[Garry Kasparov]] was the featured article of the day - during
> it's stay there it was subject to a large amount of vandalism, some of which
> was unattended to for a number of hours. No-one seemed to care, as sneaky
> vandals can seemingly do as they like at times on such articles, and not be
> noticed.

I think this is a bad idea. Most Featured Articles are greatly improved by
being on the front page.

The best thing is for the Featured Articles Dictator to let substantial
contributors to the page know it's coming up soon, and ask them to keep an
eye on the page during the day.

(The Featured Articles archive shows features for a few days ahead, but a
lot of people don't know to look there.)

Also, those in a mood to keep an eye out for vandalism/sandboxing should
keep an eye on the feature.

- d.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
I was expecting to find a nude photo in the article about [[Kate
Winslet]], which would be appropriate (out of context, misleading).
However, the photo is a very tasteful nude shot from the film
''Titanic'', and is used to enrich that article's narrative about the
movie - not to mention that it's a partial nude, with only a left breast
visible.

I don't know the uploader's motivation, and I share your suspicion that
many people might try to cause disruption by uploading such photos.
However, the best response to that, in my opinion, is to have clear
policies on the matter. Then the trolls can do whatever they want, and
we just decide quickly how to deal with the matter. Such policies might
evolve out of precedents like Autofellatio and this photo.

Erik


body:
James D. Forrester wrote:

>On Tuesday, April 12, 2005 10:38 PM, wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org <>
>wrote:
>
>>n Apr 12, 2005 10:41 PM, James D. Forrester
>><james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>If either of the first two, you evidently have natural candidates
>>>to form an official blocking group, of whom one might be appropriate to
>>>grant access to such an easily-abused tool, no? What, exactly, is the
>>>problem, then?
>>>
>>>
>>The problem is that some of the sysops want to use the tool, but nobody
>>has access to it.
>>
>>
>
>Yes, I know - I'm trying to help the w:nl community select people to put
>forward to have access to the tool. "All sysops" is far too broad (indeed,
>"all bureaucrats" is, too). Thus we must find a singleton (or other very
>small) set of people trusted sufficiently to be given access to the tool, as
>it is a very powerful and very easily abused tool and should not be (and
>will not be) given out wantonly.
>
>Am I being confusing? Sorry.
>
>Yours,
>
>
Hoi,
This problem is something that needs a proper solution. There is a small
band of people who do things for all communities they are explicitly
trusted by Jimbo as he handpicks them. They are the Stewards. There is a
need for more of them but it would be good if they are entrusted with
this task if they are willing. The benefit is that this way we have a
group that is trusted and already acting on all the projects. The need
for people to perform this function is something that may occur in any
project and therefore the solution should be one that helps all projects
and all communities.

PS you are not confusing :)

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Conflict between two Wikipedias

body:
I personally don't consider it appropriate, but it's very confusing.

Mo.wiki already exists and is being used for Cyrillic already, but
Ronline wants the Cyrillic content to either be moved to mo-cyr:, or
have mo: in both alphabets.

This situation is different from Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian for one
reason especially. Linguists and scientists from these countries
(Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia) like to make all sorts of claims about
the distinctness of their respective languages, while in Moldova, the
official Academy of Science declares on its website even that Moldovan
and Romanian are identical, and a man who published a
"Romanian-Moldovan dictionary" was mocked on national television. What
I mean is, only 30% of Moldovans claim they speak the "Moldovan
language", and that is possibly a question of naming - even less would
tell you "Moldovan" and "Romanian" are different languages.

What you say about not having Cyrillic content at ro: is totally
missing my point there. I personally believe that Romanian and
Moldovan are close enough that in most pages on Wikipedia, there would
only be differences in spelling with a few minor differences in
terminology (Moldovan also has a tendency to use less French and
Italian words). Most people who speak Moldovan or Romanian agree that
they are identical.

I am claiming a double standard on the part of some main anti-Cyrillic
people such as Danutz, who say "Moldovan and Romanian are the same
thing. All Moldovans speak Romanian. There is no such language as
Moldovan. Anybody who says they speak Moldovan must be a communist",
then "Indeed 10% of speakers of "Moldovan" use Cyrillic" and then
"Nobody who speaks Romanian uses Cyrillic". If Moldovan _is_ Romanian,
then some speakers of Romanian use Cyrillic.

And it should be emphasised that this is not merely a question of
nationality - plenty of Moldovans (the majority, in fact) claim to
speak "Romanian". This includes the majority of users of the Cyrillic
script, who also call it "Romanian" (probably a little less than half
of Cyrillic users - I don't mean "enthusiasts" who want to restore a
dead script, I mean people who learnt this as their first alphabet in
school, and still prefer to use it today and often do - call it
"Moldovan").

This means that some people who visit a "Romanian Wikipedia" might
prefer to read content in Cyrillic - after all, 1% of all speakers of
Romanian/Moldavian combined prefer the Cyrillic script to the Roman
script - and I believe that is significant enough that we should
provide content for them.

So the way I see it is: It is preferable that ro.wiki is bi-scriptal,
but of course this will not happen in a million years because of such
contradictory beliefs as illustrated above (it should be noted that
Ronline believes - at least it would seem he does - that Romanian and
Moldovan are truly separate languages), so we can just stick to the
status quo which is changing the letter infront to an "m" if you want
Cyrillic, and if you end up at mo: wanting Latin content, you click in
to get it immediately.

I do not appreciate the involvement of Ronline, Danutz, and other
ro.wikipedians in what I see as a relatively petty issue. As you can
see from usage statistics, mo.wiki gets less than 100 visits a year,
and I can tell you that most of those are from me and Vertaler and
Danutz and Ronline and devs and stewards and the like. And, all those
complaining are Romanian citizens who mainly use ro.wiki and claim
their mother tongue as "Romanian", and it is my guess that most have
never been to Moldova and that most have seen only a couple of texts
in their lives spelled in a Moldovan fashion. These people aren't so
upset about a language they claim to use or have as their mother
tongue or even a language which has some attachment to them at all,
they are interfering on a nationalist basis in an entirely separate
Wikipedia. So far the only reaction from Moldovans on mo: has been
tiny but it has been supportive and positive.

Many Serbians (though certainly not all) believe Bosnian is a dialect
of Serbian or is identical, but there is no interference with Serbians
complaining about the Bosnian Wikipedia or vice-versa, and Serbian is
bi-scriptal even though Latin is mostly used for "Montenegrin" which
is in a similar situation to Moldovan (except it isn't officially
recognised as a separate language).

To be fair Ronline does not focus on the fact that mo.wiki is
currently separate from ro.wiki, but this seems to be a main focus for
most of the other people interested.

Another question that may arise is: Is Romanian spelling convertable
by computer to Moldovan spelling and vice-versa? The answer is yes.
But, is Latin alphabet of this language convertable to Cyrillic
alphabet for this language by computer? No, because there are not
exact correspondences. "ia" can sometimes be "i-ya" in Cyrillic and
other times "i-a" (not using actual Cyrillic letters, just a
transcription), "iu" can be "i-yu", "i-u", "`-yu", and most
importantly there are 3 possible conversions in Cyrillic for the Latin
"i". Also, in some words (almost all foreign), the "g" sound in "gi"
or "ge" can be transliterated as a "zh" with a breve over it, and it
others (both foreign and non-foreign) it is written without due to an
actual difference in pronunciation. There are however a system of
complex situational rules that can cover perhaps 80% of the
ambiguities, but these might require computer parsing, needing to know
how a word is actually pronounced, and for complete accuracy you would
need a lexicon of "exceptions".

I only talk about the computer conversion because the question has
arisen in the past over script diffferences (Kurdish, Serbian).

Mark

On 4/13/05, Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
> This is familiar kind of problem, remember the quite recent controversy with
> Serbocrotian on the one, and Serbian, Croatian and Bosniak on the other. I,
> as a Western European, could easily dismiss claims on speaking a separate
> language as politically inspired nonsense, but in countries like these with
> a heavily charged recent past, questions like these are controversial. On
> the other hand, this discussion is also current in Moldovia itself, I heard.
> I propose that you allow Latin script Moldavian on ro: only, and that you
> look for five enthousiasts (including you yourself, of course) for the
> Moldovian-only Cyrillic version, not to be allowed on ro:, since virtually
> no Romanians can read it. The rest of the procedure must be familiar to you,
> I suppose. This leaves only the question of the name: ro-cy or mol-cy. Do
> you consider this an appropriate solution?
>
> Wouter
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Direct antwoord op je vragen: gebruik MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Talking about stewards

body:
On 4/13/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was pretty sure there were going to be elections, but I don't
> remember anything about them being in March... I thought it was may or
> july or something.

No date was ever set. The issue has been brought up a number of times
over the last year, and Anthere created a page about elections at the
start of March. Shortly after this, Jimbo said he wanted to appoint
all stewards himself (See
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Stewards/elections_2005#No_elections.3F>)
but never actually got round to doing so.

Angela.


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
James D. Forrester wrote:

>Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>We are looking for a negative colleration. The person has a bad
>>reputation. Before he adopted a user profile he was known for
>>doing his thing with any number of IP numbers. When he was blocked
>>he was almost instantly back on another IP-number.
>>
>>
>
>Who blocked him? Why? Based on what? Was this an official decision made by
>one person, a small group of people, all sysops together, the entire
>community? If either of the first two, you evidently have natural candidates
>
>
Everytime he was blocked this got majority community support. Everytime
he evaded. The user is tiresome, extremely tiresome. Though he seems to
have found a second home ..... en.wikipedia ...... untill his block
expires on the 25th I guess.

Waerth/Walter


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject:
[Wikitech-l] ANNOUNCEMENT: Alpha Release of ENOTIF and EAUTHENT
 3.05-alpha for Mediawiki 1.4.1 (REL1_4)

body:
E-Mail Notification for page and user-page changes.
E-Mail-Address Authentication
Many further innovative fetaures such as direct links to difference view
between current and last-seen versions (of watched pages).
...

I finished it, see http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=454 for
further information.
Visit also http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enotif (more infos there tomorrow)
Download http://www.tgries.de/mw/mw141+en305alpha.tgz

Tom


body:
Ray Saintonge (saintonge at telus.net) [050413 02:35]:
> David Gerard wrote:
> >Angela (beesley at gmail.com) [050412 13:43]:

> >>Currently the only people with the necessary permissions to use
> >>CheckUser are Tim Starling (who wrote the code for this) and David
> >>Gerard (who uses it on behalf of the English Wikipedia Arbitration
> >>Committee).

> >I should also point out that I *barely* use it - its availability to the Ac
> >directly is somewhat controversial, but I've some experience of net-abuse
> >tracing and know what the results mean or don't, and I only use it when
> >there's clearly some important issue. (Last use was to check on an apparent
> >sock of Rienzo. Use before that was to check the zillion abusive socks in
> >the Baku Ibne arb com case.) I get a lot of people asking me to check
> >something casually and I have to say "no". Although if people on en: think
> >it's relevant to an arb com case, the "Requests for clarification" section
> >on WP:RFAr is the right place to suggest. The edit evidence had better be
> >there, though, I'm not going on fishing expeditions.

> This sounds like a wise approach.  Some ultra-zealous vandal chasers are
> much too quick to jump to conclusions when finding fault.

The problem I find in practice is that there is no guideline, and I'm not
quite sure sometimes myself. I've added a question to [[m:CheckUser]]
asking for suggestions on when it's appropriate to look this stuff up.
Then I'll probably take those and see if something that's clearly good
sense emerges from them.

- d.