subject: [Wikipedia-l] Human eye

body:
But Andre, its way more effective to hi-jack *all* threads and steer
them towards a lot of talk about deletionist/admin reform ....and then
propose nothing actionable. =)

Not dismissing you, Cunctator. I agree on all counts. Its just
something I notice on this list.

Andre. That was far from clear, buddy. Thanks for clarifying.

-S

On 3/8/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think I was quite clear. If you want to change policy, then start a thread
> about that, but don't post them on a thread about a fully unrelated problem
> and pretend that everything suddenly is fine if we just do what you want.
>
> 2007/3/8, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com>:
> >
> > Huh? What was that about?
> >
> > On 3/8/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!! As if answering to your pet peeves would solve all
> > > problems in the fucking Wikipedia!!!
> > >
> > > 2007/3/8, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com>:
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Automatically make a lot more people admins.
> > > >
> > > > Stop deleting so many things under the "notability" excuse.
> > > >
> > > > Assume Good Faith from contributors.
> > > >
> > > > Don't ban newbies under the SPA excuse.
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> > > ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Puppy

subject: [Foundation-l] SIN PALABRAS...

body:
I thought this list was somewhat moderated?

Pastorini Mahler, Mario F. wrote:
> ?Te est? costando hacer las cosas que sabes que debes hacer? ?Tiendes a postergar las cosas, y a seguir posterg?ndolas?
>
> Hay una salida, y ?sta empieza en tu mente.
>
> http://www.trafford.com/06-2842
>
> "Todo lo que la mente puede concebir; todo puede crear"
>
> Si no lo crees, s?lo mira la m?quina donde est?s leyendo ?sto. Dale una oportunidad a la Vida. Quita la mediocridad y vive la excelencia. PERDER la oportunidad, IGNORARLA o NO INFORMARLA es CASTIGADO como el PEOR DE LOS PECADOS. "Como es arriba, es abajo"
>
> TODO LO RECAUDADO SE VUELCA A LA O.N.G "ANTES QUE SEA TARDE". Por favor tener en cuenta que con la compra de 1 (uno) libro; nosotros compramos el equipamiento escolar para 1 ni?o.
>
> NO EXISTE EL ?NDICE DE NI?OS EN SITUACI?N DE CALLE: EXISTEN NI?OS EN LA CALLE
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] SIN PALABRAS...


list: wikien-l

from_name: The Cunctator

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] Accountability: bringing back a
	proposal I made nearly 2 years ago

body:
On 3/8/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> > The only thing that causes real problems is when people claim to have
> > credentials they don't have to the press.
>
> I don't think it is only about the press.  I think it is hurtful to the
> community when people lie.  I know a lot of people whose feelings were
> really hurt by the lies told in the current case, and it makes them
> wonder about other people.  That's sad.

A modest proposal: allow users to link to Wikipedia articles about
themselves (an "identity link"). We may want to segregate off the identity
articles (because of notability concerns), but we have excellent systems in
place for verification and attribution for articles in the general space.
Then we just need to establish mechanisms for verifying the identity links;
or we can state as policy that such claims have to be taken with caveat
emptor, but if someone is found to be falsifying such a claim, that is
immediate grounds for banning.


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Human eye

body:
On 3/8/07, Steve <subsume at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> But Andre, its way more effective to hi-jack *all* threads and steer
> them towards a lot of talk about deletionist/admin reform ....and then
> propose nothing actionable. =)

I know you're not talking about me, because all of my suggestions are
actionable. My point was that if we want to encourage good contributors we
need to encourage good contributors. Right now we're doing a lot of things
that discourage contributors.

Not dismissing you, Cunctator. I agree on all counts. Its just
> something I notice on this list.
>
> Andre. That was far from clear, buddy. Thanks for clarifying.
>
> -S
>
> On 3/8/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think I was quite clear. If you want to change policy, then start a
> thread
> > about that, but don't post them on a thread about a fully unrelated
> problem
> > and pretend that everything suddenly is fine if we just do what you
> want.
> >
> > 2007/3/8, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com>:
> > >
> > > Huh? What was that about?
> > >
> > > On 3/8/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!! As if answering to your pet peeves would solve
> all
> > > > problems in the fucking Wikipedia!!!
> > > >
> > > > 2007/3/8, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com>:
> > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Automatically make a lot more people admins.
> > > > >
> > > > > Stop deleting so many things under the "notability" excuse.
> > > > >
> > > > > Assume Good Faith from contributors.
> > > > >
> > > > > Don't ban newbies under the SPA excuse.
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> > > > ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> > ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Peter Ansell

subject: [WikiEN-l] CSPAN copyright

body:
On 08/03/07, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/7/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm not a lawyer, but if you read the whole thing it says this in section 4b:
> >
> > "You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3
> > above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward
> > commercial advantage or private monetary compensation. The exchange of
> > the Work for other copyrighted works by means of digital file-sharing
> > or otherwise shall not be considered to be intended for or directed
> > toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation, provided
> > there is no payment of any monetary compensation in connection with
> > the exchange of copyrighted works."
>
> So, which of the following activities are allowed, and which are not?
>
> 1) Sending the work on a CD-R to anyone who asks for it, but charging
> them for the cost of the CD
> 2) Sending the work on a CD-R to anyone who asks for it, but charging
> them the cost of shipping
> 3) Using the work as part of an advertisement
> 4) Using the work on a webpage that also contains ads I placed there
> 5) Using the work on a webpage that also contains ads placed there by my webhost
> 6) Using the work on a webpage that also contains Amazon referral links
> 7) Using the work on a webpage that links to another webpage that
> contains ads I placed there
> 8) Using the work on a webpage that also solicits donations
> 9) Sending the work to someone in exchange for goods or services
>
> A strict reading of the license clause would seem to prohibit
> everything except #9.
>

How does #9 fit with the "commercial advantage" statement?

Peter


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Human eye

body:
It's not fully unrelated. Erik asked "How do we reach out to more people
with skills like this?" I was making the point that to reach out to good
contributors we need to create an atmosphere that encourages, rather than
discourages good contributors.

On 3/8/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think I was quite clear. If you want to change policy, then start a
> thread
> about that, but don't post them on a thread about a fully unrelated
> problem
> and pretend that everything suddenly is fine if we just do what you want.
>
> 2007/3/8, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com>:
> >
> > Huh? What was that about?
> >
> > On 3/8/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!! As if answering to your pet peeves would solve
> all
> > > problems in the fucking Wikipedia!!!
> > >
> > > 2007/3/8, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com>:
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Automatically make a lot more people admins.
> > > >
> > > > Stop deleting so many things under the "notability" excuse.
> > > >
> > > > Assume Good Faith from contributors.
> > > >
> > > > Don't ban newbies under the SPA excuse.
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> > > ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Conservapedia

body:
On Thu, 8 Mar 2007 09:40:22 +1100, "Steve Bennett"
<stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

>These arguments seem to be predicated on the false assumption that any
>English speaker can write equally well in British or US spelling. It's
>not the case. Most Americans think "tyre" is a typo, not a British
>spelling.

Two great nations divided by a common language :-)

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


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Accountability: bringing back a proposal I made
	nearly 2 years ago

body:
On Wed, 7 Mar 2007 22:43:09 +0000, "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
wrote:

>The general idea is that your user page is your own space *for project
>purposes*. That's not clearly defined because anyone who doesn't get
>the idea of that couldn't have it explained by a rule.

Exactly that.  The problems, when they happen, are almost always the
result of lack of Clue, not lack of policy.

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


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Dealing with juvenile vandalism

body:
Michael Snow wrote:

> Stable versions simply based on using templates and so forth, as
> described at [[Wikipedia:Stable versions]], was effectively rejected.
> But a significant part of the objection to it was that this should be
> handled by the software instead. As to the software feature, the debate
> is only about the details of implementation at this point.

A lot of the objection stemmed from the fact that there were "Stable
versions" to begin with, not so much the software.  I wouldn't be so quick
to dismiss the discussion so quickly - I know my objection is to the whole
concept, not how it would be implemented.

-Jeff


from_name: Steve

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Human eye

body:
Yes, funny how Jimmy's earlier sentiment about users, that they should
be given control to a degree that is scary, became a pretty skin-deep
approach. Sure, anonymous people can edit most articles, but beyond
that, try to create a category, template, or any other "second order"
Wikipedia function and you will feel pain!!

-S

On 3/8/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's not fully unrelated. Erik asked "How do we reach out to more people
> with skills like this?" I was making the point that to reach out to good
> contributors we need to create an atmosphere that encourages, rather than
> discourages good contributors.
>
> On 3/8/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I think I was quite clear. If you want to change policy, then start a
> > thread
> > about that, but don't post them on a thread about a fully unrelated
> > problem
> > and pretend that everything suddenly is fine if we just do what you want.
> >
> > 2007/3/8, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com>:
> > >
> > > Huh? What was that about?
> > >
> > > On 3/8/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!! As if answering to your pet peeves would solve
> > all
> > > > problems in the fucking Wikipedia!!!
> > > >
> > > > 2007/3/8, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com>:
> > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Automatically make a lot more people admins.
> > > > >
> > > > > Stop deleting so many things under the "notability" excuse.
> > > > >
> > > > > Assume Good Faith from contributors.
> > > > >
> > > > > Don't ban newbies under the SPA excuse.
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> > > > ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> > ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dealing with juvenile vandalism

body:
On 3/8/07, Aude <audevivere at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been exceptionally busy today dealing with juvenile vandalism, in
> between working on writing articles, and may have issued more blocks today
> than any other single day.  The childish behavior is sure getting annoying.
>
> Months back, I remember reading something on this mailing list about some
> stable version system or something that provides a delay before anon. edits
> go live.  Does anyone know if that is going to happen (ever?) or what's
> going on with that?  I don't expect anything anytime soon.

Work is ongoing (we've addressed this as a high priority issue on the
Board level for some time now); however, I will only give a first
report once I'm confident it will lead somewhere - not a good thing to
announce potential vapourware.

In the meantime, I think people should apply semi-protection more
liberally. Our first goal is to write an encyclopedia, and that can be
often done perfectly well with the existing community. I find it
absurd that the featured article is still not routinely
semi-protected. Yes, everyone can edit Wikipedia. Everyone _knows_
that by now. Many people are starting to think it's a bug, not a
feature.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

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

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Human eye

body:
Andre Engels wrote:

>2007/3/8, Steve <subsume at gmail.com>:
>
>
>>But Andre, its way more effective to hi-jack *all* threads and steer
>>them towards a lot of talk about deletionist/admin reform ....and then
>>propose nothing actionable. =)
>>
>>Not dismissing you, Cunctator. I agree on all counts. Its just
>>something I notice on this list.
>>
>>Andre. That was far from clear, buddy. Thanks for clarifying.
>>
>>
>My apologies too - my wording in the original message was unnecessarily
>confronting. I wish I could stop reacting that way, would be better for my
>furniture too.
>
Thanks.  I was taken aback by the harshness of your original response to
Cunc, and had to conclude that you were being ironic in support.

Ec


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Is editing for payment a fundamentally a problematic
	conflict...

body:
On Wed, 7 Mar 2007 22:34:39 +0000, "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
wrote:

>> Rob Smith (User:Nobs) has just named a former admin who did not choose
>> to name herself. Can the people monitoring the list step in, please?
>That was indeed the last straw. He's on mod now.

Pity. One of the less problematic indef-blocked members of the list.
But I don't dispute your judgment, Rob's been getting steadily less
moderate over time.

I feel bad about the extension of his ban by  ArbCom.  I hold myself
partly to blame for that.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd:  Dealing with juvenile vandalism

body:
On Thu, 08 Mar 2007 01:21:34 -0800, Ray Saintonge
<saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

>>There was a pretty strong consensus against stable versions when it was
>>first pushed last fall.  I'm not sure if that consensus still exists
>>(I'm strongly opposed to the concept myself), but it's worth noting.

>I don't remember any such consensus against it.

Neither do I.

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


from_name: Pastorini Mahler, Mario F.

subject: [Foundation-l] SIN PALABRAS...

body:
?Te est? costando hacer las cosas que sabes que debes hacer? ?Tiendes a postergar las cosas, y a seguir posterg?ndolas?

Hay una salida, y ?sta empieza en tu mente.

http://www.trafford.com/06-2842

"Todo lo que la mente puede concebir; todo puede crear"

Si no lo crees, s?lo mira la m?quina donde est?s leyendo ?sto. Dale una oportunidad a la Vida. Quita la mediocridad y vive la excelencia. PERDER la oportunidad, IGNORARLA o NO INFORMARLA es CASTIGADO como el PEOR DE LOS PECADOS. "Como es arriba, es abajo"

TODO LO RECAUDADO SE VUELCA A LA O.N.G "ANTES QUE SEA TARDE". Por favor tener en cuenta que con la compra de 1 (uno) libro; nosotros compramos el equipamiento escolar para 1 ni?o.

NO EXISTE EL ?NDICE DE NI?OS EN SITUACI?N DE CALLE: EXISTEN NI?OS EN LA CALLE


subject: [Foundation-l] SIN PALABRAS...


list: commons-l

from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Commons-l] New Java audio player, now with video.

body:
On 08/03/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> A lot of our videos aren't even used in the projects, even though
> there are interesting and informative.. like
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Pop-o-matic_video.ogg

Audio for this doesn't seem to be aligned for me. (Giant pop sound,
then I watch the hand hit the button.) Using Java 2 1.5.0, FF
1.5.0.10, WinXP.

Brianna


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Human eye

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>On 3/8/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 08/03/07, Artur Fija?kowski <wiki.warx at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>2007/3/8, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
>>>
>>>
>>>>A very nice recent example of what our top notch artists can do with
>>>>
>>>>
>>Inkscape:
>>
>>
>>>>http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Eye-diagram.svg
>>>>
>>>>How do we reach out to more people with skills like this?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>We have many of them, maybe you haven't spotted?
>>>
>>>
>>We have many. We want thousands :-)
>>
>>
>Automatically make a lot more people admins.
>
>Stop deleting so many things under the "notability" excuse.
>
>Assume Good Faith from contributors.
>
>Don't ban newbies under the SPA excuse.
>
Wow!  With that kind of agenda you might develop a reputation as a
radical that ploughs up the roots of our social fabric. ;-)    Just
because farmers do that annually in their fields ...

Ec


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Autograph pages

body:
On 3/8/07, Aude <audevivere at gmail.com> wrote:
> Problem is the talk page spamming.  User has been warned to stop spamming
> people's talk pages.  If they continue, the user should be blocked per

Yeah. I can sort of pretend we don't have these kiddies using
Wikipedia as a Myspace when they do it on their own page. But when
they poop on my talk page, that illusion evaporates.

Steve


from_name: Gary Kirk

subject: [WikiEN-l] Telegraph article on Essjay

body:
I dropped the journalist who wrote this article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/06/wwiki106.xml

a note commenting on a few errors and she corrected it to this version:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/07/nspam207.xml

which is more accurate.

To let people know :)

--
Gary Kirk


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for simplified credentials model

body:
also on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Credentials#Simplified_voluntary_model

After some more thought, I would suggest an almost completely
voluntary model, where the only requirement would be that a user
claiming credentials should put one of four templates on their user
page:

# "This user's stated credentials have not been verified." => If
placed by another user
# "This user's verification of stated credentials is pending."
# "This user does not wish to verify their stated credentials, and
asks you to assume good faith."
# "This user does not wish to verify their stated credentials, because
they should not matter to you. Please judge edits on their merits."

(Potentially the last two could be generalized into an abstract
template that lets the user provide an arbitrary reason.)

For verification process, I would suggest to keep the office
completely out of the loop -- doesn't scale. Instead, verify
exclusively by emailing credentials evidence to [[OTRS]] (mail from an
institution address [requires reply to confirm], scanned diploma /
PhD, etc.). This would be similar to the permissions queue we already
have for copyright, or the general inquiries queue, and seems to scale
reasonably well.

Using this method, we have a more obvious disclaimer present in cases
where users do commit fraud (the Essjay page would have said "Does not
wish to verify"), and at the same time, users with identified
credentials can be found easily, which may be helpful in cases where
you're looking for an expert on topic X (think categories).

I have some connections that could help to check for diploma mills
etc., if we want to go that far; for now, a simple system should
suffice.

Yes, this solution will also cause some conflict. That is, I believe,
unavoidable. If we take our responsibilities seriously, we must be
prepared to make a decision like this, even if it makes a small number
of vocal people unhappy. I believe a position like the above could
gain majority support, however.

--
Peace & Love,
Erik

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

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Human eye

body:
Oldak Quill wrote:

>On 08/03/07, Zoney wrote:
>
>
>>Credit the author inline where the images/diagrams are used. It's only fair;
>>they are after all the copyright owner even if a licence to use under the
>>GFDL has been allowed.
>>
>>
>Once a user has the time, skills and will to make these kinds of
>diagrams, I don't think being credited inline or not will make much
>difference. There are many prose editors who contribute fantastically
>without being credited inline.
>
I don't find Zoney's suggestion to be all that bad.  Accepting any such
credits should still be optional.  In theory both texts and images are
editable, but as a practical matter the brutal editing is almost
completely limited to texts.  Once accepted, images tend to remain
stable.  Texts on the other had often start as stubs and are layered up
from there by a variety of users.

Even if we don't accept nd images, adding a tag like "From an original
free image by ..." should be fine.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Learning

body:
Marc Riddell wrote:

>To any and all,
>
>Just a thought I wanted to share today:
>
>We are born naked, screaming, and reaching.
>
>Soon afterwards we are taught to cover up, keep our mouths shut, and keep
>our hands to ourselves.
>
I think it's called citizenship.

Ec


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Human eye

body:
On 08/03/07, Artur Fija?kowski <wiki.warx at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2007/3/8, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
> > A very nice recent example of what our top notch artists can do with Inkscape:
> >
> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Eye-diagram.svg
> >
> > How do we reach out to more people with skills like this?
>
> We have many of them, maybe you haven't spotted?

We have many. We want thousands :-)

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: And now for the good news (coverage)

body:
On 08/03/07, xaosflux <xaosflux at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is great news, hope it catched on even more!

Yes and no. We've had rather messy situations in the past where an
assigned piece of work was to post some work to Wikipedia, *then we
deleted it*, cue complaints and fuss and whatnot. Assuming it's given
a good check with common sense before telling them what to write,
it'll be fine, but... I wonder how that'll scale.

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


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 3/8/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> A modest proposal: allow users to link to Wikipedia articles about
> themselves (an "identity link"). We may want to segregate off the identity
> articles (because of notability concerns), but we have excellent systems in
> place for verification and attribution for articles in the general space.

Would we have any ownership of our own articles?  I'd rather not have
private details of my life up on a wiki page.  My concern with your
proposal is privacy, not notability.  I realize the link would be
optional, but an on/off switch is much more coarsely grained than the
current system.

Also, verifiability seems too strong for this, because it means
*anyone* can verify the details.  Perhaps someone wants to state that
they are a professor, but not give details of where they teach out to
the world to be edited mercilessly.  A private confidential
verification might be acceptable, but not a public one.

Anthony


from_name: David Still

body:
When I sent my first reply I was at home; I'm now uni wireless, so
can't really test any more until I get home at some point tonight.

Here are the full details, for the sake of completeness:

Mac OS X 10.4.8
12" 1.33Ghz iBook G4, 768MB RAM

Camino 1.1beta
Safari 2.0.4

I have the following versions of Java installed: 1.4.2, 1.3.1, 1.3,
1.4. I need to check which of these are being use by which browsers (I
suspect that only 1.4.2 is being used), but I'm not sure how. I'll try
to provide that information when I get home, if someone can suggest a
way to track it down... Would screenshots be helpful, perchance?

-D

On 3/8/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 07/03/07, David Still <daveydweeb at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Unfortunately, the player causes serious problems under Mac OS 10.4.8.
> > Safari 2.0.4 either crashes when playing or reports that Java is
> > unavailable (it's installed and enabled, so something's wrong there),
> > while other browsers like Camino show other weird problems (where the
> > Java player causes the entire window -- or large portions of it -- to
> > appear as garbage, even after changing or closing tabs).
>
>
> The earlier vibraphone video worked fine for me on our G4 earlier on
> Safari (latest Mac OS 10.4, latest Java). Are you using a PowerPC or
> Intel Mac?
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


references:
<4de603bb0703071644k2fee61b3wfd203e7a634a36ed@mail.gmail.com>
	<002101c76122$b879f090$296dd1b0$@com>
	<4de603bb0703071746g742ba9d6kbe74f3aeeeaf9fcc@mail.gmail.com>
	<45EF6D17.1060508@internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	<45EFD59E.4040008@telus.net>
	<jbovu25eank38lm4jmmvesh9r1lmd9bmdj@4ax.com>

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Thu, 08 Mar 2007 01:21:34 -0800, Ray Saintonge
> <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>>>There was a pretty strong consensus against stable versions when it was
>>>first pushed last fall.  I'm not sure if that consensus still exists
>>>(I'm strongly opposed to the concept myself), but it's worth noting.
>
>>I don't remember any such consensus against it.
>
> Neither do I.

I recall it rather strongly, actually.  It was around the same time we
were preoccupied with the Elephant vandalism, and Cyde was the main guy
saying let's do it anyway.

-Jeff


body:
David Gerard wrote:

> Essjay got all the community jobs going because he earnt them through
> doing lots of hard work well. His edits using his claimed credentials
> were few compared to that. But the latter were enough to have him
> asked to resign all the former.

Not to mention that he gained the trust through the hard work in part
because of his credentials - all edits being equal, I'm going to have a
higher level of informational trust from someone who has a PhD than
someone who does not.  Think of it as a form of AGF - I'll assume good
faith over any edits until there's reason not to, and that "reason not to"
line is certainly going to be extended further to someone with various
credentials than someone without.

It's typical human nature at worst, and perhaps some may consider it
"common sense."

-Jeff


body:
On 3/8/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 3/8/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > A modest proposal: allow users to link to Wikipedia articles about
> > themselves (an "identity link"). We may want to segregate off the
> identity
> > articles (because of notability concerns), but we have excellent systems
> in
> > place for verification and attribution for articles in the general
> space.
>
> Would we have any ownership of our own articles?  I'd rather not have
> private details of my life up on a wiki page.  My concern with your
> proposal is privacy, not notability.  I realize the link would be
> optional, but an on/off switch is much more coarsely grained than the
> current system.
>
> Also, verifiability seems too strong for this, because it means
> *anyone* can verify the details.  Perhaps someone wants to state that
> they are a professor, but not give details of where they teach out to
> the world to be edited mercilessly.  A private confidential
> verification might be acceptable, but not a public one.

I'm not saying this has to be done *instead* of other policies, though my
personal opinion is that Wikipedia is best served if people are either
anonymous & claims about their credentials are recognized to be caveat
emptor or people are publicly identified.

I think it's generally a good idea that we eat our own dog food.


from_name: Delirium

body:
Jeff Raymond wrote:
> Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 08 Mar 2007 01:21:34 -0800, Ray Saintonge
>> <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>> There was a pretty strong consensus against stable versions when it was
>>>> first pushed last fall.  I'm not sure if that consensus still exists
>>>> (I'm strongly opposed to the concept myself), but it's worth noting.
>>>>
>>> I don't remember any such consensus against it.
>>>
>> Neither do I.
>>
>
> I recall it rather strongly, actually.  It was around the same time we
> were preoccupied with the Elephant vandalism, and Cyde was the main guy
> saying let's do it anyway.
>

I recall bringing the issue up on this mailing list (or possibly
wikipedia-l?) a few months ago, and not only was consensus strongly in
favor, but there wasn't a *single* post opposed to it. There were just
disagreements over the best way to do it.

-Mark


from_name: Aude

references:
<4de603bb0703071644k2fee61b3wfd203e7a634a36ed@mail.gmail.com>
	<002101c76122$b879f090$296dd1b0$@com>
	<4de603bb0703071746g742ba9d6kbe74f3aeeeaf9fcc@mail.gmail.com>
	<45EF6D17.1060508@internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	<45EFD59E.4040008@telus.net>
	<jbovu25eank38lm4jmmvesh9r1lmd9bmdj@4ax.com>
	<4313.69.21.252.114.1173369276.squirrel@www.internationalhouseofbacon.com>

body:
I'm aware of this page, marked as "currently inactive and is retained
primarily for historical interest"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:STABLE

But, this isn't the same thing as the idea to be tried someday on dewiki and
maybe enwiki, to delay anon. edits from going live.  I found some pages that
describe such ideas on meta wiki, but not sure which ideas actually are or
might be pursued.  Or if dewiki decided there was no consensus for it?

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2006_proposed_approval_for_anonymous_edits
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications_subcommittees/2006/09/02_DE_article_versioning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Timed_article_change_stabilisation_mechanism
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Article_validation - some other
ideas

-Aude

On 3/8/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
>
>
> Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> > On Thu, 08 Mar 2007 01:21:34 -0800, Ray Saintonge
> > <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >
> >>>There was a pretty strong consensus against stable versions when it was
> >>>first pushed last fall.  I'm not sure if that consensus still exists
> >>>(I'm strongly opposed to the concept myself), but it's worth noting.
> >
> >>I don't remember any such consensus against it.
> >
> > Neither do I.
>
> I recall it rather strongly, actually.  It was around the same time we
> were preoccupied with the Elephant vandalism, and Cyde was the main guy
> saying let's do it anyway.
>
> -Jeff
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Aude


body:
Aude wrote:

>I have put together a few charts, with block activity for the period of
>February 19 - March 7th.  May do more with this data later, tonight.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Aude/adminactivity
>
>My perception that vandalism drops off significantly on the weekends is
>true.  I also recall a sharp increase in vandalism last September when
>school resumed in the U.S. and other places.
>
>Vandalism is also highest during the day and evenings (in the U.S.), the U.S.
>is by far the biggest source of vandalism, and schools/universities comprise
>approximately 1/4 of all vandalism from IP addresses.
>
This is interesting data.  I should add that I have observed that
activity on this mailing list also drops dramatically on Saturdays.

>I think this means I (and others) need to make blocks of school IPs be for
>longer duration... the same for other repeat vandals.
>
Not at all.  That's a simplistic solution.  Such blocks would have an
effect of blocking all users from the school, including the good ones
who do not condone vandalism.  Developping some kind of working
arrangement with the school involved would make more sense.  Work with
them to identify and deal with the offenders at a local level.  Find out
if they have local policies requiring students to log on that would lead
to a possible identification of which users were on line at the time
that the vandalism took place.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Review

body:
John Lee wrote:
> On 3/8/07, Ben Yates <ben.louis.yates at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Isn't Jimmy just supposed to be the proverbial head of state at this
>> point, no longer the commander in chief?
>>
>
>
> The last time I checked, the arbcom's powers are derived from Jimbo, not the
> other way round, so Jimbo had every right to act, since he is superior to
> the arbcom in hierarchical terms.
>
It's kind of vague, really.  Historically, the Arbitration Committee
took over the roles Jimmy previously exercised.  Informally, he
currently heads it (from afar, mostly), and has authority to veto its
decisions, appoint/remove members, etc.  Even more informally, he does
so in accordance with community approval (elections, the policy
ratification vote, etc.).  At one point Jimmy was also formally in
charge, but now in hierarchical terms the Foundation's Board of
Directors would be, with Jimmy retaining informal/customary authority
over some English-Wikipedia-specific processes.  Now that authority over
the community is mostly effective because the community tacticly
approves of it, so teasing out which has priority is tricky. =]

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Autograph pages

body:
On 3/8/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Or one could get a little nasty, and publish ratios of user page editing
> vs article space editing, give out a "Most Useless Wikipedian" award to
> the person at the top of the list.

Yeah, but not every article-space edit is good, and not every
user-space edit is bad. Lately I've been making a lot of edits to my
user page, but that's because I use it to keep track of articles I've
created and photos I've uploaded. (Yes, most people would use a
watchlist for that...;))

Steve


from_name: William Pietri

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Not at all.  That's a simplistic solution.  Such blocks would have an
> effect of blocking all users from the school, including the good ones
> who do not condone vandalism.  Developping some kind of working
> arrangement with the school involved would make more sense.  Work with
> them to identify and deal with the offenders at a local level.  Find out
> if they have local policies requiring students to log on that would lead
> to a possible identification of which users were on line at the time
> that the vandalism took place.
>

Might this call for some sort of bot that watches for IP range warnings
and sends emails to any contacts listed on the talk page for the IP? The
system would take a while to get started, but it seems like it would
help close a feedback loop that is now often slow or broken.

William

--
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki XML

body:
On 3/8/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Are you suggesting that you might end up with a chunk like:
>
> <XML>
> ...
> <UNRECOGNISED>
>   <CHUNK text="Some unrecognised code with
> {{funky!syntax|not..supported|by]]] wikiwyg" />
> </UNRECOGNISED>
> ...
> </XML>
>
> The concept sounds vaguely doable, but pretty much any comments not
> from the main mediawiki developers aren't even worth $0.02.

I think that's kind of excessive.  :)  "Main" MediaWiki developers are
unlikely to be the ones to do this, and MediaWiki developers
altogether maybe fifty-fifty at best, assuming it ever gets done.
Remember that this is an open-source project.

Overall, I think this is probably a case of too much talk, not enough
work.  If this is going to get done, someone needs to get cracking.
And I don't exclude myself here, although this isn't something I plan
to try in the immediate future anyway.

On 3/8/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Isn't there a simpler way, something like:
>
> {{subst:tilde}}{{subst:tilde}}{{subst:tilde}}{{subst:tilde}} ?

On 3/8/07, Alexander Ian Smith <ais523 at bham.ac.uk> wrote:
> {{subst:NonExistingPage}} doesn't transform on save.

Both of these are definitely bugs, and they should be fixed (although
they aren't high-priority, obviously).  Pre-save transforms should be
done recursively with sanity checks and cleaning to preserve
idempotence.  For the most part, they *are* idempotent, and any cases
where they are not are ipso facto bugs.

On 3/8/07, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> To be honest, I keep seeing talk about "defining the parser's
> behaviour", but I haven't seen any actual work on it at all. (I'm not
> saying there hasn't been any, only that I haven't seen it.)

There's been some work that I've seen, mostly abortive.  I think your
flexbisonparse probably constitutes most of the applied work people
have done on it, though.  I think other things I've seen have been
people trying to work out grammars, but not actually getting them to
work with bison or whatever.

On 3/8/07, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> > (1) The XML would be close to the HTML version that most people see
> > when they view articles in their web browser, so less parsing would
> > need to be done when presenting articles for viewing.
>
> This conclusion is incorrect. It doesn't matter how "close" they are to
> each other, you would still need to parse it.

But you would need to parse it "less", i.e., you could parse it more
simply and quickly, with fewer rules and no informal rules.  And you'd
also be parsing it in a more standard way, using XML functions, so you
can get C-like (at least C++-like) speed even in, say, JavaScript,
which I believe now comes standard with lots of XML functions at least
in most implementations.  So something standard like XML has
advantages.  You could even use XSL for the transform rules, to avoid
having to write your own transformations.


body:
On 08/03/07, Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) <newyorkbrad at gmail.com> wrote:
> There would still be edit conflicts.  Let's say the delay is 15 minutes.  At
> 8:00, anon edits a sentence (validly). At 8:05, registered user edits the
> same sentence differently.  What happens?  Okay, now it's 8:15, time for the
> anon edit to go live.  What happens then?

The second user doesn't edit the original text; he edits the 0800
modified text, and *those* edits go live. No edit conflicts.

(The intent of that proposal is to do exactly this - it allows
vandalism to be caught in that 15 minute lag time)

In effect, it's like what you have now when you edit a heavily
trafficed page - the version you work on may be very different from
the one you were reading two minutes ago, because you edit the version
on the server not the version you're reading.

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


from_name: Mark Clements

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Wiki XML (was Re: AJAX and .aspx
	astechnologiesforMediaWiki?)

body:
> > > How about just having an XML definition of the current wiki syntax.
I.e.
> > > convert that as
> > >
> > > <begin-italic/>test<eol/>
> > >
> > > or even something like
> > >
> > > <begin-italic/>test<end-italic implicit/><eol/>
> > >
[SNIP]
> > That's an interesting suggestion.  I would be interested to see a bit
more
> > work in this area...  is there anything that couldn't be handled by
this?
>
> Probably not, but it will still be tricky to reverse (see my love of
> 'potatoes' above).  And if all your tags are self-closed, you
> aren't using XML's hierarchal model, so I don't know if there's much
> point in bothering with such a heavyweight syntax.  You just need some
> consistent escaping to distinguish between data and markup, if you
> aren't going to enforce pairing and structure as "proper" XML
> requires.  (You'll still need stuff like uniqueness of id's, fine, but
> it still partly defeats the point of simplicity of parsing/rendering,
> I would think.)

Well, your example would simply be stored as
  'potatoes'

A more tricky example of
  ''''potatoes''''

would become
  <begin-bold />'potatoes'<end-bold />

The point is that the wiki markup tags would be different to standard HTML
tags, so there would be no overlap.

I take your other points though - if we are not creating properly formed
XML, then we might as well use a lighter substitution markup, e.g. if you
used short tags wrapped in braces: '' becomes {i} ''' becomess {b}, with
corresponding {/i} and {/b} tags.  { on it's own would become {rbrace} and
so on.  I'm not suggesting this as a real solution, but using it as a
demonstration of a simpler way to achieve Sanbeg's suggestion that doesn't
give the illusion of being an XML format (which it isn't).

As I said before, I am not wedded to the idea of XML - it is just one of the
possibilities to be explored.

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


body:
Florence Devouard wrote:
> Many editors of huge quality are not willing to provide their real name.
> Why would they consider sending this information to a totally anonymous
> email address handled by volunteers, who are not necessarily identified
> under their real name and have signed no confidentiality agreement them ?
>

Is there possible compromise between your position and Eric's?

There are plenty of companies in the credential validation business.
Most of them are set up for slightly different uses, but I'm sure there
are some creative ones we could work with.

The notion is that for anybody who would like their credentials
validated, they can pay a third party to do the work. The Foundation
would only get involved to select trusted vendors and verify the vendor
accounts on Wikipedia. In addition to verifying credentials, they could
perhaps verify real names, or that the user has only one verified
Wikipedia account. For the limited cases where the Foundation wanted
things verified, they could cover the cost of the verification;
otherwise, people would be on their own.

Personally, I don't have much of an opinion on this topic, but I thought
I'd suggest the possibility.

William

--
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri


from_name: Raimond Spekking

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-03-08

body:
brion at pobox.com schrieb:
> This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r20223).
>
>
>    3 previously passing test(s) now FAILING! :(
>       * Blank ref followed by ref with content  [Introduced between 07-Mar-2007 08:15:31, 1.10alpha (r20187) and 08-Mar-2007 08:17:23, 1.10alpha (r20223)]
>       * Regression: non-blank ref "0" followed by ref with content  [Introduced between 07-Mar-2007 08:15:31, 1.10alpha (r20187) and 08-Mar-2007 08:17:23, 1.10alpha (r20223)]
>       * Regression sanity check: non-blank ref "1" followed by ref with content  [Introduced between 07-Mar-2007 08:15:31, 1.10alpha (r20187) and 08-Mar-2007 08:17:23, 1.10alpha (r20223)]
>

It was me with r20190. I will try to fix the parsertest.

Raymond.

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from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 08/03/07, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Last, we should stop being the valet of the press. Each time there is a
> noise in the press, some feel we should respond, apology, change the way
> we are doing things.
> I think that is a poor way to act. What counts is the values we share
> and the success we met. Not the noises done by journalists.

Seconded. Any press reaction should be considered first in terms of
how it helps the projects.

- d.


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Why have admins of unblock-en-l blocked me?

body:
Because you are a racist :-) You probably even deny the indigenous
status of the Ainu.

Regardless of whether or not Korean and Chinese claims have been
exaggerated, it is undeniable that those countries WERE invaded by
Japan. Whether the Empire was all nice and cuddly to its
non-ethnically-Japanese subjects is debatable, but it is not debatable
that these places were invaded without invitation.

And stop being so arrogant, you are not "pure", you are not "special",
you are not somehow better or smarter than Koreans or Chinese people.
We are all human beings.

And if you were blocked without a reason, as you claim, I'm sure you
would've been blocked very soon because of your explicit and unwelcome
racism.

Mark

On 08/03/07, Rocky 7 <freudianjungianp at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, I am Rocky7.
>
> Admins of unblock-en-l have not delivered mails of unblock-en-l since May
> 4, 2007.
>
> Admins of unblock-en-l have not allowed me to enter unblock-en-l Archives.
>
> Q1. Why have admins of unblock-en-l blocked me with no explanation?
>
> Q2. Why do you cling to closed unfair trial?
>
> Q3. Why do you stick to Chinese or Korean facism trial?
>
>
> Re: unblock-en-l identification?
> (Reply to Prodego)
> You(at least Luna and Prodego) have been stalking, indeed, and
> I don't think you(all admins) would be subjected to
> non-admins' stalking.
> How can we(non-admins) do stalking?
> We can't know even your IP addresses, unless you email
> me(us) personally.
>
> On Sun, 4 Mar 2007, Prodego <prodego at gmail.com> wrote:
> >Errr, what? I don't think the idea of anonymity will go away soon,
> >a large majority of admins, myself included, would be subjected
> >to stalking, which has actually happened to quite a few people.
> >
> >Prodego
>
> He's a lying scoundrel...?!
>
>
> >On 3/4/07, Rocky7 <FreudianJungianP at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>Now admins' real identifications are needed to be revealed.
> >>Stop such a nasty intrigue, or all admins would not be
> >>trusted because of your timidness and wickedness.
> >>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> ????????????????????????????2,000???????????????????????????`??????
> http://onecare.live.jp
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


from_name: Christof Sperl

body:
I like the 4 different templates for the userpage stating how much
"certified" that particular user is. But would those scanned documents be
visible to all users or only to the sysops (or whatever they are called by
then)? Because while I would have no problem with people seeing my
graduation papers (no degree, but still I graduated at a higher technical
school in austria, which would give me credentials in electronics and
programming as it does in austria I suppose) I wouldn't want everyone to be
able to see the my real name on it.

Regards,
Christof Sperl a.k.a. Aetherfukz

On 08/03/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> also on:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Credentials#Simplified_voluntary_model
>
> After some more thought, I would suggest an almost completely
> voluntary model, where the only requirement would be that a user
> claiming credentials should put one of four templates on their user
> page:
>
> # "This user's stated credentials have not been verified." => If
> placed by another user
> # "This user's verification of stated credentials is pending."
> # "This user does not wish to verify their stated credentials, and
> asks you to assume good faith."
> # "This user does not wish to verify their stated credentials, because
> they should not matter to you. Please judge edits on their merits."
>
> (Potentially the last two could be generalized into an abstract
> template that lets the user provide an arbitrary reason.)
>
> For verification process, I would suggest to keep the office
> completely out of the loop -- doesn't scale. Instead, verify
> exclusively by emailing credentials evidence to [[OTRS]] (mail from an
> institution address [requires reply to confirm], scanned diploma /
> PhD, etc.). This would be similar to the permissions queue we already
> have for copyright, or the general inquiries queue, and seems to scale
> reasonably well.
>
> Using this method, we have a more obvious disclaimer present in cases
> where users do commit fraud (the Essjay page would have said "Does not
> wish to verify"), and at the same time, users with identified
> credentials can be found easily, which may be helpful in cases where
> you're looking for an expert on topic X (think categories).
>
> I have some connections that could help to check for diploma mills
> etc., if we want to go that far; for now, a simple system should
> suffice.
>
> Yes, this solution will also cause some conflict. That is, I believe,
> unavoidable. If we take our responsibilities seriously, we must be
> prepared to make a decision like this, even if it makes a small number
> of vocal people unhappy. I believe a position like the above could
> gain majority support, however.
>
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
>
> DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
> the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
>
> "An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
> free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why have admins of unblock-en-l blocked me?

body:
Rocky 7 wrote:

>Hi, I am Rocky7.
>
>Admins of unblock-en-l have not delivered mails of unblock-en-l since May
>4, 2007.
>
It seems as though you may be a victim of the International Date Line. ;-)

Ec


body:
On 3/8/07, Aude <audevivere at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been exceptionally busy today dealing with juvenile vandalism, in
> between working on writing articles, and may have issued more blocks today
> than any other single day.  The childish behavior is sure getting annoying.

Could we have more sophisticated auto-detect vandalism and blocks,
that pick up on likely kiddie vandalism, and automatically issue short
term blocks? Something like 30 minutes, and if they do it again, then
we can (manually) intervene and escalate. The amount of manual work
required to combat basic "o rly i can edit??" type vandalism is
excessive - and as you point out, tiring.

Steve


body:
On 3/8/07, Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) <newyorkbrad at gmail.com> wrote:
> On popular articles, wouldn't this create huge edit-conflict problems?

The proposal was to simply hide the anon edits from the outside world.
It would have no impact on edit conflicts, as the changes go live
internally straight away.

I have always liked this proposal, but the consensus seemed to be more
in favour of the "designated stable version" proposal.

Steve


from_name: Rocky 7

body:
Hi, I am Rocky7.

Admins of unblock-en-l have not delivered mails of unblock-en-l since May
4, 2007.

Admins of unblock-en-l have not allowed me to enter unblock-en-l Archives.

Q1. Why have admins of unblock-en-l blocked me with no explanation?

Q2. Why do you cling to closed unfair trial?

Q3. Why do you stick to Chinese or Korean facism trial?

Re: unblock-en-l identification?
(Reply to Prodego)
You(at least Luna and Prodego) have been stalking, indeed, and
I don't think you(all admins) would be subjected to
non-admins' stalking.
How can we(non-admins) do stalking?
We can't know even your IP addresses, unless you email
me(us) personally.

On Sun, 4 Mar 2007, Prodego <prodego at gmail.com> wrote:
>Errr, what? I don't think the idea of anonymity will go away soon,
>a large majority of admins, myself included, would be subjected
>to stalking, which has actually happened to quite a few people.
>
>Prodego

He's a lying scoundrel...?!

>On 3/4/07, Rocky7 <FreudianJungianP at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>Now admins' real identifications are needed to be revealed.
>>Stop such a nasty intrigue, or all admins would not be
>>trusted because of your timidness and wickedness.
>>

_________________________________________________________________
??????????????2,000?????????????????
http://onecare.live.jp


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Human eye

body:
SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!! As if answering to your pet peeves would solve all
problems in the fucking Wikipedia!!!

2007/3/8, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com>:

>
> Automatically make a lot more people admins.
>
> Stop deleting so many things under the "notability" excuse.
>
> Assume Good Faith from contributors.
>
> Don't ban newbies under the SPA excuse.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


from_name: Larry Pieniazek

subject: [WikiEN-l] Removed from unblock-en-l

body:
This user has been added to the auto-discard list on unblock-en-l for now
and I suggest you may want to do the same here.

Apparently we are all pro Japanese racists (or is it pro Korean? I can't
quite keep it straight...) who stalk, cling to things, and carry out nasty
intruiges...

Larry Pieniazek

> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 13
> Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2007 12:52:12 -0500
> From: "Rocky 7" <freudianjungianp at hotmail.com>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Why have admins of unblock-en-l blocked me?
> To: unblock-en-l at lists.wikimedia.org,
> 	unblock-en-l-owner at lists.wikimedia.org,
> wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org,
> 	wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <BAY120-F5E888ED2CF27CC8B4CC31C9790 at phx.gbl>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-2022-jp; format=flowed
>
> Hi, I am Rocky7.
>
> Admins of unblock-en-l have not delivered mails of
> unblock-en-l since May
> 4, 2007.
>
> Admins of unblock-en-l have not allowed me to enter
> unblock-en-l Archives.
>
> Q1. Why have admins of unblock-en-l blocked me with no explanation?
>
> Q2. Why do you cling to closed unfair trial?
>
> Q3. Why do you stick to Chinese or Korean facism trial?
>
>
> Re: unblock-en-l identification?
> (Reply to Prodego)
> You(at least Luna and Prodego) have been stalking, indeed, and
> I don't think you(all admins) would be subjected to
> non-admins' stalking.
> How can we(non-admins) do stalking?
> We can't know even your IP addresses, unless you email
> me(us) personally.
>
> On Sun, 4 Mar 2007, Prodego <prodego at gmail.com> wrote:
> >Errr, what? I don't think the idea of anonymity will go away soon,
> >a large majority of admins, myself included, would be subjected
> >to stalking, which has actually happened to quite a few people.
> >
> >Prodego
>
> He's a lying scoundrel...?!
>
>
> >On 3/4/07, Rocky7 <FreudianJungianP at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>Now admins' real identifications are needed to be revealed.
> >>Stop such a nasty intrigue, or all admins would not be
> >>trusted because of your timidness and wickedness.
> >>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> ??????????????2,000?????????????????
> http://onecare.live.jp


from_name: Florence Devouard

body:
For the record, I am totally opposed to such a model.

If the english community decides to adopt it, it is the community
decision. Fine.

But the Foundation should be entirely kept away from this. There is NO
way our rare employees should have to deal with editors credentials.
Doing so would on top further fuel the belief that we are in charge,
putting us possibly at risk legally speaking.

At the same time, I believe this proposition will scare away some people
and will result in people not telling what they are educated or trained
in; having bad social consequences (people like the warm feeling of
being in the small group of """this university""" or """that
profession"""). This is I think a slippery slope toward requesting
identification for various jobs.

Whilest I would agree we neeed identification for the jobs of stewards,
checkusers and oversight, I fear the day we will request identification
and credentials for the job of admin (yes, I saw the proposition
mentionned in the press). Same for press contacts and
business/partnership contacts.

This would entirely tip the very concept of our community. Trust build
not upon someone credential but upon what the person does.

What counts is not the credential of the person, but giving a source for
a controversial content. This is not because someone has a validated phd
that he should be more reliable than another.

Last, we should stop being the valet of the press. Each time there is a
noise in the press, some feel we should respond, apology, change the way
we are doing things.

I think that is a poor way to act. What counts is the values we share
and the success we met. Not the noises done by journalists.

Anthere (for the general comments)

Florence Devouard, Chair of Wikimedia Foundation (for the statement that
the Foundation did not ask anything, will not impose that, and definitly
should stay out of that crap)

Erik Moeller wrote:
> also on:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Credentials#Simplified_voluntary_model
>
> After some more thought, I would suggest an almost completely
> voluntary model, where the only requirement would be that a user
> claiming credentials should put one of four templates on their user
> page:
>
> # "This user's stated credentials have not been verified." => If
> placed by another user
> # "This user's verification of stated credentials is pending."
> # "This user does not wish to verify their stated credentials, and
> asks you to assume good faith."
> # "This user does not wish to verify their stated credentials, because
> they should not matter to you. Please judge edits on their merits."
>
> (Potentially the last two could be generalized into an abstract
> template that lets the user provide an arbitrary reason.)
>
> For verification process, I would suggest to keep the office
> completely out of the loop -- doesn't scale. Instead, verify
> exclusively by emailing credentials evidence to [[OTRS]] (mail from an
> institution address [requires reply to confirm], scanned diploma /
> PhD, etc.). This would be similar to the permissions queue we already
> have for copyright, or the general inquiries queue, and seems to scale
> reasonably well.
>
> Using this method, we have a more obvious disclaimer present in cases
> where users do commit fraud (the Essjay page would have said "Does not
> wish to verify"), and at the same time, users with identified
> credentials can be found easily, which may be helpful in cases where
> you're looking for an expert on topic X (think categories).
>
> I have some connections that could help to check for diploma mills
> etc., if we want to go that far; for now, a simple system should
> suffice.
>
> Yes, this solution will also cause some conflict. That is, I believe,
> unavoidable. If we take our responsibilities seriously, we must be
> prepared to make a decision like this, even if it makes a small number
> of vocal people unhappy. I believe a position like the above could
> gain majority support, however.
>


from_name: Rob Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Conservapedia

body:
On 3/8/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 8 Mar 2007 09:40:22 +1100, "Steve Bennett"
> <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >These arguments seem to be predicated on the false assumption that any
> >English speaker can write equally well in British or US spelling. It's
> >not the case. Most Americans think "tyre" is a typo, not a British
> >spelling.
>
> Two great nations divided by a common language :-)
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

The Volvo Repair Manual Glossary of English/American Autopart Equivalents
gives one of the best insights into the differences in the language.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Audio file sizes

body:
Edward Z. Yang wrote:
> 1. Encoding audio in a lossless codec seems, at least from my
> experience, to be a very CPU intensive process.  WIth our equipment,
> this may or may not be a problem.
>

It might depend on the codec, but FLAC for one is much *less*
CPU-intensive to encode than most commonly used lossy codecs, such as
MP3.  Since it doesn't have to do all the frequency-domain
psychoacoustic analysis that lossy codecs do, it's a much simpler
algorithm, both to implement and to execute.

On the decoding side things are a bit more even.  I believe FLAC is
still a bit faster, but it requires more memory bandwidth (sometimes an
issue on embedded devices), simply because there are more megabytes per
minute of audio that it needs to load.  And of course it requires more
storage on the device.  But we could always transcode from FLAC to
Vorbis on the server side to serve such clients.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Review

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> Authority here derives from the monarch, but is vested in others, and
> any attempt to exercise power against the will of the people would
> cause problems.  It took us a couple of hundred years to get the
> balance right, and it's still changing.  But over that entire period,
> the country remained governable and tolerably well-regulated.  Is that
> so bad?
>
> To paraphrase a fellow Englishman, Jimbocracy is the very worst system
> of government, apart from all the others.
>

I agree with this completely. I'd add that I think benevolent
dictatorships generally work in inverse proportion to the amount the
dictator has to intervene. So I'd rather we take any ex-cathedra
intervention as an opportunity to find out how the community can handle
things next time on its own.

William

--
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Censorship: Speedy deletion of porn articles

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>On 3/8/07, Yonatan Horan <yonatanh at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>It has recently (about two months ago) come to my attention that articles
>>on
>>the Hebrew Wikipedia are speedy deleted. I translated the Jenna Jameson
>>article from the English Wikipedia and it was very quickly speedy deleted
>>and I was indefinitely blocked due to being a sockpuppet of some guy (of
>>course no checkuser request was done).
>>
>>
>
>
><snip>
>
>Anyway, despite all the above, a few admins have
>
>
>>said that they will speedy delete any porn articles created on the Hebrew
>>Wikipedia. Currently there are a few porn articles which are about the
>>movie
>>Deep Throat and two other articles that I don't recall at the moment. This
>>is a foundation issue because the situation right now is effectively
>>censorship of articles that some people feel do not have a place on the
>>wikipedia.
>>
>>
>
>
>
>Contrary to the snide response of Gerard, this is a real issue. Articles
>which pass muster in one language should not be blocked in another one.
>
>

Depends. This is an encyclopedia, not hustler magazine. Some article
content is simply inappropriate
based upon the culture. In Cherokee, use of the word "wadoli" is
considered offensive in polite speech, but
english speakers have no such prohibition about discussing anything
considered taboo.

Sex and sexual behavior is not a topic that is considered appropriate in
public in my culture. Not because its obsence or due
to any outdated morality, but because its considered a spiritual and
private matter. Many cultures have such views.

You cannot view the entire world based upon the English Language (or the
lack of respect English speakers tend to have
towards their own language) or the culture or beliefs of the English
Wikipedia, so this argument may not address the issues.
Words are powerful, words can hurt. If the Hebrew Wikipedia does not
want articles like those due to cultural issues, this should be respected.

The culture on the English Wikipedia does not dictate the culture of
other Wiki's, nor should it. The English Wikipedia has its liberal
and open culture, and the other wikipedia's have theirs...

:-)

Jeff


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] AJAX and .aspx as technologies for MediaWiki?

body:
Virgil Ierubino wrote:

 >
 >> You haven't, it seems, been taking part in the other threads where
this keeps getting discussed, however. The current
 >> problem is to define our parser's behaviour, which is proving
 >> to be a stressful and difficult task.
 >
 > Define it how? And what other threads on what other mailing lists?

To be honest, I keep seeing talk about "defining the parser's
behaviour", but I haven't seen any actual work on it at all. (I'm not
saying there hasn't been any, only that I haven't seen it.)

My flex/bison-based parser has a grammar definition in it (after all,
that's what bison is all about). It is currently a mix between "real"
rules (i.e. the ones you would want in the formal grammar) and "fixer"
rules (those which work around invalid input; those which prevent the
parser from coming back with a "syntax error"). The only thing needed to
create a formal grammar is to strip out the latter ones, and then add
new grammar rules for the syntaxes that have been introduced since
development on flexbisonparse stopped and those that were never
implemented (e.g. HTML tags).

Timwi


body:
Yonatan Horan wrote:

>I strongly resent your reply. It seems like you have some similar issues
>with Pokemon articles and that's the reason you lashed out the way you did.
>The reason I raised this issue on this mailing list is not because of some
>misplaced sense of outrage. The incident I was talking about took place two
>months ago and the only reason I mentioned it was to fully disclose any
>relevant information so other people don't come on here later on and say
>that the only reason I'm bringing this issue to the attention of others is
>due to a vendetta against the Hebrew Wikipedia or something of the sort.
>This isn't about me trying to provoke anything. It's about a certain group
>of admins ignoring the fact that speedy deletion of porn articles was never
>passed as a policy on hewp (and there is more than one sysop who can attest
>to this). As I said previously, I don't have any particular interest in porn
>and the fact that I've never edited an article that has anything to do with
>this topic on the english wikipedia supports that. Ron Jeremy and Jenna
>Jameson are both notable enough to have their own article on any wikipedia,
>whether it be English, Hebrew or Malaysian. Attempts have been made to
>resolve this issue "in-house" have failed, otherwise I wouldn't have posted
>it to this mailing list. I can't find the specific meta page at the moment
>but it isn't English Wikipedia only policy that wikipedia isn't censored. If
>the german wikipedia decided to delete all articles regarding Nazi Germany,
>etc. would you have reacted the same way? Or maybe if the Chinese Wikipedia
>decided to ban all articles on the issue of democracy? I hope you rethink
>your response and maybe try not to treat me as a troll when I really am not
>one.
>
>-Yonatan
>
>
>
Perhaps you should make these arguments to the folks running the Hebrew
Wikipedia? How about
posting articles about famous Hebrew porn stars? See if that flies.
Would be a good test of what you say.
I do respect the Hebrew Wikipedia stance on this topic and standing up
for their culture. I have to agree
with that community. You should take your arguments back there.

Ask nicely to be let back on and see where it goes.

:-)

Jeff


subject: [Wikitech-l] No flamefests please

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> This list is under temporary moderation.
> Remember, this list is for working, not flames.

I would like to be notified by e-mail when a message I send is rejected.
Can this be turned on somehow?

Thanks,
Timwi


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Conservapedia

body:
> Ahh, wrong link, its
> http://www.conservapedia.com/Examples_of_Bias_in_Wikipedia obviously.
> Sorry 'bout that

A website who's sole aim is combating bias, and they don't even know
what bias means. Most of that page is just a list of Wikipedia's
mistakes (many of which they acknowledge have since been fixed) - few
of them are mistakes that indicate bias. For example, they complain
that our mathematical articles aren't sufficiently rigorous - I wasn't
aware that rigour was a conservative quality...


body:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> (1) The XML would be close to the HTML version that most people see
> when they view articles in their web browser, so less parsing would
> need to be done when presenting articles for viewing.

This conclusion is incorrect. It doesn't matter how "close" they are to
each other, you would still need to parse it.

Timwi


body:
Yonatan Horan wrote:

>Heh, as I said previously, the block was lifted within three days as it was
>clear to more than one admin that I was erroneously blocked. I wouldn't have
>brought this issue to foundation-l if attempts to resolve the issue on the
>Hebrew Wikipedia had succeeded. All of what you're suggesting has already
>been done and different compromises were already attempted. The other thing
>is that while you may not be inclined to believe what I'm saying, the
>community never decided this should be policy, it's just that some admins
>enforce it as if it were policy.
>
>-Yonatan
>
>
>
Then you need to go make your arguments to the folks on that Wiki or
fork the Hebrew Wikipedia
and head off on your own if you cannot make headway. The folks here are
not going to dictate to
another group to do something contrary to their culture. It's an open
internet after all.

Good luck.

:-)

Jeff


from_name: Zoney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Human eye

body:
On 08/03/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> A very nice recent example of what our top notch artists can do with
> Inkscape:
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Eye-diagram.svg
>
> How do we reach out to more people with skills like this?
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
>
>
Credit the author inline where the images/diagrams are used. It's only fair;
they are after all the copyright owner even if a licence to use under the
GFDL has been allowed.

Zoney

--
~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...


body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>Since when are the different language Wikipedias supposed to defend
>nationalistic or cultural norms?
>
>
Since the English Wikipedia folks do JUST THAT, as an example. Why
should there be categories such as
LGBT entertainers, authors, etc. There are no categories for HETERO
authors, actors, etc. Oh, I forgot,
that's a CUTTURAL NORM on the english Wikipedia that we OPENLY DISCUSS
sexual behavior and put
labels on people, whether they like it or not, or whatever or not is
offends others, and then RAM IT DOWN
EVERYONE ELSE'S THROATS.

There's a great example of an open cultural norm on the English
Wikipedia. Putting labels on people prevents you from seeing the real
person beneath and fosters BIAS. Something we should avoid.

In essence, what I am saying here is that the OPENNESS and NPOV
viewpoints are PART OF THE ENGLISH WIKIPEDIA CULTURE. I agree
they are erstwhile concepts and important, but they are very much
European attitudes, and not all cultures embrace them the same way.

>You seem to imply that the NPOV varies from language to language.
>
>
Yep. It does.

>
>
Jeff


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] "Planet" feed aggregators ( now running at
 http://WikiBlogPlanet.com/ )

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Nick Jenkins wrote:
>> An initial version is already up and running at http://WikiBlogPlanet.com/ ;
>
> Guess you beat me to it; planet.wikimedia.org will be up a bit later.

http://planet.wikimedia.org/ up now; I've only stuck on a couple of
people who asked in here so far.

The theme's a little plain and MonoBook-ish; it wouldn't hurt to add a
little flair. If someone wants to play with it and submit improvements,
well I'm no graphic designer really. ;)

The template (default) & CSS/logos (customized) are available on our SVN:
http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/tools/planet/

Nick, I'd love it if you can keep Wiki Blog Planet around as a more
"flavorful" channel, while Planet Wikimedia will remain a little more
focused.

At the moment administration is done via the .ini file... if there's a
nice web front-end for administrating the channels that would be spiffy,
though. (And if there isn't one, I don't think it would be hard to
create one. It's a pretty straightforward file.)

Just a note: WordPress can produce feeds for a specific category quite
easily, so we can filter WordPress-based blogs by category with no
problem. (I'm using category "wiki" on mine.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)


from_name: Oldak Quill

subject: [WikiEN-l] Human eye

body:
On 08/03/07, Zoney <zoney.ie at gmail.com> wrote:
> Credit the author inline where the images/diagrams are used. It's only fair;
> they are after all the copyright owner even if a licence to use under the
> GFDL has been allowed.

Once a user has the time, skills and will to make these kinds of
diagrams, I don't think being credited inline or not will make much
difference. There are many prose editors who contribute fantastically
without being credited inline.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 3/8/07, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> But the Foundation should be entirely kept away from this. There is NO
> way our rare employees should have to deal with editors credentials.

I agree - which is why the simplified proposal only works through an
OTRS queue handled by volunteers (similar to the permissions queue),
and is voluntary.

> At the same time, I believe this proposition will scare away some people
> and will result in people not telling what they are educated or trained
> in;

Why would such a person have a problem saying "I do not want to verify
my credentials, thanks"? That seems like a simple enough thing to ask.

> This is I think a slippery slope toward requesting
> identification for various jobs.

Nobody proposes anything mandatory at this point (except perhaps that
people have to tolerate simple disclaimer templates of their choice on
their user page).

> What counts is not the credential of the person, but giving a source for
> a controversial content. This is not because someone has a validated phd
> that he should be more reliable than another.

But people can, and will, make reference to the credentials people
claim on their user pages. Both the people claiming them, and others
reading them. The Essjay case has shown this.

> Last, we should stop being the valet of the press. Each time there is a
> noise in the press, some feel we should respond, apology, change the way
> we are doing things.

Not each time. When some newspaper reports "Wikipedia claimed xy was a
pedophile" and it is just a common case of vandalism that was fixed in
5 minutes, then we realize this is hyperbole and shouldn't result in
immediate action.

When USA Today had an editorial that showed that a serious case of
personal attack vandalism remained for months, then this led to some
positive reforms about living people biographies (much of the current
en.wp policy on this topic was written after the incident). I do not
regret these reforms in the slightest.

In the fake credentials case, I also think some cautious reform steps
are in order. We're not going to become a "credentialed encyclopedia",
but it makes perfect sense to me to treat such statements with some
disclaimers, in lieu of any verification. Irrespective of any media
event, for a typical user, the simple fact that Wikipedians have
thought about such things, and come up with a carefully balanced
policy for them, would inspire some trust.

Sticking our collective head in the sand is as dangerous as acting
like we don't have one. I believe the credentials problem deserves
serious attention. Therefore I think this is an important & healthy
discussion, and I hope you will continue to contribute to it.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

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

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


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

body:
Florence Devouard wrote

> What I mostly want to make sure is that this happens because editors
> think it is important, not because the WMF told them it is mandatory
> from now on.

Basically I agree. Wikipedia has in the past been a place where people do not usually 'argue from authority', based on claims to be qualified.  I don't think that should change. The basic content policies do not need to mention any kind of qualifications or credentials for editors.  So that for the most important part of the mission, writing good articles, this is all secondary.  (It is more important than, for example, people claiming conversational Spanish, but less important than being able to support edits to content with references.)

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam


from_name: Nick Jenkins

body:
> > We already have several instances of this happening:
> >
> > 1) Expanding signatures: ~~~~
> > 2) Pipe trick: [[Help:Contents|]]
> > 3) {{subst:Page}}
> > ...and maybe others.
>
> Nonsense.  There is no possible way a null edit should be able to
> activate any of those, because those strings cannot exist in a saved
> page (barring bugs) unless escaped somehow, in which case a null edit
> still won't trigger them.

You do realise that the phrase "no possible way" just makes me want to find a
way, right? ;-)

Here's at least one way to get a null edit to change something, in 3 steps.
[Note: this works on my SVN test wiki, but on the Wikipedia, step 1 generates
 a not-so informative HTML page that says, in it's entirety, "Error"].

Step 1: Create a new user account, with this username: ~~~

Step 2: User ~~~ should edit a page, add the string "~~~", and save.

Step 3: That user, or another user, should then make a null edit on the same page.

The result of the null edit in step 3 will be that this:
[[User:~~~|~~~]]

Is changed into this:
[[User:[[User:~~~|~~~]]|[[User:~~~|~~~]]]]

... and there, proof-by-existence, you have a MediaWiki null edit that changes
something :-)

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: Platonides

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>> A lot of our videos aren't even used in the projects, even though
>> there are interesting and informative.. like
>> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Pop-o-matic_video.ogg
>
> Audio for this doesn't seem to be aligned for me. (Giant pop sound,
> then I watch the hand hit the button.) Using Java 2 1.5.0, FF
> 1.5.0.10, WinXP.
>
> Brianna

It happens to me too, *also with Videolan*. Does anyone hear it while
the button is pressed?


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Really-Free Library

body:
On 08/03/07, Roger Dearnaley <rpdearnaley at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I stumbled on this interesting essay on an admin's user page:

I don't think this essay is a very good allegory for Wikipedia (for
example, I don't think the "protection room" works, the userbase is
too different, physical=/=Internet). I suppose it's close enough to
scare a few people.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


subject: [Foundation-l] Update of Foundation organization

body:
On 07/03/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Oldak Quill wrote:
>
> >On 06/03/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>This is naive.  I am very much in support of of maximum volunteer
> >>input.  You cannot oblige anybody to work a specified number of hours
> >>per week unless they are getting something out of it.  That something
> >>may still be intangible, like personal satisfaction, instead of money;
> >>pure altruism is unlikely to be enough.
> >>
> >>
> >Surely those who volunteer their time and energy to Wikimedia projects
> >are in some way committed to what the Foundation is trying to achieve?
> >If this is the case, then most of our volunteers *do* get satisfaction
> >out of their work. I don't think this satisfaction would disappear if
> >they started being asked to do tasks rather than electing to do them.
> >Volunteers would volunteer to their own areas of interest, after all.
> >Perhaps I misunderstand you?
> >
> The range of task available to be done on Wikipedia.  Very few of us
> will find that even a norrowly defined box of tasks is ever exhauted.
> It is a mistake to think that because you can adapt to having a larger
> box of tasks handed to you, others will react the same way to such
> circumstances.  Someone's refusal to expand his box of tasks does not
> imply a lessened committment to Wikipedia.  You can ask volunteers to do
> additional tasks, but you cannot oblige them to do those tasks.

I think you can give particularly committed volunteers tasks of
responsibility that they will feel obliged to fulfil such that the
Foundation can come to rely on them.

> >Similarly, I feel committed to what the Foundation is aiming to
> >achieve. I started to get involved with Wikimedia by editing articles
> >on Wikipedia. I was pleased to be adding to a free encyclopedia. I
> >loved the fact that what I added could be adapted and reused without
> >ever becoming unfree. I slowly began to appreciate the aims of the
> >Foundation on a far more philosophical level. It is this kind of
> >philosophical commitment that allows me to stand in the cold for a
> >couple of hours and would allow me to be relied upon in a specified
> >voluntary position.
> >
> Philosophical committment comes with time, but a volunteer must still
> give priority to real life.

Always. I give priority to my "real life" over earning money also, but
I still get things done.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


body:
Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

> The Cunctator wrote:
>
>> Since when are the different language Wikipedias supposed to defend
>> nationalistic or cultural norms?
>>
>>
And here is a good example on the Cherokee Wikipedia as to why this
statement has a great deal of merit.

http://chr.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CULTURE

(There's an english version if you do not read Cherokee)

:-)

Jeff


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily Mirror article today

body:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/tm_method=full%26objectid=18721683%26siteid=89520-name_page.html

Pretty good, actually. Long interview with Charles Matthews, shorter
chat with me.

A selection of amusing deleted stuff from BJAODN.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Autograph pages

body:
On 08/03/07, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/7/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Oh god. Userboxes were bad enough. What on earth is this new "sign my
> > autograph page" trend?
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ANNAfoxlover
>
> May I offer a solution? http://guestbook.wikia.com/ - a wiki purely
> for signing autograph pages. And perhaps the first wiki inspired by a
> post on wikien-l. :)

I don't mind trends like this because they help to build the
community. Why would it be sensible to move it off Wikipedia and
outside the community?

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] SIN PALABRAS...

body:
On 3/8/07, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com> wrote:
> I thought this list was somewhat moderated?

Not very much. Anyone who subscribes is allowed to post. I've
unsubscribed that spammer and added the address to the block list.

Angela


subject: [Foundation-l] SIN PALABRAS...


body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>In essence, what I am saying here is that the OPENNESS and NPOV
>
>
>>viewpoints are PART OF THE ENGLISH WIKIPEDIA CULTURE. I agree
>>they are erstwhile concepts and important, but they are very much
>>European attitudes, and not all cultures embrace them the same way.
>>
>>
>
>
>Impressive, that you consider NPOV, the core policy of Wikipedia (not just
>the English Wikipedia), part of the English Wikipedia culture.
>
>
How is putting labels on people to create external bias NPOV? Here is
one area where our culture
and the english wikipedia culture differ. We do not ever put labels on
people this way. Someone's
personal sexual behavior is private, and certainly not an open topic in
an encyclopedia.

>
>
>>You seem to imply that the NPOV varies from language to language.
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>Yep. It does.
>>
>>
>
>Do you recognize that as a problem?
>
>

Yes, it can be. What is NPOV to you may not be to me (as evidenced by my
previous comment).

Jeff


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 3/8/07, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> But the Foundation should be entirely kept away from this. There is NO
>> way our rare employees should have to deal with editors credentials.
>
> I agree - which is why the simplified proposal only works through an
> OTRS queue handled by volunteers (similar to the permissions queue),
> and is voluntary.
>
>> At the same time, I believe this proposition will scare away some people
>> and will result in people not telling what they are educated or trained
>> in;
>
> Why would such a person have a problem saying "I do not want to verify
> my credentials, thanks"? That seems like a simple enough thing to ask.

Many editors of huge quality are not willing to provide their real name.
Why would they consider sending this information to a totally anonymous
email address handled by volunteers, who are not necessarily identified
under their real name and have signed no confidentiality agreement them ?

>> This is I think a slippery slope toward requesting
>> identification for various jobs.
>
> Nobody proposes anything mandatory at this point (except perhaps that
> people have to tolerate simple disclaimer templates of their choice on
> their user page).

I think we are dangerously going on a path with less and less of
transparency.

You are suggesting that people (who may be from many different origins -
including from countries no OTRS volunteers have the single idea of the
educational system) send to an anonymous email address, a proof of
credential that the OTRS volunteers will have to take the time to
analyse, take the responsability to validate, then report on the wiki.

And editors will have to trust that, without seeing the information ?

I think that is weird. Really. And, seeing the pain that is already
going on on OTRS to manage current emails, I think it will not scale
because too complex.

Why not launching a campaign rather with two goals
* those who are identified are invited to provide some references for
anyone (anyone, publicly) to check the information.
* educating the press interviewing editors that they should simply think
of asking the person to provide relevant data
* make it clear that lying about credentials and using that expertise
"power" is bad. I guess Essjay feels very ashamed right now, and so
would anyone in his right mind.

>> What counts is not the credential of the person, but giving a source for
>> a controversial content. This is not because someone has a validated phd
>> that he should be more reliable than another.
>
> But people can, and will, make reference to the credentials people
> claim on their user pages. Both the people claiming them, and others
> reading them. The Essjay case has shown this.
>
>> Last, we should stop being the valet of the press. Each time there is a
>> noise in the press, some feel we should respond, apology, change the way
>> we are doing things.
>
> Not each time. When some newspaper reports "Wikipedia claimed xy was a
> pedophile" and it is just a common case of vandalism that was fixed in
> 5 minutes, then we realize this is hyperbole and shouldn't result in
> immediate action.
>
> When USA Today had an editorial that showed that a serious case of
> personal attack vandalism remained for months, then this led to some
> positive reforms about living people biographies (much of the current
> en.wp policy on this topic was written after the incident). I do not
> regret these reforms in the slightest.
>
> In the fake credentials case, I also think some cautious reform steps
> are in order. We're not going to become a "credentialed encyclopedia",
> but it makes perfect sense to me to treat such statements with some
> disclaimers, in lieu of any verification. Irrespective of any media
> event, for a typical user, the simple fact that Wikipedians have
> thought about such things, and come up with a carefully balanced
> policy for them, would inspire some trust.
>
> Sticking our collective head in the sand is as dangerous as acting
> like we don't have one. I believe the credentials problem deserves
> serious attention. Therefore I think this is an important & healthy
> discussion, and I hope you will continue to contribute to it.

I am willing to discuss it.

But I insist that the Foundation be not involved in this. If the
Foundation itself pushes a policy of this type and manage credential
stuff, we are clearly labelled editors.

And it will really bugs me if I see in the press an official statement
from the Foundation that we promise to work to provide such checking,
when we will not.

And who will take the time to explain the various languages communities
that "euh, no, this will not happen actually"

What I mostly want to make sure is that this happens because editors
think it is important, not because the WMF told them it is mandatory
from now on.


body:
On 08/03/07, xaosflux <xaosflux at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is great news, hope it catched on even more!

Although not quite the same, I'm sure students have been editing
Wikipedia as revision for years. I know many people who find it an
enjoyable and effective way to increase their understanding of a
particular subject.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Review

body:
On 3/8/07, Ben Yates <ben.louis.yates at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Aside from any particulars, what this episode in general represents if
> > anything is how mob rule has overstepped even the Arbcom's role, at a
> time
> > when JW has been almost completely out of the loop.
> >
> > -Stevertigo
>
> Isn't Jimmy just supposed to be the proverbial head of state at this
> point, no longer the commander in chief?

The last time I checked, the arbcom's powers are derived from Jimbo, not the
other way round, so Jimbo had every right to act, since he is superior to
the arbcom in hierarchical terms.

Also, I'm not sure what the difference between a "head of state" and
"commander in chief" is - IIRC, they are the same in most countries, where
the head of state is also the head of the country's military. I'm sure
there's a meaningful point here, but it seems that the wrong word's been
used.

Johnleemk


body:
On 08/03/07, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> For the record, I am totally opposed to such a model.

I agree with what Florence says and oppose credential verification
generally. I also want to add a specific opposition to this proposal
as it gives the impression that credentials are default and that users
have to opt-out.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


body:
On 08/03/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:

> I agree with what Florence says and oppose credential verification
> generally. I also want to add a specific opposition to this proposal
> as it gives the impression that credentials are default and that users
> have to opt-out.

More importantly, I'm not sure it does have a point except in extreme cases.

Essjay got all the community jobs going because he earnt them through
doing lots of hard work well. His edits using his claimed credentials
were few compared to that. But the latter were enough to have him
asked to resign all the former.

I think the example of Essjay, and the community approbation at his
falsely-claimed credentials, demonstrates that "don't lie on your
userpage" is *already* an implicit rule, and doesn't need a special
rule (per Shelton) or a registry for credentials (per Jimbo or Erik) -
editors of good faith won't lie about credentials. Many even link to
their university or company.

- d.


body:
geni wrote:

>On 3/8/07, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
>>How is putting labels on people to create external bias NPOV? Here is
>>one area where our culture
>>and the english wikipedia culture differ. We do not ever put labels on
>>people this way. Someone's
>>personal sexual behavior is private, and certainly not an open topic in
>>an encyclopedia.
>>
>>
>>
>
>How were you planning to write about say [[Peter Tatchell]]? or pretty
>much anyone listed on:
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:LGBT_rights_activists
>
>
>
>>Yes, it can be. What is NPOV to you may not be to me (as evidenced by my
>>previous comment).
>>
>>
>
>That isn't how NPOV works. NPOV is meant to be an objective standard.
>
>
Or how about:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Lynde
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Sargent

I guess its OK to "out" them since they are deceased now -- doesn't
matter what impact it might
have on their children or grandchildren? This is my point.

Or this one is a great one. Look at the disputed tag "Categorization of
People"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Gay_actors

This is a far from NPOV in my culture as you can get. So where are the
"Heterosexual Actors" category, or are they
in the group "if you have not been labeled with our POV labels, you are
hetero".

Jeff


from_name: Travis Derouin

subject: [Wikitech-l] postcomment extension

body:
Hi,

I've added an extension we've been using at wikihow for awhile to
easily post new messages to discussion pages:

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Postcomment

It's pretty basic. You can see it in action here:

http://www.wikihow.com/Discussion:Transfer-Cassette-Tape-to-Computer

Travis