from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Times They are a'Changin'

body:
Note:Forgive me if this is a little out of date-- just
catching up.

--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at joey.bomis.com> wrote:
> ...we can all just talk about how to best
> avoid this sort of thing in the future.

Well for starters, how about if you, Jimbo. and you,
Ed, don't pamper and coddle people "like" him.  If
there is anything practical to learning about "this
sort of thing."  I would someday when the breezes
permit, like an explanation as to why you let it get
this far.  Perhaps you think as Abe does-- that
'extremist points of view are necessary to Wikipedia,'
even if they are held by people who think of a comment
on their talk page as "vandalism."

Jim, you've put your foot down before-- why is it that
you merely tapped your foot with RK?  At least this is
my perception of it.  As I recall there have been
around 3 users banned in connection with fights with
RK.  This raised to me the issue of an "imbalance,"
and as I suggested to you in private-- this is perhaps
more an issue of your *confusion over the "ethnic
issues",  or lack of time for detail, rather than
anything overtly POV (as others here have suggested.

Ed: I told you on your talk page that I would support
you in a role where you could act as a formal
moderator.  I am still somewhat suspect of you, given
your current cotton-glove defensism for RK.  This
suspicion comes from your  previous statement (perhaps
in haste) that your opinion on matters Israel, are not
your own but rather in deference to the opinions of
your religious leadership.  I think perhaps you've had
time to reflect on this since I first asked, and
perhaps you have formed an opinion of your own.  With
that said-- I think of you as a uniquely soothing
presence, one which was invaluable the other night in
diffusing the situation with RK.

Bcorr: Your journalistic spirit is yet unmatched on
Wikipedia. Thank you for your work in vindicating me--
where previously RK's accusations saw no meaninful
resistance, and no specific retort could be more
damning than your proof that RK himself tampered with
the text to include a term I would never use.
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-October/006792.html
"Shameful", to quote RK. He here violated God's 9th
commandment -- "thou shalt bear no false witness..." I
consider it entirely forgivable-- as is Edward's lame
attempt to cover it up:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-October/006794.html

On this whole list thread: Considering the various
forms of coddling: Attacks on Erik's "strange
precedent"; Abe's silly notion that extreme POV is
necessary for NPOV (thank you Angela); and Jimbo and
Ed's (still, or until just hours ago) seem to want to
make gold out of pyrite.

It's was never a problem with his Jewishness--it was
his *low-self esteem, and persecution complex* that
were the real problems all along.  I'm glad you all
now can see it for what it was.  Robert will be in a
prayer or two (like it or not)-- in the hope that he
comes away from this stronger, and finds some peace of
mind.  I hope he can someday soon rediscover his
*faith-- one which perhaps he knew only of its dogmas
and traditions until now.  Faith is much more than
what many think it is. Faith is sustaining, and the
*true path to "it" is not found in any book, or on any
computer screen.

On his ban-- I think *I* ( whether I have any
"authority" or not, Jimbo ) must take a harder line.
I would like to see "RK" permanently banned from
Wikipedia.   (No, I dont agree with Martin that he
simply "wont be back.")   That said, if  "Robert
Kaiser", after getting down from his self-appointed
fictitional role as 'defender of all things Jewish,'
wishes to return as "Robert,"  I would only be
encouraging.

Let "RK" be no more.  But if *Robert finally wants to
introduce himself, I for one would like to meet him.
Jim and Ed, Abe, et al.  I dont mean to be rude--I
simply dont have time here to beat around the burning
bush.

If I may choose this as a final word: 'Shalom,'
~S~

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk

subject: [WikiEN-l] RK's vandalism spree

body:
Axel wrote
> 4 edits

Here is a list of RK's pure vandalism edits today. In these edits, RK blanks
the page and (optionally) adds insults and profanity.

23:54, 1 Oct 2003 Talk:Christian-Jewish reconciliation (While you are
harassing me and slandering Catholics and Jews, this page will be blanked.
What is so hard to understand about this?)
23:53, 1 Oct 2003 User:Eloquence (Stop vandalizing my home page. Your
harassment of me is not acceptable.)
23:47, 1 Oct 2003 User:Louis Kyu Won Ryu
23:45, 1 Oct 2003 User:MyRedDice
23:45, 1 Oct 2003 User:Angela (You win Angela! If you can vandalize my
home page, I can vandalize yours. As long as you keep vandalizing other
people's pages, yours will be too.)
23:43, 1 Oct 2003 Talk:Christian-Jewish reconciliation (While censorship,
Jew-baiting and Catholic bashing is being practiced, this page WILL be
blanked.)
23:38, 1 Oct 2003 User:MyRedDice (oK, Martin, you win. I will let you keep
vandalizing my home page. )
16:42, 1 Oct 2003 Talk:Christian-Jewish reconciliation
16:17, 1 Oct 2003 Talk:Christian-Jewish reconciliation (WARNING. Anti-
Semitic racists have vandalized this page and protected it.)

That's nine, I think.

-Martin "MyRedDice" Harper


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Consensus on Banning

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Geoff Burling wrote:
>
>>4. This process should not rely on Jimbo. That's for the simple
>>   reason eventually he won't be involved as closely with Wikipedia,
>>   & may be replaced by someone who is not as ``hands-off" or
>>   ``wise" or ``lazy" as Jimbo has been, & starts to push her/his
>>   own POV onto all of us.
>>
>
>Well, I'm not going anywhere.  I might die, of course, as might
>happen to any of us.  But I have no plans to that effect.  :-)
>
>So, although I agree that we should devise processes that rely less
>and less on me, it isn't because I'm not going to be as closely
>involved as I am now.  I'm here for the long haul, as far as I know.
>
It's a good idea, but for the wrong reasons.  The reliance sounds more
like little kids whining to daddy when their brother hits therm.  It can
be tedious. Sometimes those kids need to learn how to solve their own
problems as part of growing up.

Ec


from_name: Alex R.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "blairr" <blairr at telus.net>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2003 11:04 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

> That's good for vandals, but what about problem users.
> For things like strange edits (eg Nuuk/Godthab), and users that have made
> POV changes, as well as other things.
>
> I like the idea of mediation by a select group of users, as well as
> empowering these users, if the user-in-question does not change their
> behavior, to orchestrate bans.
>
> - Vancouverguy

I would keep the mediators and arbitrators two distinct
groups. If you go in front of a mediator and know they
have been or might be an arbitrator then you may not
consider them your friend.

Mediation and arbitration are two very different processes.
Mediation is trying to get people to talk, communicate
and come to some kind of compromise. Mediators allow
people to take any position they want and then they try
to have the parties see the position of the other side to
appreciate it and see if there is any merit in the other side's
POV. It is really a lot like the NPOV process we encourage
here.

An arbitratror (from ancient Roman origins) is a neutral decision
maker who looks at the differentPOVs and tries to find the
proper interpretation of the parties differing POVs to find
the controlling opnion in terms of rules and events and
the interpretation of those rules in relation to the events.
While the arbitrator (or arbitration committee) must only
come to one opinion it may not even be the opinions of
the parties, they may decide on a third opinion. Also the
parties going into arbitration basically agree that whatever
decision the arbitrator comes to will be binding on both
of them. Thus they are giving up their particular position
in an appeal to the impartiality of the arbitration process.

You can't talk to an arbitrator the way you talk to a mediator.
 Also the arbitration process is open to some scrutiny
(though it may not be public as in a court because it is done
by the consent of the parties not through the coersion of
 the state). Mediation cannot really work unless it is
confidential and the parties do not fear a penalty for
somehow failing in the mediation process.

Sorry for goiing on but these are two incredibly complex
processes that have very long histories and many
different types of manifestation in the behavior of
groups of people so it is very difficult to take all the
knowledge I have about these two processes and
condence them down into layperson nutshells. Please
excuse my verbosity!

Alex756


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: RK temp-banned

body:
"Erik Moeller" <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote in message
news:8v5NnLKSpVB at erik_moeller...
> Vicki-
> > That power is supposed to be used only to enforce an already-existing
> > ban: it was created to deal with Michael's endless aliases and can
> > reasonably be used in any similar situation. It doesn't mean that any
> > sysop--of whom, as you note, there are many--can exclude someone
> > from Wikipedia. That way lies instability at best.
>
> It was always allowed for developers to ban signed in users in cases of
> obvious vandalism. Now that sysops have the same ability, I see no reason
> why it should remain limited to people such as myself.

This represents a significant jump in the power wielded by sysops over other
users. Deletion, IP blocking and page protection are insignificant compared
to the ability to effectively block any non-sysop. I was afraid my software
feature might incite a policy change like this, so I made sure my policy
statement was carefully worded. In hindsight, I'm not particularly surprised
Eloquence chose to ignore it.

Eloquence obviously has a different idea of "simple vandalism" than I do. RK
got angry, he lashed out at a few users. He didn't replace the contents of
an article with "poo poo". I hope Jimbo takes this opportunity to clarify
the definition of the term.

Repeat vandalism probably could have been prevented by protecting the user
pages involved. Instead of merely dealing with the effects of RK's actions,
Eloquence was able to take retributive action. I strongly believe that
sysops should not be capable of punishing other users in this way. Threats
of such actions could greatly increase the perception of a power structure;
a pecking order.

-- Tim Starling (still theoretically on holiday)


from_name: Graham Burnett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 3, Issue 17

body:
> >2. The act of banning him, however, sets a disturbing president.
> >
> >
> >
> With all due respect to your mature attitude in the message, I'm not a
> native English speaker either, and I sometimes produce the same kind of
> lovely results, but this is just too precious to go unnoticed.
>

LOL!!!

Graham (quercus robur)

---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.518 / Virus Database: 316 - Release Date: 12/09/2003


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Luc Van Oostenryck

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Drive problem on pliny: command timed out on the
	controler

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Wow, I'm just the bearer of good news today!
>
> The second hard drive on pliny, the one that holds most of the of the
> database, has stopped responding.
>
> Log extract attached.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>

The only thing I can see is that a command timed out on the controler
which was probably still responding since all the ABORT command were
successfull.
I suppose the problem can come from the controler or from the disks.

I can't say more without study first the SCSI protocol and then the code
of the scsi layer and the one of the controler driver.

-- Looxix


from_name: Gutza

subject: [WikiEN-l] Consensus on Banning

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:

>2. The act of banning him, however, sets a disturbing president.
>
>
>
With all due respect to your mature attitude in the message, I'm not a
native English speaker either, and I sometimes produce the same kind of
lovely results, but this is just too precious to go unnoticed.

Gutza


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Peter Gervai

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Server back up after partial crash

body:
On Thu, Oct 02, 2003 at 02:50:01PM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Sorry about the downtime today; everything _should_ now be back up and
> running.

Um, the wikimedia's first press release completely disappeared from the
hungarian wikipedia, along with its history. :-@

Hope it's not lost because... uh...


body:
On Fri, Oct 03, 2003 at 01:10:03AM +0200, Peter Gervai wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 02, 2003 at 02:50:01PM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > Sorry about the downtime today; everything _should_ now be back up and
> > running.
>
> Um, the wikimedia's first press release completely disappeared from the
> hungarian wikipedia, along with its history. :-@

Oh, I see, the whole Wikip?dia: namespace is screwed. Did you upgrade the
sw, Brion? ;-)

Peter


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Profiling

body:
On Fri, 2003-10-03 at 01:11, Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> Well, what I wanted to say is that, even for registered users, the article
> (everything between <div id='article'> and its </div>) could be precalculated
> and stored, and then when needed concatenated between head+content (head
> could be joined with content on user login and whenever a new message
> arrives) and footer+quickbar (only several possibilities for these exist,
> depending on the user prefs, and they could be precalculated too). Only two
> concatenations would be needed, and I guess that more then half of the
> requests of registered users could be served this way.

I eagerly await your patch!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
From: "Vancouverguy" <blairr at telus.net>

> If it is blatent JoeM-style POV that is the problem, there is really no
need
> for arbitration. However in cases like the "Japanese Pornograpy" article,
> then arbitration is nessesary since not everyone may think that the
article
> is actually POV.

I am not sure that an article/NPOV  dispute  is actually the subject of
banning.
Though I guess that one could use an arbitrator to decide what NPOV is,
but is that really very contentious? Can't most people who are here for
a while understand that? Am I giving our users too much credit?

I thought what we were talking about is the problem with behaviour of
users that is a violation of Wikiquette,
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiquette
and this is the basis for some kind of sanction or penalty (i.e access to
the holy grail of wikis).

> If we do decide to do this, there should be a "fast track" process that
> would be more efficient to go by when we are dealing with people like JoeM

That is what I was suggesting when I mentioned a temporary restraining
ban for really outgrageous activity. There would have to be strict
guidelines
for that and an appeal to Jimbo so that there is some due process. Perhaps
it got lost in my verbosity!

Alex756


from_name: peter gervai

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Drive problem on pliny: command timed out on the
	controler

body:
On Fri, 03 Oct 2003 00:42:50 +0200, Luc Van Oostenryck
<luc.vanoostenryck at easynet.be> wrote:

> The only thing I can see is that a command timed out on the controler
> which was probably still responding since all the ABORT command were
> successfull.
> I suppose the problem can come from the controler or from the disks.

Cable?


body:
On Thu, Oct 02, 2003 at 04:21:37PM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-10-02 at 16:13, Peter Gervai wrote:
> > OnUm, the wikimedia's first press release completely disappeared from the
> > > hungarian wikipedia, along with its history. :-@
> >
> > Oh, I see, the whole Wikip?dia: namespace is screwed. Did you upgrade the
> > sw, Brion? ;-)
>
> D'oh! Lemme downgrade that bit again until that's fixed.

Well if you think every possible thing finished sucking today then it's time
to realise that there's plenty further opportunity to find something new that
sucks. :-))

Btw I believe it's okay to freeze Wikip?dia: and Wikipedia: namespaces on HU
for 5 minutes and run a simple conversion on the db to change the namespace
numbers. (Less than 200 articles, lightweight.) You're pretty free to make
all Wikipedia: (without accent) entries to either disappear or transmutate
to, say, Wikimonster:. Probably 2 simple SQL commands would do the job
(without checking, so I could be wrong). Then we could forget this messup.

g.


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bounced from the mailing list

body:
On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 01:31:53PM -0400, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> This will make you laugh:
>
> > Your membership in the mailing list WikiEN-l has been disabled
> > due to excessive bounces The last bounce received from you was
> > dated 01-Oct-2003.  You will not get any more messages from
> > this list until you re-enable your membership.  You will
> > receive 3 more reminders like this before your membership in
> > the list is deleted.
>
> I don't know what that's about, unless I've posted too many times in one
> day? It would be ironic if the LIST ADMINISTRATOR himself got deleted
> from the mailing list!! ^_^
>
> I'd have to go in, *as administrator*, and re-instate myself.

A 'bounce' is a mail the mailing list attempted to send to you that
has failed due to some reason (e.g.: mail address invalid, maximum
mailbox size reached, etc). If too many of the mails it tries to send
to you bounce, the mailing list software assumes that your email-
account is either broken or expired and stops sending more mails.

So it's not related to the number of articles you sent to the list
but the numbers of mails the list was not able to deliver to you.

	JeLuF


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abe's thesis

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Can you give examples of RK taking outrageous positions on
> Israel/Palestine issues?  I don't think he does, and I don't think
that's > quite what Abe's point was.
>
> RK is a pretty good NPOV writer.  Better than most, I think.

I intended to keep myself silent in this debate, but this statement
was simply too much.

Not everybody who often cries NPOV in recent changes is also a good NPOV
writer.

I focus on Islamic topics, not on the Palestine/Israel issues, because
I decided not to read anything about this in Wikipedia anymore.

reinserted by RK into the article [[Islam]]

"An infamous example of a Muslim apostate undergoing persecution is that
of [[Salman Rushdie]], whose novel [[The Satanic Verses]] prompted furious
clerics to issue a [[Fatwa]] for his execution."

Do you consider the words "infamous" and "furious" NPOV? (regardless
of the personal opinion one may have about this case)

deleted from the article [[Islam]] by RK:

"Muslims who believe in the "Five Pillars of Islam" may be offended by the
mention of a violent sixth pillar." [1]

(BTW, I know personally quite a lot of muslims for whom this statement
holds true)

Shall I provide more examples? two more from
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Arabs_and_anti-Semitism&diff=433211&oldid=433202
(anonymous IP on left side, RK on the "right" side)

"Unlike Christianity, Muslims sought to conquer the world through force of
arms, rather than through conversion. As such, when Muslim armies
conquered nations, they felt no special need to force Jews (or Christians)
to convert to Islam. Members of other religions, however, were forced to
convert, or they were killed"

(If someone doesn't understand why I consider this paragraph so ridiculous,
I can provide detailed explanation)

This history page is also a good example for RK doing something he usually
accuses others: Deleting facts who are disagreeable to them. Part in
brackets deleted by RK.

"These verses are not rhetorical; they refer to the attack by the pagans
of Mecca on the city of Medina (also known as Yathrib) where Muhammad was
living. [Having signed a treaty with the three Jewish tribes of the city
to maintain peace and a unified defence force for the city, Muhammad
discovered that when Medina was attacked by the Meccans, the Jewish tribes
refused to abide by the treaty they signed. Further, the Jewish outpost of
Khyber (which had also signed a peace treaty with Muhammad) joined forces
with the Meccans to attack Medina.]"

> The problem with RK is not that he battles to write absurd things in
articles -- the problem with RK is that he's very difficult to work
with, and that -- in the current case -- he really stepped over the
lines in terms of not treating others with respect and kindness.

Not only in the current case. I left the english wikipedia half a year ago
because I couldn't stand any more the sight of recent changes where RK was
labelling people as vandals, trolls, anti-semites, told them "Wikipedia is
no place for you, we don't want you here, go away" and so on.

> Several people have made this claim over time -- that RK is trying to
insert blatant propaganda into articles.  But the examples that I have
seen are very *very* thin,

and very likely to hurt a lot of Muslims deeply in their religious feelings.

If RK's writings correspond to your vision of how NPOV should manifest
itself in Wikipedia, I don't regret to have left the english Wikipedia.
Sorry for the personal attack -- normally I hold you in a very high esteem
-- but your statement made me sad and angry.

greetings,
elian.

[1] Wikipedia "The sixth pillar of Islam" gives a really impressing

"History of use"
"According to Kenneth R. Timmerman's book, "Preachers of Hate: Islam and
the War on America," and his Washington Times article "Truth from the
mouths of terrorists" [4] (published June 19, 2003), the sixth pillar of
Islam is violent jihad. In Timmerman's words, "Think of it: Murder has
become the sixth pillar of Islam, according to the terrorists. Where are
the Muslim leaders to denounce this?"

The phrase has also been used by orientalists, and some Muslims, although
the meanings plainly can differ widely."


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
In response to Gutza's request, here is what Alex
said, but with 1100 words removed. I hope this is an
accurate summary. Apologies if not. Angela.

Confidential mediation could be useful for resolving
disputes.

This would only involve those directly involved in a
dispute. The advantage of it being private is that
comments you make can not be later used against you.

How it would work:
You would have a mediator and an arbitrator (impartial
decision maker). This could be Jimbo or a group of
trained users. You could have 3 arbitrators (one per
side and one impartial).

All complaints are made to a complaint officer who
passes these on to the mediator. Someone else could
act as advocate for the problem user. All this should
be done in private, maybe by phone. This group then
tries to solve things. If they can't, the complaint
officer makes a record of all the allegations.

Jimbo then chooses an arbitrator. The advocate of the
problem user has to reply to the complaint. The
problem user has some say over who the arbitrators
are. The posts (complaint officer/ advocate/
arbitrator) could be short term appointments.

This is a simplified version of what the American
Arbitration Association (see www.adr.org) do.

There should be one person to represent the complaints
by other users.

Aim: more rational and reasoned process.

You just need 12-15 users to spend a few hours a week
on this to make it work. Lawyers, social workers,
psychologists or philosophy types especially could
help. You could vote for certain people to be given
each post. The process would take about a month. Jimbo
could still overrule it.

This would calm things down and not be so time
consuming.

________________________________________________________________________
Want to chat instantly with your online friends?  Get the FREE Yahoo!
Messenger http://mail.messenger.yahoo.co.uk


subject: [WikiEN-l] Where can I find a WikiBot?

body:
Hello,

Sorry for bothering you with something I'll probably get bashed about
for bringing up, but where can I find a bot for /editing/ Wikipedia
articles? Some user has started creating articles with the wrong format
on the Romanian Wikipedia, I don't have the proper permissions to
perform SQL queries on it, and due to the lack of regexp replace
functions in MySQL, even that would be pretty much useless in the end.
What I really need is a PHP bot I can program to get the current content
of some articles, perform some preg_replace's in them and post them
back. Can anyone suggest a basis for such a bot?

Thanks,
Gutza


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Database error when moving pages. Server crash
	issue?

body:
On Fri, 2003-10-03 at 03:29, Ulrich Fuchs wrote:
> Have there been any updates on the german Wikipedia Software since yesterday,
> or ist this a problems arising out of the server crash?
>
> When moving a page, I'll get this message:
>
> Es gab einen Syntaxfehler in der Datenbankabfrage. Die letzte Datenbankabfrage
> lautete: "UPDATE LOW_PRIORITY searchindex SET si_title='europ?ische
> wildkatze' WHERE si_page=19358" aus der Funktion "SearchUpdate::doUpdate".
> MySQL meldete den Fehler: "1016: Can't open file: 'searchindex.MYI'. (errno:
> 145)".
>
> However, the page seems to have been moved correctly.

Ugh, not again. I'll have to run a repair on those tables...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
Alex R. wrote:

>Anyway, this is just another legal beagle suggestion, and
>as usual it is not "legal" advice, just a suggestion.
>
>
>
I'll say, judging by the length of your message, this not only looks
legal, it looks like a full-fledged license agreement. I have to be
honest here and say I could only go thorugh half of it (maybe less)
before my attention span spanned to something else (such as writing this
e-mail). I highly doubt the average Wikipedian's attention span spans
considerably wider than mine. Can you please resume? For as long as I've
been able to follow, you make sense, just KISS please!

Gutza


body:
Vancouverguy wrote:
>Umm...it's been giving me an intermittent "503
Service Temporarily Unavailable" error.

That is because there is a limit on how many pages you
can open within a certain time period. The limit is
currently very low to prevent overloading the server.
You just have to work really slow or go off to make
coffee every so often. It's driving me mad, but I
expect the limit will be raised when the new server
comes. Sometimes changing browser will solve it. In
Mozilla, I am totally banned from editing for a few
minutes, but if I then switch to IE, it often lets me
edit, (but sometimes doesn't let me write anything in
the edit summary field). Strange.

Angela.

________________________________________________________________________
Want to chat instantly with your online friends?  Get the FREE Yahoo!
Messenger http://mail.messenger.yahoo.co.uk


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Stevertigo wrote:
> Well for starters, how about if you, Jimbo. and you,
> Ed, don't pamper and coddle people "like" him.

Be careful, Stevertigo, that sword cuts in both directions.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Upgrade status

body:
Larousse is now a dual Athlon MP 2800. Or MP 2600, as the BIOS settings
perhaps are not quite right.

Anyway, that's a bit of a step up from an 866MHz Pentium III and should
be a big help!

Pliny has not yet been touched; Jason can give more details on the
hardware issues, but it seems things don't exactly fit and maybe not all
the bits are here yet.

Larousse currently has 2 gigs of ram; with the full 4 gigs that had
earlier been tried in pliny there was some segfaulting, leading to again
suspicions of bad memory. It passed up through the 4th test level on
memtest86 before we got tired and tried downgrading it to 2 but that's
not conclusive.

At some point all the mem should be more thoroughly tested.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
Angela wrote, summarizing Alex:
> Confidential mediation could be useful for resolving
> disputes.

I agree with that.  One of the things that I realized in reading
through Alex's discussion is that I've been trying to do all three
of the following:

1.  Mediation, and I've asked people to email me privately to try to
sort these things out *before* a public explosion.

2.  Arbitration, meaning that I eventually have to make enforceable
decisions.  Here, I've been the district count, court of appeals, and
supreme court all in one.

3.  Executive clemency, or 'pardons', meaning a final check on the
process to let people back even after they've been banned.

But these are all different things, and there are sometimes tensions
between them.

The only one power I really need to keep in the long run is #3, the
ability to be the final "release valve" if some process for mediation
and arbitration goes haywire and I think people are being banned left
and right for little reason, or if after a period of time I think that
a person has reformed, or if I think some terrible injustice was done
in a particular case.

----------

If I understand Ed Poor, he likes being a mediator, but doesn't so
much like being a 'gatekeeper' or 'arbitrator'.  (If that's not right,
no matter, I'm just making up an example.)  I can see that -- some
people would like to help others resolve disputes, but don't want to
be in a position of having to make a decision for or against that
person.  I can testify that trying to do both is, well, exhausting.

Other people may feel, with justification, that although they can
judge cases fairly and reasonably, their own personal style isn't
likely to be so helpful in terms of mediating disputes.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
Alex R. wrote:
> If that private session is not resolved, then
> they go to arbitratoin. Jimbo can always set it
> aside (so it is not strictly speaking arbitration).
> but there can be one or three arbitrators, the
> arbitration is in writing, generally reviewable by
> other members and results in a written decision
> and submitted to Jimbo.

And I'm willing to give up the power to declare 'guilty' if the
arbitration process says 'innocent'.  I'd just like to retain the
ability to set aside a ban in case I think the process has gone
horribly astray.

In practice, I doubt if that would happen.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Committe volunteers requested

body:
Could people please write to me privately to volunteer for mediation
and arbitration committees?  You can't be on both, but please indicate
your willingness to serve on mediation, arbitration, or either, and
your preference, if any, so that I may make some selections based on
what people are willing to do.

That is, your email should say something like:
"I only want to volunteer for the mediation committee."
or
"I prefer mediation, but I'd also do arbitration if you asked."
or
"Either mediation or arbitration is better for me."

Then what I'll do is make appointments, the number depending on the
number of volunteers I get, and I'll make them for a defined period
and I'll stagger the terms, say 1, 2, or 3 years.

I'll try to get a healthy mix of people on the committee, including
some of the people who would almost never vote for a ban.  But also
some of the people who would almost always vote for a ban.  :-) This
will most closely replicate my own internal debate on these matters.

Then, a year from now, we can start a series of votes to make those
positions community-selected.  We can even vote on whether or not to
continue the process or go back to Jimbo-dicatorship.

I'd say let's come up with proposals and vote on it, and then have
elections, and all that, but it would take months to do it that way,
and I think we're all still exhausted from the logo voting debate.

We can work out the details as we go along, rather than trying to
figure it all out a priori.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Is a press release now a good idea?

body:
Matthew Woodcraft wrote:
> If the limiting factor on Wikipedia's growth is people's tolerance for
> slow edits, the effect of faster hardware will be more activity (which
> is great), but not a faster user experience after things have settled
> down.

Well, what I hope we can do is stay one step ahead of the growth in
the future -- something that we haven't done so well in the past.

It is my belief that the next round of upgrades, i.e. the big Opteron
server for $6,000 that we will buy once contributions reach a high
enough level, will give us around 10x our October 1st capacity.
That's substantial, and we'll take a while to outgrow that.  And in
the meantime, we'll be constantly raising money to stay ahead of the
curve.

I've been doing an informal survey of the "big foundations" to try to
find programs that would support us.  It seems likely that such an
approach will be successful, and of course anyone with connections is
invited to help me with that!

--Jimbo


from_name: Cafemusique - Scott Rollins

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
On Thu, 2 Oct 2003, Jake Nelson wrote:

> Fuzheado's system:
> > 0. NORMAL
> > 1. WARNING
> > 2. AUTO-REVERT (auto revert certain pages for the user)
> > 3. TEMPORARY BAN (time expires automatically)
> > 4. LONG TERM BAN (banned until talks to Jimbo)
>
> ...sounds good to me. I think 24 hours for temporary ban is reasonable...
> and I'm not against there being a mechanism in code that auto-unbans after
> that time, perhaps even by default.

I think there may be a need for several lengths of "temporary ban" perhaps
depending on the offence, perhaps depending on the number of repetitions
of the offence, perhaps depending on factors I haven't thought of, but
which discussion might determine have an impact.

Perhaps within #3 there could be a 24-hour ban, then a 7-day ban, then a
30-day ban...gives lots of opportunity for the user to reform...seems
better than constant 24-hour bans or leaping too quickly to long-term ban.

Cafemusique


from_name: Vancouverguy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Two-edged Sword

body:
I have to agree.
Vancouverguy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 7:30 AM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Two-edged Sword

>Stevertigo wrote:
>> Well for starters, how about if you, Jimbo. and you,
>> Ed, don't pamper and coddle people "like" him.
>
>Be careful, Stevertigo, that sword cuts in both directions.
>
>--Jimbo

If I repeat my offer from last year, will Steve or anyone else accept
it?

Make me a "lieutenant" or "sheriff" or "nursery school teacher",
and I will liberally apply "time-out" to anyone who breaks a
rule.

I'll use something like Andrew's graded system of
"consequences":

1. A friendly explanation or reminder.
2. A warning.
3. A unilateral temporary ban (length: anywhere from, say, 3 to
   24 hours)
4. An indefinite ban (to be resolved on the mailing list and/or
   by appeal to our Captain or Head Marshall, Jimbo Wales)

I keep proposing this every 6 months or so, but people keep
objecting that it will erode our freedom. Well, have you ever counted
the number of writers who LEAVE Wikipedia because they have NO FREEDOM
freedom to contribute in peace here?

I say we ought to try it out: say, for a 6-weeks trial period.

If it works, let's keep doing it. If it works but needs
refinement, let's tweak it. It if it doesn't work, let's stop
it.

But anything's better than having several dozen edit wars
simmering at a low boil, ready to erupt like volcanoes at a
moment's notice.

I say, let's give it a try.

Ed Poor
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Two-edged Sword

body:
Well, its usually pretty difficult to deal with IPs, since they usually do a
few edits and then go.

Vancouverguy

----- Original Message -----
From: "Angela" <sloog77 at yahoo.co.uk>
To: <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 7:46 AM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Two-edged Sword

> Ed, do you mean only in relation to logged-in users?
> Or are you proposing changes to the blocking of
> anonymous IPs as well? If only the former, I support
> the idea.
>
> Angela.
>
> ________________________________________________________________________
> Want to chat instantly with your online friends?  Get the FREE Yahoo!
> Messenger http://mail.messenger.yahoo.co.uk
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Two-edged Sword

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> > Make me a "lieutenant" or "sheriff" or "nursery school teacher",
> > and I will liberally apply "time-out" to anyone who breaks a
> > rule.
>
> I support you as part of a committee, but not as a lone ranger.

Yes, me too.  The reason I've never taken Ed up on that generous offer
is that I felt that it would just cause grief for him, and would
likely not have the legitimacy that we all want from the process.

A committee will surely have legitimacy (I'll lend it mine, to start
with, but a track record of reasonable decisions will help a lot, as
will elections).

By 'legitimacy' I mean: widespread support for the process, even when
we may individually not agree with particular outcomes.  Legitimacy is
necessary because in a wiki environment, only shared values can push
us toward shared goals.  Decrees from anyone mean nothing unless
people buy into them.

--Jimbo


from_name: Jake Nelson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] WikiSyntax

body:
tarquin wrote:
> Jake Nelson wrote:
>
> >On meta: [[Wikitax]] and [[Simple ideology of Wikitax]].
> >
> >
> >
>
> I don't think those pages are about wiki markup.
> They are one person's particular ideas on wiki markup. And IIRC they are
> rather weird.
>
>
> I suggest you make a new page called [[Wiki markup]].
>
They are weird, yes, but the question asked was whether there were existing
pages on meta about this. I'd rather see them get reused, myself...

-- Jake


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
Jimbo wrote:
>It is my belief that the next round of upgrades, i.e. the
>big Opteron server for $6,000 that we will buy once
>contributions reach a high enough level, will give us
>around 10x our October 1st capacity. That's substantial,
>and we'll take a while to outgrow that.  And in the
>meantime, we'll be constantly raising money to stay
>ahead of the curve.

Sweet! But what should be our headline announcement?
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia's_first_press_release is announcing
our 300,000th article, but that is based on the article count of only our
MediaWiki Wikipedia versions. It does not count the 20,000+ articles still
under UseMod (we missed the real 300,000 milestone because we simply were not
ready yet). It may just be me, but I think at this point we should just wait
a couple to a few weeks for the more inclusive and exciting-sounding  "one
third of a million" milestone. The number of non-English articles should also
outnumber the English ones by then, so we could also announce that.

What do others think? This could be something we allow each Wikipedia version
to decide on its own (en.wikipedia already had a X00,000 press release this
year, so something a bit different would be nice, at least for en.wikipedia).
But that may be confusing for multilingual press and readers given the
different article counts.

But before we decide on anything, could somebody check my math here
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Multilingual_statistics#2003_Statistics
? I may have overcounted the UseMod wikis....

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
blairr wrote:

>That's good for vandals, but what about problem users.
>For things like strange edits (eg Nuuk/Godthab), and users that have made
>POV changes, as well as other things.
>
>I like the idea of mediation by a select group of users, as well as
>empowering these users, if the user-in-question does not change their
>behavior, to orchestrate bans.
>
Simply making strange edits is not an offence.  Even POV changes are not
in theselves offences.  How a person goes about doing these things is
much more important.

The mediation panel should be able to recommend a ban to Jimbo or a
delegated person.  That recommendation could also include a length of
time for the ban.  If they become involved directly in the ban
themselves it could compromise their objectivity.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
Alex R. wrote:

>I would keep the mediators and arbitrators two distinct
>groups. If you go in front of a mediator and know they
>have been or might be an arbitrator then you may not
>consider them your friend.
>
>Mediation and arbitration are two very different processes.
>Mediation is trying to get people to talk, communicate
>and come to some kind of compromise. Mediators allow
>people to take any position they want and then they try
>to have the parties see the position of the other side to
>appreciate it and see if there is any merit in the other side's
>POV. It is really a lot like the NPOV process we encourage
>here.
>
>An arbitratror (from ancient Roman origins) is a neutral decision
>maker who looks at the differentPOVs and tries to find the
>proper interpretation of the parties differing POVs to find
>the controlling opnion in terms of rules and events and
>the interpretation of those rules in relation to the events.
>While the arbitrator (or arbitration committee) must only
>come to one opinion it may not even be the opinions of
>the parties, they may decide on a third opinion. Also the
>parties going into arbitration basically agree that whatever
>decision the arbitrator comes to will be binding on both
>of them. Thus they are giving up their particular position
>in an appeal to the impartiality of the arbitration process.
>
>You can't talk to an arbitrator the way you talk to a mediator.
> Also the arbitration process is open to some scrutiny
>(though it may not be public as in a court because it is done
>by the consent of the parties not through the coersion of
> the state). Mediation cannot really work unless it is
>confidential and the parties do not fear a penalty for
>somehow failing in the mediation process.
>
>Sorry for goiing on but these are two incredibly complex
>processes that have very long histories and many
>different types of manifestation in the behavior of
>groups of people so it is very difficult to take all the
>knowledge I have about these two processes and
>condence them down into layperson nutshells. Please
>excuse my verbosity!
>
Compared to some of your previous legal explanations, this one was
remarkably succinct. :-)

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
Vancouverguy wrote:

>If it is blatent JoeM-style POV that is the problem, there is really no need
>for arbitration. However in cases like the "Japanese Pornograpy" article,
>then arbitration is nessesary since not everyone may think that the article
>is actually POV.
>
>If we do decide to do this, there should be a "fast track" process that
>would be more efficient to go by when we are dealing with people like JoeM
>
Who is JoeM?  With 300,000 articles each of us necessarily only works on
a small subset of the articles.  It's perfectly understandable that we
may never have heard of a person raising hell over a completely
different topic area.

Ec


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
Gutza's point is right on the money -- too many man/woman hours have
been spent on this and too many bytes sent. Keep it simple.

SHORT TERM
    - Temporary ban on RK, lift after 1-3 days
    - Make sure he understands difference between "User" and "User talk"
    - Reinstate RK fully and keep eye on activities

LONG TERM
We need due process for these cases not because we're legal eagles, but
because 1) it captures the state of affiars and 2) it will save
everyone's time.  There's discussion ad nauseum because folks think
democracy means having to consider every case by individual vote.  It
has to be compartmentalized and captured in some way.

A more defined, comprehensible and fair way would be an escalating set
of warning levels, like DEFCONs (or to be more crude, seven stages of
hell).  This way a user knows where he/she stands, and where he/she's
going.  It would be measureable, well defined and *brief*, something I
know Wikipedians have a tough time doing. :)

A sample system, variations encouraged...

0. NORMAL
1. WARNING
2. AUTO-REVERT (auto revert certain pages for the user)
3. TEMPORARY BAN (time expires automatically)
4. LONG TERM BAN (banned until talks to Jimbo)

I know folks hate labels, "branding" folks or creating classes of users.
However, the RK episode shows it's necessary and far more fair than the
vigilante system we have now.

-Fuzheado


list: textbook-l

from_name: KNOTT, T

subject:
[Textbook-l] turning an image into a usable hyperlink in wiki
	books

body:
I don't normally reply "me too" to a message but I would like it as well for
a different purpose. I'd like to put up a multiple choice question in the
form "Which  of the following diagrams/graphs best represents bah blah blah"
then when users click on one of them, take them to a correct answer, or
incorrect answer page.

Theresa

-----Original Message-----
From: Karl Wick [mailto:karlwick at yahoo.com]
Sent: 02 October 2003 18:31
To: text
Subject: [Textbook-l] turning an image into a usable hyperlink in wikibooks

On my organic chemistry textbook I would like to have the
feature of having a little icon up in the corner of the
editable part of the page that takes the reader back to the
table of contents page. Is this possible to code ? How ?
Right now if you click on an image it takes you a page
about that image. How can I change this destination page to
be the contents page for my book ?

Thanks.
Karl

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
Textbook-l mailing list
Textbook-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Two-edged Sword

body:
--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> >Stevertigo wrote:
> >> Well for starters, how about if you, Jimbo. and
> you,
> >> Ed, don't pamper and coddle people "like" him.
> >
> >Be careful, Stevertigo, that sword cuts in both
> directions.
> >
> >--Jimbo
>
> If I repeat my offer from last year, will Steve or
> anyone else accept
> it?
>
> Make me a "lieutenant" or "sheriff" or "nursery
> school teacher",
> and I will liberally apply "time-out" to anyone who
> breaks a
> rule.
>
> I'll use something like Andrew's graded system of
> "consequences":
>
> 1. A friendly explanation or reminder.
> 2. A warning.
> 3. A unilateral temporary ban (length: anywhere
> from, say, 3 to
>    24 hours)
> 4. An indefinite ban (to be resolved on the mailing
> list and/or
>    by appeal to our Captain or Head Marshall, Jimbo
> Wales)
>
> I keep proposing this every 6 months or so, but
> people keep
> objecting that it will erode our freedom. Well, have
> you ever counted
> the number of writers who LEAVE Wikipedia because
> they have NO FREEDOM
> freedom to contribute in peace here?
>
> I say we ought to try it out: say, for a 6-weeks
> trial period.
>
> If it works, let's keep doing it. If it works but
> needs
> refinement, let's tweak it. It if it doesn't work,
> let's stop
> it.
>
> But anything's better than having several dozen edit
> wars
> simmering at a low boil, ready to erupt like
> volcanoes at a
> moment's notice.
>
> I say, let's give it a try.
>
> Ed Poor

What if a new page is created where the one-day ban
will discussed, and the person will be banned for one
day if, after 24 hours, the general concensus is to
ban. I just can't see banning completely unilaterally
to be that helpful.
LDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Upgrade status

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>Larousse is now a dual Athlon . . .
>
It's important to comment how much we appreciate your efforts in keeping
the masses apprised of what is going on in the technical side, even if
much of the time we have no clue about what you are saying.

Often, just saying things when technology appears to be in technical
default works wonders in maintaining a Wiki spirit of openness.  This
contrasts with saying nothing, and leaving the masses grumbling in the dark.

Those of us who don't understand the technical side, can at least feel
confident that the material is there for those who do.  Thanks.

Ray


from_name: Abe Sokolov

subject: [WikiEN-l] response to Ray - hopefully formatted

body:
I thank Ray Saintonge for reading - and rereading - my lengthy comments,
despite the lack of copyediting for typos, and the formatting problems that
I can't seem to figure out (I've only been having trouble with the margins
on the Wiki mailing list). Although he understood all my points, the
assumptions of his counter-arguments are unrealistic.

His comments, however, highlight my need to further explain why there's no
way that removing RK would do anything to bring the Israel-related articles
under the influence of the idealized set of contributors whom Stan had
described.

First, consider the central cause of all flame wars. It's important to note
that by and large, the more controversial an article gets on Wikipedia, the
more partisan the core group of contributors becomes (e.g., the Roman
Catholic sex abuse scandal, abortion, and Communism - just to name some
recent and never ending flame wars). This is an iron-clad relationship that
few who contribute even scantly to Wiki articles on history and politics can
deny. I acknowledge that other flame wars are far less prolonged and
vicious. While patterns of more manageable disputes over parallel the ones
over Israeli-Palestinian neutrality, the others are less prone to zero-sum
games (see the Wiki article on game theory if this term?s unfamiliar ? btw,
sorry for habitual jargon of the social sciences). They usually far less
emotionally charged, and/or the structure of the antagonists is not
polarized.

I acknowledge that polarized factions is not unique to the Israel-related
articles. There is polarizing left-versus-right political squabbling all the
time on many articles, but the stakes are not as great personally to users.
Disputes are channeled toward something narrowed (such as a particular
policy), rather than an 'us versus them' struggle. For example, consider the
recent disputes over privatization, which I?ve been mediating. Lir and
Daniel Quinlan hold irreconcilable views on the subject: one brings in an
anti-government dogma, the other an anti-capitalist one. But there was no
personal animosity expressed on the talk page (they didn?t even cross paths
? just channeling their mixed feeling though me on the talk page).

Jews worldwide, however, are haunted by the past and ever-vigilant when
criticism of Israel might be imbued with anti-Semitism. Conversely,
Palestinians have suffered declining living standards in the context of
Israeli heavy-handedness, displacement, and marginalization in their
homeland and in any setting of any refugee camp. These two collective
identities are not ?irrational? or ?insane? when individual channel those
frustrations toward hating the enemy; and we should expert their champions
outside the Middle East to quarrel in every forum in which they are both
present at the same time.

On other controversial articles, emotionalism can run high too, but the
structure of the disputes is rarely so polarizing. For example, there is
often conflict over a minority view that challenges an analysis, the
balance, and/or the tone of a Wiki article. However, you don?t inherently
attract two equally-large homogenous groups pitted against each other.

Among the conflict-prone articles on Wikipedia, perhaps only abortion
attracts the same level of polarization and bitterness as the Israel-related
articles. But this is largely a single article, along with a handful of
others that go along with it, not close to receiving the level of attention
garnered by the hundreds of articles related to the Israeli-Palestinian
disputes.

Within the freedom of Wikipedia (which opens the doors to partisans), the
fanacticism and polarization of the two sides on the Palestinian question,
the partisans can gravitate toward the zero-sum conflict demanded by their
fanatical ? and often quite understandable considering where they are both
coming from - worldviews. Thus, we'd have almost daily Mid East flame wars
regardless of whether or not RK's around.

Yes, theoretically RK would be less "effective in presenting [his] view[s]
than a large number of moderates." But the ?moderates? are always going to
be marginalized - with or without RK: the large share of extremists on both
sides will always make more noise than the "silent majority" (not that I
like to borrow Richard Nixon's '68 campaign slogans). A new RK can arrive
any day. Even worse, since the majority of the core contributors are also
partisans, RK's absence would just shatter the workable balance of power
between the opposing forces. Yes, we would like to have a scholarly,
congenial lot rather than what we have, but we?re to going to get it. And
yes, Stan and Ray are correct that the flame wars have driven off a number
of users; but this was the only likely outcome anyway.

In that regard, I do admit that Ray has good reasons to express concerns
over my "[endorsement] of bully tactics and intimidation." I firmly agree as
much as anyone with Ray that "failing to confront these people does not make
the world better or safer." RK must always be prodded to ensure that he?s
reasonably acing in line, but not so constrained that RK can?t be RK. That's
been the status quo for over a year, and it's been working.

However, we should consider lax enforcement policy in light of this context
- with the caveat that RK is reprimanded promptly each time (and with so
many enemies, he?s under enough scrutiny). The Israeli-Palestinian articles
should be regarded as an exception, calling for a measured enforcement of
Wiki policy (and every institution doesn?t enforce all laws and guidelines
to the letter ? just consider all the arcane, non-enforced laws on the books
right now everywhere). There should be a tacit, unstated understanding that
the habits and customs among their core group of Israel-related contributors
are going to be more a function of the emotionalism and fervency of the
real-world Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and not the conventions of
Wikipedia as a whole. However, I?m not saying that RK deserves preferential
treatment. Just don?t ban him, and let?s to more to acknowledge that he?s a
indispensable pillar of the Wiki community.

I'd also point out in closing that the ideals of the Wikipedia project would
favor my laissez-faire, less elitist, and more freedom-oriented approach to
this matter. Little heavy handed intervention from the top (by developers
such as Erik), combined with the free-for-all squabbling from below, has
been working. Impartial experts need not dominate the Israeli-Palestinian
articles (which would be Stan?s elitist ideal) because the struggle and
fervency among all the partisans winds up forging good, neutral articles
after a lot of noise has been made. The problem with little expertise and a
lot of opinion is rectified, not caused, by stalemated edit wars among the
partisans - right now we have a lot of horrible articles that could use some
antagonism to whip them into shape. RK and his edit wars are part of the
solution, not the problem.

_________________________________________________________________
Get McAfee virus scanning and cleaning of incoming attachments.  Get Hotmail
Extra Storage!   http://join.msn.com/?PAGE=features/es


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Two-edged Sword

body:
> From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 7:30 AM
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Two-edged Sword

> I'll use something like Andrew's graded system of
> "consequences":
>
> 1. A friendly explanation or reminder.
> 2. A warning.
> 3. A unilateral temporary ban (length: anywhere
> from, say, 3 to
>    24 hours)
> 4. An indefinite ban (to be resolved on the mailing
> list and/or
>    by appeal to our Captain or Head Marshall, Jimbo
> Wales)
>
> I keep proposing this every 6 months or so, but
> people keep
> objecting that it will erode our freedom. Well, have
> you ever counted
> the number of writers who LEAVE Wikipedia because
> they have NO FREEDOM
> freedom to contribute in peace here?
>
> I say we ought to try it out: say, for a 6-weeks
> trial period.
>
> If it works, let's keep doing it. If it works but
> needs
> refinement, let's tweak it. It if it doesn't work,
> let's stop
> it.
>
> But anything's better than having several dozen edit
> wars
> simmering at a low boil, ready to erupt like
> volcanoes at a
> moment's notice.
>
> I say, let's give it a try.
>
> Ed Poor

Ed, I *love* it when you change your mind.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [WikiEN-l] RK ban deemed unwise

body:
On Thu, 2 Oct 2003 09:39:42 -0400, Poor, Edmund W <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
gave utterance to the following:

>
> I would like to:
> *un-ban RK
> *request that everyone avoid posting on [[talk:RK]]
>
Ed, won't the latter action reinforce RK's misguided impression that his
talk page is sacred and for his use only, the thing which seemed to
trigger his flying off the handle?

His acceptance that user talk pages are intended for Wikipedians to leave
each other messages is probably one of the keys to resolving this.

--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Profiling

body:
On Thursday 02 October 2003 16:19, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-10-02 at 04:16, Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> > On Wednesday 01 October 2003 04:13, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > > Anybody wanna look into optimizing OutputPage::replaceInternalLinks()?
> > > It's a known troublemaker; it's got a bit loop that could probably be
> > > much much more efficiently done.
> >
> > Why would not pages be rendered when saved and stored on disk as HTML, as
> > they are typically saved once and viewed many times? As I understood,
> > disk space is not a problem, but processor time is.
>
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_cache

Well, what I wanted to say is that, even for registered users, the article
(everything between <div id='article'> and its </div>) could be precalculated
and stored, and then when needed concatenated between head+content (head
could be joined with content on user login and whenever a new message
arrives) and footer+quickbar (only several possibilities for these exist,
depending on the user prefs, and they could be precalculated too). Only two
concatenations would be needed, and I guess that more then half of the
requests of registered users could be served this way.


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Two-edged Sword

body:
>Stevertigo wrote:
>> Well for starters, how about if you, Jimbo. and you,
>> Ed, don't pamper and coddle people "like" him.
>
>Be careful, Stevertigo, that sword cuts in both directions.
>
>--Jimbo

If I repeat my offer from last year, will Steve or anyone else accept
it?

Make me a "lieutenant" or "sheriff" or "nursery school teacher",
and I will liberally apply "time-out" to anyone who breaks a
rule.

I'll use something like Andrew's graded system of
"consequences":

1. A friendly explanation or reminder.
2. A warning.
3. A unilateral temporary ban (length: anywhere from, say, 3 to
   24 hours)
4. An indefinite ban (to be resolved on the mailing list and/or
   by appeal to our Captain or Head Marshall, Jimbo Wales)

I keep proposing this every 6 months or so, but people keep
objecting that it will erode our freedom. Well, have you ever counted
the number of writers who LEAVE Wikipedia because they have NO FREEDOM
freedom to contribute in peace here?

I say we ought to try it out: say, for a 6-weeks trial period.

If it works, let's keep doing it. If it works but needs
refinement, let's tweak it. It if it doesn't work, let's stop
it.

But anything's better than having several dozen edit wars
simmering at a low boil, ready to erupt like volcanoes at a
moment's notice.

I say, let's give it a try.

Ed Poor


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Quality, neutrality,
	and perspective: the benefits of RK's bad behavior

body:
Admittedly, I would have jumped on the bandwagon for his banning when I had
my first RK experience.
RK has called me a few choice things in the past, but I been discovering
that RK is an essential part of the Wiki community since his edit wars
consistently yield the kind of synthesis that we want: quality, neutrality,
and a unique perspective that highlights what Wiki can offer that other
sourcebooks cannot.

We should disregard the mountain of grievances we have against him, and
accept him as an eloquent, forceful representative of a significant share of
hard-liners on the pro-Israel side, although I would certainly favor banning
if there were no counterweight. Since these are mass-based struggles, there
might be a substantive benefit to allowing partisans to engage in struggle
and yield syntheses, in that we might be better able to deal with the role
of public opinion, and political mobilization.

Actually, I?ve been noticing that Wikipedia?s have been doing a better job
of conveying how the two sides see this conflict than the academic
literature and media articles (Reuters, NY Times, BBC, AP usually) that I
usually read.

All academic journals, sourcebooks, and media outlets have their strengths
and weaknesses when weighed against each other. And Wiki offers a unique
perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute made possible by the dynamics
of RK and his enemies.  Nothing else available online is going to be
synthesis of material written by- and also edited by - such a diverse group
of perspectives (the online medium makes it possible ? there might be
violence if this group were in the same room!). The articles convey all
facets of reality, being products themselves of an actually
Israeli-Palestinian proxy battle.

As a disclaimer, as the son of Holocaust survivors I?ll state my solidarity
with RK?s passions for a strong, secure state of Israel. However, my views
on his conception of Arab culture are closer to the late Edward Said than
Daniel Pipes. As a historian, I find myself cringing, and often gasping with
disbelief, when reading RK?s tracts on the Palestinians, Arabs, or Islam.

Perhaps I can relate to RK?s mentality better than most, but I?ve wedded a
strong rebuke of RK?s paranoia, obnoxiousness, and bully tactics to a
defense of the end result.

_________________________________________________________________
Instant message in style with MSN Messenger 6.0. Download it now FREE!
http://msnmessenger-download.com


body:
Jimbo,

I'm a volunteer for whatever role you want to give me.

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Two-edged Sword

body:
Erik wrote with his usual eloquence:

> I support you as part of a committee, but not as a lone ranger.

Thanks, Erik (Eloquence). I support you, too.

Ed "Not the Lone Ranger" Poor (Uncle Ed)

P.S. I changed my WikiVote re: RK's banning to "support temp-ban"


from_name: J. Noel Chiappa

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
    > From: Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com>

    > Wikipedia's goal is to make an encyclopedia, not a judicial system. Any
    > big debates that are not solved by mediation could just go on village
    > pump .. or, if it's really hard to resolve, the mailing list. A private
    > messaging system would be useful .. but more than that would be too
    > much.

You've managed to make me produce a wry smile! I sympathize sincerely with
your desire for a lack of bureacracy, but, alas, more structure and
procedures are the inevitable price you have to pay for success and its
Siamese twin, growth in size. (This is a process I lived though, painfully,
as the Internet and IETF grew from a handful of people.)

There's no avoiding it - all you can do is try and manage it so that it
happens in the least objectionable way. And you can't do that if you try and
stop it from happening...

People seem to be generally agreeable to the concept that we need a fairly
well-specified hierarchy of chastisements (or behaviour-modification tools,
whatever).

Equally, we need a *matching* hierarchy of entities to hand out those
chastisements - because the further up the hierarchy of chastisements you go,
the more serious they become, so they should be applied more carefully. That
generally means a larger circle of review, to make sure an error isn't being
made.

I really don't think VP, or the mailing list, should get involved except as a
last desperate resort. Those are very expensive resources, since they take
the time of everyone in the community. Use of such things simply won't scale
as the community grows larger.

(Now there would be a very interesting number to report, along with the
number of articles: the number of user-id's, or if you want to be picky, the
number who've done something in the last 60 days, to filter out the ones who
are no longer active. But I digress...)

I don't know about you, but I could have done without all the email this RK
thing has generated clogging my mailbox. I'd much rather have spent the time
working on articles...

	Noel


from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cuts both ways

body:
--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

> If I repeat my offer from last year, will Steve or
> anyone else accept
> it?
>
> Make me a "lieutenant" or "sheriff" or "nursery
> school teacher",
> and I will liberally apply "time-out" to anyone who
> breaks a
> rule.
>
> I'll use something like Andrew's graded system of
> "consequences":
>
> 1. A friendly explanation or reminder.
> 2. A warning.
> 3. A unilateral temporary ban (length: anywhere
> from, say, 3 to
>    24 hours)
> 4. An indefinite ban (to be resolved on the mailing
> list and/or
>    by appeal to our Captain or Head Marshall, Jimbo
> Wales)
>
> I keep proposing this every 6 months or so, but
> people keep
> objecting that it will erode our freedom. Well, have
> you ever counted
> the number of writers who LEAVE Wikipedia because
> they have NO FREEDOM
> freedom to contribute in peace here?
>
> I say we ought to try it out: say, for a 6-weeks
> trial period.
>
> If it works, let's keep doing it. If it works but
> needs
> refinement, let's tweak it. It if it doesn't work,
> let's stop
> it.
>
> But anything's better than having several dozen edit
> wars
> simmering at a low boil, ready to erupt like
> volcanoes at a
> moment's notice.
>
> I say, let's give it a try.

This sounds reasonable.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] 503 Service Unavailable

body:
>Hi. While stopping people from retrieving a lot of
>pages in a short space of time might seem like a good

>idea, the people this really hits are the folk (like
>me) who spend a fair amount of time checking anon.
>edits for vandalism. I've twice in the past 10
>minutes been (temporarily) unable to revert
>vandalism because of this wretched 503 error....
>
>Evercat (English Wikipedia)

Yes, can this be disabled for logged-in users? Or at
least admins?

--mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at joey.bomis.com> wrote:

> That is, your email should say something like:
> "I only want to volunteer for the mediation
> committee."
> or
> "I prefer mediation, but I'd also do arbitration if
> you asked."
> or
> "Either mediation or arbitration is better for me."

I prefer mediation, but I'd also do arbitration if you
asked.

~S~

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


from_name: Peter Gervai

body:
On Thu, Oct 02, 2003 at 06:27:06PM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:

> I think I've got them sorted out now; the ex-Wikipedia: pages have now
> been either moved into Wikip?dia: space or deleted (for mere redirects).

Neat! Thanks. Seems to work now.

> The link tables may be all screwed up, so if you see weird things in
> whatlinkshere etc, well, that's how things are until we've got a better
> way to straighten those out.

Okay, I won't remove it from your TODO list then. ;->

thanks,
grin


body:
Is a press release now a good idea?

Heavens no.  Maybe tomorrow.
~S~

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] 503 Service Unavailable

body:
On Fri, 2003-10-03 at 11:52, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Yes, can this be disabled for logged-in users? Or at
> least admins?

No, it cannot be, as it's at a lower level than the PHP code.
However I'm putting the limit back up to a less obnoxious limit.

-- brion vibber (brino @ pobox.com)


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Response to Ray Saintonge - more in favor of the
 status quo for the Israel-related articles

body:
Abe,

in general I am sympathetic to your point, which you will allow me to
paraphrase as

     For contentious political topics, Wikipedia is a sandbox where
     loudmouthed extremists on both sides fight it out in an often ugly
     manner, but at the end an OK article will emerge.

Now, it's important to realize that *we* set the boundaries of that
sandbox. For instance, threatening another Wikipedian's life is
completely unacceptable and people have been banned for it, with wide
support.

One might argue that we should adopt stricter boundaries, for instance
throwing out those kids (on all sides) who repeatedly personally abuse
others. The extremists who can live inside that boundary would then have
to fight it out in the now smaller sandbox. It is not at all clear to me
that that smaller sandbox would produce worse results.

Axel


from_name: Ulrich Fuchs

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Database error when moving pages. Server crash issue?

body:
Have there been any updates on the german Wikipedia Software since yesterday,
or ist this a problems arising out of the server crash?

When moving a page, I'll get this message:

Es gab einen Syntaxfehler in der Datenbankabfrage. Die letzte Datenbankabfrage
lautete: "UPDATE LOW_PRIORITY searchindex SET si_title='europ?ische
wildkatze' WHERE si_page=19358" aus der Funktion "SearchUpdate::doUpdate".
MySQL meldete den Fehler: "1016: Can't open file: 'searchindex.MYI'. (errno:
145)".

However, the page seems to have been moved correctly.

Uli


body:
--- Abe Sokolov <abesokolov at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Jimbo's "double edge sword" comment was very well
> put. Both users function
> best on the Israeli-Palestinian articles when they
> have each other by the
> throat.

Nonsense.

> Btw, Sv's Bob Dylan allusion should be leaving us
> with more than the tune to
> "The Times They are a'Changin'" in our heads. Made
> with such decidedly bad
> taste, it started to prove me right sooner than I
> had expected.
> Israeli-Palestinian neutrality was little more than
> an equilibrium of RK and
> Sv. Without RK, Sv's side's going to have a far
> greater say over all the
> articles than ever - which will encourage new
> RK-types to invade the site in
> droves.

Nonsense.

> Those favoring a ban on RK are way off if they think
> that the outcome is
> going to be NPOV (or maybe they don't care - maybe
> their reasons are solely
> personal and ideological). I can understand that -
> I'd much rather work with
> the more reasonable Sv (whose worldview is by and
> large is far closer to
> mine than RK's is)- but that's not in Wikipedia's
> interests as a whole.

Nonsense.

Respectfully,
~S~

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


body:
--- Abe Sokolov <abesokolov at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Those favoring a ban on RK are way off if they think
> that the outcome is
> going to be NPOV (or maybe they don't care - maybe
> their reasons are solely
> personal and ideological). I can understand that -
> I'd much rather work with
> the more reasonable Sv (whose worldview is by and
> large is far closer to
> mine than RK's is)- but that's not in Wikipedia's
> interests as a whole.

So you don't agree that we should ban trolls? Maybe
I'm misusing the term, but I though we said that
trolls can be banned (but with discussion).

RK's banning wasn't just for trolling either. He
vandalized four userpages, threatening to ban Erik
(even though he's not, nor has ever been, a sysop).
LDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


from_name: tarquin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abe's thesis

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>
>The problem with RK is not that he battles to write absurd things in
>articles
>
actually, it is. See the history of [[Mel Gibson]]. RK had the large
majority of that article about Mel's father being a holocaust denier.
Which may be true -- but it's imbalanced and not terribly relevant to an
article on a has-been C-list film star.

>- the problem with RK is that he's very difficult to work
>with, and that -- in the current case -- he really stepped over the
>lines in terms of not treating others with respect and kindness.
>
well that too.

Not been checking my mail for a couple of days. I am SO glad I missed
all this!!!!!


from_name: Dante Alighieri

body:
At 06:58 AM 10/3/2003, you wrote:
>Could people please write to me privately to volunteer for mediation
>and arbitration committees?  You can't be on both, but please indicate
>your willingness to serve on mediation, arbitration, or either, and
>your preference, if any, so that I may make some selections based on
>what people are willing to do.

Ugh. In my opinion this is a bad idea. The way I was thinking about the
committees is that they'd be chosen more or less at random on a regular
basis from a pool of volunteers. The terms could run something like 3
months and no one would serve more than once on a given board in a 12-month
period. I think that as long as we've got boards for this sort of thing,
there ought to be a little more variety in them. All we have to do is limit
volunteers to people who have been active for 6+ months or something, and
we automatically weed out people who aren't really interested.

-----
Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's first press release

body:
Now that the server upgrades are complete and
wikimedia.org is up, should we send out Wikimedia's
first press release?
LDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


body:
On Fri, 3 Oct 2003 02:07:02 +0200, Jens Frank <JeLuF at gmx.de> gave
utterance to the following:

> On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 01:31:53PM -0400, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>> This will make you laugh:
>>
>> > Your membership in the mailing list WikiEN-l has been disabled
>> > due to excessive bounces The last bounce received from you was
>> > dated 01-Oct-2003.  You will not get any more messages from
>> > this list until you re-enable your membership.  You will
>> > receive 3 more reminders like this before your membership in
>> > the list is deleted.
>>
>> I don't know what that's about, unless I've posted too many times in one
>> day? It would be ironic if the LIST ADMINISTRATOR himself got deleted
>> from the mailing list!! ^_^
>>
>> I'd have to go in, *as administrator*, and re-instate myself.
>
> A 'bounce' is a mail the mailing list attempted to send to you that
> has failed due to some reason (e.g.: mail address invalid, maximum
> mailbox size reached, etc). If too many of the mails it tries to send
> to you bounce, the mailing list software assumes that your email-
> account is either broken or expired and stops sending more mails.
>
> So it's not related to the number of articles you sent to the list
> but the numbers of mails the list was not able to deliver to you.
>
Ed, are you suffering from a deluge of swen worms at the moment? These can
fill your mailbox and cause bounces. If you need help with dealing with
it, email me off-list.
--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


subject: [Wikipedia-l] WikiSyntax

body:
Jake Nelson wrote:

>On meta: [[Wikitax]] and [[Simple ideology of Wikitax]].
>
>
>

I don't think those pages are about wiki markup.
They are one person's particular ideas on wiki markup. And IIRC they are
rather weird.

I suggest you make a new page called [[Wiki markup]].


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
--- "Alex T." <alex756 at nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> (except for
> the temporary "status quo" ban to insure someone
> does not cause
> damage to Wikipedia in the interim period where
> mediation and
> arbitration occur).
> Alex756

"Status quo" ban? Discussion needs to come before any
sort of banning. Otherwise, in accordance with the
procedures, someone could say that I was in an edit
war with an article I made one comment about to
someone and reverted their edit (I'd be the one
initiating it, of course, because I could have just
let his edit go), and then, while you're considering
the evidence, I'd be banned. That would be an extreme
case, and you'd probably change the rules somewhat if
it came to that, but I really think that this is a bad
idea in general to ban someone while the decision is
pending.
LDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


body:
On Fri, 2003-10-03 at 12:31, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> Now that the server upgrades are complete and
> wikimedia.org is up, should we send out Wikimedia's
> first press release?

Server upgrades are *not* complete, they've only just begun. There will
be some downtime when pliny is upgraded. (Assuming all the pieces are in
place soon.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Alex T.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>
> The mediation panel should be able to recommend a ban to Jimbo or a
> delegated person.  That recommendation could also include a length of
> time for the ban.  If they become involved directly in the ban
> themselves it could compromise their objectivity.

I for one would not go to a mediation panel if they were going
to recommend banning to anyone. What kind of mediation would
that be? Mediation should be independent of Jimbo (except maybe
Jimbo can be the filter for now to decide who might make a good
mediator). Also the accused user should be able to pick between
a few mediators, so they pick someone comfortable. Also at the
mediation stage having an advocate for one's position may not
be necessary, but appointing someone to represent the community's
gripe about the accused user would make the mediation manageable
so that the accused is not facing a whole bunch of accusers,
but one who takes all the complaints against that user and presents
them to the user for hiers feedback.

The point of mediation is to try and resolve the problem amicably.
With the consent of all involved (granted the representative of
the community has some power there, but it is power to resolve
differences and stop a ban, not the power to agree to a ban,
unless the accused user also agrees and in that case, fine the
person does not want to be on Wikipedia any longer).

My proposal is  that only when mediation fails that arbitration
kicks in and only in the context of arbitration can a ban be
recommended.

As far as the arbitration panel (the panel is the particular three
mediators that are chosen for a particular arbitration, the rest
of the committee would have nothing to do with that arbitration)
is concerned I was suggesting that they do make a recommendation
that is reviewable by Jimbo. It would not take effect (except for
the temporary "status quo" ban to insure someone does not cause
damage to Wikipedia in the interim period where mediation and
arbitration occur).

We could decide to give Jimbo "de novo" review or just have
him be like an appeal court that either upholds or overturns
a ban decision. It would then be implemented by the powers
that be. He could always retain the pardon power, i.e. on his
last day in office he could pardon the 140 banned contributors
who gave Wikimedia a lot of money [illusion to Bill Clinton ;-)]

I hope that is clear, but I think it is really important to get this
distinction between mediation and arbitration straight. That
is the way that the process can be made most effective and
the transaction cost to Wikipedia volunteers kept to a minimum.
This is a fairly standard process I try to put a mediation and
an arbitration clause in most contracts I draft as it makes sense
from a practical point of view (some lawyers who like to drag
their clients into litigation are very much against such clauses).

So now I am writing shorter emails, but more of them! I guess I
thought putting it all in one email would make it clear, but it
is too much information for someone who is not involved in these
kinds of issues on a daily basis (a lot of being a lawyer is about
mediation or arbitration, it is much more common than litigation).

Alex756


subject: [Wikitech-l] Upgrade status

body:
On Fri, 2003-10-03 at 10:02, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >Larousse is now a dual Athlon . . .
> >
> It's important to comment how much we appreciate your efforts in keeping
> the masses apprised of what is going on in the technical side, even if
> much of the time we have no clue about what you are saying.

The alluvial dampers are shot, but we were able to reroute the power
couplings through the neural cluster... ;)

Glad to help!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Posting old message - formatted this time!

body:
Abe,

You appear to be re-posting a couple of your long messages, repeatedly.
Do you need help with formatting or something?

We don't usually send the exact same message to the list multiple
times...

Ed Poor
Wikien-l list administrator


body:
>>Daniel Mayer wrote:

>>Jimbo wrote:
>  >
>>It may just be me, but I think at this point we
should just wait
>>a couple to a few weeks for the more inclusive and
exciting-sounding  "one
>>third of a million" milestone. The number of
non-English articles should also
>>outnumber the English ones by then, so we could also
announce that.
>>
Good idea.

> >
>>What do others think? This could be something we
>allow each Wikipedia version
>>to decide on its own
>
>The press release was worked on as a cross-language
>thing -- I think it
>should stay as such.

I can read this only with a lot of pain. The press
release was not only written to be a cross language
thing, but it was also written to announce what it is
announcing today.

Either the site is ok (perhaps in a couple of days)
and we send the release
Either it is not, and we just abandon the proposition.

For me, one third million does not speak any better
than 300 000. I would even say it does not sound as
good, as the reader does not see jackpot numbers on
front of his eyes.

I try

COMMUNIQUE DE PRESSE : WIKIPEDIA atteint 300 000
articles

versus

COMMUNIQUE DE PRESSE : WIKIPEDIA atteint un tiers de
million d'articles

sorry, that is ugly

in any case, if technical limitations are an argument,
33000 more articles are not.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


body:
--- Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Abe Sokolov <abesokolov at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Those favoring a ban on RK are way off if they
> think
> > that the outcome is
> > going to be NPOV (or maybe they don't care - maybe
> > their reasons are solely
> > personal and ideological). I can understand that -
> > I'd much rather work with
> > the more reasonable Sv (whose worldview is by and
> > large is far closer to
> > mine than RK's is)- but that's not in Wikipedia's
> > interests as a whole.
>
> So you don't agree that we should ban trolls? Maybe
> I'm misusing the term, but I though we said that
> trolls can be banned (but with discussion).
>
> RK's banning wasn't just for trolling either. He
> vandalized four userpages, threatening to ban Erik
> (even though he's not, nor has ever been, a sysop).

I think this is a good point, Dan and I was under the
impression that Abe (with his RK=Stevertigo
comparison) and Jimbo ( with his "double edged sword"
comment) were alluding to me being a troll, and me
paying a price somehow for RK's blowup. Fortunately I
took Jimbo's advice from a year ago, and decided to
just shut up.  "RK" self-destructed like a monster
villain at the end of a Troma movie, and all that's
left now is 'Robert.'

In my haste, I may have skipped over Abe's compliment
-- Thank you Abe-- (I note that RK told Bcorr that I
and Martin were "highly intelligent and literate"...
"anti-Semites." Which in my view is a contradiction,
as anti-Semitism is a product of ignorace and bias.)
But It doesnt change my mind, that attempts to create
content should be engineered by an artificial
WikiDarwinism or other imposings are foolish, and
lacking in [[m:Wikifaith]].

Reasons: 1-- You cant reasonably set the NPOV
terms--see below. 2. You cant quantify people to mere
political positions ( the 'finite identity complex'
was RK's bug ) 3. Its disingenuous to claim that the
conflict is a battle of equal but opposing views. It
is not-- It's a moral battle between objective
Moralists against foolish and closed-minded people on
both sides who seek to perpetuate the violence by
emphasizing the divisions of ethnicity, religion, and
nationalism over inclusiveness of a Humanist POV. Is a
neutral ( or humanist ) POV to be considered just
another "POV"?

Respectfully,
~S~

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
At first read, I thought it said,  "The mediation
panel should be able to recommend a ban on Jimbo."

That might be wishful thinking, but at least we can
set this as one of the finite limits-- "No bans on the
guy who owns the servers and the domain names."
~S~

--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> blairr wrote:
>
> >That's good for vandals, but what about problem
> users.
> >For things like strange edits (eg Nuuk/Godthab),
> and users that have made
> >POV changes, as well as other things.
> >
> >I like the idea of mediation by a select group of
> users, as well as
> >empowering these users, if the user-in-question
> does not change their
> >behavior, to orchestrate bans.
> >
> Simply making strange edits is not an offence.  Even
> POV changes are not
> in theselves offences.  How a person goes about
> doing these things is
> much more important.
>
> The mediation panel should be able to recommend a
> ban to Jimbo or a
> delegated person.  That recommendation could also
> include a length of
> time for the ban.  If they become involved directly
> in the ban
> themselves it could compromise their objectivity.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee" (for Ray)

body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> Compared to some of your previous legal
> explanations, this one was
> remarkably succinct. :-)

But ironically, you copied the entire thing, making
your response longer than the comment. ;)

~S~

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee" (Alex)

body:
I like the track your on Alex, in helping Jimbo fit
his changing role to better fit the times.  I for one
would not like to see him (you Jim) as an individual
to be the target of a libel lawsuit for sanctioning a
ban on someone, under the premise of  'defamation of
character' - given that he has 'last word.'  On the
other hand, hes said in the past that hes better able
to defend the WP if its under him, rather than the
other way around.

Maybe you guys can talk about formeruser Isis as a
case precedent, if youre not doing so already, and
explain to us some of your thinking on the matter when
you're ready.

~S~

--- "Alex T." <alex756 at nyc.rr.com> wrote:

> I for one would not go to a mediation panel if they
> were going
> to recommend banning to anyone. What kind of
> mediation would
> that be? Mediation should be independent of Jimbo
> (except maybe
> Jimbo can be the filter for now to decide who might
> make a good
> mediator). Also the accused user should be able to
> pick between
> a few mediators, so they pick someone comfortable.
> Also at the
> mediation stage having an advocate for one's
> position may not
> be necessary, but appointing someone to represent
> the community's
> gripe about the accused user would make the
> mediation manageable
> so that the accused is not facing a whole bunch of
> accusers,
> but one who takes all the complaints against that
> user and presents
> them to the user for hiers feedback.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] About "RK"s return.

body:
--- Abe Sokolov <abesokolov at hotmail.com> wrote:

> I couldn?t agree more with your message: ?Now, it's
> important to realize
> that *we* set the boundaries of that sandbox.?
>
> If RK?s coming back (and hopefully he will), he?s
> going to need close
> supervision.

I would support this, if "RK" is not his username.
Let user RK stay in the record of his bad personae,
and let his new one, maybe "RobKai" or whatever, be a
chance for him to start fresh.

~S~

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Sometimes, there is every reason to be amazed

body:
I was looking for which sites were already using as a
ressource (eh, that is definitly beginning), but
typind random "double words" on google, such as
"biosph?re wikip?dia "(yup, we are useful)
"?cologie wikip?dia" (yup as well)
"?cologie politique wikip?dia" (yup again)

And as I typed "canicule wikipedia", I found a link,
followed it...

And found this

http://webgeneraction.levillage.org/breve.php3?id_breve=110

Notice, I have no idea who sent it (not me), but I am
quite surprised by the date, 29th of august !

Err

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] err...

body:
Are they doing it on purpose on the Tel Aviv,
Jerusalem and other pages, just to give credit to 172
thesis ?

Anthere

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] More benefits of RK's bad behaivor

body:
--- Abe Sokolov <abesokolov at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Admittedly, I would have jumped on the bandwagon for
> his banning when I had
> my first RK experience.
> RK has called me a few choice things in the past,
> but I been discovering
> that RK is an essential part of the Wiki community
> since his edit wars
> consistently yield the kind of synthesis that we
> want: quality, neutrality,
> and a unique perspective that highlights what Wiki
> can offer that other
> sourcebooks cannot.
>
> We should disregard the mountain of grievances we
> have against him, and
> accept him as an eloquent, forceful representative
> of a significant share of
> hard-liners on the pro-Israel side, although I would
> certainly favor banning
> if there were no counterweight. Since these are
> mass-based struggles, there
> might be a substantive benefit to allowing partisans
> to engage in struggle
> and yield syntheses, in that we might be better able
> to deal with the role
> of public opinion, and political mobilization.
>
> Actually, I?ve been noticing that Wikipedia?s have
> been doing a better job
> of conveying how the two sides see this conflict
> than the academic
> literature and media articles (Reuters, NY Times,
> BBC, AP usually) that I
> usually read.

I don't usually have that experience of the two sides
banancing. I usually find that many of the articles
about Israel are either violently for Israel (by RK)
or violently against (by Stevertigo).
LDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Two-edged Sword

body:
Poor,-
> Make me a "lieutenant" or "sheriff" or "nursery school teacher",
> and I will liberally apply "time-out" to anyone who breaks a
> rule.

I support you as part of a committee, but not as a lone ranger.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] Two-edged Sword

body:
Ed, do you mean only in relation to logged-in users?
Or are you proposing changes to the blocking of
anonymous IPs as well? If only the former, I support
the idea.

Angela.

________________________________________________________________________
Want to chat instantly with your online friends?  Get the FREE Yahoo!
Messenger http://mail.messenger.yahoo.co.uk


from_name: Vancouverguy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
You're right- it does say it should be able to ban Jimbo. Not likely to
happen.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stevertigo" <utilitymuffinresearch2 at yahoo.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 1:25 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

> At first read, I thought it said,  "The mediation
> panel should be able to recommend a ban on Jimbo."
>
> That might be wishful thinking, but at least we can
> set this as one of the finite limits-- "No bans on the
> guy who owns the servers and the domain names."
> ~S~
>
> --- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > blairr wrote:
> >
> > >That's good for vandals, but what about problem
> > users.
> > >For things like strange edits (eg Nuuk/Godthab),
> > and users that have made
> > >POV changes, as well as other things.
> > >
> > >I like the idea of mediation by a select group of
> > users, as well as
> > >empowering these users, if the user-in-question
> > does not change their
> > >behavior, to orchestrate bans.
> > >
> > Simply making strange edits is not an offence.  Even
> > POV changes are not
> > in theselves offences.  How a person goes about
> > doing these things is
> > much more important.
> >
> > The mediation panel should be able to recommend a
> > ban to Jimbo or a
> > delegated person.  That recommendation could also
> > include a length of
> > time for the ban.  If they become involved directly
> > in the ban
> > themselves it could compromise their objectivity.
> >
> > Ec
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
> http://shopping.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
JoeM was a recent American ultra-conservative vandal who put POV in numerous
articles
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 9:22 AM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

> Vancouverguy wrote:
>
> >If it is blatent JoeM-style POV that is the problem, there is really no
need
> >for arbitration. However in cases like the "Japanese Pornograpy" article,
> >then arbitration is nessesary since not everyone may think that the
article
> >is actually POV.
> >
> >If we do decide to do this, there should be a "fast track" process that
> >would be more efficient to go by when we are dealing with people like
JoeM
> >
> Who is JoeM?  With 300,000 articles each of us necessarily only works on
> a small subset of the articles.  It's perfectly understandable that we
> may never have heard of a person raising hell over a completely
> different topic area.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: RK temp-banned

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> As Martin has pointed out, it were more than four edits;

Yup, that is correct. However, not one was to the encyclopedia proper.

Axel


from_name: Jay Bowks

subject: [Wikitech-l] Upgrade status

body:
From: "Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com>
> The alluvial dampers are shot, but we were able to reroute the power
> couplings through the neural cluster... ;)
> Glad to help!

:-))) You and Jason deserve a triple kudos!
Hip Hip Hurrah!

w/ thanks,
Jay B.