subject: [WikiEN-l] AfD on unencyclopedic content

body:
I've opened an AfD at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Proof_that_0.999..._equals_1 because the article is unenclopedic. WIkipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of facts, which means that it is not a repository for proofs of arbitrary mathematical nuggets.  Shall I proceed to publish Prof that 1+1 = 2. Bertrand Russel proved it in 260 pages, but it could be shortened. If this is deleted it will also open up the avenue to delete many other proof articles. It's a shame that we fall over ourselves deleting biogaphies of proffessors and sportspersons while content like this is allowed to stay on.

  Molu

---------------------------------
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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Craig Whitford

body:
Perhaps Wikipedia should have some new policies to deal with vote stacking??
I could do checkuser if anyone wants, I'm a network admin so could probably learn it fairly quickly.

It would take the workload off admins/current checkusers.

Craig

--- robchur at gmail.com wrote:

From: "Rob Church" <robchur at gmail.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] We need a policy against vote-stacking
Date: Fri, 5 May 2006 13:50:06 +0100

On 5/5/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> (interesting question: if we delete material, do we still own the
> copyright to it? Is it still released under GFDL?)

As Geni pointed out, we never owned the copyright. And yes, the
material is still GFDL. It's just that by deleting it, we reject it.

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


body:
WP:NVS
(Wikipedia:No vote stacking)

That was one of the factors in Jason Gastrich's downfall??

Is he still sock/meatpuppeteering on Wikipedia???

Craig

--- stevage at gmail.com wrote:

From: "Steve Bennett" <stevage at gmail.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] We need a policy against vote-stacking
Date: Fri, 5 May 2006 15:00:52 +0200

On 5/5/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > For all the standard reasons like Wikipedia is not paper, inclusion of
> > > > any single article does almost infinitesimal direct harm.
> > > >
> > >
> > > I can think of quite a few that could do considerable harm.
> >
> > Sorry, "inclusion of any single article which might otherwise be
> > deleted for lack of notability"...
> >
>
> So say a "John doe is a pedophile" article (nn 3 google hits) would do no harm?

Yawn. You know exactly what I'm saying.

> The "ize" risks starting spelling wars. The first four letters of
> dearticlify risk breaking [[WP:TOE]]. Vaporize has a nice 1984 ring to
> it.

Terminate :)

Steve
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from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting smarter about surnames

body:
Chris L?er wrote:
>
> At 07:28 AM 5/5/2006, charles matthews wrote:
>>The fact is that dab pages in general are never going to be neat and tidy:
>>it's a catch-all idea.  Surname dab pages on the other hand should be
>>important reference pages, for example for someone wondering which Watson
>>was a sixteenth century commentator on Senecan drama (Thomas, as I found a
>>couple of days ago).
> Agreed, but this requires to be lenient about spelling. Historical
> names often exist in lots of spelling variants, so one would have to
> have Jamison and Jamieson on the same page.
>
Absolutely. My known family tree stretches back 27 generations, and the
surname is spelt in very nearly that many ways. Originally "de Bossuille",
it has been "Bosvil" and "Boswil" at various times. Only in recent
generations has the spelling settled down, and even so the variant "Boswall"
is still around: there's a famous TV producer of that name who's a distant
cousin.

There is a discussion on Meta as to whether a genealogy project should be
adopted under the Wikimedia Foundation umbrella: this kind of data would be
invaluable for the kind of page Charles is describing. Imagine not simply
having to say "This John Smith is the one born in 1710" but also being able
to say "This John Smith is in our genealogy wiki [[here]]" with a proper
link!

HTH HAND
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Getting-smarter-about-surnames-t1563336.html#a4246835
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability equating to notability

references:
<6f9e671a78.71a786f9e6@student.canberra.edu.au>
	<71cd4dd90605040957v3b4c8e29t3e8c3fdfc3ed4f2c@mail.gmail.com>
	<445A4FAB.1080704@student.canberra.edu.au>
	<71cd4dd90605041305r3faea2a3ofc38d8c3c9352e50@mail.gmail.com>

body:
G'day Anthony,

> On 5/4/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
 >
>>"He won the nobel prize!" under the title "Joe Bloggs" would be speedy
>>deletable because of a lack of context and a desire to see how Jimbo
>>would react.
>
> Would "Joe Bloggs won the nobel prize." be speedy deleteable (assuming
> it was true, and not patent nonsense).  If so, why wouldn't we want
> the otherwise deleting admin to just substitute the name for "He" and
> the period for exclamation point?  If not, which nobel prizes are
> notable, and which aren't?

You'll have to ask Jimbo about that one.

Serves me right for relying on an incident hardly anyone knew about (and
fewer remember) for humour ...

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.5.2/330 - Release Date: 3/05/2006


from_name: John Tex

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 34, Issue 51

body:
>
>
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Fri, 5 May 2006 12:51:07 +0100
> From: "Tony Sidaway" <f.crdfa at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] We need to recognize that advocating is a
>         basic right
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID:
>         <605709b90605050451u54ffec61i46939c96b8f8a6e1 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> On 5/4/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> >
> > On May 4, 2006, at 10:10 AM, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> >
> > > On 5/4/06, John Tex <johntexster at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >> This is "advocacy".  Contacting people to recruit them to support
> > >> you or to
> > >> act according to beliefs you think they may already have should
> > >> rightly be
> > >> called "campaigning". This is a Good Thing.
> > >>
> > >
> > > You're on the wrong project, mate.
> >
> > He's thinking about policy issues and expressing himself in the
> > proper forum. He's being courteous. He may be wrong, but input on
> > policy questions is welcome.
>
> All of the above may be true, but he's still on the wrong project.
> This is a project for the production of an encyclopedia, not for
> political campaigning.

Hi Tony,

I thought it was a bit rude of you to essentially invite me to leave the
project with your "You're on the wrong project, mate."  However, since
you're known for your somewhat surly statements and lack of civility, I let
it slide.  Now that you've repeated your transgression, however, I feel
compelled to respond.

I'm here to build an encyclopedia.  I hope that my contributions log shows
that I have helped to do that.  If people disagree, then there are proper
channels to go through if anyone thinks I shouldn't be here.  I'd thank you
to use one of them rather than to make your snide, off-wiki comments saying
I'm in the wrong place.

In the meantime, building the encyclopedia requires decisions on policy, as
well as daily decisions about how to apply policy to individual situations.

This requires discussion and sometimes debate.  That is inherently a
political process.  Person A will inevitably be trying to convince person B
and C that Person A is proposing the correct solution.  Sometimes Person A
will be successful in bringing B and C around.  Sometimes the opposite will
happen and A will change positions.  Sometimes people will agree to
disagree.  Etc.

Fortunately, Wikipedia is not ruled by Tony Sidaway, so you don't get to
make all the decisions yourself.  As long as multiple people are
contributing to decision-making, politics is a fact-of-life.

I welcome your continued presense on Wikipedia and I thank you for the
myriad contributions you have made to date.  I would thank you as well to
extend me the same courtesy, even if you disagree with my position.

Sincerely,
Johntex


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Toolserver update?

body:
On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 05:57:20PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> Hi all,
>   Not trying to be a pain, but I recall reading that a solution to the
> toolserver problem for EN being in the pipeline. Just wondering how
> that's going...I seem to keep finding more and more tools that would
> be great, if only they were up to date :)

Replication of enwiki is running, it's currently still 360'000 seconds
lagged, but it reduces the lag by some 100'000 s/day, so it should be
up to date on monday. See
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~leon/stats/replag/replag-en-daily.png

Regards,

	jens


from_name: Cheney Shill

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV majorities/minorities

body:
Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
    I think the ambiguity is necessary -- 10 fringe sources do not
    outweigh 2 sources from recognized authorities. But there's no easy

I agree about the 10 fringe vs. 2 authorities.  But that has nothing to do with this scenario, in which the sources are of equal authority.  In fact, the very fact that you turned a non-ambiguous scenario into an ambiguous scenario is evidence that the process itself is far too ambiguous.  It's not just you; I have not gotten 1 straight answer on this.  Are we not supposed to be judging and reporting on the facts as they are, not as we think they should be?~~~~Pro-Lick

    On 5/2/06, Cheney Shill wrote:
    > *View Moo has 3 sources that support it.
    > *View Bark has 15 sources that support it.
    >
    > Which has the majority? Should either be be dropped completely? Should either be reduced to a footnote or an "other views" section deeper within the article? Again, for simplicity, all the sources are equally reliable, reputable, and prominent.

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Mail goes everywhere you do.  Get it on your phone.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Reply to Tony on advocacy - resend with new title

body:
>
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Fri, 5 May 2006 12:51:07 +0100
> From: "Tony Sidaway" < f.crdfa at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] We need to recognize that advocating is a
>         basic right
> To: "English Wikipedia" < wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID:
>         <605709b90605050451u54ffec61i46939c96b8f8a6e1 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> On 5/4/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> >
> > On May 4, 2006, at 10:10 AM, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> >
> > > On 5/4/06, John Tex < johntexster at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >> This is "advocacy".  Contacting people to recruit them to support
> > >> you or to
> > >> act according to beliefs you think they may already have should
> > >> rightly be
> > >> called "campaigning". This is a Good Thing.
> > >>
> > >
> > > You're on the wrong project, mate.
> >
> > He's thinking about policy issues and expressing himself in the
> > proper forum. He's being courteous. He may be wrong, but input on
> > policy questions is welcome.
>
> All of the above may be true, but he's still on the wrong project.
> This is a project for the production of an encyclopedia, not for
> political campaigning.

Hi Tony,

I thought it was a bit rude of you to essentially invite me to leave the
project with your "You're on the wrong project, mate."  However, since
you're known for your somewhat surly statements and lack of civility, I let
it slide.  Now that you've repeated your transgression, however, I feel
compelled to respond.

I'm here to build an encyclopedia.  I hope that my contributions log shows
that I have helped to do that.  If people disagree, then there are proper
channels to go through if anyone thinks I shouldn't be here.  I'd thank you
to use one of them rather than to make your snide, off-wiki comments saying
I'm in the wrong place.

In the meantime, building the encyclopedia requires decisions on policy, as
well as daily decisions about how to apply policy to individual situations.

This requires discussion and sometimes debate.  That is inherently a
political process.  Person A will inevitably be trying to convince person B
and C that Person A is proposing the correct solution.  Sometimes Person A
will be successful in bringing B and C around.  Sometimes the opposite will
happen and A will change positions.  Sometimes people will agree to
disagree.  Etc.

Fortunately, Wikipedia is not ruled by Tony Sidaway, so you don't get to
make all the decisions yourself.  As long as multiple people are
contributing to decision-making, politics is a fact-of-life.

I welcome your continued presense on Wikipedia and I thank you for the
myriad contributions you have made to date.  I would thank you as well to
extend me the same courtesy, even if you disagree with my position.

Sincerely,
Johntex


body:
charles matthews wrote:
>
> There is a notability point here: dab pages don't need to assert
> notability,
> because that is implicitly assumed from the existence of an article.  The
> MoS gets that right, in effect, in saying you don't write a short essay,
> just the essentials.
There is also scope, as in a generic list, of including names which do not
currently correspond to an article and which Will therefore display as
red-links. This is useful when there are several people of the same name,
only one of who is deemed notable enough at present to deserve an article;
the others might deserve such in future, and in the meantime provide a
simple way of showing "not this one, or even this one, but this one here".

A genealogical project is interested in people who
> procreate, which is not WP's criterion at all outside a few royal or
> aristocratic or plutocratic contexts.
>
That depends on your criteria for interest. Those families spread more
widely than is sometimes supposed. I have just spent some while trying to
find somewhere on Wikipedia a list of famous...and maybe not so
famous...people related to Queen Elizabeth II, which I am reasonably certain
would contain several surprising names; the fact that I have not been able
to locate any such list inspires me to wonder whether we need something
which could generate it automatically.

Given the huge number of article we do have on various royal families and
dynasties, some way of organising even this information would be very
helpful; using it for other people would provide some interesting links
which might otherwise be overlooked.

HTH HAND
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Getting-smarter-about-surnames-t1563336.html#a4247834
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Generally proofs are encyclopedic. Much more so than many other items
which we regularly include.

Fred

On May 5, 2006, at 6:45 AM, Molu wrote:

> I've opened an AfD at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Proof_that_0.999..._equals_1
> because the article is unenclopedic. WIkipedia is not an
> indiscriminate collection of facts, which means that it is not a
> repository for proofs of arbitrary mathematical nuggets.  Shall I
> proceed to publish Prof that 1+1 = 2. Bertrand Russel proved it in
> 260 pages, but it could be shortened. If this is deleted it will
> also open up the avenue to delete many other proof articles. It's a
> shame that we fall over ourselves deleting biogaphies of
> proffessors and sportspersons while content like this is allowed to
> stay on.
>
>   Molu
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Talk is cheap. Use Yahoo! Messenger to make PC-to-Phone calls.
> Great rates starting at 1¢/min.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] We need a policy against vote-stacking

body:
Steve Bennett-4 wrote:
>
> Again, replace Star Trek with Pokemon (my favourite punching bag, for
> no real reason). Would you really entrust Pokemon fans with deciding
> which Pokemon articles are notable enough for inclusion in Wikipedia?
> Surely your proposal simply leads to vastly greater inclusion rates.
>
But if all of those articles were of good quality and well referenced, who
could possibly object? Those articles are still subject to fearless editing
from anybody who wants to fix the often egregious grammar and spelling (as
is common elsewhere I should add :-). Also WP:NOT paper, remember? It's not
as if those articles on Pokemon are taking up space which would otherwise be
available for your own pet subject.

Also, that knife cuts both ways: you could set up your own WikiProject(s) to
cover your areas of interest. Would you want armies of Pokemon fans
hammering your articles because they don't think they're notable?

Actually, come to think of it, doesn't it seem interesting that you don't
often see a Pokemon fan trying to have huge swathes of articles on other
subjects removed because they don't recognise the subjects? Maybe some
people could learn a bit of tolerance from their example...
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/We-need-a-policy-against-vote-stacking-t1553689.html#a4247982
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: Guettarda

body:
On 5/5/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> I think we need to have some more focussed policy guides about surname
> lists.

<snip>

> This may not be the most fascinating discussion for all, but for me it
> does
> go to the heart of one big issue: what can be done to make the English
> Wikipedia have more the look-and-feel of a finished product?  I think good
> lists by surname do give that impression, that reference material is here
> and has been worked over.
>
> What would be great would be to have a standard format for a surname page.
> As usual, standardisation can lead to some future automation.  But it
> would
> solve a bunch of niggling issues I'm going to outline

Do you know any examples of a good surname page?  Something people could use
as a model to improve others?

Ian


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 5/5/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/05/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Surely the speedy deletion criterion doesn't require that notability
> > be summed up in the first sentence.  Or is that what "asserting
> > notability" means?
>
> I can't speak for the CsD, but summing up notability in the first
> sense is good practice stylistically.

Well, my question was in terms of the CsD, and we don't require
articles to be perfect in order to avoid speedy deletion.

> Of course, notability is a vague
> concept. Mentioning that someone was a king makes them notable without
> any further information.

Unless you're King George Francis Cruickshank (or is he Emperor?).
(And yes, that's a joke, sort of.)

Anyway, yeah, vague concept.  In other words, it means anything the
admins want it to mean.  That's what I've gotten from all the other
contributors to this discussion also.

> I wonder how we deal with notability for
> mathematical formulas though...do we accept "Smith's rule" if it was
> invented for one published paper and never referred to since?
>
> > > States. If it's not notable, you can't sum it up.
> ...
> > These are all easily summed up, so they are all notable?
>
> You know that's not a logical restatement.
>
Sure it is, it's the contrapositive.

http://regentsprep.org/regents/math/relcond/Lcontrap.htm

>
> > I'm starting to think that "notability" is even more this way.  It
> > means something radically different to different people, to the point
> > where the ability to delete due to non-assertion of notability is
> > equivalent to the ability to delete for any reason whatsoever.
>
> Notability is very poorly defined at the moment. And there are
> certainly biases present in our interpretation of it - for example, I
> doubt a journalist for a major paper in a minor city in an
> little-known country would stand much of a chance. If the country was
> the US, the article would stand a better chance of surviving.
>
> But all of this is to say - fix the problem of lack of notability
> definition, don't just complain about it. :)
>
> Steve

I have no ability to fix the problem of lack of notability definition.
 My definition is similar to that of Steve Block.  Notability is, as
far as I'm concerned, equivalent to verifiability (which is a much
more tightly defined concept).  But, short of talking about it
(complaining, as you call it), there's nothing I can do to have others
adopt this same definition.  All I can do is point out the problems
and hope someone more persuasive realizes the ludicrousness of the
current situation.

Anthony


body:
On 5/4/06, julieharding1 at charter.net <julieharding1 at charter.net> wrote:
> To assert notability: To rise above the rest.  To cause immediate attention and/or attraction due to action and/or content.  To be assertive.  To assert notability is to rise above the rest with respect and wisdom for what you are representing.  Notability if given sufficiently enough, can make your name known forever.  It will make your strong voice heard.  Choose your topic wisely.  For, to assert notability, you must choose something that will express your strongest points of character.  Yet be careful, because we must always remember to respect new knowledge with care and pride.  With this, your notability can be asserted: Respect.
> -JTMH
>
I think you might have something there.  But what is it that must rise
above the rest?  You're talking about the article, right?

Anthony


body:
Short and elegant

Fred

On May 5, 2006, at 7:20 AM, geni wrote:

> On 5/5/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
>> Generally proofs are encyclopedic. Much more so than many other items
>> which we regularly include.
>>
>> Fred
>>
>>
> That would depend on how the article is presented. For example the
> proof of the [[Taniyama?Shimura theorem]] (if copyright doesn't cover
> it) would be on wikisource.
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
geni wrote:
>
> On 5/5/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>> Generally proofs are encyclopedic. Much more so than many other items
>> which we regularly include.
> That would depend on how the article is presented. For example the
> proof of the [[Taniyama?Shimura theorem]] (if copyright doesn't cover
> it) would be on wikisource.
>
The actual proof itself, yes.

I would hope that an explanation for mathematical peons like myself would
also be forthcoming. Whether that would be more appropriate to Wikipedia or
Wikibooks is a matter for conjecture.

I am still having difficulty figuring out where exactly Wikibooks is
supposed to mesh with Wikipedia in the grand Wikimedia scheme...to read some
of the discussions there, it would seem that they don't think any kind of
"meshing" suitable at all, which seems ridiculous to me...
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/AfD-on-unencyclopedic-content-t1563690.html#a4248701
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


subject: [WikiEN-l] We need to recognize that advocating is a basic right

body:
geni wrote:
>
> On 5/5/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
>> "PR photo" implies non-free licencing, which means that it's not
>> acceptable on Commons, our free media repo. So in this case, and in
>> others, no image *is* better.
> I assumed that people were releasing them under a free licence (it
> might be a logical course of action for politicians although not so
> much for celebrities).
>
Actually, you would have thought that any given celebrity of any rank or
stripe would rather that there was a freely-available high-quality
controlled-source picture being used for them than an opportunistic snap
taken during some sweaty ruck at a premiere with inadequate lighting and
extraneous limbs intruding from strange angles...or maybe a paparazzi-style
"candid" image of them in some embarrassing pose.

Obviously we wouldn't necessarily use the latter if it proved too salacious
but if it were the best available free-licence picture you'd likely be able
to build some sort of reasonable argument...

HTH HAND
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Re%3A-We-need-to-recognize-that-advocating-is-a-basic-right-t1563663.html#a4248943
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


body:
It doesn't seem like a question of whether it's encyclopedic.  Unless we need a consensus to agree first, math is encyclopedic.  The questions seem to be:

1.  Is it notable.
2.  Does it meet verifiability (in this case, other peer reviewed math publications than the one it was pulished in).
3.  Is it a stub that will almost certainly remain a stub that might be better merged with a collection of other related mathematical proofs (assuming it does in fact qualify as a proof).
4.  Presentation is an issue of deciding copyvio and NPOV, not whether it's encyclopedic.  There are plenty of tags for dealing with presentation issues and plenty of long-existing articles with presentation issues that have no impact on whether they will continue to be in Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_maintenance_templates
~~~Pro-Lick

Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:

    Short and elegant

On May 5, 2006, at 7:20 AM, geni wrote:

    > On 5/5/06, Fred Bauder wrote:
    >
    >> Generally proofs are encyclopedic. Much more so than many other items
    >> which we regularly include.
    >>
    >>
    > That would depend on how the article is presented. For example the
    > proof of the [[Taniyama???Shimura theorem]] (if copyright doesn't cover
    > it) would be on wikisource.

---------------------------------
Blab-away for as little as 1?/min. Make  PC-to-Phone Calls using Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.


body:
Well said.

Fred

On May 5, 2006, at 8:04 AM, John Tex wrote:

>
> Hi Tony,
>
> I thought it was a bit rude of you to essentially invite me to
> leave the
> project with your "You're on the wrong project, mate."  However, since
> you're known for your somewhat surly statements and lack of
> civility, I let
> it slide.  Now that you've repeated your transgression, however, I
> feel
> compelled to respond.
>
> I'm here to build an encyclopedia.  I hope that my contributions
> log shows
> that I have helped to do that.  If people disagree, then there are
> proper
> channels to go through if anyone thinks I shouldn't be here.  I'd
> thank you
> to use one of them rather than to make your snide, off-wiki
> comments saying
> I'm in the wrong place.
>
> In the meantime, building the encyclopedia requires decisions on
> policy, as
> well as daily decisions about how to apply policy to individual
> situations.
>
>
> This requires discussion and sometimes debate.  That is inherently a
> political process.  Person A will inevitably be trying to convince
> person B
> and C that Person A is proposing the correct solution.  Sometimes
> Person A
> will be successful in bringing B and C around.  Sometimes the
> opposite will
> happen and A will change positions.  Sometimes people will agree to
> disagree.  Etc.
>
> Fortunately, Wikipedia is not ruled by Tony Sidaway, so you don't
> get to
> make all the decisions yourself.  As long as multiple people are
> contributing to decision-making, politics is a fact-of-life.
>
> I welcome your continued presense on Wikipedia and I thank you for the
> myriad contributions you have made to date.  I would thank you as
> well to
> extend me the same courtesy, even if you disagree with my position.
>
> Sincerely,
> Johntex


from_name: Elliott F. Cable

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On May 5, 2006, at 4:44 AM, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:

> On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 03:41:48PM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
>> On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 01:04:42PM -0800, Elliott F. Cable wrote:
>>> Mac OS X? Other way around - went from system 7, 8, OS 9 - then 10.1
>>> (10), 10.2 (11), 10.3 (12), 10.4 (13) and soon, 10.5 (14) - I
>>> tend to
>>> find that copying something apple did leads to success, ESPECIALLY
>>> when they changed something - usually, when they admit they made a
>>> mistake (very rare) and fix it in a given way (much less rare) then
>>> they usually fix it 100%, and put lots of thought into their
>>> decision. I see the fact that they ended up using a X.YY system
>>> means
>>> we should stick to the same, but maybe that's just me.
 >>
>> The reason there's a 10.x anything is that MacOS X followed MacOS 9.
>> They're dragging out the 10.x because of the association of 10
>> with X.
>
> Indeed.  And it's worth noting, too, that Elliot is apparently missing
> the fact that 7, 8, and 9 all had sub-version numbers, as well.  So,
> no, 10.2 != 11.

I'm not missing the fact that the old OS had version numbers - Hehe I
remember excitement at the updates (-:

I'm saying that the change from 10.1 to 10.2 is MORE than enough to
qualify a major change - I should have specified more; let me re-
write that:
They switched from 7.x -> 8.x -> 9.x (snap!) 10.1.x -> 10.2.x ->
10.3.x -> 10.4.x and so on. And yes, I am aware that 7-9 had sub-sub
versions also, I am just saying that their entire numbering system
was A) reset to 1 B) moved one place to the right, and C) prefixed by
10. Make sense now? [-;


body:
On May 5, 2006, at 8:11 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

> On Fri, 5 May 2006 07:04:18 -0700, you wrote:
>
>
>> I thought it was a bit rude of you to essentially invite me to
>> leave the
>> project with your "You're on the wrong project, mate."  However,
>> since
>> you're known for your somewhat surly statements and lack of
>> civility, I let
>> it slide.
>>
>
> Really?  I thought Tony was best-known for his outspoken support for
> policy and the fundamental purpose of the project against all
> conflicting influences.  Silly of me.
>
> He is right: the only two *rights* are to fork or to leave.  If you
> require any other rights to be extended you are indeed quite likely in
> the wrong place.
>
> Guy (JzG)

All users are entitled to respect and to cooperation in participating
productively in the project. These "rights" are not enforceable in
any court, but are a part of our common culture. They are enforced.

Fred


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] Julie on Mod

body:
On 5/5/06, Mark Gallagher  > >>>
> Last I heard, being fingerprinted by the State of California (or,
> indeed, any American state) was a Bad Thing, and certainly didn't
> entitle you to special status (well, unless you consider free use of a
> taxi at certain times, and if you're really lucky, free room and board
> for consecutive lifetimes, to be "special status").

In certain US states, I believe a few professions, such as teaching or
lawyering, require you to get fingerprinted.  So nothing particularly
bad there, but certainly nothing to brag about.


from_name: Chris Lüer

body:
At 07:28 AM 5/5/2006, charles matthews wrote:

>- It seems that the historic accident, that 40000 pages on U.S. places were
>created early on, has rather skewed perceptions (as if the Johnson City dab
>issue was more important than the Johnson surname dab issue).  That is not
>right, but many, many pages still start off disambiguating places named
>after people called X, when the more obvious thing is the people called X.

A difference is that that there are maybe ten places, but hundreds of
notable people named Johnson. It might be best to have a separate
disambiguation page for common surnames, e.g. Johnson (person) or so.
This would make it easier to use a different style guideline for them, too.

>The fact is that dab pages in general are never going to be neat and tidy:
>it's a catch-all idea.  Surname dab pages on the other hand should be
>important reference pages, for example for someone wondering which Watson
>was a sixteenth century commentator on Senecan drama (Thomas, as I found a
>couple of days ago).

Agreed, but this requires to be lenient about spelling. Historical
names often exist in lots of spelling variants, so one would have to
have Jamison and Jamieson on the same page.

         Chl


subject: [Wikitech-l] Threads: any plans

references:
<87y7xhlsho.fsf@mat.ucm.es>
	<b80736c80605050822w51acdeafv69995480efe81489@mail.gmail.com>
	<4250438.post@talk.nabble.com>

body:
On May 5, 2006, at 8:22 AM, Phil Boswell wrote:
> Erik Moeller-3 wrote:
>> I just saw that Tax Almanac, a MediaWiki customized by Intuit
>> software, has a very interesting integrated discussion system:
>>
>> http://www.taxalmanac.org/index.php/Discussion_Forum_Index
>>
>> It uses normal wiki pages in the "Discussion:" namespace to store the
>> threads, and stores the comments themselves as parametrized templates
>> within these pages. But the user interface looks like any ordinary
>> bulletin board.
>>
>> I don't see any links to source code and don't expect that it is
>> available. Has someone talked to them about whether they'd be willing
>> to open source it already?
>>
> That looks very interesting, and kind of similar to an idea I had
> myself. I
> haven't seen the interface yet because I didn't bother creating an
> account
> and whilst IPs can view source on locked pages, they can't edit
> unlocked
> pages (which is an interesting way round to have it :-).
>
> They seem to be using an extension to provide the "most recent
> discussions"
> view, sourced from a particular namespace JOINed with a given
> category.
>
> I was wondering whether it would be possible to arrange that a given
> namespace could be set up to work like this from the ground up,
> rather than
> spatchcocking it into existing pages...I have no idea, for example,
> how they
> manage to prevent ordinary wikicode from messing up their nice orderly
> conversations.
I contacted the person who developed that system, may be able to get
the source code and start working on it; perhaps I can even get him
involved in this list! (-;


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 03:41:48PM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
> On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 01:04:42PM -0800, Elliott F. Cable wrote:
> > Mac OS X? Other way around - went from system 7, 8, OS 9 - then 10.1
> > (10), 10.2 (11), 10.3 (12), 10.4 (13) and soon, 10.5 (14) - I tend to
> > find that copying something apple did leads to success, ESPECIALLY
> > when they changed something - usually, when they admit they made a
> > mistake (very rare) and fix it in a given way (much less rare) then
> > they usually fix it 100%, and put lots of thought into their
> > decision. I see the fact that they ended up using a X.YY system means
> > we should stick to the same, but maybe that's just me.
>
> There's some truth in that -- but you might want to think about all the
> implications of their decisions.  The reason for the change in version
> numbering for MacOS seems to have been made for reasons other than how
> pretty the version numbers look.
>
> After all, the version numbers are largely targeted at technically
> oriented people who just want a sense of continuity to the versioning.

Ah... someone who likes my addition to [[Version number]].  :-)

> The reason there's a 10.x anything is that MacOS X followed MacOS 9.
> They're dragging out the 10.x because of the association of 10 with X.

Indeed.  And it's worth noting, too, that Elliot is apparently missing
the fact that 7, 8, and 9 all had sub-version numbers, as well.  So,
no, 10.2 != 11.

> In fact, they may well end up going to 10.x.x if this gets dragged out
> long enough to make it necessary to avoid a 10.247 version number.  I
> think it's a lot more likely they'll go the Emacs/Java route, though,
> and drop the 10. part of the version numbering, if they don't toss out
> their current numbering system entirely and do another significant
> paradigm shift in the way they present their OS to the world instead.

Well, one can *hope* the engineers will win out over the marketers;
look what happened to Motorola when that stopped being the case.  Or HP.

Thank ghod it hasn't happened to state Departments of Transportation.
Would you want to drive on Interstates that were designed for looks?

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


body:
geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

    On 5/5/06, Phil Boswell wrote:
    > I am still having difficulty figuring out where exactly Wikibooks is
    > supposed to mesh with Wikipedia in the grand Wikimedia scheme...to read some
    > of the discussions there, it would seem that they don't think any kind of
    > "meshing" suitable at all, which seems ridiculous to me...
    > --
    > Phil
    > --

    It is meant to be for text books and instruction manuals

>From the top of the page http://en.wikibooks.org:
"Wikibooks is a collection of free, open-content textbooks that you can edit."

There is no NPOV or verifiability policy, and it can be about anything.  When you click edit you get this message (which presumably summarizes the most important aspects of Wikibooks policy):
"Please note that all contributions to Wikibooks are considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation Licence (see Wikibooks:Copyrights for details). If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then don't submit it here.
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource. DO NOT SUBMIT COPYRIGHTED WORK WITHOUT PERMISSION!"

Apparently it's the place for fringe people to go that want to publish the memoirs and photos of their toenail clipping or a book on why having 50 million micro-policies with lots of inherent ambiguity, a team of lawyers, a team of advocates, and 10 internal courts is better than 3 well-defined major policies with limited ambiguity that can be implemented entirely by volunteers.~~~~Pro-Lick

---------------------------------
Get amazing travel prices for air and hotel in one click on Yahoo! FareChase


from_name: Pete Bartlett

subject: [WikiEN-l] meshing (was: Re:  AfD on unencyclopedic content)

body:
On 5/5/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I am still having difficulty figuring out where exactly Wikibooks is
>> supposed to mesh with Wikipedia in the grand Wikimedia scheme...to read some
>> of the discussions there, it would seem that they don't think any kind of
>> "meshing" suitable at all, which seems ridiculous to me...

Whilst in an ideal world we would be meshing left, right and centre, there
are lots of all too human reasons why we've never done so. I hope
single sign-on is not a pipe dream as it might alleviate some of them.

>And similarly, Wikitravel. There is such a lot of duplication of
>effort on city articles. IMHO, a wikitravel article on a city should
>basically be a great big {{wikipedia:en:Paris}} followed by "the best
>bars are..." and "don't forget to buy a metro ticket". There's plenty
>of information in Wikitravel that ought to be present in Wikipedia as
>well, and a vast amount of the opposite situation.

Yep if you could just spend a couple of minutes unifying the licences
for us Guy that would be great ;-).

Seriously has anything more been said about GFDL >1.2? Hopefully
Erik's freedomdefined project announced recently on this list will
have positive effects in this regard.


from_name: Reinhardt WIEWE @ torg.is

subject: [Wikitech-l] Sorting for some (cached) special:pages

body:
Hallo!

Comparing some of the special pages I wonder if it would be possible to add /
expand sort criterias in MySQL queries especially because most of the pages
here are limited and cached:

[[Special:Mostcategories]]
sort by
1. number of references (members)
*and* 2. title

[[Special:Mostimages]]
sort by
1.  number of references (how often imagy syntax is used)
*and* 2. title

[[Special:Mostlinked]]
sort by
1.  number of references (links, category members, how often imagy syntax is
used)
*and* 2. namespace (by "ns value")
*and* 3. title

[[Special:Mostlinkedcategories]]
sort by
1. number of references (members)
*and* 2. title

[[Special:Mostrevisions]]
sort by
1.  number of versions
*and* 2. title

[[Special:Shortpages]] (ascending)
and [[Special:Longpages]] (descending)
sort by
1. number of bytes
*and* 2. title

[[Special:Wantedcategories]]
sort by
1. number of references (members)
*and* 2. title

[[Special:Wantedpages]]
sort by
1.  number of references (links, category members, how often imagy syntax is
used)
*and* 2. namespace (by "ns value")
*and* 3. title

[[Special:Whatlinkshere]]
*sort by*
1. namespace (by "ns value")
2. title

see http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2306
Special:Whatlinkshere lists ordered by creation timestamp - ordering and
filtering should be possible

best regards reinhardt [[user:gangleri]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Any Roman Catholics on the list?

body:
On 5/5/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> I could do with some input at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Traditionalist_Catholic
>
> Thanks.
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

You might want to try Essjay (not a Catholic, but see his user page)


from_name: Sigvat Stensholt

body:
Jimbo Wales wrote:
>>Ben McIlwain wrote:
>> That would take weeks, and by then the vote-stackers have long gotten
>> away with it. ?And I don't think vote-stacking is too subjective. ?If
>> you see someone recruiting votes, deal with them. ?It's pretty simple.

>I am, again, very much in sympathy with you, but now think about my
>bridge example. ?A bridge is placed on AfD. ?It looks like it is about
>to be deleted, let's suppose, because idiots are voting on the premise
>of "Well, I have never heard of it, so: nn, delete."

>A bridge expert knows that it *is* an important bridge.

>Now, the right thing to do here, and what used to work, is that our
>bridge expert writes a few sentences: ?"This is an important bridge, and
>part of an ongoing project we have in the bridges area to flesh out
>articles on the top 1,000 longest bridges in the world. ?This one is
>currently ranked 797. ?May not seem important to you, but we have
>verifiable sources and are planning to fill these stubs in over the next
>6-9 months. ?Thanks."

>THEN, some admin comes along and says, gee, the vote is 27-3 to delete,
>but frankly, this bridge guy knows what he is talking about, so I am
>going to close it with a keep.

>In today's environment, the admin doing that better be prepared for a
>massive firestorm from process wonks.

>So, what's our bridge guy to do? ?Well, one thing he can do is go around
>to all the other bridgipedians (great word, huh?) and point it out to
>them. ? ?Vote stacking? ?Maybe, but don't we prefer that these bridge
>people come in and have a say?

This is an interesting case, and the question of experts and expertise on AFD
has been brought up before, the debate over the validity of articles on
webcomics is the one which comes to mind.

My personal opinion here is that an expert should be able to provide a good
enough argument that a lay-person is convinced to make a "keep" vote.

I want to give some perspective from an "process wonkish" admin who regularly
closes AFD debates and some of the thought processes which influence my
choices here.

Now, "nn, delete" votes are REALLY annoying, and I do my best to avoid making
such votes myself. They are really no more helpful than delete votes without
commentary whatsoever. Indeed, if the best argument I see for deletion is
"Delete. Not notable", then I have no trouble with letting a single
well-argued "keep" vote overruling all of them.

I remember
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Savvica

This debate was a little tough to close, balancing the suffrage of new voters
with the quality of the arguments they presented. Finally, I decided that the
argument for keep by the two new keep voters, outweighed the "nn delete"
votes from the established contributors. Close as a "no consensus". Did I
wind up in a firestorm because of it?

Well, I got a inquiry on my talkpage from the nominator, and as I recommended
he brought it to Deletion review. That debate can be read at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Deletion_review&oldid=43964944#Savvica

Hardly a firestorm. Indeed, my experience is that closers who provide a good
reasoning for a possibly controversial close are NOT subjected to firestorms,
but are usually thanked for their efforts.

If the article is a good one, the scenario of 27 "nn delete" votes countered
by three "Keep. This article is on one of the World's top longest bridges. We
have a number of other articles on bridges much shorter than this" is in fact
rather unlikely, because

a) Most people will abandon "nn, delete" reasoning and seriously consider good
arguments for inclusion if someone throws a strong argument into the debate.
b) We have a number of inclusionists on AFD who more or less reject the notion
of notability anyway and will vote to keep articles on all roads, streets,
schools and churches.
c) Most people are loathe to delete well-written articles, even if the
notability is dubious.

The scenario *could* happen if the content of the article was "This is a
bridge in Hampshire", but in that case deletion would not really be
disastrous (We lost only a single sentence and we can always recreate a
longer and better article without running afoul of the recreation clause of
CSD).

Sjakkalle


subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV majorities/minorities

body:
   On 5/5/06, Cheney Shill wrote:
    > I agree about the 10 fringe vs. 2 authorities. But that has nothing to do with this scenario, in which the sources are of equal authority. In fact, the very fact that you turned a non-ambiguous scenario into an ambiguous scenario is evidence that the process itself is far too ambiguous. It's not just you; I have not gotten 1 straight answer on this. Are we not supposed to be judging and reporting on the facts as they are, not as we think they should be?~~~~Pro-Lick

Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
     "As they are" in this case is a socially defined fuction, inseperable
    from "as we think they should be".

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a socially defined collection of original research.

"In particular, to elaborate on the last comment above, if you are able to prove something that nobody currently believes, Wikipedia is not the place to premiere such a proof."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Undue_weight
In other words, there is even less need for social interaction.  No need to petition funding for a laboratory to test a hypothesis.  No questions about which researcher should have his name placed first next to a theory.

It seems the policies and problems of the foundation in general (i.e., which projects and enhancements to fund, which gets a new server, which gets a new lawyer, etc.) are being confused with those of the encylopedia itself.  Yet another area in need of clarification, not ambiguity.~~~~Pro-Lick

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Make PC-to-Phone Calls to the US (and 30+ countries) for 2?/min or less.


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Toolserver update?

body:
On 05/05/06, Jens Frank <jf at mormo.org> wrote:
> Replication of enwiki is running, it's currently still 360'000 seconds
> lagged, but it reduces the lag by some 100'000 s/day, so it should be
> up to date on monday. See
> http://tools.wikimedia.de/~leon/stats/replag/replag-en-daily.png

Oh, cool! But maybe I'm missing something here:

http://tools.wikimedia.de/~tim/counter/?page=Bouchon

Shows that this article doesn't exist on the toolserver (if this tool
is reliable?) copy. However it was created several weeks ago, not in
the last 4 days (360,000 / 86,400).

Where have I gone wrong?

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Threads: any plans

body:
Erik Moeller-3 wrote:
>
> I just saw that Tax Almanac, a MediaWiki customized by Intuit
> software, has a very interesting integrated discussion system:
>
> http://www.taxalmanac.org/index.php/Discussion_Forum_Index
>
> It uses normal wiki pages in the "Discussion:" namespace to store the
> threads, and stores the comments themselves as parametrized templates
> within these pages. But the user interface looks like any ordinary
> bulletin board.
>
> I don't see any links to source code and don't expect that it is
> available. Has someone talked to them about whether they'd be willing
> to open source it already?
>
That looks very interesting, and kind of similar to an idea I had myself. I
haven't seen the interface yet because I didn't bother creating an account
and whilst IPs can view source on locked pages, they can't edit unlocked
pages (which is an interesting way round to have it :-).

They seem to be using an extension to provide the "most recent discussions"
view, sourced from a particular namespace JOINed with a given category.

I was wondering whether it would be possible to arrange that a given
namespace could be set up to work like this from the ground up, rather than
spatchcocking it into existing pages...I have no idea, for example, how they
manage to prevent ordinary wikicode from messing up their nice orderly
conversations.
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Threads%3A-any-plans-t1557851.html#a4250438
Sent from the Wikipedia Developers forum at Nabble.com.


body:
On 05/05/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Surely the speedy deletion criterion doesn't require that notability
> be summed up in the first sentence.  Or is that what "asserting
> notability" means?

I can't speak for the CsD, but summing up notability in the first
sense is good practice stylistically. Of course, notability is a vague
concept. Mentioning that someone was a king makes them notable without
any further information. I wonder how we deal with notability for
mathematical formulas though...do we accept "Smith's rule" if it was
invented for one published paper and never referred to since?

> > States. If it's not notable, you can't sum it up.
...
> These are all easily summed up, so they are all notable?

You know that's not a logical restatement.

> I'm starting to think that "notability" is even more this way.  It
> means something radically different to different people, to the point
> where the ability to delete due to non-assertion of notability is
> equivalent to the ability to delete for any reason whatsoever.

Notability is very poorly defined at the moment. And there are
certainly biases present in our interpretation of it - for example, I
doubt a journalist for a major paper in a minor city in an
little-known country would stand much of a chance. If the country was
the US, the article would stand a better chance of surviving.

But all of this is to say - fix the problem of lack of notability
definition, don't just complain about it. :)

Steve


body:
On 05/05/06, Molu <loom91 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> That was an extraordinary case, such a thing is not likely to happen again within some time now. Wikipedia's systemic bias is not exposed in such a candid way very often. We can not use it as a benchmark.

Sorry, but what did this example have to do with Wikipedia's
*systemic* bias? Our systemic bias stems from the fact that most of
our contributors are young American men interested in technology and
the internet. What does that have to do with one person apparently
soliciting "votes" from Republican voters for an AfD?

Steve


body:
On 5/5/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> I think we need to have some more focussed policy guides about surname
> lists.
> <snip>
> Some fresh thinking, taking into account the current balance and trend of
> articles on the site, seems urgently needed.
>
> Charles

Do you think that a WikiProject Surnames might be in order?


body:
On 04/05/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> 1. Consensus works when there are a small number of people who have
> reputations with each other who are willing to work for compromise and
> positive progress.  The importance of social capital in the process
> (earning it and spending it) can not be overemphasized.
>
> 2. As we get to be a larger community, consensus still works well on
> individual articles and areas of interest, because there are
> subcommunities in negotiation there who know each other.
>
> 3. Certain global processes, though, have turned quite bitter and sour,
> likely because it is increasingly hard to have a process of reputation
> and social capital when you have tons of people who don't know each other.
>
> 4.  The solution to this may well be to attempt to move the "locus of
> control" for deletion decisions into subcommunities.

It's funny that you see the problem with AfD and RfA as being their
"globalness". With RfA at least, I see the reverse: the fact that a
subcommunity ("regular RfA participants") has formed, with its own
norms, culture, convetions and so forth. If you randomly selected any
Wikipedian, pointed them at the policy for selecting admins, and asked
them to vote on a given candidate, you would get a result very
different to what happens at RfA.

I've heard similar stories about AfD - that there is a small group
that frequently votes, occasionally interrupted by vote stacking or
interest from outside parties.

Perhaps the real problem is that "locus of control" should not be
self-selecting. The trouble is that the people who vote on RfA the
most are the ones who *enjoy* voting on RfA, apparently because they
(or some of them) enjoy exerting power over candidates, by making them
jump through hoops.

I don't want to propose an elected committee to do RfA's or AfD's. But
do you agree that a) there exists a "locus of control" already, and
that b) it is self-selecting?

Steve


body:
On 05/05/06, Sigvat Stensholt <sigvats at mi.uib.no> wrote:
> a) Most people will abandon "nn, delete" reasoning and seriously consider good
> arguments for inclusion if someone throws a strong argument into the debate.

What if the keep argument is made at the end of the voting period?
It's obviously the great weakness of AfD that discussion and voting
happens simultaneously - votes can take place in ignorance of
intelligent arguments subsequently made.

> b) We have a number of inclusionists on AFD who more or less reject the notion
> of notability anyway and will vote to keep articles on all roads, streets,
> schools and churches.

I think it would be in the project's interest if we could define a set
of exceptions to "notability" on the basis that comprehensiveness in
certain areas is more valuable. Most people would probably agree that
every university in the world should have an article. However by
definition, once you include "every" anything, you include "non
notable" examples.

In other words, I don't think every subject should have to be notable,
if it has another reason for being included.

> c) Most people are loathe to delete well-written articles, even if the
> notability is dubious.

That's a major problem. Perhaps if we change the emphasis from
"deleting it", with its connotations of purging it from the surface of
the earth, to "moving it out of Wikipedia"?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] "should not be written by an interested party

body:
On 05/05/06, Molu <loom91 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I do not know what top-posting is, so I can hardly stop it. I do not fall into either of your divisions.

Top-posting means replying to a message above the original message.
This may be a message in an Internet forum, an e-mail message or a
Usenet post. Top-posting is criticized by some definitions of Internet
etiquette.

Can you guess where I got that definition from? :)

Steve


subject:
[WikiEN-l] OT Monty Hall (was: Re: Cyde should not have violated
	Deletion policy)

body:
On 05/05/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> More to the point, the outcome of the Monty Hall problem is "common
> sense" once you understand it. Denying that staying will give you a
> better chance of winning when there are 9999998 doors with goats behind
> them open, when you've had it explained to you, is /not/ common sense.

Fwiw, I explain it like this: "Did you know what was behind any of the
doors when you made your first guess? Do you know now? Do you prefer
uninformed decisions?"

Steve


body:
geni wrote:
>
> On 5/5/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Actually, you would have thought that any given celebrity of any rank or
>> stripe would rather that there was a freely-available high-quality
>> controlled-source picture being used for them than an opportunistic snap
>> taken during some sweaty ruck at a premiere with inadequate lighting and
>> extraneous limbs intruding from strange angles...or maybe a
>> paparazzi-style
>> "candid" image of them in some embarrassing pose.
> The problem is that under the GFDL people would be free to modify the
> image.
>
Under the GFDL they would have an obligation to document their sources and
modifications thereto.

I tend to think that anyone with sufficient clue to fiddle with an image
under the provisions of the GFDL is likely to have sufficient clue not to
try to pass it off as a genuine image.

The alternative is to have ONLY low-quality images circulating in any
quantity, whether fiddled with or not...which is pretty much what we have
now on teh Intarweb in general.
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Re%3A-We-need-to-recognize-that-advocating-is-a-basic-right-t1563663.html#a4250810
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: geni

body:
On 5/5/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry, but what did this example have to do with Wikipedia's
> *systemic* bias? Our systemic bias stems from the fact that most of
> our contributors are young American men interested in technology and
> the internet.

Hmm we have a pretty strong european base.

--
geni


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject:
[Wikitech-l] add a border (in CSS) in order to emphasise
 indentation

body:
Steve Bennett-4 wrote:
>
> On 5/5/06, Uwe Brauer <oub at mat.ucm.es> wrote:
>> It would be more logical to do it the other way around > for
>> indentation with border : for without, but maybe most people would
>> find that to confusing.
> Sure, why not. It'd also be great if there was a convenient way of
> quoting stuff from the article. I still haven't come up with a
> convention that I'm happy with. You really want something that puts a
> nice big box around it to make clear what's a quote and what isn't.
> Something sort of like what happens when you start a line with a
> space, but without the monospace, and with line wrapping.
>
I commend for your perusal the <blockquote> tag, which can be customised
with CSS styles to your heart's content, and the {{quotation}} template:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Quotation

There's a nice example here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy

It needs a bit of tweaking (named parameters are better for various reasons,
and in some places you don't actually need the attribution because it
precedes the quotation) but it seems to fit your bill.

HTH HAND
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/add-a-border-%28in-CSS%29-in-order-to-emphasise-indentation-t1564580.html#a4250963
Sent from the Wikipedia Developers forum at Nabble.com.


subject: [WikiEN-l] meshing (was: Re: AfD on unencyclopedic content)

body:
>Wikitravel and Wikipedia have incompatible licenses?

I am no expert but I believe the GFDL with clauses as used by Wikipedia
and the CC-sharealike-attribution licence used by Wikitravel are only
"morally compatible" i.e. they have basically the same intent (viral, free reuse,
including making derivatives, is allowed, even commercially, if original is
attributed). But they are not legally compatibles for various reasons (I believe).

Thus there has been talk of future versions of each licence being written in such a way
to move towards compatibility.


subject: [WikiEN-l] More Angry Admin Abuse

body:
On 5/4/06, Bacchante Maenad <bacchante at gmail.com> wrote:
>   I tried again to create a username and predictably the self described
> angry Wikipedia admin username, Freakofnurture, immediately blocked me from
> editing.  The name I choose was "Even Small Children Can Edit Wikipedia" and
> his explanation is "yep, and i'm keeping it safe for them".  It's curious
> how this person became an admin, being so angry, his consistent not assuming
> good faith and not being genuine in his communications.  It seems in the
> wikipedia user-space there is plenty of room for anger and nastiness and not
> much for humor.

Quick question: Did you register that name because you wanted to edit
Wikipedia, or because you wanted to make a point?

Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:POINT

Steve


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On Fri, May 05, 2006 at 08:44:51AM -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 03:41:48PM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
> >
> > After all, the version numbers are largely targeted at technically
> > oriented people who just want a sense of continuity to the versioning.
>
> Ah... someone who likes my addition to [[Version number]].  :-)

Actually . . . I haven't read it.  I should.

I guess I will, as soon as I get off hold with tech support for my
webhost.

>
> > The reason there's a 10.x anything is that MacOS X followed MacOS 9.
> > They're dragging out the 10.x because of the association of 10 with X.
>
> Indeed.  And it's worth noting, too, that Elliot is apparently missing
> the fact that 7, 8, and 9 all had sub-version numbers, as well.  So,
> no, 10.2 != 11.

I didn't follow the doings of Apple as much before MacOS X.  Their OS
simply didn't provide the general functionality domain I needed -- it
didn't intersect at all with the purposes to which I put computers,
basically.  As such, I didn't know they released minor versions that
were numbered in that fashion.

>
> > In fact, they may well end up going to 10.x.x if this gets dragged out
> > long enough to make it necessary to avoid a 10.247 version number.  I
> > think it's a lot more likely they'll go the Emacs/Java route, though,
> > and drop the 10. part of the version numbering, if they don't toss out
> > their current numbering system entirely and do another significant
> > paradigm shift in the way they present their OS to the world instead.
>
> Well, one can *hope* the engineers will win out over the marketers;
> look what happened to Motorola when that stopped being the case.  Or HP.

I don't think there's really a "marketers have won now" cut-off point at
either company.  In each case, some significant battles have been won in
a way that makes it painfully obvious to we outsiders, but there are
still occasional signs that the engineers get to make decisions that
make it out to the real world now and then.  This might be especially
notable to me because I'm currently living in an area littered with HP
research centers.

By the way, the fact that the engineers still make about 98% of the
decisions related to Linux, outside of companies like Mandriva and
Canonical (where the decisions are somewhat closer to 50%, from what
I've seen so far), is probably a significant contributing factor to the
condition of low market and mindshare penetration for desktops and even
servers in certain market niches.  Engineers have an even greater hold
on decision making for *BSD, which is (I think) why the various BSDs are
even less widely known and implemented than Linux distributions.

. . . but I digress.

>
> Thank ghod it hasn't happened to state Departments of Transportation.
> Would you want to drive on Interstates that were designed for looks?

Unfortunately, the bureaucrats are in charge, rather than either
marketing or engineers.

There's a freeway interchange in Southern California that bears a
passing resemblance to a cloverleaf interchange, but as designed by
someone with a sick, diabolical sense of humor.  This is perhaps the
worst-designed interchange I have ever seen in my life, and worse than
any I expect to see any time soon.  Ironically, the man who designed it
is rumored to have died there.

That sounds a little like poetic justice.

--
Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
unix virus: If you're using a unixlike OS, please forward
this to 20 others and erase your system partition.


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 34, Issue 33

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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Molu stated for the record:

> No thanks. As you say, it's just informing people, and it's okay irrespective of sample selection methods. Wikipedia is not a democracy, there's no such thing as vote stacking. And please stop wheel-warring without consensus.

How is he wheel-warring?  What admin action has he repeatedly reverted?

- --
 Sean Barrett     | You know, boys, a nuclear reactor is a lot
 sean at epoptic.org | like women. You just have to read the manual
                  | and press the right button. --Homer Simpson
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from_name: Steve Summit

body:
>> I thought it was a bit rude of you to essentially invite me to leave the
>> project with your "You're on the wrong project, mate."  However, since
>> you're known for your somewhat surly statements and lack of civility, I let
>> it slide.
>
> Really?  I thought Tony was best-known for his outspoken support for
> policy and the fundamental purpose of the project against all
> conflicting influences.

Sure.  But he can come off as being very surly and rude while he's
about it.

> He is right: the only two *rights* are to fork or to leave.  If you
> require any other rights to be extended you are indeed quite likely
> in the wrong place.

For what it's worth, this remark looks equally surly and rude.
I haven't followed the whole thread, but I saw Johntex's comments
about the inevitability of "politics" as being eminently
reasonable.  He wasn't demanding any rights; he was pointing
out a fact.


from_name: Cheney Shill

subject: [WikiEN-l] We need a policy to deal with new policies

body:
David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

    Process is important. It is also dangerous, and must be kept strictly
    under control and rebuilt regularly. AND NO I'M NOT GOING TO WRITE UP
    A PROCESS FOR THAT.

How about:
IF Process.Growth > 10%
THEN EXECUTE(Process.Rebuild)
ELSE EXECUTE(Process.Grow(.1 - Process.Growth.Current)
~~~~Pro-Lick

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. PC-to-Phone calls for ridiculously low rates.


from_name: Fred Bauder

references:
<eeec757b0605050704g76c4bb8bj47ca3a7fdf33a62d@mail.gmail.com>
	<c5nm52p93492odspf55u3s86ml1b09f98t@4ax.com>
	<48F10423-CDE3-44CC-8FF0-BA7C9CB63D34@ctelco.net>
	<anom52lq5dlir1mcgpd4u9im7ikm1hiq6v@4ax.com>

body:
On May 5, 2006, at 8:42 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

> On Fri, 5 May 2006 08:22:16 -0600, you wrote:
>
>
>> All users are entitled to respect and to cooperation in participating
>> productively in the project. These "rights" are not enforceable in
>> any court, but are a part of our common culture. They are enforced.
>>
>
> Yes, of course.  But Tony's fundamental point was being ignored: there
> is no right to advocacy.  I would have said that advocacy is the
> precise opposite of what Wikipedia is for.
>
> Perhaps I need a nice cup of tea and a sit down.
>
> Guy (JzG)

There is a bit of talking by one another here. Reasoned polite
advocacy of policy positions is welcomed. Tendentious biased editing
(especially when you are working in a group) is not. However, there
are numerous situations where which is occurring is not immediately
clear. Often the touchstone is that the nasty behavior goes on and on
and on and on and on and at some point you realize you are engaging
in deliberate behavior calculated to subvert neutral point of view
(or in some other way create some tendency which simply doesn't
belong in a reference work.

Fred


body:
On May 5, 2006, at 8:56 AM, Mark Gallagher wrote:

> "Wikipedia could be really cool, if only
> it weren't an encyclopaedia."

Truer words were never spoken. In fact, a number of alternatives to
Wikipedia have the possibility of being very profitable. THINK AND
GROW RICH... Just do it somewhere else.

Fred


body:
geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

    On 5/5/06, David Gerard wrote:
    > 2. Process is good, but more process is *BAD*. Process grows like
    > bindweed and must be culled regularly. Anyone who says "process is
    > important" must read and understand [[m:Instruction creep]].

    Since m:Instruction creep relates to process they probably have. The
    broad principle is correct (although I quite like our overgrown and
    contradictory guidelines it means it is almost imposible to produce a
    solid case based on them to stop me doing what I want to do) the
    anicdote doesn't tend to apply wikipedia (It is generaly less complex
    to remove someone from wikipedia rather than get a new policy
    aproved).

Are you saying this is "good"?  Instruction creep could easily be retitled tax code creep or bureaucrat creep.  Tossing people into the torture chamber doesn't seem like a reasonable solution to dealing with a process problem, especially if the intent (AGF) is to cleanup (de-weed) the process.

    > 3. Grey areas exist; the human brain exists to deal with them. You
    > can't Taylorise clue.

    However you can produce rigidly defined areas of doubt and
    uncertainty. It is possible to define where the grey areas are.

Very true.~~~~Pro-Lick

---------------------------------
How low will we go? Check out Yahoo! Messenger?s low  PC-to-Phone call rates.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Julie on Mod

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

Garion1000 stated for the record:

> On 5/5/06, julieharding1 at charter.net <julieharding1 at charter.net> wrote:
>
>>You better watch it Phil.  I am fingerprinted and accepted by the State
>>of California and it is illegal for you to make false allegations against
>>me, even if it is in cyberspace.  The police know how to track people down
>>with just their email addresses.  What's wrong?  Does a little intelligence
>>from a woman intimidate you?  One more public false allegation and I'll turn
>>you in.
>>Julie Miller Harding
>>951-788-8934
>
> The mod doesn't seem to be working....
>
> Garion96

Nor the meds.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | You know, boys, a nuclear reactor is a lot
 sean at epoptic.org | like women. You just have to read the manual
                  | and press the right button. --Homer Simpson
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from_name: Fastfission

body:
The copyright situation of a photo is independent of whether it is a
"PR" photo or not. Air Force releases plenty of PR photos which are,
like all of its photos, not copyrighted and as such perfectly
acceptable for Commons. Their use in articles is restricted along
typical content guidelines, of course.

FF

On 5/5/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/05/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 5/5/06, Craig Whitford <craigwhitford1 at emailaccount.com> wrote:
> > > I've heard about the Request for comment from the United States Congress.
> > > It's true, Wikipedia is used as a PR/spin machine.
> > > I've also noticed Commons is being used to upload PR pictures too, for spin purposes.
> > >
> > > Craig
> > >
> >
> > A PR photo is better than nothing.
>
> "PR photo" implies non-free licencing, which means that it's not
> acceptable on Commons, our free media repo. So in this case, and in
> others, no image *is* better.
>
>
> Rob Church
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: foundation-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject:
[Foundation-l] The status of smaller languages on the Wikimedia
 Commons

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
>  Why you are talking about a meta-subcommittee I wonder, I
>
>> was thinking more in terms of the communication committee and its
>> translation subcommittee. With the new structures that are put in place,
>> there are new opportunities to find ways of getting your message out.
>>
>
> OK, I repeat: what subcommittee? Link, please? What is this
> committee's relationship with the Commons supposed to be? Were we
> informed that it existed and we should use it? Or should we be
> scouring [[meta:]] everyday, or...? (Two-way street, & all that...)
>
> Another part of
>
>> making Commons more relevant is called InstantCommons and we are waiting
>> for the special projects committee to finally inform us that we can
>> start coding.
>>
>
> [[m:InstantCommons]] has nothing much to do with the WM foundation or
> its projects, which is what I thought we were discussing?
>
Wrong. InstantCommons has everything to do with the WM Foundation.
InstantCommons would have been coded by now if this was not the case.
> But please do communicate big things, do use the Foundation or
>
>> the Wikipedia list for things that are profound. It is the lack of
>> communication that creates resentment it is not the fact that things are
>> done.
>>
>
> Well that's fine! I would be very happy to write a fortnightly or
> monthly summary of major activities and discussions taking place on
> Commons. Is that what is desired? Maybe it will encourage more people
> to take an interest. But nobody's ever told us we should do this! You
> are resentful at us for not doing something we were never informed we
> had a duty to do. What "big things", exactly, are we remiss in not
> reporting?
>
A summary of what happened is nice. It is not what I am really
interested in. What I am interested in is having things announced before
they happen. This will have, as an effect, that people do not have the
excuse that they did not know. They will have less reason to moan (they
will anyway). When you say nobody told us, you mean nobody told you.
Fine. This has been discussed at previous occasions when we had a flash
in the commons pan.
> I look forward to your definition of "profound" and "big things" so I
> should know what level of detail to provide. If "profound" includes
> ***the appearance of a language navigation template*** you should
> expect a nice long report!
>
> (BTW - a post without the accusations of conspiracy and racism, on
> commons-l or the Village pump, requesting such communications would
> have been a much better bridge towards "better communication")
> Brianna
Conspiracy; not from me. Racism; the Danes are as lily white as any
other predominantly Caucasian people but we are talking languages here
not people. Posting on commons-l is not what I do. I may be one of the
bigger contributors to Commons (last time I looked some 13.000 files) it
is not the main thing I do.

As to my definition of "profound"; changes in policy that affect usage
need to be communicated widely before they are finalised and implemented.

Thanks,
   GerardM


list: wikimedia-l


body:
On 5/5/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > So all of those "nn, delete" pile-ons are simply a figment of my
> > imagination?

No but they don't reach 27. 20 would be unusal. A lot of deletion
debates are "pile-ons" becuase delete is the right descision

> You are obviously aware of AfD discussions which have simply escaped my
> notice.
>
> Please provide links to AfD discussions which contain reasonable arguments
> like those suggested which are not then countered by piled-on "nn, delete"
> entries; even better would be a "nn, delete" replaced with a "keep" as a
> result of listening to reason. I would like to sooth my tortured soul with a
> bit of good-natured discussion...
> --
> Phil
> --

Well at random [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dust bunny]] has
people changeing thier mind from delete. Now where are these "nn,
delete" "pile-ons"?

--
geni


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Image Downloads

body:
On 05/05/06, Tom Dichiaro <tom at trasa.com> wrote:
> Are the image downloads offline?  I can't pull down the files in the normal
> way from:

I don't believe we offer image dumps at this time.

Rob Church


body:
On 05/05/06, Reinhardt WIEWE @ torg.is <gangleri at torg.is> wrote:
> Hallo!
>
> Comparing some of the special pages I wonder if it would be possible to add /
> expand sort criterias in MySQL queries especially because most of the pages
> here are limited and cached:
[snip]

This would be awesome, but requires two things:

1) We need to index querycache to hell. Not a problem, I don't think.
2) The QueryPage wrappers would need rewriting to fully support this
(we don't want to end up with sorting &c. applied to our caching
SELECT queries). Again, not *too* much of a problem; just time.

At one point, I had a namespace filter for some of these pages
complete. It wasn't too neat, but wasn't too much of a mess either,
although I never committed it.

Rob Church


body:
On 05/05/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/05/06, Molu <loom91 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I do not know what top-posting is, so I can hardly stop it. I do not fall into either of your divisions.
>
> Top-posting means replying to a message above the original message.
> This may be a message in an Internet forum, an e-mail message or a
> Usenet post. Top-posting is criticized by some definitions of Internet
> etiquette.
>
> Can you guess where I got that definition from? :)

You didn't use that Wikipedia place, I hope? I hear anyone can edit
that. What if it's inaccurate?

Rob Church


subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV majorities/minorities

body:
On 5/5/06, Cheney Shill <halliburton_shill at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I agree about the 10 fringe vs. 2 authorities.  But that has nothing to do with this scenario, in which the sources are of equal authority.  In fact, the very fact that you turned a non-ambiguous scenario into an ambiguous scenario is evidence that the process itself is far too ambiguous.  It's not just you; I have not gotten 1 straight answer on this.  Are we not supposed to be judging and reporting on the facts as they are, not as we think they should be?~~~~Pro-Lick

"As they are" in this case is a socially defined fuction, inseperable
from "as we think they should be".

It will always be semi-ambiguous. That's fine. We do our best. But
since we are all "editors" in the end discussion and fudged
compromises are what we will have to go with. Whether that is a
disadvantage or not is up for debate, but it's clearly one of the
inevitable aspects of an open knowledge-production system.

Of course, that our standards are defined by social activities does
not make Wikipedia really any different from any other aspect of
knowledge-production. But with Wikipedia that social process is very
transparent and the "hand of the author" is very obvious.

In a scientific journal, for example, those social activities are
still there, but the boundary for admission to the discussion is much
higher, and the mechanisms of how they work are hidden away from sight
(and tied up with a number of other variables as well). But in the end
it is still a social activity which produces, certifies, or knocks
down the "knowledge" itself. Since we at Wikipedia are not even making
any claims of doing the research ourselves, pointing to "the facts as
they are" as some sort of stabilizing mechanism seems even more
problematic than it already would be in something like scientific
activity, where the social structures which support "the facts" are
far less obvious.

FF


body:
On 5/5/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/5/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Sorry, but what did this example have to do with Wikipedia's
> > *systemic* bias? Our systemic bias stems from the fact that most of
> > our contributors are young American men interested in technology and
> > the internet.
>
> Hmm we have a pretty strong european base.

True, and actually that was an incorrect bad use of "most". It would
be truer to say that that demographic, amongst certain others, is
over-represented.

Steve


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

David Gerard stated for the record:

> AND NO I'M NOT GOING TO WRITE UP A PROCESS FOR THAT.

Do you crave the rich, satisfying sensation of having a clue, but
dislike that harsh, time-consuming thinking that can accompany it?  Then
you need KLOO[tm], the clue-free process-compliant clue-flavored
process[0] from Process Fetishes R Us!

99.44% of Wikipedia's admins agree[1] that decluvinated KLOO[tm] solves
all their problems, including Trolls, Rabid Inclusionists, World Hunger,
IAR Fanatics, and David Gerard!

And now, for those heavy days, introducing Super-Absorbent Maximum
Strength KLOO-XTRA[tm]!  Guaranteed to neutralize three times its weight
in excess thinking ... and ... IT'S TAYLORIZED![sm]

[0] No products were produced during the production of this process.
[1] Improperly formatted survey returns were discarded.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | You know, boys, a nuclear reactor is a lot
 sean at epoptic.org | like women. You just have to read the manual
                  | and press the right button. --Homer Simpson
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from_name: julieharding1 at charter.net

body:
---- Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 5 May 2006 10:58:15 -0600, you wrote:
>
> >There is a bit of talking by one another here. Reasoned polite
> >advocacy of policy positions is welcomed. Tendentious biased editing
> >(especially when you are working in a group) is not. However, there
> >are numerous situations where which is occurring is not immediately
> >clear. Often the touchstone is that the nasty behavior goes on and on
> >and on and on and on and at some point you realize you are engaging
> >in deliberate behavior calculated to subvert neutral point of view
> >(or in some other way create some tendency which simply doesn't
> >belong in a reference work.
>
> Yes, I suspect we are in violent agreement.  It probably comes down to
> how one understands advocacy: I understand it as a point of view
> forcefully put, whereas on Wikipedia I rather prefer a case simply
> stated and consensus sought.  But there is more than one shade of the
> colour advocado.
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

> Good Afternoon Guy,
  I had fully intended to just come to this address today and delete anything that came from Wikipedia, due to the way I was treated last night.  Are those people administration, or are they just faking it?  If they are supposed to be behaving professionally , they sure did not do so last night.  Ask Phil and Mark what happened.  I saved their emails if your are interested in the disgusting way they are representing your enterprise.  I am only here for my love and devotion for the english language and writing.  I want to be able to help people who need advice.  I did not come online last night to get in a word-fight with a couple of ignorant, mean men who had absolutely no idea of who and what they were dealing with.

-Julie Harding____________________________________________

> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Robert Rapplean

subject: [Wikitech-l] Threads: any plans

body:
Hi, Uwe.  I've been working on a consensus building tool for this purpose,
but if you're just looking for something that will thread conversations it's
probably a bit too industrial for your tastes.  The primary problem with
threaded message bases is that they encourage completely off-topic
conversations under the assumption that people can readily ignore the bits
that aren't to their interest.  This assumption is somewhat falacious
because the end result is a convoluted conversation structure where finding
the on-topic threads becomes increasingly difficult, and important points
get burried pretty quickly.

On 5/4/06, Uwe Brauer <oub at mat.ucm.es> wrote:
>
>
> Hello
>
> I asked sometime ago about the possibilities to add some Thread
> functionality to the discussion pages and I was pointed out that there
> exists
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:LiquidThreads.
>
> However it seems to me not a very vivid project. Are there any other
> plans to add such a functionality?
>
> Thanks
>
> Uwe Brauer
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: charles matthews

body:
I think we need to have some more focussed policy guides about surname
lists.

Firstly, I feel it is clear that we should get smarter about surnames.
Biographical articles are created at a rate of hundreds every day.  These
include some of the most problematical articles of all, when it comes to:
stubbiness (yet another bass guitarist in a virtually unknown band); poor
writing style; lack of good sources; copyvio; potential defamation and
intrusion; vanity, hoaxes and other detrimental things.  A notional worst
10% of articles on the English Wikipedia would probably contain a high
proportion of such pages.

So, main point, searching out and listing articles by surname has the prime
virtue of making navigation to our 'dark matter' or near-orphans much more
easy and likely.

But if you go into it, as I have been doing in 2006, you see issues that are
not helpful.  For example whether a surname, say out of the 1000 most
common, has indeed a dedicated page seems to be pretty much a random thing.
And if there is such a page, it may be several years maintenance short of
being complete.  I have no solution to the maintenance issue, other than to
note that raising the profile of surnames will help, and that where lists do
exist there are editors who will find them and add to them incrementally.
It's the usual situation, that there is inertia to overcome, and if
[[Jamison]] doesn't exist, it may continue not to exist.  (It does now, but
[[Jamieson]] doesn't.)

This may not be the most fascinating discussion for all, but for me it does
go to the heart of one big issue: what can be done to make the English
Wikipedia have more the look-and-feel of a finished product?  I think good
lists by surname do give that impression, that reference material is here
and has been worked over.

What would be great would be to have a standard format for a surname page.
As usual, standardisation can lead to some future automation.  But it would
solve a bunch of niggling issues I'm going to outline

- It seems that the historic accident, that 40000 pages on U.S. places were
created early on, has rather skewed perceptions (as if the Johnson City dab
issue was more important than the Johnson surname dab issue).  That is not
right, but many, many pages still start off disambiguating places named
after people called X, when the more obvious thing is the people called X.

- Generally speaking, subordinating surname dab pages to [[Wikipedia:Manual
of Style (disambiguation pages)]] seems the wrong way to go.  I have issues
with what the MoS says about piping (don't - but how can that be right for
readability of long lists?), about subdisambiguation (I want all the John
Smiths on the Smith page, rather than elsewhere, though in two places seems
right to me, not merging). And probably a few more things, that get taken
too prescriptively.

The fact is that dab pages in general are never going to be neat and tidy:
it's a catch-all idea.  Surname dab pages on the other hand should be
important reference pages, for example for someone wondering which Watson
was a sixteenth century commentator on Senecan drama (Thomas, as I found a
couple of days ago).

Some fresh thinking, taking into account the current balance and trend of
articles on the site, seems urgently needed.

Charles


from_name: Jossi Fresco

subject: [WikiEN-l] "should not be written by an interested party"

body:
On May 3, 2006, at 1:57 PM, Cheney Shill wrote:

> I agree completely.  The simplest and quickest BIG thing would be
> to make it VERY, UNEQUIVOCALLY clear that consensus only applies to
> policy and guidelines, not to article content.  All to often, and
> despite the warning on the consensus page regarding groups taking
> over articles, admins use consensus as the deciding factor to keep
> a version of an article up that goes completely against
> verifiability or NPOV, violating NOR at the same time by accepting
> the claims, arguments, and votes of the group.~~~~Pro-Lick

If there is any unclarity about this issue, it needs to be spelled
out in the policy pages. The understanding is that WP:NPOV is *not-
negotiable* ane cannot be bypassed by any kind of editors consensus,
that is a group cannot agree on violation NPOV by consensus.

FYI, the amended NPOV policy (as of several weeks ago) clearly states
in the article's lead that:

"NPOV is one of Wikipedia's three content-guiding policy pages. The
other two are Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original
research. Jointly, these policies determine the type and quality of
material that is acceptable in the main namespace. Because the three
policies are complementary, they should not be interpreted in
isolation from one other, and editors should therefore try to
familiarize themselves with all three. The three policies are also
non-negotiable and cannot be superseded by any other guidelines or by
editors' consensus."

The last paragraph unambiguously addresses this issue.

-- Jossi


subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 34, Issue 49

body:
---- Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/5/06, Bacchante Maenad <bacchante at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Both times I've tried to register with a name I was reading wikipedia and
> > wanted to make a small addition/correction.  Inspired by some of the other
> > funny user names I've seen on wikipedia, I wanted to make one.  But this
>
> Ok, but seriously - we'd love to have your corrections and
> improvements, and you don't need a funny user name to do that. Hell, I
> don't. And David Gerard certainly doesn't (no offence, David) :)
>
> > whole process has left me with a bad taste about what wikipedia is.  Rather
> > than 'assume good faith' and not resorting to ad hominem attacks like I've
> > seen recommended in so many wikipedia pages, I've seen a lot of nastiness,
> > on this list (which I don't read often, but just glancing at some of the
> > side conversations and other conversations, it's hard to find one devoid of
> > insults) and on wikipedia.  I guess this list isn't held to the same
> > standards as wikipedia, so I suppose maybe why the concentration of nasty
> > people here is because this is where angry wikipedians go? I don't know.
> > I'm sure someone will just insult me for being earnest.  Have at it.
>
> This list is where some of Wikipedia's most passionate editors hang
> out. It's not surprising that emotions can run high. Seriously,
> though, if you just want to make good contributions to Wikipedia, you
> don't need the list, and there are thousands of pages that need your
> help where you won't hit any nastiness at all. We tend to discuss some
> of the worst corners of Wikipedia here, but they're pretty rare.
>
> Steve
> _

Hello Steve,
I'll have to consider that now after the full head on attack I received last night.  Is this your guys' way of testing someone to find out if they have enough proxy to be on your team of editors?  Because if your team of editors work together every night accusing each other of being on crack or being insane, then I don't want anthing to do with it.  There is a whole world wide web out there that can appreciate my intelligence and time more than you all did last night.  Yet if you want to be my friend, and you will respect me for what I can help you with, then tell me where to go and maybe I'll see you there in a couple of days.  God Bless

-Julie______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV majorities/minorities

body:
Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:

    On 5/5/06, Cheney Shill wrote:
    > Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a socially defined collection of original research.

    Wikipedia is an encyclopedia which subverts the usual definition of an
    encyclopedia and expands far beyonds the bounds of typical
    encyclopedias because of its social model, one based on collective
    authorship. You can't get around the social interaction, it is what
    makes the entire thing work. I should think such is fairly obvious.

I think "free", the assumption of accuracy that comes with "encyclopedia", and the assumption that reasonable people will be reviewing the changes without requiring days of debate over easily verifiable knowledge is more obvious.  Unless we're discussing trolls, you'll have to provide support for your opinion.  How many people arrive at Wiki as a result of a "social interaction" or "chat" search on Google?  Has that even been suggested in a motto of the day?  That's a reasonable argument for mysapce's success, not an encyclopedia who's goal is to share the sum of the world's knowledge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About
I'll respond on the rest later.~~~~Pro-Lick

---------------------------------
Get amazing travel prices for air and hotel in one click on Yahoo! FareChase


body:
---- Cheney Shill <halliburton_shill at yahoo.com> wrote:
> David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>     Process is important. It is also dangerous, and must be kept strictly
>     under control and rebuilt regularly. AND NO I'M NOT GOING TO WRITE UP
>     A PROCESS FOR THAT.
>
> How about:
> IF Process.Growth > 10%
> THEN EXECUTE(Process.Rebuild)
> ELSE EXECUTE(Process.Grow(.1 - Process.Growth.Current)
> ~~~~Pro-Lick
>
> It's not that hard to figure out guy's.  You act as if you are trying to explain something as intricate as world security when in reality it is as simple as picking your nose.  These are computer systems, keyboards and mouses.  Don't get your panties in an uproar.

-Julie
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. PC-to-Phone calls for ridiculously low rates.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
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> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] systemic bias

body:
"Raphael Wegmann" wrote

> The systemic bias, which stems from the fact that most contributors
> are living in anglophone countries, where islamist terrorist attacks
> occured, which resulted in widespread anti-islam bias, is IMHO bad
> enough. You don't believe me? Well, read it up on [[Islamophobia]]
> and it's talk page.

There is systemic bias, no question.  This analysis is unhelpful for a few
reasons.

- Islamist terrorist attacks are by no means limited to anglophone
countries.
- Anti-Islam feeling is not restricted to anglophone countries either.
- The real issue with systemic bias is not that it contributes to
_systematic_ bias.  WP policy directly targets systematic bias, since the
NPOV policy says quite clearly that it is not acceptable.  It may be there,
but it is not acceptable in the encyclopedia.  Systemic bias manifests
itself, for example, in the distribution of articles by sector, even if
those articles are all good.

Charles


from_name: jf_wikipedia at mac.com

body:
On May 3, 2006, at 10:51 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> The philosophy that NPOV is achieved by warring parties is one that I
> have always rejected, and in practice, I think we can easily see
> that it
> absolutely does not work.

Sometimes it *does* work, if there is a commitment to Wikipedia
content policies.

In my experience in editing [[Prem Rawat]] ((Disclaimer: I am a
student of his), and not-withstanding the sometimes contentious
nature of the exchanges and the obvious lack of talk-page disciple,
the article has amassed more than 130 citations over the two years it
has been edited, most of which from scholarly articles, books and
other reputable sources, making this article one of the best
referenced articles in WP. If it was not for the efforts of
interested parties, this would not have been achieved.

If editors (interested parties or not) abide by policy and make
efforts to improve articles to make them more encyclopedic and NPOV,
I see no problem.

I would argue that most articles are edited by interested parties,
after all most of us got attracted to WP to address articles and
subjects that we knew something about. In the beginning, and until
one learns the ropes, one may do more harm than good, but in the long
run and if the commitment is there, editors learn the power of NPOV
and of the WP community to assert it and protect it against
undesirable bias.

Finally, I personally don't see a way to enforce a ban on interested
parties, rather prefer that we trust the power of the community of
editors that care about this project to contain these situations and
to welcome and coach newbies on the best ways to contribute.

-- Jossi