body:
Can someone clarify whether the software records your IP address every time
you access a page, or only when you edit? If it's the former, does anyone
have any ideas how to block this information without constantly logging in
and out?
 I don't mind Wikimedia tracking what I edit, but I don't want you tracking
what I read.


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The New Student's Reference Work, 1914

body:
Some of you know that I (LA2) am the founder of Project Runeberg,
a website (runeberg.org) where we scan old books from Sweden,
Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Iceland, including several works
that are recycled for Wikipedia.  In promoting the way we work, my
biggest obstacle is that the world at large is so unwilling to
learn Swedish.  You don't know what you're missing!

So I found and bought "The New Student's Reference Work", a little
encyclopedia in five volumes, published in Chicago in 1914.  As it
was published before 1923, it is now in the public domain.  Since
this non-Scandinavian work doesn't fit in Project Runeberg, I put
it in Wikisource.

First I scanned images (300 dpi JPEG) of all 2791 pages and
uploaded them to Wikimedia Commons, where you will find them in
the category http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:LA2-NSRW

Then, for each book page, I created a wiki page on Wikisource
displaying the scanned image and containing the raw OCR text. If
you want to help in proofreading, use two separate browser windows
to open the enlarged image and edit the wiki text.

Finally, I made a front page with a short preface and a rough
table of contents, which is your starting point:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_Student%27s_Reference_Work

Some trivia:

It turns out that this work has a historic relationship to
Encyclop?dia Britannica.  The main editor, Chandler B. Beach,
started out as a salesman for Britannica, but in 1892 set out to
create his own, smaller and more easily sold "Youth's Cyclopedia".
His companion F.E. Compton took over the firm in 1907 and later
produced "Compton's Encyclopedia".  In 1941 this competitor was
acquired by Encyclop?dia Britannica, Inc.

Someone already noticed that the illustration plate for Peanuts,
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:LA2-NSRW-3-0473.jpg is
identical to the one found in Koehler's Medicinal-Plants 1887,
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Koeh-163.jpg

So reuse of encyclopedic materials is nothing new indeed.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Project Runeberg - free Nordic literature - http://runeberg.org/


list: wikien-l

from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Checkuser fiasco

body:
On 10/19/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> Can you give examples of RFA promoting bad admins lately? I don't just
> mean people you opposed, of course; but people who went on to
> misbehave. I genuinely don't know.

I rarely ever vote in RfAs, so these aren't just people I've opposed;
rather, they're people whose conduct as administrators has been
brought to my attention either in my role as an Arbitrator or in my
prior role as an unofficial mediator and generally as the sort of
person people go to for advice about problematic situations.  Like
SlimVirgin, I'm not going to name names publicly.

Kelly


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Non-admin rollback?

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

Marco Chiesa wrote:
> Well, I used to do manual rollback (i.e. modifying the previous version
> and saving it) before becoming admin on it.wiki, it's just slightly
> longer but it works the same; sometimes even admins may prefer it, since
> that allows to put reason for rollbacking in the subject.
> Cruccone
I used to do that before I was an admins also. It took forever though.
I'm on dial up.

- --
Phroziac
Encrypted Email Preferred
OpenPGP key ID: 0x8DA573EA

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Checkuser fiasco

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Look, I'm happy with the board appointing trusted people to use
>checkuser.  I don't  mind if this is delegated to arbcom.
>
>But I'm not happy at all about having a RFA-style beauty contest for
>people to use checkuser.  Nope.   This isn't how we do things
>associated with privacy.
>
Absolutely.  This whole matter of electing people is bizarre, beginning
with putting sysop condidates through an election.  That alone does not
bring out the best people.  Voting there can be no different than on
AfD.  Some way of evaluating how a person gets along with others would
be appreciated.

Ec


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: So what do we do about this?

body:
Alphax wrote:

>What about if the author has blogged about (some current event) that
>they witnessed or attended?
>
>
That still seems like a shaky source.  That's basically saying, "some
guy on the internet claims he saw this happen".  If I "blogged" about
witnessing an event on my Wikipedia User page, could we cite that as a
source?

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Quality vs. consensus (was: Meanwhile, AfD grinds on)

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>I think the word you're looking for is "irony". Alphax was making the
>ironic observation that an overwhelming number of Wikipedians are more
>concerned with consensus than with quality.
>
Not only that but they misunderstand the nature of consensus.  Effective
consensus depends on having effective community.  Consensus that is
motivated by being right and winninbg your point is not much of a consensus.

>The question I wish to address is what method or "means" will best help
>us achieve our goal. Anything which has worked so far, but is now
>proving an obstacle should be re-examined.
>
Certainly!  There is the old saw, "Patience is a virtue."  Most of the
disputes concerning deletions could easily be defused if those seeking
deletions showed a little patience, and weren't so convinced that they
are right or that a deletion can only be reversed with great difficulty.

Maintaining deletion discussions actively open after something is
deleted would probably have the counter-intuitive result that fewer
would be undeleted.  At the very least, the heat would be reduced.

Ec


from_name: Andrew Venier

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The whole point of wikipedia

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Is that really true, though?  How many editors do we have doing RC
>patrol?  I'm on #wikipedia-en-vandalism right now and there are about
>a dozen voiced users (ie regulars) on channel.  Most of them are
>idling.  A load of other editors will be involved at any one time in
>fixing recent change, but if you look at the deletion log and see who
>is doing deletions and restores, you can get a maximum value for the
>number of editors who have been on active patrol today.  57 editors
>are responsible for the last 500 deletions--which covers the last 9
>hours.  But we have many thousands of editors contributing every day.
>For instance, of the last 500 edits,  there were 287 unique usernames
>or IPs.
>
>There may be many editors involved in dealing with vandalism, but it's
>a drop in the bucket compared to the resources we have available.
>
>
>
The deletion log will only show admins who are carrying out the
deletion.  It won't show non-admins who are monitoring recent changes,
manually reverting vandalism, and tagging speedies.  It doesn't make
sense to compare the number of admins performing deletetions  to recent
changes by everyone.

I also don't know how to interpret what the IRC numbers mean ... right
now there are 32 people in #wikipedia-en, but I'm certain there are many
more editors than that active right now.


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
On 10/19/05, dpbsmith at verizon.net <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
> Prudence, indeed, will dictate that practices long established, such as zero-
> threshold editing should not be changed for light and transient causes.
>

Considerations like this are one reason I won't be submitting my patch
to CVS anytime soon.  The possibility of widespread abuse, as a means
of coercing editors to sign up and log in, is one I wouldn't want to
countenance.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Checkuser fiasco

body:
Look, I'm happy with the board appointing trusted people to use
checkuser.  I don't  mind if this is delegated to arbcom.

But I'm not happy at all about having a RFA-style beauty contest for
people to use checkuser.  Nope.   This isn't how we do things
associated with privacy.


from_name: Fl Celloguy

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Blocking Proposal

body:
> > What's wrong with that? I repeat, Wikipedia should let *anyone* edit.
>Just
> > because someone uses AOL doesn't mean s/he should have to register and
> > create an account to edit. We're "forcing" users, to quote from you, to
> > register when the whole point of Wikipedia is that you don't need to
> > register to edit.
>
>  I really can't figure out what you're arguing here, though. Because right
>now, when an AOL IP is blocked, you can't edit using it regardless of
>whether or not you register. As I understand it, the proposal is to allow
>logged in users to edit when they otherwise wouldn't.
>  Sure, this might lead to admins being more liberal with IP blocks, but it
>doesn't require it - whether or not admins are more liberal with IP blocks
>is a separate issue, and we could pass policies to ensure that this doesn't
>happen.
>
>

True, but right now AOL IP blocks are kept to a minimum, and I haven't seen
an AOL range block in a long time. From the proposal: "This new form of
blocking will only affect specific IP addresses, most obviously will be AOL,
which would almost certainly be blocked due to the level of vandalism. " If
this proposal was implemented, it would almost be certain that AOL IPs would
be continuously blocked or blocked indefinitely. In addition, so many
schools and public-use computers would also almost certainly be blocked
using this method. But that's not the main point: the main point is that
we're restricting editing from IP addresses, which in itself is against the
spirit of wikis and especially of Wikipedia. We're proposing punishing a
large majority of internet users for a small percentage of troublesome
vandals. In addition, my opinion is that this won't deter vandalism but will
instead encourage vandalism. I see very few benefits in this proposal. We
don't have a problem with vandalism right now; we have a problem with
getting enough contributors to edit and write, as evidenced with the
articles [[Bill Gates]] and [[Jane Fonda]]. Are we to scare off
contributors, encourage vandalism, and go against the spirit of the wiki? I
sure hope not, and I personally think that this policy would be detrimental
to Wikipedia.

Thanks.

Flcelloguy
>From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.

_________________________________________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Requests for checkuser rights

body:
I know this has already been well-discussed, but I'd like to thank Raul for
taking off the CheckUser nominations. While I supported the proposal, I was
under the impression that more policy would be discussed afterwards, Board
permission sought, and then another final vote. *Never* did I imagine that
hours after the vote closed (I note that it was so close that if I had
changed my mind and voted oppose, the proposal would have failed) that there
would be two nominations already.

But that's all past - we should focus on the future. IMO, some of the
community has an incorrect perception regarding CheckUser. It's *not*
another level on the so-called Wikipedia hierarchy, and I don't think anyone
"deserves" it. With board approval or Jimbo's approval, it should be limited
to ArbCom members and bureaucrats only, and even then, they should undergo a
strict community vote. CheckUser should *not* be given liberally to any
admins wishing to see someone's IP address. Unlike adminship and
bureaucratship, this has huge implications off the project and in "real
life".

I hope everyone takes CheckUser a lot more seriously. In fact, I have half a
mind to go onto the proposal and change my vote to oppose, given the way
this has been handled. Please take CheckUser as a serious tool that should
only be given out extremely sparingly, if ever.

Many thanks.

Flcelloguy
>From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.

_________________________________________________________________
Don?t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Funny joke...

body:
On 10/19/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Closing an AFD debate is not just about the numbers. If I come across
> one where there's one reasoned vote that explains it's a copyvio or
> hoax while there's 30 others voting keep without such reasoning, I
> would still close in favor of the one explained vote, despite the
> numbers.
>

This procedure is also supported by the deletion guidelines for
administrators.  We don't keep copyright infringements, no matter how
many people say "keep", no matter even what fine reasons we give for
keeping.


body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>Martin, I think you're confusing anonymous editors with vandals.
>We're allowing anonymous users to edit so there's a low treshhold to
>contributing.
>Kill that, and you take away a large pool of users who just haven't
>signed for various legitimate reasons.
>
>We can deal with the vandals. Forcing valid editors to do something
>they don't want to is a bad way to fight vandalism.
>
>
Amazing!  We agree on something.  Vandals are a fact of life here, but
it is a stretch to assume that every anonymous editor is a vandal.

Ec


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Bad writing and driving away newcomers (was: The whole
	point of wikipedia)

body:
Here's an extract from what Tony wrote:

> Specifically the suggestion further up the thread was that we
> needed to tackle vandalism because it's  so serious, and you
> said "This is a project to make the best encyclopedia ever,
> policy and procedure should evolve as our problems evolve,
> and vandalim is one of the biggest problems, it discredits
> us, wastes our time, and puts off good users. The least we
> could do is be able to block vandals properly when they do surface."
>
> Personally I think that bad writing and driving away
> newcomers are the two worst problems of the project.  The
> former can be fixed over time with effort.  The latter will
> kill us if we keep it up.  Compared to those, vandalism
> doesn't even count as a blip on the radar screen.

I agree, and I would say that the reason we tolerate (1) bad
writing and (2) mistreatment of newcomers stems from an anti-
elitism which refuses to define standards of quality.

In our over-arching desire to keep this the "project of the masses" we
have settled for the lowest common denominator. Until we make
subordinate this value to the twin values of (1) having high quality
articles which people can rely on and obtain freely; and (2) providing a
congenial working environment for our volunteers - until we do this, I
say, we are at the mercy of the lowest elements of the on-line world:
the trolls, the time-wasters, and the people Fred Bauder's arbcom
describe as lacking the maturity to be part of this project.

I hope our new Research Officer will be looking into the twin matters of
defining a standard of quality and providing a congenial working
environment. And I'd like to be on the committee which forms around
these 2 issues.

Ed Poor


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Personally I think that bad writing and driving away newcomers are the
>two worst problems of the project.  The former can be fixed over time
>with effort.  The latter will kill us if we keep it up.  Compared to
>those, vandalism doesn't even count as a blip on the radar screen.
>
We deal quickly with real vandals because we all know what they are and
we don't need to argue about them.  Primarily, the efforts of vandals
fail a test of basic relevance.

Even a POV pushing neo-nazi passes the relevance test.  The articles
that he acts upon will have some connection with his political views,
and he is only rarely found doing anything with non-political articles.

Ec


from_name: Martin Richards

body:
> I hold this truth to be self-evident: the whole point of Wikipedia is to
> produce a free encyclopedia.
>
> To secure this goal, policies and practices have been instituted. Whenever
> current policies and practices becomes destructive of this goal, it is
> appropriate that the community institute such new practices as seem as to
> them shall seem most likely to secure the goal of producing a free
> encyclopedia.
>
> Prudence, indeed, will dictate that practices long established, such as
> zero-
> threshold editing should not be changed for light and transient causes.

"Light and transient"!! are you serious? These vandals waste so much of our
good editors time and effort that it is an extreme problem.

We have to ask ourselves "is wikipedia a social experiment or not?"

answers;
YES!
Then let absolutely everyone edit freely (well everyone who has a computer
with internet and is not blocked by other means, including being on an IP
shared with a blocked vandal) and live by our artificial rules and see what
happens.

NO!
This is a project to make the best encyclopedia ever, policy and procedure
should evolve as our problems evolve, and vandalim is one of the biggest
problems, it discredits us, wastes our time, and puts off good users. The
least we could do is be able to block vandals properly when they do surface.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: The whole point of wikipedia (Martin Richards)

body:
>
> > Personally I think that bad writing and driving away newcomers are the
> > two worst problems of the project.  The former can be fixed over time
> > with effort.  The latter will kill us if we keep it up.  Compared to
> > those, vandalism doesn't even count as a blip on the radar screen.
>
>Agree, but I think bad faith editing causes these problems. What do you
>think are the best methods to attract new users? Personally I think that if
>we only allowed editing from a registered with email account, the number of
>good productive editors would increase as our credibility would greatly
>increase. I know that is blasphemous and against wiki principle, but
>frankly
>I don't give a s*** about wiki principle, I am only here to make a good
>encyclopedia.
>
>I think it is only a matter of time before a clone of wikipedia pops up
>with
>restricted editing, gains some popularity (especially with academics), and
>over time makes Wikipedia start to look like the urban dicionary.
>
>p.s. I do love WIkipedia, really.
>
>Martin

We *do* have a clone that requires that has restricted editing. It's called
wikinfo (http://www.wikinfo.org), and no IP editing is allowed. It's run by
Fred Bauder, who is also one of our Arbitrators. You may ask him whether
Wikinfo has signficant vandalism, but that's not the point: we're here to
make a good encyclopedia as well. But if we restrict IP editing - even if we
restrict it in some way, like with this blocking policy proposal - we'll get
a worse encyclopedia. I would dare say maybe 80 percent or (probably)
greater of our articles have been improved by IP edits. We're talking about
fixing a minor problem to create a major one; Wikipedia's strength lies in
the fact that *anyone*, regardless of whether that person uses AOL, Firefox,
or XYZ ISP, can edit, even without logging in or registering. I doubt
Wikipedia would be where it is now without IP editing; even right now, we
have trouble retaining good editors and finding new ones. Should we make it
that much harder to edit? Should we violate the sacred principles that
Wikipedia was founded on? I hope not, and I think that the new blocking
proposal would be highly detrimental.

Thanks.

P.S. I do love Wikipedia as well. :-)

Flcelloguy
>From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.

_________________________________________________________________
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body:
On 10/19/05, Martin Richards <Martin at velocitymanager.com> wrote:
> This is a project to make the best encyclopedia ever, policy and procedure
> should evolve as our problems evolve, and vandalim is one of the biggest
> problems

You might think so, but it isn't.  Even the most vandalized articles
on Wikipedia are well under control.  The category "Protected against
vandalism", which contains a list of all pages currently with a
vprotect template, is almost empty of real articles.

It's easy to get the Chicken Licken attitude if you don't look at the
actual facts.

Vandalism is in no way, shape or form a serious ongoing threat to Wikipedia.


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>On 10/19/05, Martin Richards <Martin at velocitymanager.com> wrote:
>
>>This is a project to make the best encyclopedia ever, policy and procedure
>>should evolve as our problems evolve, and vandalim is one of the biggest
>>problems
>>
>
>
>You might think so, but it isn't.  Even the most vandalized articles
>on Wikipedia are well under control.  The category "Protected against
>vandalism", which contains a list of all pages currently with a
>vprotect template, is almost empty of real articles.
>
>It's easy to get the Chicken Licken attitude if you don't look at the
>actual facts.
>
>Vandalism is in no way, shape or form a serious ongoing threat to Wikipedia.
>
I think you're discounting the amount of time that can be be sucked
up by patrolling. For instance, my longish watchlist has very few of
the "popular" articles on it, but still gives me some 500 edits to
review each day. Of those, most are by editors I know and trust, so
I don't look at those unless the summary line is interesting, but that
leaves maybe 100 by anons. Of those, maybe 5 of the anon edits are
the obvious "Joey is gay"-type vandalism, but since there is no way
to tell which ones they are without bringing up a diff, I need to
look at all of those edits. That can easily suck up an hour - very
often at least one of the vandalisms is "complex" in that it involves
multiple edits, and maybe a ham-handed incomplete attempt to fix,
thus requiring careful study of the history to make sure all is scrubbed.

Of the other 95 anon edits, most are trivial - spellfix, commas, random
rearrangement changing good English into broken English :-), etc.
This leaves a handful of valuable edits, but the average total is less
than I could have added in the same hour just working from the books in
my personal library. Nevertheless, I do the patrolling because it seems
that many of the pages I'm watching have no other reviewers - more than
a few times I've overlooked an anon's trash and it went unnoticed for
days or weeks.

So yes, we're keeping the random vandalism under control, but IMHO
just barely, and at the price of time that should be going into
development of better content. I think we really need to consider
whether unlimited anon editing is helping or hurting our primary
goal of encyclopedia writing.

Stan


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Checkuser fiasco

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>On 10/19/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Can't find an SI unit for measureing how well people get along with
>>others
>>
>>
>The rodneyking is I believe the standard unit in the US.
>
>
So you're suggesting the rest of the world should adopt a US unit as the
standard? You filthy American imperialist swine!

--Michael Snow


body:
From: Tony Sidaway:

> You might think so, but it isn't.  Even the most vandalized articles
> on Wikipedia are well under control.  The category "Protected against
> vandalism", which contains a list of all pages currently with a
> vprotect template, is almost empty of real articles.
>
> It's easy to get the Chicken Licken attitude if you don't look at the
> actual facts.
>
> Vandalism is in no way, shape or form a serious ongoing threat to
> Wikipedia.

Thats because we only protect pages under fairly extreme circumstances. The
real vandalism problem is the one we don't see, the articles that aren't
being watched closely (i.e. the ones that make up the bulk of the ~750,000
articles we have).

The most vandalised pages are ok because lots of people watch them, only
just a few minutes ago I reverted some serious one-off vandalism on a fairly
important article that was done over 2 weeks ago. But even high profile
articles are not immune to vandalism, if you monitor the Bill Gates article
it is painfully obvious why it was so badly criticised; because it is a
constant war between vandalism/crap editing and reverting back, any good
editing just get eroded away.

The other problem that vandalism causes is that it wastes so much time of
editors who would otherwise being making articles better rather than
stopping them being destroyed. Plus, as I said, vandalism deters good
editors from taking us seriously and contributing.

The real cost is the one you don't see. Not the one you see in recent
changes.

Martin


body:
> Martin, I think you're confusing anonymous editors with vandals.
> We're allowing anonymous users to edit so there's a low treshhold to
> contributing.
> Kill that, and you take away a large pool of users who just haven't
> signed for various legitimate reasons.
>
> We can deal with the vandals. Forcing valid editors to do something
> they don't want to is a bad way to fight vandalism.
>
> --Mgm

I am not confusing anything, I may have just not made myself clear. The
proposed change is proving rather popular at the moment, see
Wikipedia:Blocking policy proposal .


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
> If you think all vandalism is noticed in RC then you are seriously wrong,
> it
> is totally unquestionable that a significant amount does get through, sure
> its not much compared to the total volume, but it is still way too much
> for
> an encyclopedia that is trying to establish credibility.

It's a lot easier to revert vandalism when it's being performed by a logged
in user. This is especially true if you force some non-vandals to start
logging in.

Yeah, the party line is that we want to allow people to contribute
anonymously, but the fact is that the current system doesn't really allow
that anyway. The real problem with requiring *everyone* to log in is that it
makes it more time consuming to casually edit. However, the alternative in
this particular case is to make it impossible to edit using that IP, so I
don't see that as an argument.

The question becomes whether or not this will make it easier for vandals. I
don't think it'll matter that much, especially if there is a mechanism to
hard block certain IP addresses in case a Wik-like vandal comes along.
(Preferably without the blocking admin needing to see the IP address at all,
but that's another argument altogether).

Regards
>
> Martin


subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
On 10/19/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/19/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm not sure you're being sarcastic here, or whether you really mean
> it...
> > Anyway, Wikipedia is NOT a democracy.
> >
> > --Mgm
>
> For the most part wikipedia is functionaly a democracy that uses super
> majorities. There isn't really any other way to run things since any
> project that includes (to pick a random example) me and tony sideway
> is going to have dificulty reaching a consensus on anything (ok I
> think we are on the same side as to letting people without accounts
> edit).

I agree totally. Wikipedia used to not be a democracy, but as it has grown
it has become more and more democratic. I should mention that I don't mean a
pure democracy, but rather democracy in the sense of "run by the people,
possibly through elected representatives". What the arb committee says
basically goes, and the arb committee is mostly elected. Yes, the board has
the power to override the arb committee in theory, and the majority of the
board is not elected, but so far that distinction has not actually come into
play (I think).

--
> geni

Anthony


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
Martin, I think you're confusing anonymous editors with vandals.
We're allowing anonymous users to edit so there's a low treshhold to
contributing.
Kill that, and you take away a large pool of users who just haven't
signed for various legitimate reasons.

We can deal with the vandals. Forcing valid editors to do something
they don't want to is a bad way to fight vandalism.

--Mgm


from_name: Alphax

subject:
[WikiEN-l] 18 sockpuppet attacks in two hours on my talkpage
	by	Skyring

body:
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Theresa Knott wrote:
> On 10/19/05, Tom Cadden <thomcadden at yahoo.ie> wrote:
>
>
>>He did state that, notwithstanding his ban, he is
>>continuing to edit Wikipedia at will, and "You've
>>spent several months expressing this hope that I will
>>leave Wikipedia and quit pointing out your errors, and
>>I wonder when the message will finally sink in that
>>it's not going to happen."
>
>
> I think we need to band together and revert him whenever we see him.
> Either that or block all of australia ;-)
>

We could equally block the UK for being home of the NTL proxy situation
and the US as being home of the AOL proxy situation :)

>>Wikipedia clearly needs to work out some sort of
>>strategy for dealing with stalkers like Skyring (who
>>BTW is so off the wall he actually accused another
>>Wikipedian of physically stalking his house!!!)
>
>
> Oh he's a complete nutter.
>

Agreed. However, I'm sure we could arrange a visit by ASIO...

- --
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from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Checkuser fiasco

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Look, I'm happy with the board appointing trusted people to use
> checkuser.  I don't  mind if this is delegated to arbcom.
>
> But I'm not happy at all about having a RFA-style beauty contest for
> people to use checkuser.  Nope.   This isn't how we do things
> associated with privacy.

Never mind that it's not how we do it, it's also probably illegal to do
it under European Union law.

Chris


body:
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Phil Boswell wrote:
> "Fastfission"  wrote:
>
>>The key issue here is not the topic at hand but whether or not it is
>>verifiable. The main question here seems to be, "Do blogs count as
>>sources?"
>>In certain rare cases they ought to be, but in general they are no better
>>than citing user pages on Wikipedia. If a blog can cite a source, then we
>>can find that source and cite it ourselves, I assume.
>
>
> If the article is not actually about a particular blog, you'd be on rather
> shaky ground depending upon it as a "primary source".
>

What about if the author has blogged about (some current event) that
they witnessed or attended?

(Yes, I know we're talking about political opinions and such, but I hope
you won't throw the baby out with the bathwater...)

- --
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
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MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> On 10/18/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>Bryan Derksen wrote:
>>
>>>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>>
>>>>I'd hope the article were kept, and changed to explain the hoax, since
>>>>obviously it's a notable hoax.
>>>>
>>>
>>>Yeah, I tried to throw that into the hypothetical example but it was
>>>getting rather large and complicated. I hoped nobody would call me on
>>>it. :) The basic point remains, though - the vote with backing evidence
>>>and detailed arguments should trump any number of ones without those.
>>>
>>
>>Good heavens no! That will upset people! You'll never be an
>>administrator with such blatant direspect for consensus!
>>
>
> So you mean to say that if there's a "consensus" of a number of
> trusted users who vote to delete ("Delete, actor vanity") for example
> a Oscar nominated actor (they just don't know it), you're going with
> the majority and delete it even when there's one person saying "Keep,
> it's an Oscar nominated actor"? That's insane! Common sense should
> never be overthrown by blanket unreasoned votes. AFD is about the
> discussion.
>

You're right, it IS insane. But according to community consensus, due
process is all that matters. Content be damned, we're here to run an
internet democracy, not write an encyclopedia!

- --
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from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
On 10/19/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> So you mean to say that if there's a "consensus" of a number of
> trusted users who vote to delete ("Delete, actor vanity") for example
> a Oscar nominated actor (they just don't know it), you're going with
> the majority and delete it even when there's one person saying "Keep,
> it's an Oscar nominated actor"? That's insane! Common sense should
> never be overthrown by blanket unreasoned votes. AFD is about the
> discussion.
>
> --Mgm

So rewrite the article to include that fact and claim it as a
significant change which it is.

--
geni


body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>So I found and bought "The New Student's Reference Work", a little
>encyclopedia in five volumes, published in Chicago in 1914.  As it
>was published before 1923, it is now in the public domain.  Since
>this non-Scandinavian work doesn't fit in Project Runeberg, I put
>it in Wikisource.
>
>First I scanned images (300 dpi JPEG) of all 2791 pages and
>uploaded them to Wikimedia Commons, where you will find them in
>the category http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:LA2-NSRW
>
>Then, for each book page, I created a wiki page on Wikisource
>displaying the scanned image and containing the raw OCR text. If
>you want to help in proofreading, use two separate browser windows
>to open the enlarged image and edit the wiki text.
>
>
I don't mean this to sound particularly harsh, but I'm wondering why
we're doing this on Wikisource, when Distributed Proofreaders for
Project Gutenberg already has a well-debugged workflow for taking texts
from images to OCR to proofread to a final version.  Is there an
advantage to starting our own project that does the same thing they
already do pretty well?

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
On 10/19/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not sure you're being sarcastic here, or whether you really mean it...
> Anyway, Wikipedia is NOT a democracy.
>
> --Mgm

For the most part wikipedia is functionaly a democracy that uses super
majorities. There isn't really any other way to run things since any
project that includes (to pick a random example) me and tony sideway
is going to have dificulty reaching a consensus on anything (ok I
think we are on the same side as to letting people without accounts
edit).

--
geni


body:
On 10/19/05, Martin Richards <Martin at velocitymanager.com> wrote:
> From: Tony Sidaway:
>
>
> > You might think so, but it isn't.  Even the most vandalized articles
> > on Wikipedia are well under control.  The category "Protected against
> > vandalism", which contains a list of all pages currently with a
> > vprotect template, is almost empty of real articles.
[...]
>
> Thats because we only protect pages under fairly extreme circumstances. The
> real vandalism problem is the one we don't see, the articles that aren't
> being watched closely (i.e. the ones that make up the bulk of the ~750,000
> articles we have).

But we do see those changes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges

> But even high profile
> articles are not immune to vandalism, if you monitor the Bill Gates article
> it is painfully obvious why it was so badly criticised; because it is a
> constant war between vandalism/crap editing and reverting back, any good
> editing just get eroded away.

Reverting vandalism is an almost transparent activity.  When I was
regularly editing the Dubya article I'd just ignore it completely,
edit on through, and the RC patrollers and other interested parties
took care of cleaning it up.

Article quality in the Gates article, we discussed last week.  Nothing
at all to do with vandalism.

>
> The other problem that vandalism causes is that it wastes so much time of
> editors who would otherwise being making articles better rather than
> stopping them being destroyed.

Is that really true, though?  How many editors do we have doing RC
patrol?  I'm on #wikipedia-en-vandalism right now and there are about
a dozen voiced users (ie regulars) on channel.  Most of them are
idling.  A load of other editors will be involved at any one time in
fixing recent change, but if you look at the deletion log and see who
is doing deletions and restores, you can get a maximum value for the
number of editors who have been on active patrol today.  57 editors
are responsible for the last 500 deletions--which covers the last 9
hours.  But we have many thousands of editors contributing every day.
For instance, of the last 500 edits,  there were 287 unique usernames
or IPs.

There may be many editors involved in dealing with vandalism, but it's
a drop in the bucket compared to the resources we have available.

Plus, as I said, vandalism deters good
> editors from taking us seriously and contributing.
>
> The real cost is the one you don't see. Not the one you see in recent
> changes.
>
> Martin
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
> I think the word you're looking for is "irony". Alphax was making the
> ironic observation that an overwhelming number of Wikipedians are more
> concerned with consensus than with quality.

Maybe, but there are also those of us who believe that in the long run
reaching consensus is the way to achieve quality. In fact, reaching
consensus and reaching an NPOV in many ways go hand in hand, and NPOV is a
"non-negotiable" qualitative measure.

Of course, I'm not sure the majority of Wikipedians care that much about
consensus. In fact, I'd say the majority of vocal Wikipedians don't even
know what consensus means (or intentionally abuse the term). When conflict
rolls around it's more often solved by voting and other forms of the
majority forcing its opinion on the minority (such as that enacted by the
three revert rule), rather than being solved through compromise and
consensus decision-making.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Funny joke...

body:
On 10/19/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> This procedure is also supported by the deletion guidelines for
> administrators.  We don't keep copyright infringements, no matter how
> many people say "keep", no matter even what fine reasons we give for
> keeping.

This relies on people being sure if something is a copy vio or not
(see: [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rochester Community Schools]])

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking proposal

body:
On 10/19/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
>  I really can't figure out what you're arguing here, though. Because right
> now, when an AOL IP is blocked, you can't edit using it regardless of
> whether or not you register. As I understand it, the proposal is to allow
> logged in users to edit when they otherwise wouldn't.
>  Sure, this might lead to admins being more liberal with IP blocks, but it
> doesn't require it - whether or not admins are more liberal with IP blocks
> is a separate issue, and we could pass policies to ensure that this doesn't
> happen.

I don't think that will be required since I will pull any blocks
against wide ranges that don't exist without a very good reason.

--
geni


body:
On 10/19/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Considerations like this are one reason I won't be submitting my patch
> to CVS anytime soon.  The possibility of widespread abuse, as a means
> of coercing editors to sign up and log in, is one I wouldn't want to
> countenance.

You are an admin. it is posible for you to pull any such blocks.
Incerdenterly do you remeber Mr treason? We had to block everyone who
edited from AOL.

--
geni


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Static HTML dumps

body:
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Phil Boswell wrote:
> "Tim Starling"
> <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote in
> message news:dir0g4$47q$1 at sea.gmane.org...
>
>>I've done some HTML dumps of Wikipedia:
>
>
> Looking good so far. Congratulations.
>
>
>>This is a "beta" release, I would recommend that most people wait for
>>the second release, when a number of known bugs will be fixed.
>
>
> Would this include the "syntax error" which is all that IE will grudgingly
> divulge as an explanation why the little yellow triangle appears?
>
> Is there a Wiki page for this somewhere? I'd like to keep track of
> progress...

I've just made one at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Static_dumps - go
forth and make it sensible!

- --
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subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Blocking Proposal

body:
On 10/19/05, Fl Celloguy <flcelloguy at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> True, but right now AOL IP blocks are kept to a minimum, and I haven't seen
> an AOL range block in a long time. From the proposal: "This new form of
> blocking will only affect specific IP addresses, most obviously will be AOL,
> which would almost certainly be blocked due to the level of vandalism. " If
> this proposal was implemented, it would almost be certain that AOL IPs would
> be continuously blocked or blocked indefinitely.

I would pull any such blocks I saw without a second thought.

> In addition, so many
> schools and public-use computers would also almost certainly be blocked
> using this method.

Doubtful and once again I would pull such blocks

> But that's not the main point: the main point is that
> we're restricting editing from IP addresses, which in itself is against the
> spirit of wikis and especially of Wikipedia. We're proposing punishing a
> large majority of internet users

Most don't edit as IPs

> In addition, my opinion is that this won't deter vandalism but will
> instead encourage vandalism.

Huh?

>I see very few benefits in this proposal. We
> don't have a problem with vandalism right now;

Not true.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Blocking Proposal

body:
From: Fl Celloguy

> True, but right now AOL IP blocks are kept to a minimum, and I haven't
> seen an AOL range block in a long time. From the proposal: "This new form
> of blocking will only affect specific IP addresses, most obviously will be
> AOL, which would almost certainly be blocked due to the level of
> vandalism. " If this proposal was implemented, it would almost be certain
> that AOL IPs would be continuously blocked or blocked indefinitely. In
> addition, so many schools and public-use computers would also almost
> certainly be blocked using this method. But that's not the main point: the
> main point is that we're restricting editing from IP addresses, which in
> itself is against the spirit of wikis and especially of Wikipedia. We're
> proposing punishing a large majority of internet users for a small
> percentage of troublesome vandals. In addition, my opinion is that this
> won't deter vandalism but will instead encourage vandalism. I see very few
> benefits in this proposal. We don't have a problem with vandalism right
> now; we have a problem with getting enough contributors to edit and write,
> as evidenced with the articles [[Bill Gates]] and [[Jane Fonda]]. Are we
> to scare off contributors, encourage vandalism, and go against the spirit
> of the wiki? I sure hope not, and I personally think that this policy
> would be detrimental to Wikipedia.

Also, there are people on the proposal page desperate for it to be
introduced because they get blocked frequently.

This new kind of block would only be used when the existing kind of block
failed, no IP would be blocked just simply for being shared. And if AOL
vandals did stop vandalising, then it would never be blocked at all.

Martin


body:
On 10/19/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/19/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Considerations like this are one reason I won't be submitting my patch
> > to CVS anytime soon.  The possibility of widespread abuse, as a means
> > of coercing editors to sign up and log in, is one I wouldn't want to
> > countenance.
>
> You are an admin. it is posible for you to pull any such blocks.

Then many people would decide that I was a rogue admin.  No, I prefer
not to risk sabotaging the wiki. If some other developer wants to
submit such a patch, let him, but it won't be me.

> Incerdenterly do you remeber Mr treason? We had to block everyone who
> edited from AOL.
>

This seems a little unlikely.


body:
From: "Tony Sidaway"

> But we do see those changes:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges

If you think all vandalism is noticed in RC then you are seriously wrong, it
is totally unquestionable that a significant amount does get through, sure
its not much compared to the total volume, but it is still way too much for
an encyclopedia that is trying to establish credibility.

> Reverting vandalism is an almost transparent activity.  When I was
> regularly editing the Dubya article I'd just ignore it completely,
> edit on through, and the RC patrollers and other interested parties
> took care of cleaning it up.
>
> Article quality in the Gates article, we discussed last week.  Nothing
> at all to do with vandalism.

Sorry, in this case I was using vandalism as a blanket term for bad
edting/POV pushing etc. not just outright vandalism, and as has been
discussed, this is exactly the type of bad editting that erodes articles.

> Is that really true, though?  How many editors do we have doing RC
> patrol?  I'm on #wikipedia-en-vandalism right now and there are about
> a dozen voiced users (ie regulars) on channel.  Most of them are
> idling.  A load of other editors will be involved at any one time in
> fixing recent change, but if you look at the deletion log and see who
> is doing deletions and restores, you can get a maximum value for the
> number of editors who have been on active patrol today.  57 editors
> are responsible for the last 500 deletions--which covers the last 9
> hours.  But we have many thousands of editors contributing every day.
> For instance, of the last 500 edits,  there were 287 unique usernames
> or IPs.

Like I said, it is a fact that RC patrollers don't pick up everthing, I
don't see how you could possibly argue otherwise.

Anyway, this has little to do with the blocking proposal it originated from
and I can't win this arguement anyway because there isn't a chance in hell
that the almighty one would ever let editting rights be tightened up at all.

Regards

Martin


body:
On 10/19/05, Andrew Venier <avenier at venier.net> wrote:
> >
> The deletion log will only show admins who are carrying out the
> deletion.

Undoubtedly.  But the bottleneck is the admins.  There have been an
absolute maximum of 57 admins doing RC deletes and restores in the
past nine hours.  It's a piddling number.


body:
On 10/19/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Then many people would decide that I was a rogue admin.

Doubtful. No one concluded that when I've pulled blocks in the past.

> This seems a little unlikely.

It happened. I think it was [[User:Theresa Knott]] who put the block in place.

--
geni


body:
On 10/19/05, Martin Richards <Martin at velocitymanager.com> wrote:
>
> If you think all vandalism is noticed in RC then you are seriously wrong, it
> is totally unquestionable that a significant amount does get through, sure
> its not much compared to the total volume, but it is still way too much for
> an encyclopedia that is trying to establish credibility.

Show me some old vandalism.

>
> Sorry, in this case I was using vandalism as a blanket term for bad
> edting/POV pushing etc. not just outright vandalism, and as has been
> discussed, this is exactly the type of bad editting that erodes articles.

Yes. The point is, that isn't vandalism.


body:
On 10/19/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/19/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Can someone clarify whether the software records your IP address every
> time
> > you access a page, or only when you edit? If it's the former, does
> anyone
> > have any ideas how to block this information without constantly logging
> in
> > and out?
> > I don't mind Wikimedia tracking what I edit, but I don't want you
> tracking
> > what I read.
>
> [[Special:CheckUser]] only shows what you've been editing. The server
> logs will show what your IP has been reading, but isn't logged (afaik)
> by user name.

So in theory a developer could match up the IP with the username and then
look through the server logs, but that'd require a very intentional breach
of ethics. Also, according to the link below, even these logs are only kept
for 2 weeks.

If all of this is true, I think y'all have done a pretty good job of keeping
this information private. I first became particularly concerned about this
when Jimbo mentioned considering selling log data to researchers (implying
to some extent that they were kept for longer than 2 weeks), and also I
thought someone presented a sample log line which included username
information.

I just looked back (gmail search is awesome), and here was the log line that
was provided by Jerome Jamnicky:
"
1124167686.523 210 12.34.56.78 <http://12.34.56.78/> TCP_MISS/200 2962 GET
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=Potato&go=Go -
PARENT_HIT/207.142.131.200 text/html [Host:
en.wikipedia.org\r\nUser-Agent : Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1;
en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6\r\nAccept:
text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=
0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5\r\nAccept-Language:
en-us,en;q=0.5\r\nAccept-Encoding: gzip,deflate\r\nAccept-Charset:
ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7\r\nKeep-Alive: 300\r\nConnection:
keep-alive\r\nReferer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esoterica\r\n]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esoterica%5Cr%5Cn%5D>
[HTTP/1.0 200 OK\r\nDate: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 04:48:06 GMT\r\nServer:
Apache\r\nX-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.11\r\nContent-language: en\r\nVary:
Accept-Encoding,Cookie\r\nExpires: -1\r\nCache-Control: private,
must-revalidate, max-age=0\r\nContent-Encoding: gzip\r\nConnection:
close\r\nContent-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8\r\n\r]"

Now that I look at it again, it doesn't seem to have username information
(not sure what 1124167686.523 is though, maybe a timestamp). Are these log
files still thrown away after 2 weeks?

(For those following at home, the thread was entitled "Research access to
logs", in September 2005 on the wikipedia-l mailing list.)

Angela.

And from Puddl Duk, "see
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy#Private_logging"<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy#Private_logging>

Yes, I was going on my apparently bad memory of that previous thread and the
contradiction of it with the privacy policy which was last updated in May. I
also noticed recently that cookies were kept containing my username even
after I log out.

The line from the log file given in that thread and the one in the privacy
policy *are* different, too. Presumably one is the apache log and the other
is the cache log.


body:
On 10/19/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:

> Undoubtedly.  But the bottleneck is the admins.  There have been an
> absolute maximum of 57 admins doing RC deletes and restores in the
> past nine hours.  It's a piddling number.

However New pages patrol is less of a problem (lower trafic and
vandalims is more obvious) than RC patrol.

--
geni


body:
From: "Tony Sidaway"

> Show me some old vandalism.

Well I just reverted a 15 day old 3/4 page blank of [[Complement good]]. Let
me guess, it doesnt count as vandalism because it might have been a good
faith blanking?

> Yes. The point is, that isn't vandalism.

Yeah, but it doesnt matter what you label it, an edit either makes wikipedia
better or worse.

Martin


from_name: Keith Old

subject: [WikiEN-l] So what do we do about this?

body:
Folks,

There are probably reliable reports that we can use:

(1) reports by state and local election authorities on the elections in
their states or districts;

(2) the debate on January 6 over certifying the vote in Ohio;

(3) essays in political science journals;

(4) books such as the Almanac of American Politics 2006 by Michael Barone
will have articles on the outcomes;

(5) reports on the court challenge.

While blogs can be useful, a lot depends on the credibility of the blogger -
Michael Barone. Like in all articles, we should aim for a neutral point of
view. For example, in the number of articles on voter fraud, there is
precious little on Wisconsin (won narrowly by John Kerry) where an inquiry
found clear evidence of fraud see [
http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/may05/324933.asp].

Kerry's margin in Wisconsin was much less than Bush's in either Florida or
Ohio by the way. We are now in a situation when reliable sources are
available and more will become progressively available. We should clean up
these articles for NPOV, make sure we use reliable sources in a balanced way
and get rid of the claims in the articles that just don't stack up.

Regards

Keith Old

Keith Old
User:Capitalistroadster

On 10/19/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The key issue here is not the topic at hand but whether or not it is
> verifiable. The main question here seems to be, "Do blogs count as
> sources?"
> In certain rare cases they ought to be, but in general they are no better
> than citing user pages on Wikipedia. If a blog can cite a source, then we
> can find that source and cite it ourselves, I assume.
>
> If you remove everything from the article that is cited with a blog, and
> everything which is not cited but should be, what do you have? Perhaps it
> would be a useful rhetorical technique to try on one of them, whether it
> gets reverted or not.
>
> Of course, all of the above rests on the conclusion that blogs don't count
> as sources in and of themselves for articles of this sort. The people who
> wrote the articles are obviously going to disagree on this, hence the
> entire
> root of this dispute. I think it'd be nice to have some sort of "ruling on
> high" every once in awhile about what counts as evidence and what doesn't
> (what Foucault would call defining our "regimes of truth") but I'm not
> sure
> there's any way to do it systematically or rigorously. But perhaps that
> isn't needed -- perhaps a one-time, "this doesn't work in this situation"
> wouldn't be so bad (seems to have worked out with the LaRouchies).
>
> Again, this doesn't have to have to do anything with politics if it is
> honestly just a source issue. If "real" sources on these topics come out
> later, the articles can be rewritten, simple as that.
>
> FF
>
> On 10/18/05, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Oct 18, 2005, at 1:33 PM, Guettarda wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > I see. So saying "obviously you support election fraud" would be
> > > appropriate
> > > too, and not "needlessly" inflammatory? Interesting.
> > >
> > >
> >
> > I don't know how to answer this, except to say this. I have taught
> > freshman composition at a respected university, focusing particularly
> > on research. If one of my students handed me a paper that used those
> > citations in that way, I would fail them. Regardless of whether there
> > was election fraud, the article is a poorly written, POV mess. And it
> > is not the place of Wikipedia to decide if there was election fraud -
> > it's the place of Wikipedia to accurately describe the controversy
> > surrounding it. A controversy that led to no successful challenges to
> > the outcome of the election, and no lasting media coverage. Instead
> > of this, though, we have 60,000 words of original research.
> >
> > -Snowspinner
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 10/19/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Show me some old vandalism.

How is he meant to find it? Dig out the hiostory of [[Sathya Sai
Baba]] there was a period of a couple months where it was getting
vandalised day in day out at about lunch time. The vandalism almost
always lasted until I loged in and picked it up on my watchlist

--
geni


body:
On 10/19/05, Martin Richards <Martin at velocitymanager.com> wrote:
> From: "Tony Sidaway"
>
>
> > Show me some old vandalism.
>
> Well I just reverted a 15 day old 3/4 page blank of [[Complement good]]. Let
> me guess, it doesnt count as vandalism because it might have been a good
> faith blanking?
>

Not plausible.  Looks like an obvious case of vandalism to me.

(On Bill Gates)

> > Yes. The point is, that isn't vandalism.
>
> Yeah, but it doesnt matter what you label it, an edit either makes wikipedia
> better or worse.
>

Well we're talking about vandalism, here, not sloppy editing.
Specifically the suggestion further up the thread was that we needed
to tackle vandalism because it's  so serious, and you said "This is a
project to make the best encyclopedia ever, policy and procedure
should evolve as our problems evolve, and vandalim is one of the biggest
problems, it discredits us, wastes our time, and puts off good users. The
least we could do is be able to block vandals properly when they do surface."

Personally I think that bad writing and driving away newcomers are the
two worst problems of the project.  The former can be fixed over time
with effort.  The latter will kill us if we keep it up.  Compared to
those, vandalism doesn't even count as a blip on the radar screen.


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Static HTML dumps

body:
Tim Starling schreef:
> I've done some HTML dumps of Wikipedia:
>
> http://static.wikipedia.org/
>

It is very nice. But I do not see any reason to include the talk page.
--
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be


body:
On 10/19/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/19/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Show me some old vandalism.
>
> How is he meant to find it? Dig out the hiostory of [[Sathya Sai
> Baba]] there was a period of a couple months where it was getting
> vandalised day in day out at about lunch time. The vandalism almost
> always lasted until I loged in and picked it up on my watchlist
>

Yep, we've all got articles on our watchlists.  It's an easy, almost
painless way of dealing with vandalism.  We fix it almost without
thinking about it.

But if [[Sathya Sai Baba]] ever became a serious vandalism target,
just protect it and slap a vprotect template on it.  A few days of
that usually deals with the problems.


from_name: Angela

body:
On 10/19/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> Can someone clarify whether the software records your IP address every time
> you access a page, or only when you edit? If it's the former, does anyone
> have any ideas how to block this information without constantly logging in
> and out?
>  I don't mind Wikimedia tracking what I edit, but I don't want you tracking
> what I read.

[[Special:CheckUser]] only shows what you've been editing. The server
logs will show what your IP has been reading, but isn't logged (afaik)
by user name.

Angela.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>>You're right, it IS insane. But according to community consensus, due
>>process is all that matters. Content be damned, we're here to run an
>>internet democracy, not write an encyclopedia!
>>
>
> I'm not sure you're being sarcastic here, or whether you really mean it...
> Anyway, Wikipedia is NOT a democracy.
>

Shh! You're not supposed to tell them that! :)

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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from_name: Tom Cadden

subject: [WikiEN-l] assistance with vandalism

body:
Hey folks,

Your assistance is needed. As you saw in yesterday's
email (the long one) the banned user Skyring launched
a sockpuppet siege on my talkpage, using over 30
identities to add in demands over and over again.
(Thanks to all those who reverted him, over and over
again.)

He is now trying a new approach - putting what he
calls an 'open letter to Jtdirl' on talk pages all
over Wikipedia. For example

October 2005
    20:47 Talk:Irish Potato Famine (1845-1849) (diff;
hist) . . 144.131.118.99 (Talk | block) (Open letter
to user:jtdirl)
    20:45 Talk:Tom?s Cardinal O'Fiaich (diff; hist) .
. 144.131.118.99 (Talk | block) (Open letter to
user:jtdirl)
  20:36 Talk:Ian Paisley (diff; hist) . .
203.51.35.227 (Talk | block) (Open letter to
user:jtdirl)
    20:35 Talk:George III of the United Kingdom (diff;
hist) . . 139.168.158.199 (Talk | block) (Open letter
to user:jtdirl)
    20:34 Talk:Irish Republican Army (diff; hist) . .
144.131.119.3 (Talk | block) (Open letter to
user:jtdirl)
 m  20:34 Wikipedia talk:Village pump (diff; hist) . .
Theresa knott (Talk | block) (Reverted edits by
203.51.35.148 to last version by Jtdirl)

Though banned for a year for stalking me Skyring is
still trying to get me to talk to him. I am
deliberately not responding or reverting. If you see
any more of his messages anywhere on the 'pedia,
please revert on sight.

Thanks folks, Thom.

Eventually Skyring might finally get the message that
a ban means you are banned.

___________________________________________________________
To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Non-admin rollback?

body:
> >If they're not idiots, we should be giving them full admin rights, not just rollback.
Rollback would be a good way to help prove they should be an admin
though. This would let us set the bar a lot lower.

> >
> >Cheers
> >
> >Derek
> >
> >
> People should actually start looking if they can trust someone as an
> admin .... not look at how many edits someone does. Also their should be
> an easy de-sysop procedure so people will sooner give their trust. Trust
> is what the wikimedia projects are build on. Without trust there is no
> basis.

Agreed. If we had an easy de-sysop procedure, and image undeletion was
possible, there would be no reason not to make more admins...


body:
From: "Tony Sidaway"

> Personally I think that bad writing and driving away newcomers are the
> two worst problems of the project.  The former can be fixed over time
> with effort.  The latter will kill us if we keep it up.  Compared to
> those, vandalism doesn't even count as a blip on the radar screen.

Agree, but I think bad faith editing causes these problems. What do you
think are the best methods to attract new users? Personally I think that if
we only allowed editing from a registered with email account, the number of
good productive editors would increase as our credibility would greatly
increase. I know that is blasphemous and against wiki principle, but frankly
I don't give a s*** about wiki principle, I am only here to make a good
encyclopedia.

I think it is only a matter of time before a clone of wikipedia pops up with
restricted editing, gains some popularity (especially with academics), and
over time makes Wikipedia start to look like the urban dicionary.

p.s. I do love WIkipedia, really.

Martin


subject: [WikiEN-l] assistance with vandalism

body:
On 10/19/05, Tom Cadden <thomcadden at yahoo.ie> wrote:
> Hey folks,
>
> Your assistance is needed. As you saw in yesterday's
> email (the long one) the banned user Skyring launched
> a sockpuppet siege on my talkpage, using over 30
> identities to add in demands over and over again.
> (Thanks to all those who reverted him, over and over
> again.)
>
> He is now trying a new approach - putting what he
> calls an 'open letter to Jtdirl' on talk pages all
> over Wikipedia. For example
>
> October 2005
>     20:47 Talk:Irish Potato Famine (1845-1849) (diff;
> hist) . . 144.131.118.99 (Talk | block) (Open letter
> to user:jtdirl)
>     20:45 Talk:Tom?s Cardinal O'Fiaich (diff; hist) .
> . 144.131.118.99 (Talk | block) (Open letter to
> user:jtdirl)
>   20:36 Talk:Ian Paisley (diff; hist) . .
> 203.51.35.227 (Talk | block) (Open letter to
> user:jtdirl)
>     20:35 Talk:George III of the United Kingdom (diff;
> hist) . . 139.168.158.199 (Talk | block) (Open letter
> to user:jtdirl)
>     20:34 Talk:Irish Republican Army (diff; hist) . .
> 144.131.119.3 (Talk | block) (Open letter to
> user:jtdirl)
>  m  20:34 Wikipedia talk:Village pump (diff; hist) . .
> Theresa knott (Talk | block) (Reverted edits by
> 203.51.35.148 to last version by Jtdirl)
>
> Though banned for a year for stalking me Skyring is
> still trying to get me to talk to him. I am
> deliberately not responding or reverting. If you see
> any more of his messages anywhere on the 'pedia,
> please revert on sight.
>
> Thanks folks, Thom.
>
> Eventually Skyring might finally get the message that
> a ban means you are banned.

this link my of use to those who want to track this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ARecentchanges&hideliu=1&namespace=1

--
geni


body:
On 10/19/05, Martin Richards <Martin at velocitymanager.com> wrote:
> I think it is only a matter of time before a clone of wikipedia pops up with
> restricted editing, gains some popularity (especially with academics), and
> over time makes Wikipedia start to look like the urban dicionary.
> Martin

Not likely. The shear size of wikipedia means you have to have a fair
size user base to even mentain it.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Checkuser fiasco

body:
On 10/19/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Absolutely.  This whole matter of electing people is bizarre, beginning
> with putting sysop condidates through an election.  That alone does not
> bring out the best people.  Voting there can be no different than on
> AfD.  Some way of evaluating how a person gets along with others would
> be appreciated.
>
> Ec

Can't find an SI unit for measureing how well people get along with
others (there is that EQ thing but I don't think that is too
relivant).

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Checkuser fiasco

body:
On 10/19/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Can't find an SI unit for measureing how well people get along with
> others

The rodneyking is I believe the standard unit in the US.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Mark Bergsma

subject: [Wikitech-l] Caching; a modest proposal

body:
Neil Harris wrote:
> After a very informative exchange with Tim Starling, I've thought a bit
> more about my proposal last night about making Wikipedia cacheable,
> which in the light of day seems excessively complex. Here's a simpler
> version:

[snip]

> (a) pages for logged-in users
> (b) pages for anon users who have a pending message
> (c) pages with auto-generated dynamic content (Special: pages, and any
> others with similar behaviour)

[snip]

> I'd be interested to hear what others think. Is there an obvious flaw in
> my reasoning? Is this worth a try?

I agree that this would be better, but implementing this has one
problem: Squid 2.5 currently does not differentiate cache-control
headers between its role as an accelerator/surrogate, and as a normal
proxy cache. For this to work, Mediawiki should be able to send *two*
kinds of cache control headers: one for our squids, and one for "the
others out there".

Squid 3 (if it'll ever see the light of day) will support this through a
X-Surrogate-Control header, but until then we're stuck with a hack:
Mediawiki sends out Cache-Control headers for our squids, which then
then try to recognize normal content pages and replace the Cache-Control
header on those responses to:

Cache-Control: private, s-maxage=0, max-age=0, must-revalidate

We could of course do s/private/public/ here, but there may be pages
that are private/user specific that Squid cannot really detect reliably,
simply because it doesn't have the same detailed information that
Mediawiki has. Therefor, 'private' is the safest way to go for now.

Another option would be to try to signal Squid when it should and when
it should not replace the Cache-Control header sent by Mediawiki.
However, Squid is not very flexible in this area, so it'd be a dirty hack.

Modifying Squid is of course possible as well, but requires a bit more
effort. Additionally, itt has proven to be a nuisance to maintain a
patched up Squid on our cluster, so we'd like to try to keep the set of
patches against upstream as small as possible.

--
Mark

mark at nedworks.org


body:
From: "Fl Celloguy"

> We *do* have a clone that requires that has restricted editing. It's
> called wikinfo (http://www.wikinfo.org), and no IP editing is allowed.
> It's run by Fred Bauder, who is also one of our Arbitrators. You may ask
> him whether Wikinfo has signficant vandalism, but that's not the point:
> we're here to make a good encyclopedia as well. But if we restrict IP
> editing - even if we restrict it in some way, like with this blocking
> policy proposal - we'll get a worse encyclopedia. I would dare say maybe
> 80 percent or (probably) greater of our articles have been improved by IP
> edits. We're talking about fixing a minor problem to create a major one;
> Wikipedia's strength lies in the fact that *anyone*, regardless of whether
> that person uses AOL, Firefox, or XYZ ISP, can edit, even without logging
> in or registering. I doubt Wikipedia would be where it is now without IP
> editing; even right now, we have trouble retaining good editors and
> finding new ones. Should we make it that much harder to edit? Should we
> violate the sacred principles that Wikipedia was founded on? I hope not,
> and I think that the new blocking proposal would be highly detrimental.

That is interesting, however what I envisaged was in a few years when
Wikipedia is much more mature and covers everything (there are still many
articles missing) in much more detail, a clone would copy the entire
database, images and all, and then set about essentially peer reviewing the
wikipedia work and deleting the crap (fancruft etc.) at the same time, it
would be a big job, but a fraction of the amount of people would be needed
compared to the amount of people needed here at the moment. I have no doubt
that if wikipedia does not adapt in the future, some kind of clone like this
would pop up. If I had the money I would do it myself.


from_name: Ben E.

body:
I think that a system that uses email addresses as validation is too easy to
game. Look at the popularity of sites such as Spaminator and Bugmenot. I
also think that a system that forces one to provide an email address will
drive away many potential good users. If someone is so determined to
vandalize Wikipedia, they'll find a way around any system. A potential good
user isn't as persistent. I know that I probably wouldn't have started
editing under an account if I was forced to provide an email address. Most
likely, that would have been the end of my Wikipedia use.

[[:en:User:Bratsche|Ben]]

On 10/19/05, Martin Richards <Martin at velocitymanager.com> wrote:
<snip>

> Personally I think that if
>
we only allowed editing from a registered with email account, the number of
> good productive editors would increase as our credibility would greatly
> increase. I know that is blasphemous and against wiki principle, but
> frankly
> I don't give a s*** about wiki principle, I am only here to make a good
> encyclopedia.
>
> p.s. I do love WIkipedia, really.
>
> Martin
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Bratsche-It means "viola!"


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Non-admin rollback?

body:
>>
>>
>
>If they're not idiots, we should be giving them full admin rights, not just rollback.
>
>Cheers
>
>Derek
>
>
People should actually start looking if they can trust someone as an
admin .... not look at how many edits someone does. Also their should be
an easy de-sysop procedure so people will sooner give their trust. Trust
is what the wikimedia projects are build on. Without trust there is no
basis.

Waerth


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
On 10/19/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Having stuff undeleted isn't a bad thing, as long as
> there's a proper reason behind overruling the original AFD debate (new
> info, faulty closure, or lots of blanket votes).

Or, heaven forbid that we should ever admit it, an article that was
actually jolly good to begin with! :)


from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Images greater than 12.5 megapixels can't be
	thumbnailed

body:
When someone uploaded a 200 megapixel PNG of a fractal to de, it caused
the hard drives on 4 apache servers to fill up, and caused the site to
slow down. The action was not malicious, I hate to think what might have
happened if someone tried to actively exploit it.

I've now limited the thumbnailing code to only attempt to thumbnail
images less than 12.5 megapixels, or about 3500x3500. The problem is
that in ImageMagick's scaling code, the entire image needs to be
decompressed and stored in RAM. For a 200 megapixel image, that means
800 megabytes of working space.

The standard JPEG library has the ability to decompress directly to a
thumbnail. ImageMagick uses this feature. So I haven't restricted JPEG
sizes in any way. You'll still be able to upload large PNGs and link to
them with [[media:]] links.

There are probably still a few DoS avenues in the image handling code,
if anyone's really keen to crash the site. This change should at least
take care of the accidental problems.

In case anyone is looking for a fun project, it is theoretically
possible to make small thumbnails of large PNGs with very little working
memory, using libpng's low-level interface. Bicubic interpolation only
needs 4 rows, so non-progressive PNGs could be thumbnailed in a single
pass with 4 rows of working memory. Progressive PNGs could be
thumbnailed using the first few passes.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Brian

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Find-A-Grave's founder provides us with list of famous
	people

body:
FindAGrave.com provides genealogists, historians, and others with
information on people who have died (famous or not). It averages
millions of hits daily, 500k-700k page views daily, and 30k-50k unique
visitors daily. They have a separate category for "famous people", each
of whom were individually approved by the Find-A-Grave staff to be
"well-known outside his or her local community".

As part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles, I
contacted their administrators about getting this list of famous people,
which could then be wikified and used to determine what content is
missing from Wikipedia. They referred me to the founder, Jim Tipton, who
at first was hesitant to have the entire list be released and copied by
mirror sites, but finally said "Go for it...I'm not worried about it,
anymore...The whole point of  the web is to get as much organized info
out there as possible...Use  it as you see fit..." (those ellipses are
his, not mine).

So, after a lot of wrangling with a 4.33MB spreadsheet file, containing
46,698 individuals, I've posted it at [[Wikipedia:Find-A-Grave famous
people]]. Of course, there is some overlap with our content, but this
should give us something to work on for a while :)

brian0918


body:
> Maintaining deletion discussions actively open after something is
> deleted would probably have the counter-intuitive result that fewer
> would be undeleted.  At the very least, the heat would be reduced.
>
> Ec
>
I'm not so sure about that. Wouldn't it just attract people unhappy
with the result piling up votes and requesting a recount of the
original result? Having stuff undeleted isn't a bad thing, as long as
there's a proper reason behind overruling the original AFD debate (new
info, faulty closure, or lots of blanket votes).


from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
>From: Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
>
>Content be damned, we're here to run an
>internet democracy, not write an encyclopedia!

But that's exactly the argument that many people who claim "AfD is not
working" and "everyone should have access to deleted articles" make.

Jay.


from_name: Michael Turley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
On 10/20/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
> >
> >Content be damned, we're here to run an
> >internet democracy, not write an encyclopedia!
>
> But that's exactly the argument that many people who claim "AfD is not
> working" and "everyone should have access to deleted articles" make.

Who would that be?

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
On 10/20/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/20/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 10/20/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > >From: Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
> > > >
> > > >Content be damned, we're here to run an
> > > >internet democracy, not write an encyclopedia!
> > >
> > > But that's exactly the argument that many people who claim "AfD is not
> > > working" and "everyone should have access to deleted articles" make.
> >
> > Who would that be?
> >
>
>
> Indeed!  Is anyone seriously asking for all deleted articles to be
> made accessible?  What about all the copyright infringements and
> defamatory material?  That just wouldn't make sense.  This sounds like
> a straw man.

Actually, the point I was after is that it's those who want to make it
easier to delete articles and reduce review are the ones trying to
turn Wikipedia into a democracy, which is opposite of what Jay's email
implied.

I don't know anyone who's actively trying to further democratize
Wikipedia who is also in favor of keeping more marginal articles.
>From where I sit, democratic populism appears to be an appeal on the
side of those who prefer deletion of the unfamiliar over accomodation
of broad topics.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


list: foundation-l

from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2006 - Boston/Toronto, why and why not?

body:
Since the jury has been speculating on why or why not people would go
to one or the other of the two shortlisted cities for Wikimania, a
page was started on meta to actually stop speculating and finding
reasons why *you* (not your neighbour, not your dog, not your
grand-mother) would go (or not go) to Boston or to Toronto. This is
not a vote, this is not even really a poll. Please help us by stating
your reasons on this page:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006/Why_and_why_not%3F

[[m:Wikimania 2006/Why_and_why_not?]]

Thank you :-)

Delphine
--
~notafish


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimania 2006 - Boston/Toronto, why and why not?


body:
>From: Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com>

>
>On 10/19/05, Martin Richards <Martin at velocitymanager.com> wrote:
> >
> > If you think all vandalism is noticed in RC then you are seriously
>wrong, it
> > is totally unquestionable that a significant amount does get through,
>sure
> > its not much compared to the total volume, but it is still way too much
>for
> > an encyclopedia that is trying to establish credibility.
>
>
>Show me some old vandalism.

Are you suggesting it doesn't exist? I've come across week-old vandalism on
little-watched articles on my watchlist.

Jay.


from_name: Jeff Heikkinen

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>
>> I think the word you're looking for is "irony". Alphax was making the
>> ironic observation that an overwhelming number of Wikipedians are more
>> concerned with consensus than with quality.
>>
> Not only that but they misunderstand the nature of consensus.  Effective
> consensus depends on having effective community.  Consensus that is
> motivated by being right and winninbg your point is not much of a
> consensus.

I'm not sure what you mean by "winning your point", but why is being
right NOT a good motivation? I'm having a hard time thinking of a better
one.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimania 2006 - Boston/Toronto, why and why not?


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Checkuser fiasco

body:
Looking at [[List of strange units of measurement]], the only one I
can find that's even remotly close is the "herm", but unfortunatly
that's a) rather sexist, and b) only works when measuring womes
ability to get along with others. Also, c) it's rather sexist.

--gkhan

On 10/19/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/19/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Can't find an SI unit for measureing how well people get along with
> > others
>
> The rodneyking is I believe the standard unit in the US.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: local bots

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
> On 10/19/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Pakaran made a comment on irc which really makes a lot of sense to me
>>
>>Why could not be bureaucrat be allowed to give bots on their local
>>projects ? They are more likely to know the peoople as well as the rules.
>
>
> This is a deliberate constraint put in place for reasons unknown to
> me, I can't see why local bureaucrats can't be trusted with the full
> Makesysop interface, which would allow them advanced control over user
> rights such as granting/revoking any right on the wiki. I can't see
> this becoming a problem, as it would cut down on the overhead of
> getting a steward to grant bot rights and in case some bureaucrat goes
> AWOL we can always quickly clean up the mess (which I don't see
> happening in the first place since these are trusted individuals).

The current power structure reflects the outcome numerous discussions I
had on the subject, with developers, users and probably most
influentially, Sunir Shah. My personal preference was for an IRC-style
model, a two-level system where sysops could sysop or desysop anyone.
But I was talked out of it by IRC and wiki experts alike.

The bureaucrat model was pioneered by Brion and Snok, and I introduced
stewards as a way to completely displace the power of developers within
the wiki power structure. The current model has a population of people
holding various rights proportional to the quantity of demand for use of
those rights. The aim is to give away the minimum amount of power needed
for oversight and a timely response, not to give the maximum amount of
power allowable by considerations of trust. This seems to mirror
sentiments in the general community. Desysopping is rare and potentially
destructive, so the ability is only given to a small number of people.

To answer Avar's objection directly, you can be a trusted individual and
still be rash or arrogant. We minimise power to minimise the damage done
when trusted individuals act in anger. I'm not talking about damage to
articles, I'm talking about damage to egos, and there's no rollback
button for that.

It may be that there's not enough active stewards at the moment, and
that may be leading to tensions. But I think the system we have has been
quite effective in general, so if steward workload is a problem, we
should just get more stewards.

The fact that bot access can only be granted by stewards is not a
deliberate constraint, and I would have no problem allowing bureaucrats
to both grant and revoke it. The steward interface is general, so they
can grant and revoke anything, but the bureaucrat interface has to be
extended for each new ability. Rollback is another example of a right
which could potentially be granted at the bureaucrat or sysop level. It
certainly wouldn't be practical to require stewards to grant it.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
>From: Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com>
>
>On 10/20/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 10/20/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > >From: Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
> > > >
> > > >Content be damned, we're here to run an
> > > >internet democracy, not write an encyclopedia!
> > >
> > > But that's exactly the argument that many people who claim "AfD is not
> > > working" and "everyone should have access to deleted articles" make.
> >
> > Who would that be?
> >
>
>
>Indeed!  Is anyone seriously asking for all deleted articles to be
>made accessible?  What about all the copyright infringements and
>defamatory material?  That just wouldn't make sense.  This sounds like
>a straw man.

Straw man arguments deserve similar responses. Stating that VFU is a check
of proper process does not imply that "we're here to run an internet
democracy, not write an encyclopedia!"

Jay.


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Fwd: Being Prepared in the face of Hurricane Wilma as
	far as communications.]

body:
I have no particular opinion on the proposal below, nor does it have
anything directly to do with us, but I was just thinking that for
disasters that are easy to foresee, we might want to think about how we
can be prepared in advance to bring people the information they need.

Is there anything we can do in advance to prepare?

We're so fast anyway, I have no ideas, but I thought I'd pass along the
notion.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Being Prepared in the face of Hurricane Wilma as far as
communications.
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2005 23:08:54 -0600
From: Taran Rampersad <cnd at knowprose.com>
Reply-To: cnd at knowprose.com
Organization: KnowProSE.com
To: mobileactive at mobileactive.org,	Jamais Cascio
<cascio at worldchanging.com>,	The Digital Divide Network discussion group
<digitaldivide at milhouse.edc.org>

While Wilma is headed somewhere to in the Gulf region, and has already
caused deaths in Haiti, it might be a good idea to get the community
involved before disaster strikes, and set up alternative means of
communication at the community level - and let people know *before*
disaster strikes.

Projects such as the ARC (http://www.knowprose.com/ARC ;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4149977.stm ) can be set up NOW,
and be ready before disaster strikes an area. Organized communication
BEFORE a disaster, DURING a disaster, and AFTER a disaster. SMS and HAM
radio always seem to be the main means of dependable communication.

I wrote an entry (link below) to share. Please share widely, by email,
weblog, print, television, radio, carrier pigeon and telling your
gossipy acquaintances at the coffee shop and bar:

http://www.knowprose.com/node/9106

Or, we can just wait and blame someone else for not doing anything.

--
Taran Rampersad
Presently in: San Fernando, Trinidad
cnd at knowprose.com

http://www.knowprose.com
http://www.easylum.net
http://www.digitaldivide.net/profile/Taran

Coming on January 1st, 2006: http://www.OpenDepth.com

"Criticize by creating." ? Michelangelo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Static HTML dumps

references:
<dir0g4$47q$1@sea.gmane.org> <dj63t4$cio$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<dj7c0v$ucf$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> Talk pages include information vital to the diligent reader, such as
> factual disputes and source information. Once we are sure Wikipedia is
> perfect, we can remove the talk pages, and the reader can base their
> trust in the accuracy of our material on the force of our authority alone.

I agree with you completely.  Many users will want to see the talk pages.

However, as a potential user of this, I find the 27GB size a bit
daunting.  I have, at this moment, 8GB free space on my laptop.

I wonder how much work it would be for you to generate a few different
versions...

Complete (current version)
Complete, no images
Minimum (no talk pages, no images)

A really cool thing to have would be some kind of cleverly constructed
"middle" version -- some images, but not all the images -- but I can't
at the moment think of any clever way to decide algorithmically which
images to include.  Maybe exclude images over a certain size, or include
a maximum of one image per article or similar?

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
On 10/20/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/20/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > >From: Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
> > >
> > >Content be damned, we're here to run an
> > >internet democracy, not write an encyclopedia!
> >
> > But that's exactly the argument that many people who claim "AfD is not
> > working" and "everyone should have access to deleted articles" make.
>
> Who would that be?
>

Indeed!  Is anyone seriously asking for all deleted articles to be
made accessible?  What about all the copyright infringements and
defamatory material?  That just wouldn't make sense.  This sounds like
a straw man.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
On 10/20/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
 >From where I sit, democratic populism appears to be an appeal on the
> side of those who prefer deletion of the unfamiliar over accomodation
> of broad topics.

Oh, you mean the VFU situation.  Oh let the children play.


body:
On 10/20/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com>
>
> >
> >Show me some old vandalism.
>
> Are you suggesting it doesn't exist? I've come across week-old vandalism on
> little-watched articles on my watchlist.
>

I'm suggesting that it's not around in significant amounts.   I find
some now and again.   I find instances of poor quality writing and bad
organization more often.  A few articles are prone to link-spamming,
others get POV-pushing.  Compared to that, old vandalism is rather
rare.


from_name: Jakob Voss

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Placeopedia

body:
Angela wrote:

> Placeopedia is an online application which integrates Google Maps
> images and Wikipedia encyclopedia articles.See
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placeopedia>
> and<http://www.placeopedia.com/>.
[..]
> For example, some issues already raised are whether links to
> Placeopedia should be added automatically to all Wikipedia articles
> that have a corresponding entry in Placeopedia. There is already a
> template for this on the English Wikipedia
> (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Placeopedia>) but so far any
> links have only been added manually.

There already is a way to link to map services:
[[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Geographical_coordinates]].
The only disatvantage is that it's not located at wikipedia but links to
an external server. You should better focus on this but manually adding
links to *any* single selected map service.

> Another issue is whether users of Placepedia should be able to add
> categories to Wikipedia directly from Placeopedia.

Nope. Maybe when it'll be possible to move categories and watch
categories (the additions/removes, not the pages!) without needing a bot.

Greetings,
Jakob

P.S: You can automatically compare placeopedia data with wikipedia
geodata templates and vice versa. Directly editing coordinates stored in
wikipedia articles using placeopedia would be nice but I don't see an
easy way to do this.


from_name: David Iberri

subject: [Wikitech-l] latex2wiki, html2wiki, no online

body:
On 10/20/05, Uwe Brauer <oub at mat.ucm.es> wrote:
>  I have seen some converters for producing math formulas, music etc.
> For me a simple html2wiki converter would be fine.

You might try my HTML::WikiConverter Perl module (available from CPAN
[1]) which comes with a simple html2wiki command-line interface.
[[Wikipedia:Tools]] might also be of use [2].

-- David Iberri

[1] http://search.cpan.org/dist/HTML-WikiConverter/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
On 10/20/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/20/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Indeed! Is anyone seriously asking for all deleted articles to be
> > made accessible? What about all the copyright infringements and
> > defamatory material? That just wouldn't make sense. This sounds like
> > a straw man.
>
> Anthony DiPierro

I never asked for copyright infringments to be made more accessible.
Actually I think they should be made less accessible.

--
> geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Blocking Proposal

body:
> This new kind of block would only be used when the existing kind of block
> failed, no IP would be blocked just simply for being shared.

So does that mean we're not going to block anonymous proxies simply for
being shared? Especially in light of the proposed expansion of those who
have access to my IP address, it'd be nice if I could start editing through
Tor or something.

Martin

Anthony


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Doomsday or Beebday?

body:
Ed Poor seems to have found a new variant on the Doomsday-meltdown scenario
so often in the past wrongly predicted.  My own researches at Alexa suggest
WP will in fact overtake the BBC web site (currently #11 of English-language
sites), and will do so on some measure by early 2006.  Interesting to find
out which prediction is fulfilled.

Charles


body:
FindAGrave.com provides genealogists, historians, and others with
information on people who have died (famous or not). It averages millions of
hits daily, and 500k-700k page views daily. They have a separate category
for "famous people", each of whom were individually approved by the
Find-A-Grave staff to be "well-known outside his or her local community".

As part of "WikiProject Missing articles", I contacted their administrators
about getting this list of famous people, which could then be wikified and
used to determine what content is missing from Wikipedia. They referred me
to the founder, Jim Tipton, who at first was hesitant to have the entire
list be released and copied by mirror sites, but finally said "Go for
it...I'm not worried about it, anymore...The whole point of the web is to
get as much organized info out there as possible...Use it as you see fit..."
(those ellipses are his, not mine).

So, after a lot of wrangling with a 4.33MB spreadsheet file, containing
46,698 individuals, I've posted it at [[Wikipedia:Find-A-Grave famous
people]]. Of course, there is some overlap with our content, but this should
give us something to work on for a while :)

brian0918


subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
On 10/20/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/20/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> > I never asked for copyright infringments to be made more accessible.
> > Actually I think they should be made less accessible.
> >
>
> However you know that this is not posible with the current softwear.

I'd gladly write the code if there is policy in place to implement it.

--
> geni

Anthony