body:
So you are saying Guerdlam's accusations are actually true? In that case it is a cause for concern! If a certain admin will not pass a RfA today, he has no business whatsoever being an admin. An admin is a person who has been entrusted with some additional abilities by the community because he is trusted to make good use of them and entrusting those abilities to all users has too much potential for disruption.

  If however an admin ceases to be popular within the community, that means he has overstayed his welcome and immediately needs to be kicked out, call it a lynchmob if you will. An admin is a janitor, not the member of some elite aristocracy and if they perform actions unpopular to the majority of the community then they are abusing their powers.

  Molu

    On Mon, 29 May 2006 12:36:51 +0100 Nick Boalch wrote:

>I don't think that is a particularly fair test. As is obvious, admins
>are occasionally called upon to perform actions that upset people -- I
>don't think admins should shrink from making those hard choices.

>I can think of several thoroughgoingly solid admins, people who temper a
>good knowledge of policy with a healthy dose of knowing that what we're
>here to do is write an encyclopaedia, who I doubt would pass an RfA
>because they've done things that have made them controversial or
>unpopular in certain sectors of the community.

>The community giveth, and the community taketh away -- but it taketh
>away under the auspices of proper consideration by the arbitration
>committee, not by having unpopular admins strung up by a baying lynchmob.

>Cheers,

>N.

---------------------------------
Feel free to call! Free PC-to-PC calls. Low rates on PC-to-Phone.  Get Yahoo! Messenger with Voice


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Are phone books reliable sources?

body:
That's a great example of a non sequitur.  It's usefulness won't be
established by choosing one of the most common names as a straw man.
Once you've established that a person lived at a particular address his
continuing appearance in the phone books for a 15 year period is
evidence that he may have lived there for that 15 years.  Whether any
information source will be useful depends on what we are trying to do
with it.  Why dismiss it prematurely?

Ec

Steve Bennett wrote:

>The surname "Ng" is one of the most common in Melbourne, spanning 47
>pages of the 2006 phone book...
>
>Steve
>
>On 5/29/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I would be interested to see how a phonebook would be used as a source.
>>
>>On 5/29/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>On 5/26/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>When we choose to publish facts on private people
>>>>>versus public people, for example, is a judgment call about how
>>>>>"notable" they are---not anything to do with verifiability, as many
>>>>>private/non-notable people have information about them verifiable from
>>>>>e.g. phone books.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>Actually, I'd dispute that a phone book is a reliable source.  It's
>>>>pretty easy to get fake information into a phone book.  Also I'd say
>>>>there usually isn't enough information in a phone book to uniquely
>>>>identify a person anyway.
>>>>
>>>>I'd go so far as to say phone books are completely excludable as
>>>>Wikipedia sources, regardless of whether the information is on a
>>>>public or private person, famous or average, "notable" or
>>>>"non-notable".
>>>>
>>>>
>>>While I acknowledge that most phone book information has very limited
>>>value, it is easy to imagine situations where that would not be the
>>>case.
>>>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-05-30

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

Running test Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test Language converter: output gets cut off unexpectedly (bug 5757)... FAILED!
Running test HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML ordered list, closed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested ordered list, closed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!

Passed 322 of 332 tests (96.99%) FAILED!


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Portal:Taiwan is missing on Chinese Wikipedia

body:
Hsiang-Tai Chien wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> Can someone check what is going wrong on Chinese Wikipedia? "Portal:??"
> now is missing and all the content and the histories for this portal is
> gone.

It appears that someone half-configured a Portal namespace on zh.wikipedia.org
but didn't finish the job, leaving the 48 Portal pages and one Portal talk page
stranded and inaccessible. I've run the fixup script to mark them correctly in
the database, so they are accessible again.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed

body:
Gavin Chait wrote:
> The most immediate concern for the Wiki Foundation is less the idea of an
> office with furniture and windows, or even the difficulties of
> collaboration, mostly it is continuity.
>
> At the moment the founders are involved.  They have an idea of what they
> want and how to achieve that.  There are now thousands of regular
> contributors who are influencing that direction.  There are millions of
> occasional contributors who muddy the edges.  How do you ensure continuity?
>
> One of the first development organisations I worked in 15 years ago was a
> student-run endeavour at the University of Cape Town.  Every year hundreds
> of students volunteer and contribute to different projects.  Each project is
> run by older students.  Continuity is difficult where students graduate and
> leave each year.  Sometimes entire projects vanish when the students who
> know how to run them fail to come back.
>
> The solution was to employ a small band of professionals whose task is to
> make sure that projects are properly budgeted and accounted for, keep track
> of how the different projects interact, and ensure that the overall emphasis
> of the organisation remains focused.  The professionals ensure consistency
> while the volunteers contribute fresh ideas, fresh thinking, new directions
> and lots of enthusiasm.
>
> It has worked well for more than 50 years for this organisation.
>
> Offices are far less important than continuity.  And the more you rely on
> volunteers, the more important it is to have a solid base of professionals -
> where-ever they may be.

you speak a lot of sense.

Ant


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed


from_name: Molu

subject: [WikiEN-l] To: Jimmy Wales - Admin-driven death of Wikipedia

body:
If you are unpopular, then you are doing something wrong. Blocking vandals pisses them off, but earns the support of real Wikipedians. As you raise the userbox issue, if an admin is doing something that the majority of the community does not support then he's doing the wrong thing. If his actions are controversial within only a small part of the community but actually is in accordance with policy, then other wikipedians will come in to support and drown the trolls.

  There should be a mechanism to impeach admins without going through ArbCom. Apart from increasing accountability, the next time trolls complain about admin abuse and corrupt ArbCom we can just point to the mechanism and say what are you waiting for? If there is some support in this list I may go ahead and start a proposal. What do you think?

  Molu

    On Mon, 29 May 2006 22:11:32 +0100 (BST) Nick Boalch wrote:

  <snip>
  >I do. One can do things without being unpleasant that nevertheless make
>you unpopular. Look at the administrators who have been vilified
>for attempting in all good faith to deal with the userbox problem.

>Cheers,

>N

---------------------------------
Ring'em or ping'em. Make  PC-to-phone calls as low as 1?/min with Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.


body:
If there's something an admin wouldn't be doing if he knew he would be accountable for doing it, then he shouldn't be doing it anyway. If you are prepared to take an action only in the knowledge that you have nothing to lose if you are found to be wrong, then you are reasonably certain that you are in fact wrong in which case your actions are the most obvious abuse of power.

  Tenured professors don't provide a valid analogy in this case, Supreme Court justices are more likely and not all think appointing them for life is a good idea. Our justice system is far from perfect, there is no need to take it as model in Wikipedia.

  Molu

    On Mon, 29 May 2006 16:27:47 -0700 Philip Welch wrote:

  >Wikipedia admins are appointed for life (or at least until
>resignation or disciplinary dismissal) for a very important reason--
>they can't properly do their job if they have to worry about being re-
>appointed or re-elected. Tenured professors and Supreme Court
>justices fall under the same model for the same reason.

>--
>Philip L. Welch
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch

---------------------------------
Talk is cheap. Use Yahoo! Messenger to make PC-to-Phone calls.  Great rates starting at 1¢/min.


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [WikiEN-l] welch and consensus

body:
Philip Welch wrote:
> No one ever asserted that "Saladin" was an offensive username. I'm
> amazed at the limitless supply of straw on this list.

JzG did write, in the message that started this branch of the thread:
"start with a request to change user name to something less blatantly
inflammatory."

I rather suspect he got "Saladin" and "Abu Hamza" mixed up, though.

--
Ilmari Karonen


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: limited extension of semi-protection

body:
Delirium wrote:

>I would assume this means they're not acceptable as sources for facts
>that they claim; it seems hard to argue that they aren't credible
>sourcees for the statement that they made said claims.  The main purpose
>of putting this policy in was to avoid people adding weird things like
>"Mint cures cancer [source: some random website claiming so]".
>
You never know for sure!

    "Common thyme, which was recommended in whooping cough three or four
    years ago by Dr. S. B. Johnson, is regarded by Dr. Neovius ('The
    Lancet', May 9, 1891), as almost worthy the title of specific,
    which, if given early and constantly, invariably cuts short the
    disease in a fortnight, the symptoms generally vanishing in two or
    three days.  He gives from one ounce and a half to six ounces
    perdiem, combined with a little marshmallow sirup.  He never saw any
    undesireable effect produced, except slight diarrhoea.  It is
    important that the drug should be used quite fresh." --  'Scientific
    American', Jan. 9, 1892  ;-)

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: limited extension of semi-protection policy

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>On 5/24/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>>We have open editing?
>>>
>>>
>>Of course we do.  Does the fact that, for example, felons can't
>>vote in the U.S. mean it's not a democracy?
>>
>>
>Many serious people have made that argument in all seriousness.
>
>To be more precise, only certain states prevent felons from voting.
>
>The practice, one can more easily argue, is one of the reasons the US isn't
>a very good democracy.
>
When people believe they live in a democracy it doesn't matter how that
term is defined.

Ec


from_name: Ben Yates

body:
I think the sheer volume of unpleasantness admins have to deal with --
vandalism, verbal abuse, etc -- might tend to sour some of them toward
interactions in general.  I've seen a few admins acting in jarring
ways ("better not mess with me -- do you have any idea who I am?",
etc.)

On 5/29/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> On May 29, 2006, at 4:13 AM, Conrad Dunkerson wrote:
>
> > Look around at your fellow admins from time to time and ask
> > yourself... is
> > there ANY way this person could pass an RFA at this point? If the
> > answer
> > is 'no' then the de facto situation is that a person who does NOT
> > have the
> > support or respect of the community has powers which are only
> > supposed to
> > be held by those who DO... and that inherently breeds disruption and
> > resentment and ongoing damage to Wikipedia as a whole.
>
> Wikipedia admins are appointed for life (or at least until
> resignation or disciplinary dismissal) for a very important reason--
> they can't properly do their job if they have to worry about being re-
> appointed or re-elected. Tenured professors and Supreme Court
> justices fall under the same model for the same reason.
>
> --
> Philip L. Welch
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Ben Yates
Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed

body:
By the way, a citation published on a french site recently (an interview
from Jimbo).

Jimbo says

"... nous souhaitons g?n?rer une version
? stable ? des articles, v?rifi?e et approuv?e par des experts sur le
sujet, tout en maintenant la possibilit? de le modifier. Il est hors de
question de demander aux b?n?voles de faire le plus gros du travail, et
de  demander ? un expert de peaufiner le rest."

Translation

"We wish to create a stable version of all articles, checked and
approved by experts on the topic, whilst keeping the option of
modification of the article. It is excluded to ask volunteers to do most
of the bulk work, and to ask to an expert to just take care of the
polishing".

What was meant here ?

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed


subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Gavin Chait wrote:
>
>>The most immediate concern for the Wiki Foundation is less the idea of an
>>office with furniture and windows, or even the difficulties of
>>collaboration, mostly it is continuity.
>>
>>At the moment the founders are involved.  They have an idea of what they
>>want and how to achieve that.  There are now thousands of regular
>>contributors who are influencing that direction.  There are millions of
>>occasional contributors who muddy the edges.  How do you ensure continuity?
>>
>>One of the first development organisations I worked in 15 years ago was a
>>student-run endeavour at the University of Cape Town.  Every year hundreds
>>of students volunteer and contribute to different projects.  Each project is
>>run by older students.  Continuity is difficult where students graduate and
>>leave each year.  Sometimes entire projects vanish when the students who
>>know how to run them fail to come back.
>>
>>The solution was to employ a small band of professionals whose task is to
>>make sure that projects are properly budgeted and accounted for, keep track
>>of how the different projects interact, and ensure that the overall emphasis
>>of the organisation remains focused.  The professionals ensure consistency
>>while the volunteers contribute fresh ideas, fresh thinking, new directions
>>and lots of enthusiasm.

A few thoughts however. It is not correct to say "the founders are
involved". One is still involved and the other long left the project and
regularly comment on it, but as an outsider.

I think it would be incorrect to oppose the founder as the stable one in
comparison to all the contributors (the ones vanishing). Many of us
(more than a handful) have been there for several years. Some even have
been there since the beginning of the project. I consider them just as
stable as Jimbo.

It is very likely that these old-timer currently ensure consistency,
whilst the band of professionals (who may be old timers or may be
absolute newbies) do not necessarily do so. To be frank, a good part of
the "fresh thinking" of the past few months came from a newbie, working
for us as a professional... whilst us old-timers ensured the stability ;-)

In our organisation, the volunteers themselves offer stability. Much
more than professionals are likely to do.

Which raise another big issue for me. We are currently considering
expanding the board. In a way that I can understand, it is likely that
at least part of the future board will not be constituted from community
people such as Angela or I, but rather of big shots, who may be great
people, with potential great input and probably very precious to the
Foundation. But who have two main defaults as far as I am concerned. All
the names considered are from a continent over there...accross the
ocean... not Africa if you see what I mean ? So, a loss in diversity.
And all of them will actually bring fresh ideas... but also instability.

So yeah, offices are far less important than continuity. Just have to
see how we can best ensure continuity :-)

ant

>>It has worked well for more than 50 years for this organisation.
>>
>>Offices are far less important than continuity.  And the more you rely on
>>volunteers, the more important it is to have a solid base of professionals -
>>where-ever they may be.
>
>
> you speak a lot of sense.
>
>
> Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed


from_name: Minh Nguyen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Commons: url of a image

body:
For thumbnails, you can use thump.php, for instance
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/thumb.php?f=Wikipedia-word.png&w=174>.

Tomer Chachamu wrote:
> I think it's the md5 of "Violin_case.jpg".
> http://pajhome.org.uk/crypt/md5/ shows "Violin_case.jpg" ->
> "c08f6840732b9d9c6c7d7b6e71f04616"
> and "Tetris.jpeg" -> "f80e1fb8ec92fbd63688b29ad53a9af"
> so http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Image:Tetris.jpeg
> is at http://uncyclopedia.org/images/c/cf/Tetris.jpeg
> which is correct!
>
> However, this behaviour may change in the future (I think it's
> unlikely) so you should probably look at the MediaWiki code. Also,
> thumbnails aren't made just because you visit the URL.
>
> http://uncyclopedia.org/images/thumb/c/cf/Tetris.jpeg/180px-Tetris.jpeg
> http://uncyclopedia.org/images/thumb/c/cf/Tetris.jpeg/190px-Tetris.jpeg
>
> So maybe you need to call some MediaWiki code for it to be generated.
>
> On 5/29/06, Piotr Pazola <piotr at gmm.com.pl> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I use Text_Wiki package to parse database of polish wikipedia. I need some information about commons, i.e.: i've got something like that: [[Image:Violin case.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Skrzypce w futerale|]] and i wanna link it to: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Violin_case.jpg/200px-Violin_case.jpg. What I need is the unknown part of url string: "/c/c0/", how could I establish it? I've been looking for any data quering wiki's database, but i don't see useful information, unfortunately.
>>
>> Thank you.
>>
>> Greets,
>> Piter.

--
Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com>
AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn at myjabber.net; Blog: http://mxn.f2o.org/


from_name: SPUI

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>>The surname "Ng" is one of the most common in Melbourne, spanning 47
>>pages of the 2006 phone book...

 > That's a great example of a non sequitur.  It's usefulness won't be
 > established by choosing one of the most common names as a straw man.
 > Once you've established that a person lived at a particular address his
 > continuing appearance in the phone books for a 15 year period is
 > evidence that he may have lived there for that 15 years.  Whether any
 > information source will be useful depends on what we are trying to do
 > with it.  Why dismiss it prematurely?

You misinterpreted his statement. He's saying that "The surname "Ng" is
one of the most common in Melbourne, spanning 47 pages of the 2006 phone
book" can use the phone book as a source.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Fred Bauder

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] blatant state-sponsored copyright violations (by
	Baide Baiku of the PRC)

body:
We then find out there is no way to collect the judgement.

Fred

On May 30, 2006, at 6:22 AM, Andrew Gray wrote:

> On 30/05/06, SCO Estmort <eudaimonic.leftist at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> We can't fight China; it'd waste our time and they wouldn't even
>>> notice. We're not magically endowed crusaders for truth and justice;
>>> we're writers. Ripe targets are all well and good, but picking a
>>> fight
>>> we can win should come before picking a fight that sounds good.
>>>
>>
>> The key thing is that we can win, and that is why they are ripe,
>> because the copyright violation is so blatant.
>>
>
> Okay, we've magically found someone with standing to sue and we've
> magically found the money for them to do it with. We (magically) win.
> What, exactly, do you envisage happening?
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [WikiEN-l] The admin problem

body:
A. Nony Mouse wrote:
>
>
> ?responding to Jimmy Wales?
> I'll note that once, I spoke to you on IRC, and you demanded that I not
> refer to you as "preening", and that you would in return speak with me
> later. You never bothered responding to my PM attempts again.
>
I don't think you'll find many people who would regard Jimmy's response as
anything less than perfectly normal. If someone was rude enough to refer to
me as "preening" I suspect i would likely tell them to push off in much
stronger terms than Jimmy probably used.

HTH HAND
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/%28+First+post+%29+RE%3A+%22In+which+Snowspinner+pwns+WR.%22-t1685546.html#a4628263
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: SCO Estmort

body:
> We can't fight China; it'd waste our time and they wouldn't even
> notice. We're not magically endowed crusaders for truth and justice;
> we're writers. Ripe targets are all well and good, but picking a fight
> we can win should come before picking a fight that sounds good.

The key thing is that we can win, and that is why they are ripe,
because the copyright violation is so blatant.

Otherwise, there'd be no point releasing Wikipedia under the GFDL; we
might as well do it under the public domain. The key thing is to keep
our material free.


from_name: jf_wikipedia at mac.com

body:
On May 29, 2006, at 2:11 PM, Nick Boalch wrote:

>> I see no problem with requiring them to be reaffirmed every 2
>> years or
>> so. If they are unpleasant that is reason enough not to reaffirm
>> them.

I oppose this... since becoming an admin a few months ago, my user
page has been vandalized 98 times by those users that I have blocked
for disruption and vandalism, or those that believed that a page
protection or closing an AfD against their POV were admin abuse . All
I need is 98 "against" votes on such reaffirmation.

The peer review process that can be initiated by posting a complaint
at WP:ANI, or as a last resort presented to de ArbCom, is sufficient
recourse for those that have a complaint against an administrator.

-- Jossi


body:
On May 29, 2006, at 3:11 PM, Conrad Dunkerson wrote:

> Wikipedia is becoming more and more a battleground (does anyone
> disagree with that assessment?)

This is only natural... an unsuccessful project does not attracts
criticism. It is only because the project is *so* successful that it
is unavoidable we will encounter opposition. And what was the basis
for the project success so far? Wikipedia content policies, the
strength of the community and the application of these polices by the
latter.

So, on the face of criticism against WP and admins, we ought to
continue doing what we have done successfully so far.

After all, failure is the discrepancy between the expected and the
observed. People may need to adjust their expectations of WP and re-
read WP:NOT from time to time.

-- Jossi


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 5/29/06, SCO Estmort <eudaimonic.leftist at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We can't fight China; it'd waste our time and they wouldn't even
> > notice. We're not magically endowed crusaders for truth and justice;
> > we're writers. Ripe targets are all well and good, but picking a fight
> > we can win should come before picking a fight that sounds good.
>
> The key thing is that we can win, and that is why they are ripe,
> because the copyright violation is so blatant.
>
> Otherwise, there'd be no point releasing Wikipedia under the GFDL; we
> might as well do it under the public domain. The key thing is to keep
> our material free.

Our material always will be free.  A claim of copyright on a
derivative work (which, by the way, is *REQUIRED* by the GFDL, see
section 4e), "extends only to the material contributed by the author
of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed
in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting
material."

Anthony


from_name: Selina .

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Unblock request - Critique on administrators is no
	personal attack

body:
On 29/05/06, Raphael Wegmann <raphael at psi.co.at> wrote:
>
> Will "Sceptre" Noble wrote:
> > Raphael, if the images affect you so much, why not use monobook to hide
> that
> > image?
>
> Because it is not the images which affect me, it is the way Wikipedia
> publishes them. I could certainly close my eyes and pretend they don't
> exist, but that wouldn't change anything.
>
> @Selina:
> Yes, I am trying to add decency to this project and (more importantly)
> I don't want that project to fail in becoming an intercultural
> encyclopedia. Unfortunately I'm getting the impression, that
> my efforts aren't appreciated. If you prefer to write an indecent
> encyclopedia, where editors of a "foreign" faith or culture aren't
> welcome, just say so and I won't bother you again.
>
> --
> Raphael

If people feel unable to read or contribute to a project that has things
that don't agree with the theology of their own personal religion, they're
not suitable for working on ANY secular project.

Having things critical of religion on Wikipedia is not the same as "
"foreign" faiths or cultures aren't welcome" at all.

If people simply cannot cope and have a temper tantrum when they see
anything in their religion criticised (ala. the Mohammed cartoons), maybe
they should set up a strictly religious Wiki where the thin-skinned and
reactionary can "safely" contribute.

-Selina


subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories on nap.wikipedia.org don't work

body:
Sabine Cretella wrote:
>
> Brion Vibber schrieb:
>> Sabine Cretella wrote:
>>> [[category:Comune d<nowiki>''</nowiki>a Campania]]
>> Get rid of the <nowiki>.
>> Yes, the bug was fixed that allowed <nowiki> in there.
> We really do need '' as normal chars and not to initiate text written in
> italics ... we must be able to include this in a wiki link in some way
> and also in a category link
>
Have you tried using the Unicode Zero-width Joiner? HTML code is
(which might need to be &#x200d; depending upon how you are viewing
this).

Trying this on enwiki gets me this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Comune_d%27%E2%80%8D%27a_Campania&action=edit

Since page titles are not displayed using class="Unicode" or any other such
dodge, this for me means that there is an odd-looking "thing" between the
apostrophes. However this can be fixed by an appropriate use of fonts if
available: for example if I wrap the link in {{Unicode}} it displays
properly.

HTH HAND
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Categories+on+nap.wikipedia.org+don%27t+work-t1691057.html#a4629901
Sent from the Wikipedia Developers forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: A. Nony Mouse

body:
"Sometimes"?

Excuse me while I have a good laugh. You've been trying to drive people like
me, who honestly want wikipedia reformed, onto wikipediareview (so that you
can say "oh it's just whining from wikipediareview, we should destroy them")
for months now.

I'm just going to sit back and eat some popcorn and enjoy watching them make
fun of YOU now, Conrad, because that's all they're doing. You've raised
valid points just as I did, and they're not taking you seriously, just
reiterating the same old Judge Dredd "I AM THE LAW" bullshit.

A. Nony Mouse

On 5/29/06, Conrad Dunkerson <conrad.dunkerson at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> I was suggesting that PART of the reason for the excessive hatred directed
> at Wikipedia and the admin community in particular are the actions of some
> admins. The original poster said that a lost Wikipedia user can also be a
> new anti-Wikipedia crusader. They're right. Obviously there will always be
> people who are dis-satisfied and disruptive. But the fact is that we
> sometimes go out of our way to antagonize them and it only makes things
> worse.


from_name: charles matthews

body:
"Conrad Dunkerson" wrote

> I was suggesting that PART of the reason for the excessive hatred directed
> at Wikipedia and the admin community in particular are the actions of some
> admins.

Well, and I'm suggesting that you are busy dragging red herrings right over
this issue.  It is pretty much tautologous that criticism of the
administration of the English Wikipedia is criticism of the admins, plus
Jimbo.  I think it is very naive about the Internet and its denizens to
assume 'no smoke without fire applies'.  Criticism of admins does not imply,
necessarily, that there are admins who deserve such criticism.  You do
concede that some very difficult 'customers' are rightly banned from WP?
And that subsequent comment from them may have a malicious component?

Charles


subject: [Wikitech-l] title case mapping and Wiktionary links

body:
Steve Summit wrote:
>
> <snip/>
> At some point, once Tim recovers from (or becomes inured to) his
> horror at sending us down this slippery slope in this hell-bent
> handbasket, we can think about introducing a proper built-in
> {{exists:}} operator, to eliminate the need for the bizarre
> compare-the-substitution-to-the-redlink hack.  (Though I *am*
> appreciative of whoever devised it...)
>
This has now been done, for anybody interested:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ParserFunctions#.23ifexist:

HTH HAND
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/title+case+mapping+and+Wiktionary+links-t1587997.html#a4630228
Sent from the Wikipedia Developers forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
On 5/29/06, SCO Estmort <eudaimonic.leftist at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there any way we can take action against Baidu Baike? Surely there is
> some legal means of recourse, because they apparently are taking things from
> the Chinese Wikipedia wholesale, with utter copyright violations. We have to
> deal with copyright issues, I don't see why we should idly stand by and let
> ourselves get trampled over with. Since we have been sending cease and
> desist notices to small mirrors now, surely this is the ripe target, as
> Baidu Baike is state-sponsored by the People's Republic of China.

Well, Baidu is its own company that's NASDAQ listed; it's not an arm
of the PRC government. But there is no doubt the PRC government looks
kindly on its own companies and wants to promote their well-being.

What you say is true, that Baidu is lifting content wholesale and
integrating it into its own corpus without appropriate GFDL license
requirements. The upside is that Baidupedia is generally regarded as a
joke within the PRC and is not getting much traction (for now at
least).

I think it is worth it to send them a letter to the effect that the
GFDL requires such-and-such and that WMF would be happy to supply them
a translation of the policy and provide help to implement the
measures. Remind them first, rather than charge in with legal notices.
And in the process, point out their own "Business Code of Conduct and
Ethics" listed here which has a statement about respecting copyright:
http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol-govhighlights

> I think we should give up any hope of negotiating with the PRC entirely, as
> they obviously have taken a hostile and insulting stance to us by lifting
> material wholesale, then saying it is their copyright.

That's easy to do, because we have never negotiated with the PRC per
se, and there is no real avenue to do so.

> This is such a gross
> violation of Wikipedia's philosophy, and PRC being a member of the World
> Trade Organisation (with compulsory ratification of the WIPO), some form of
> action *must* be taken. I do not think this is a time for lega pacifism.

I agree that after the appropriate gestures and made, in the end high
profile PR about this issue may be a good thing. But if you want to
see something that is more likely to get the attention of "big media"
just make sure to highlight at the same time their incredibly "useful"
MP3 search engine - http://mp3.baidu.com

> If we could initiate any attempts I think the whole community will cheer on.
> The right to sue is clearly there, perhaps the tediousness is in collecting
> copyright holders, but then again I think we can make a point of this case.
> The PRC is required to comply, because such a gross violation can mean PRC's
> expulsion from the WTO. If anything I think we should treat Baidu Baike as
> an enemy, and drop any pretenses or hopes that the PRC will ever willingly
> unblock zh.
>
> Natalinasmpf

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: Lord Voldemort

subject:
[WikiEN-l] okay (was Re: Aww, so cute,
	a banned user is trying to take us down with a DMCA notice)

body:
On 5/30/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> G'day Chris,
>
> "a bit rich" implies inconsistency.  I assure you both emails are quite
> consistent.  They're both a case of someone posting something silly to
> this list and me getting snappy about it.
>
> If you'd called me on civility alone, well, you'd have been 100% right.
>   While everything I said to Molu was true, it did not, perhaps, need
> to be said, and *definitely* did not need to be said in such a tone.
> Molu: I am sorry, my post was rude and insulting.  I always aim to be
> straightforward, but there is a line between "being straightforward" and
> "being a dick" and I crossed it.

What?! An apology on something Wikipedia-related?!?!  What is this
world coming to???  It's like I'm in a whole new universe.  ;-)  Yeah,
the original email probably shouldn't have been sent.  At least not to
the entire wikien-l.  Has this been passed on to the juriwiki list?  I
don't really think it holds too much water, since he knows that his
contibutions originally fell under the GDFL, but it may be worth
letting them know.
--LV


from_name: Gavin Chait

subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed

body:
Continuity is less about individuals than it is about systems and the
organisation of information.

This means that the system must be defined.  Definition does not imply
limitation.  It is important to know how new projects are organised, run and
scrutinised without declaring what they should be.  How far one goes with
the hierarchy is also important.  Are different language versions or large
sub-projects of a common project different projects?  Many "embarrassing"
moments have come out of English content wikis.  How many potential pitfalls
are waiting in other languages?  How feasible is it to have language experts
for each of the wikis?  Recognising limitations inherent in the system is
also important - these should be declared.

The professional project manager can still be a volunteer.  There are large
numbers of astonishingly talented people willing to work for free for causes
they believe in.  The difference between a volunteer and a "professional" is
not about paid / unpaid it is about the time dedicated to a project and
their accountability.  Some projects are large enough to require full-time
commitment.  Project managers must accept this and be responsible.  Not all
the things that need doing are glamorous.

Project management may not be about content generation alone.  It is also
about budgets, settling disputes and being responsible and answerable to the
organisation at large.  If something goes wrong, they must sort it out
immediately and understand and report back on how it happened.  They are
also there to find their own successor.

There must be a project log, and project manual that details exactly how
things are done (thus ensuring a consistent approach).  Clearly the manual
can evolve but it must be the DNA for the project.

A simple project blog or mailing list isn't good enough since the quantity
of information produced (and the various diversions it follows) makes rapid
decision making impossible.  In reality, each project needs its own
moderated (and access limited) wiki where the basics are paired down:  how
things are done, daily / weekly / monthly ... tasks, etc.  At the moment
projects may be run by the person who started them or someone one or two
iterations away.  What happens in 50 years?

The organisation itself requires a similar approach with a slightly larger
set of responsibilities:  PR, legal, accounting, admin and an overall
director.  These are the trappings of any formal development organisation.
Having them doesn't limit the activity of the volunteers, it is simply a
responsible way of handling information generated by the organisation.

The director also needs feedback and that will come from your board.

Each of the tasks can be defined and each of the roles can be filled.  A
mechanism for recruiting and training new people to fill each task is much
more straightforward when you know exactly what that task is.

I would imagine that a simple flow could be as follows:  volunteer works on
a project, gets more involved, gets groomed to become the project leader,
stays in that for a year and grooms his / her replacement, gets invited to
join the core team, gets groomed to become director, serves for a set
period, becomes a board member.  Some of these tasks are full-time, some are
not.  The person accepting major tasks does so recognising what the
commitment is and what it will cost them (if the tasks are unpaid).

This is continuity.  It doesn't limit the content, projects or creativity of
the organisation.  It channels the most capable people through a system that
maintains the integrity of their knowledge while still allowing the
organisation to evolve and meet future needs.


subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed


from_name: Death Phoenix

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Aww, so cute,
	a banned user is trying to take us down with a DMCA notice
	(Forwarded email)

body:
On 5/29/06, Will Sceptre Noble <tintower at tintower.tk> wrote:
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Pce3 at ij.net <pce3 at ij.net>
> Date: May 29, 2006 7:42 PM
> Subject: Wikipedia e-mail
> To: Sceptre <sceptre at tintower.co.uk>

<snip />

5.a) The information contained herein is accurate to the best of my
> knowledge. I am the author and owner of the above cited material. ?Patrick
> Eberhart
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation is hereafter required to expeditiously remove, or
> disable access to the material.
>

This notice is Good For Damn Little.


from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] To: Jimmy Wales - Admin-driven death of WIkipedia

body:
Brilliant post, Mark.

Jay.

On 5/30/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> Molu,
>
> <snip/>
>
> > If however an admin ceases to be popular within the community, that
> > means he has overstayed his welcome and immediately needs to be
> > kicked out, call it a lynchmob if you will. An admin is a janitor,
> > not the member of some elite aristocracy and if they perform actions
> > unpopular to the majority of the community then they are abusing
> > their powers.
>
> Nonsense.  Admins make calls all the time that are recognised by the
> community as necessary, but still make one unpopular with certain
> subsections nonetheless.  RfAs are extraordinarily easy to stack, as
> opposers count for more than supporters and the wider community does not
> generally take an interest in them.  Requests for adminship tend to
> involve only a very small subset of the community, who, fortunately, are
> usually considered sane (editcountitis notwithstanding); requests for
> confirmation will have all the problems of RfA, with the added drawback
> of being inhabited by trolls and idiots who are too concerned with
> advancing their own agendas to bother learning what admins do and why.
>
> Until RfA can realistically be considered The Voice of the People, it is
> not an appropriate or safe mechanism for reconfirming admins.  ArbCom
> and Jimbo Wales are very well aware of what makes an abusive admin (far
> more than users such as, well, *you*), and rest assured, if there's a
> problem, they can deal with it far better than a lynch mob of
> disgruntled users miffed that they weren't able to turn Wikipedia into
> their private playgrounds.
>
> I am not the only person who has noticed that, in your brief time on
> this list, you have rarely posted anything that could not be considered
> "nonsense".  I would like to suggest you spend more time on Wikipedia,
> attempting to learn what we're about and how we work, before you try to
> instruct the Wikipedia Grannies in advanced egg-sucking procedures.  The
> views of someone ignorant of Wikipedia procedures can be useful, at
> times; fresh eyes, etc., but at others it's damned annoying to see
> someone who doesn't know what he's talking about attempt to lecture us.
>   Please, give it a rest, and fill your head instead of this list.
>
>
> --
> Mark Gallagher
> "What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
> - Danger Mouse
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Felipe Sanches

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re : sanger on 'open meritocracies'

body:
> An other example is discussions. I think, it would actually be nice if
> the MediaWiki software would be changed in that way that the
> 'discussion' page of each article had a more automated formatting, more
> like a forum, while still enabling the wikimedia-syntax. Outdated
> discussions could simply be hided and a rating system for comments
> (maybe similar to /.) could also work very well.
this seems to be one of the wikimedia summer of code 2006 projects

> To enable more semantic and meta-data support, or a more data-base-like
> feeling for Wiktionary etc. there's being worked at the Semantic
> MediaWiki (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki). Looks
> very promising!
And there is WiktionaryZ too...

Felipe Sanches ( "JucaBlues" )


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 5/30/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> That's a great example of a non sequitur.  It's usefulness won't be
> established by choosing one of the most common names as a straw man.
> Once you've established that a person lived at a particular address his
> continuing appearance in the phone books for a 15 year period is
> evidence that he may have lived there for that 15 years.  Whether any
> information source will be useful depends on what we are trying to do
> with it.  Why dismiss it prematurely?

What did I do to deserve having the word "straw man" thrown at me?

Steve


from_name: Jan Vanoverpelt

subject: [Wikitech-l] Upgrading through web-based install?

body:
I would like to upgrade my 1.5.7 wiki to version 1.6.6 but i have ONLY
ACCESS TO:
1) the files through FTP
2) the database through phpmyadmin

I was thinking of upgrading through a web-based install, but it seems that i
have to make the 'config' subdirectory writable by the web server. Is there
a way to upgrade without having to make something writable on the webserver
or i am missing something?

thanks!
Jan


from_name: Nick Boalch

body:
Molu wrote:
> As you raise the userbox issue, if an admin is doing something that the
> majority of the community does not support then he's doing the wrong thing.

This is simply not the case. If an admin is acting in the interests of
the encyclopaedia then he is doing the right thing, regardless of what
the majority of the community thinks.

We're here to build an encyclopaedia, not a community. Usually the
interests of the encyclopaedia and those of the community go hand in
hand. Where they don't, the encyclopaedia comes first. Always and
without exception.

> There should be a mechanism to impeach admins without going through ArbCom.
> Apart from increasing accountability, the next time trolls complain about
> admin abuse and corrupt ArbCom we can just point to the mechanism and say what
> are you waiting for? If there is some support in this list I may go ahead and
> start a proposal. What do you think?

[[:m:Instruction creep]]. Such a mechanism would be totally unnecessary.

Trolls complain about ArbCom being 'corrupt' because, rightly if they're
trolls, they don't get the results they want from it.

Cheers,

N.

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3456
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


from_name: Travis Derouin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Hiding titles of pages

body:
Hi Claudi,

Do you mean hiding the main title that are displayed on the article?

I'm pretty sure your only option is to modify the source code, and change
the skin and add your logic for which h1 title tags should be displayed and
which shouldn't.

Travis

On 5/30/06, Claudi Meneghin <clamengh at yahoo.fr> wrote:
>
> Hello,
> I am admin in Lombard wikipedia: we would like to hide the titles of some
> pages, for matters related to dialect fragmentation of Lombard tongue.
> An exemple of this feature can be found at:
> http://ca.wikipedia.org.
> Unfortunately, I have got no idea about how we could proceed.
> Do you have any suggestions, please?
> Many thanks.
> Sincerely yours,
> Claudi
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Mail r?invente le mail ! D?couvrez le nouveau Yahoo! Mail et son
> interface r?volutionnaire.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Creation of new wikis

body:
I specified "wuu" on the initial request; I don't know if maybe
someone has changed that, but it definitely should be "wuu".

In the future, zh-yue should probably be moved to yue:

Mark

On 30/05/06, Arbeo M <arbeo.wiki at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 5/30/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hoi,
> > Would it not make better sense to have a wuu in stead of a zh-wuu? In
> > ISO-639-3 wuu IS a language so there is no need to suggest that Wuu is
> > second to Mandarin.
>
>
> I've noticed that, too. The main reason why I specified "zh-wuu"
> was consistency with the existing "zh-min-nan" ("Taiwanese") and "zh-yue"
> (Cantonese) Wikipedias. Apart from that I fully agree with you that an
> individual three-letter code, where available, is to be preferred. I for one
> have no objections against picking "wuu".
>
> Arbeo
>
> P. S. Sorry, I misspelled the domain name for the Min Nan (Taiwanese)
> Wikisource. It should read zh-min-nan.wikisource.org, of course.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

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


from_name: Joe Anderson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedian Organisations

body:
I've created an essay on Wikipedian organisations. You can view it
here<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedian_organisation>
.

I'm aware many people have problems with Wikipedian organisations, and I
would be interested in writing a policy to stop so many CVU clones, amongst
trolling organisations.

If you look at MfD you see the pure amount of organisations for deletion,
yet there's no policy or guideline to support the deletion of them.

I would like thoughts on a possible guideline or policy.

--
Joe Anderson

[[User:Computerjoe]] on en, fr, de, simple, Meta and Commons.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Aww, so cute,
	a banned user is trying to take us down with a DMCA notice

body:
>On 5/30/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> Mark Gallagher wrote:
> > He's sincere, and hurt, and there's no call to go making fun of him
> > here, and especially not to republish his full personal details,
> > including home address.
> >
> > Please, just *think* a little before you post!
>
> That's a bit rich coming a few hours after you just told Molu his posts
> were annoying and full of nonsense, and demanded he stopped posting to
> the list.

Nonsense; the two aren't even remotely comparable.  A potentially good
editor who has been hard done by over an article is nothing like a
non-editor who feels they need to get rid of Wikipedia admins because
they can't POV the project to their own liking.

Jay.


from_name: Hsiang-Tai Chien

body:
Hi there,

Can someone check what is going wrong on Chinese Wikipedia? "Portal:??"
now is missing and all the content and the histories for this portal is
gone.

Thanks and best regards,
H.T.
[[w:zh:User:Htchien]]

___________________________________________________  ??? Yahoo!?????? 7.0???????????  http://messenger.yahoo.com.tw/


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
On 5/30/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> That's a great example of a non sequitur.  It's usefulness won't be
> established by choosing one of the most common names as a straw man.
> Once you've established that a person lived at a particular address his
> continuing appearance in the phone books for a 15 year period is
> evidence that he may have lived there for that 15 years.  Whether any
> information source will be useful depends on what we are trying to do
> with it.  Why dismiss it prematurely?
>
> Ec
>
> Because you have no way of knowing whether the phone book is up-to-date.
> Even if the celebrity in question doesn't have a secret phone number, the
> encyclopedic merit of including phone book information is pretty much
> non-existent.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 5/29/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>What you seem to forget is that Wikipedia's strength rests with its
>>>amateurs.  While there may be evident need for some amount of
>>>administrative staff it is as important to avoid pretensions of being a
>>>professional organization.  If you look at staff as an investment you
>>>are assuming an economic model that runs contrary to Wikipedia's free
>>>nature.
>>>
>>>
>>But you can also make the case that getting professionals to do the
>>work that needs to be done (legal, finance, fundraising, etc.)
>>offloads those tasks so that the "strength of the amateurs" can be
>>more productively tapped and scaled up to keep Wikipedia evolving in
>>what it does best.
>>
>>
>Exactly. The amateur model just does not scale well *at all* for the Wikimedia Foundation
>(Wikipedia and the other wikis are a different matter). I, for example, am an amateur when it
>comes to finance. My day job and education have nothing to do with it. And yet I'm the CFO. Which
>may have been fine when Wikipedia was a top 500 website and had a small budget, but not now.
>
>I'm a quick learner and always have been able to handle widely varied responsibilities that
>require different skill sets (thus my ability, with the help of the Wikimedia treasurer who does
>have the relevant experience and training, to perform in my role), but there simply is a limit to
>what I can do; both from a time perspective (I can only devote an hour or two - at most - a day to
>this) AND, perhaps more importantly, from an experience/education perspective.
>
>That is why I've had a standing letter of resignation that will go into effect once the foundation
>finally gets around to hiring a properly qualified finance director.
>
>The foundation is not a wiki. It needs to grow up.
>
I don't dispute the need for the Foundation to have some level of paid
staff.  I also feel some concern about the way you have been hung out to
dry in the CFO job.  While you have no doubt worked at the position to
the best of your ability, Wikipedians having a little more familiarity
with such matters probably could see the potential difficulties, and
avoided volunteering for the task.  I really don't think that the Board
has ever been on top of this portfolio.

The Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia are indeed two different
concepts, and the relative roles of professionals and amateurs will
indeed be different in these two organizations.  In many respects we
need to start building a firewall between the two.  This would leave the
WMF responsible for the maintenance of the infrastructural assets, while
Wikipedia and its sisterprojects could be free to pursue their
innovative strategies without the need to be guided by a paranoia that
any small legal oversight could bring the entire empire crashing.  There
are certainly profitable enterprises out there who would welcome that
development with great glee.  There needs to be an arm's length
relationship between the two, and I don't see much being said to address
that.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office


from_name: Jesse W

body:
On May 29, 2006, at 9:37 AM, Raphael Wegmann wrote:
> Yes, Wikipedia publishes anti-Semitic cartoons as well, but they
> are published on the article about "anti-Semitism" resp.
> "new anti-Semitism". I wouldn't complain about publishing the
> J-P cartoons on the Islamophobia article.
Wait a sec.  We are talking about putting the cartoons in an article
*on the J-P cartoons*, right?  AFAIK, no-one is suggesting the cartoons
be included in the [[Islam]] article, or even [[2005 Islamic events]]
(if we have such an article).  So, you think it's utterly wrong to
include the cartoons in an article * devoted solely to them *, but it
would be fine to include them in an article on a general subject of
which they are an (arguable) example?  Does this make any sense to
anyone else?

Jesse Weinstein


subject: [WikiEN-l] Template:spoiler

body:
On May 29, 2006, at 9:46 AM, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> Hmm, now the trick is how to get that to
> pop up automatically whenever I go to Wikipedia.
Use Greecemonkey (google it); it's a extension to Firefox that allows
arbitrary javascript to be automatically run on arbitrary pages.  Very
nice thing.

Jesse Weinstein


body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>On 5/30/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>That's a great example of a non sequitur.  It's usefulness won't be
>>established by choosing one of the most common names as a straw man.
>>Once you've established that a person lived at a particular address his
>>continuing appearance in the phone books for a 15 year period is
>>evidence that he may have lived there for that 15 years.  Whether any
>>information source will be useful depends on what we are trying to do
>>with it.  Why dismiss it prematurely?
>>
>>Ec
>>
>Because you have no way of knowing whether the phone book is up-to-date.
>Even if the celebrity in question doesn't have a secret phone number, the
>encyclopedic merit of including phone book information is pretty much
>non-existent.
>
At least in North America phone books are annual publications, with a
publication date like any other books.  Each directory is as up to date
as it can be for the publication date in question.  I'm not saying that
there are no limits to the utility of telephone books.  They are, like
encyclopedias, convenient first places to look for information, but a
good researcher does not stop at that source.

Ec


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 5/30/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>That's a great example of a non sequitur.  It's usefulness won't be
>>established by choosing one of the most common names as a straw man.
>>Once you've established that a person lived at a particular address his
>>continuing appearance in the phone books for a 15 year period is
>>evidence that he may have lived there for that 15 years.  Whether any
>>information source will be useful depends on what we are trying to do
>>with it.  Why dismiss it prematurely?
>>
>>
>What did I do to deserve having the word "straw man" thrown at me?
>
You extrapolated the frequency of the name "Ng" in the Melbourne
directory as an argument to prove the much broader hypothesis that phone
books are not valid sources.  That name was the straw man.  Choosing a
much rarer name may have resulted in the quite different conclusion that
a phone book is _sometimes_ a valid source.  If among all those Ngs
there is only one Egg Foo Ng it might still be useful there.  And we
haven't even mentioned the usefulness of the yellow pages in
establishing the existence of a business over a time frame.

Ec


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 30/05/06, SCO Estmort <eudaimonic.leftist at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We can't fight China; it'd waste our time and they wouldn't even
> > notice. We're not magically endowed crusaders for truth and justice;
> > we're writers. Ripe targets are all well and good, but picking a fight
> > we can win should come before picking a fight that sounds good.
>
> The key thing is that we can win, and that is why they are ripe,
> because the copyright violation is so blatant.

Okay, we've magically found someone with standing to sue and we've
magically found the money for them to do it with. We (magically) win.
What, exactly, do you envisage happening?

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] The shift of Wikipedia

body:
On May 28, 2006, at 1:26 PM, A. Nony Mouse wrote:
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Lerichard
> Perhaps?

Good thought, but this account, at least, doesn't seem to be the
account of the Original Poster.  It's first edit was June 2005, and
most recent was November 2005.  And, although I don't speak French, it
doesn't look like there are any math-related articles on the contribs
list.

Next?

Jesse Weinstein


from_name: Arbeo M

subject: [Foundation-l] Catalan Wikinews set up

body:
On 5/26/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:

Wikinews has a bit of an unusual process. Individual Wikinews language
editions have to meet much higher standards than, for example,
Wikipedias to be launched.
...
The procedure for creating a new Wikinews edition is at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Start_a_new_edition

Thanks for the info. Didn't know about this special procedure wrt Wikinews.

A.


subject: [Foundation-l] Catalan Wikinews set up


from_name: Jossi Fresco

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin-driven death of Wikipedia: a diatribe

body:
On May 30, 2006, at 1:26 PM, Redvers @ the Wikipedia wrote:

> What amazes me is how these people can represent
> either or both of these views depending on what they
> feel will get them an advantage that moment. How they
> can dismiss Wikipedia as meaningless, then spend hours
> on a bloody forum devoted to how meaningless Wikipedia
> is. How they can demand perfection at all times from
> admins whilst demanding everyone ignore their own
> failings.

Not only that ... after vociferously dismissing Wikipedia as a tool
for the lazy and feeble minded, and the WP community as cultic, you
can still find them around, quoting misapplied guidelines and
policies back at you...

I would love your post to be added as a Wikipedia:Essay.

-- Jossi


from_name: jf_wikipedia at mac.com

body:
On May 30, 2006, at 1:38 PM, Raphael Wegmann wrote:

> The article is called "Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy"
> and should report about the *controversy* surrounding the cartoons.
> How are we supposed to write a neutral report on this controversy,
> if we block the editors who feel insulted by the cartoons?
Raphael,

The blocks may not have been against the editor(s) who felt insulted,
but against the editors that disrupted the editing process by
editwarring, violating the 3RR rule, etc. Was not this the case?

-- Jossi


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Aww, so cute,
 a banned user is trying to take us down with a DMCA notice

body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:
> He's sincere, and hurt, and there's no call to go making fun of him
> here, and especially not to republish his full personal details,
> including home address.
>
> Please, just *think* a little before you post!

That's a bit rich coming a few hours after you just told Molu his posts
were annoying and full of nonsense, and demanded he stopped posting to
the list.

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


body:
On 30/05/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> Mark Gallagher wrote:
> > He's sincere, and hurt, and there's no call to go making fun of him
> > here, and especially not to republish his full personal details,
> > including home address.
> >
> > Please, just *think* a little before you post!
>
> That's a bit rich coming a few hours after you just told Molu his posts
> were annoying and full of nonsense, and demanded he stopped posting to
> the list.

Okay, then, I'll sign that email instead of Mark; it's exactly what I
was saying on IRC last night.

Sometimes, our processes don't work well for people. Sometimes, they
end up being compelled to do things we view as being a bit silly, like
DMCA takedown notices. This is because, frankly, we have an
institutionalised culture of being pretty dickish when people make
not-unreasonable requests like "please delete an article I wrote".

I really do feel sorry for this guy, and there is *absolutely nothing*
to be gained by mocking him on wikien-l other than making us look like
heels.

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


body:
On May 29, 2006, at 3:11 PM, Conrad Dunkerson wrote:
> I was suggesting that PART of the reason for the excessive hatred
> directed
> at Wikipedia and the admin community in particular are the actions of
> some
> admins. The original poster said that a lost Wikipedia user can also
> be a
> new anti-Wikipedia crusader.
I just want to note that I agree with this.  We do have a problem with
sometimes inflaming "problem users" rather than educating them into
good contributors or deflating and wearing them out until they leave.
Is this primarily due to the growth of the site?  In my opinion, yes.
What can we do about this without making our problems (this and/or
others) worse?  I don't know.  Conrad, do you have any suggestions?  In
any case, I do appreciate you bringing this up, it is good that we are
(once again) having this discussion.  This *is* the sort of "good
response to critics" that we hope to practice.

Jesse Weinstein


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
On 5/30/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Sometimes, our processes don't work well for people. Sometimes, they
> end up being compelled to do things we view as being a bit silly, like
> DMCA takedown notices. This is because, frankly, we have an
> institutionalised culture of being pretty dickish when people make
> not-unreasonable requests like "please delete an article I wrote".
>
> I really do feel sorry for this guy, and there is *absolutely nothing*
> to be gained by mocking him on wikien-l other than making us look like
> heels.

Hear hear.  We should not be engaging in such mockery.  I think it
would have been better if the email at the head of this thread had not
been sent, or failing that, if it had been modded out because of its
unacceptable tone (and perhaps for some confidential content, if there
is some)


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 30/05/06, Jan Vanoverpelt <jan.vanoverpelt at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would like to upgrade my 1.5.7 wiki to version 1.6.6 but i have ONLY
> ACCESS TO:
> 1) the files through FTP
> 2) the database through phpmyadmin
>
> I was thinking of upgrading through a web-based install, but it seems that i
> have to make the 'config' subdirectory writable by the web server. Is there
> a way to upgrade without having to make something writable on the webserver
> or i am missing something?

How did you install the wiki in the first place, without being able to
make the config dir. writable? In any case, can't your FTP client do
simple CHMOD commands?

Rob Church


from_name: Andy Rabagliati

body:
On Tue, 30 May 2006, Andrew Lih wrote:

> I think it is worth it to send them a letter to the effect that the
> GFDL requires such-and-such and that WMF would be happy to supply them
> a translation of the policy and provide help to implement the
> measures. Remind them first, rather than charge in with legal notices.
> And in the process, point out their own "Business Code of Conduct and
> Ethics" listed here which has a statement about respecting copyright:
> http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol-govhighlights

This seems easy to do, and shows that some effort has been made to
protect the copyright - an important step, I think.

Cheers,     Andy!


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
No, I did not read every post. But if that is so, I would say
collecting might be possible. So if the case is slam dunk, if there
are damages that can be calculated and collection is possible....

Fred

On May 29, 2006, at 10:42 PM, Mark Williamson wrote:

> Did you read this thread? Baidu is traded on NASDAQ.
>
> On 29/05/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
>> Assuming you could actually win a judgement against the government,
>> they have substantial assets in the United States. Expect them to
>> claim that they have nothing to do with Baide Baiku though. Baide
>> Baikul likely has no assets in the US.
>>
>> Fred
>>
>> On May 29, 2006, at 7:10 PM, Sean Barrett wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Supposing for the moment that we won the most crushing victory in
>>> the
>>> history of international jurisprudence ... what would we do if they
>>> just
>>> ignored it?  Who do we call to enforce the judgment?  For some
>>> reason I
>>> doubt that the State Department is going to send any sternly-worded
>>> communiqu?s on our behalf, to say nothing of the likelihood that
>>> Congress is going to impose any trade sanctions....
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Josh Gordon

subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletions

body:
Ted Sturgeon, bless his heart, had a much too charitable opinion of
human endeavor.

On 5/30/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/20/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Absolutely.  What we *mustn't* do is delete good articles.  Crappy
> > articles we can live without and we should be happily deleting them.
>
>
> To paraphrase Sturgeon, 90% of Wikipedia is crap.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
--jpgordon ????


body:
This kicking out business is not cool, but we could require periodic
reaffirmation of administrator status.

Fred

On May 30, 2006, at 1:10 AM, Molu wrote:

> So you are saying Guerdlam's accusations are actually true? In that
> case it is a cause for concern! If a certain admin will not pass a
> RfA today, he has no business whatsoever being an admin. An admin
> is a person who has been entrusted with some additional abilities
> by the community because he is trusted to make good use of them and
> entrusting those abilities to all users has too much potential for
> disruption.
>
>   If however an admin ceases to be popular within the community,
> that means he has overstayed his welcome and immediately needs to
> be kicked out, call it a lynchmob if you will. An admin is a
> janitor, not the member of some elite aristocracy and if they
> perform actions unpopular to the majority of the community then
> they are abusing their powers.
>
>   Molu
>
>
>     On Mon, 29 May 2006 12:36:51 +0100 Nick Boalch wrote:
>
>
>> I don't think that is a particularly fair test. As is obvious, admins
>> are occasionally called upon to perform actions that upset people
>> -- I
>> don't think admins should shrink from making those hard choices.
>>
>
>
>> I can think of several thoroughgoingly solid admins, people who
>> temper a
>> good knowledge of policy with a healthy dose of knowing that what
>> we're
>> here to do is write an encyclopaedia, who I doubt would pass an RfA
>> because they've done things that have made them controversial or
>> unpopular in certain sectors of the community.
>>
>
>
>> The community giveth, and the community taketh away -- but it taketh
>> away under the auspices of proper consideration by the arbitration
>> committee, not by having unpopular admins strung up by a baying
>> lynchmob.
>>
>
>
>> Cheers,
>>
>
>
>> N.
>>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Feel free to call! Free PC-to-PC calls. Low rates on PC-to-Phone.
> Get Yahoo! Messenger with Voice
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
I think you will make a lot of trouble and accomplish nothing.

Fred

On May 30, 2006, at 1:39 AM, Molu wrote:

> If you are unpopular, then you are doing something wrong. Blocking
> vandals pisses them off, but earns the support of real Wikipedians.
> As you raise the userbox issue, if an admin is doing something that
> the majority of the community does not support then he's doing the
> wrong thing. If his actions are controversial within only a small
> part of the community but actually is in accordance with policy,
> then other wikipedians will come in to support and drown the trolls.
>
>   There should be a mechanism to impeach admins without going
> through ArbCom. Apart from increasing accountability, the next time
> trolls complain about admin abuse and corrupt ArbCom we can just
> point to the mechanism and say what are you waiting for? If there
> is some support in this list I may go ahead and start a proposal.
> What do you think?
>
>   Molu
>
>
>     On Mon, 29 May 2006 22:11:32 +0100 (BST) Nick Boalch wrote:
>
>   <snip>
>
>> I do. One can do things without being unpleasant that nevertheless
>> make
>> you unpopular. Look at the administrators who have been vilified
>> for attempting in all good faith to deal with the userbox problem.
>>
>
>
>> Cheers,
>>
>
>
>> N
>>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Ring'em or ping'em. Make  PC-to-phone calls as low as 1?/min with
> Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Creation of new wikis

body:
 A number of new language subdomains for various Wikimedia projects have
been requested in the recent months. The ones listed below (according to
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages) have
been approved by the Community after thorough examination and discussion.
All of them have sufficient support by native/proficient speakers as well as
ISO language codes.

On behalf of the Wikimedians interested in contributing to our projects in
those languages, I'd would like to ask for the early creation of the wikis
listed below:

Wikipedia
* Wu: zh-wuu.wikipedia.org
* Mazandarani: mzn.wikipedia.org
* Nepal Bhasa (Newar): new.wikipedia.org
* Lak: lbe.wikipedia.org
* Emilian-Romagnol: eml.wikipedia.org
* Buryat: bxr.wikipedia.org
* Upper Sorbian: hsb.wikipedia.org
* Novial: nov.wikipedia.org
* Pangasinan: pag.wikipedia.org

Wikisource
* Bosnian: bs.wikisource.org
* Malayalam: ml.wikisource.org
* Slovak: sk.wikisource.org
* Slovenian: sl.wikisource.org
* Min Nan (Taiwanese): zh-min-man.wikisource.org

Wikiquote
* Ido: io.wikiquote.org

Wiktionary
* Cebuano: ceb.wiktionary.org
* Pangasinan: pag.wiktionary.org

Wikibooks
* Cebuano: ceb.wikibooks.org

For details, please see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages. For any
questions, please feel free to contact me, post to the "Approved requests
for new languages" talk page or to the wikipedia-l mailing list. Your help
in enabling multilingualism is great appreciated. Thanks for your attention!

Arbeo


from_name: Lord Voldemort

body:
On 5/30/06, Raphael Wegmann <raphael at psi.co.at> wrote:
<snip>
> Yes, critique on religions should be included in Wikipedia,
> but WP:NPOV does not mean to call those who disagree vandals
> and block them, if they deem the "critique" a respectless
> insult and remove it. This is what I was refering to, when
> I wrote "foreign faiths or cultures aren't welcome".

You say "critique on religions should be included in Wikipedia", then
immediately afterwards say those people that remove it should not be
called vandals.  Removal of appropriate material is considered
vandalism, and repeatedly doing so may result in a block.  Do you not
think it should be so?  I don't really want to get into *this*
specific debate, I was just a little confused about what you wrote.
Thanks.
--LV


from_name: GerardM

subject: [Wikitech-l] Creation of new wikis

body:
Hoi,
Would it not make better sense to have a wuu in stead of a zh-wuu? In
ISO-639-3 wuu IS a language so there is no need to suggest that Wuu is
second to Mandarin.

Thanks,
    GerardM

On 5/30/06, Arbeo M <arbeo.wiki at googlemail.com> wrote:
>  A number of new language subdomains for various Wikimedia projects have
> been requested in the recent months. The ones listed below (according to
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages) have
> been approved by the Community after thorough examination and discussion.
> All of them have sufficient support by native/proficient speakers as well as
> ISO language codes.
>
> On behalf of the Wikimedians interested in contributing to our projects in
> those languages, I'd would like to ask for the early creation of the wikis
> listed below:
>
> Wikipedia
> * Wu: zh-wuu.wikipedia.org
> * Mazandarani: mzn.wikipedia.org
> * Nepal Bhasa (Newar): new.wikipedia.org
> * Lak: lbe.wikipedia.org
> * Emilian-Romagnol: eml.wikipedia.org
> * Buryat: bxr.wikipedia.org
> * Upper Sorbian: hsb.wikipedia.org
> * Novial: nov.wikipedia.org
> * Pangasinan: pag.wikipedia.org
>
> Wikisource
> * Bosnian: bs.wikisource.org
> * Malayalam: ml.wikisource.org
> * Slovak: sk.wikisource.org
> * Slovenian: sl.wikisource.org
> * Min Nan (Taiwanese): zh-min-man.wikisource.org
>
> Wikiquote
> * Ido: io.wikiquote.org
>
> Wiktionary
> * Cebuano: ceb.wiktionary.org
> * Pangasinan: pag.wiktionary.org
>
> Wikibooks
> * Cebuano: ceb.wikibooks.org
>
> For details, please see
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages. For any
> questions, please feel free to contact me, post to the "Approved requests
> for new languages" talk page or to the wikipedia-l mailing list. Your help
> in enabling multilingualism is great appreciated. Thanks for your attention!
>
> Arbeo
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed

body:
Anthere wrote:
> By the way, a citation published on a french site recently (an interview
> from Jimbo).
>
> Jimbo says
>
> "... nous souhaitons g?n?rer une version
> ? stable ? des articles, v?rifi?e et approuv?e par des experts sur le
> sujet, tout en maintenant la possibilit? de le modifier. Il est hors de
> question de demander aux b?n?voles de faire le plus gros du travail, et
> de  demander ? un expert de peaufiner le rest."
>
> Translation
>
> "We wish to create a stable version of all articles, checked and
> approved by experts on the topic, whilst keeping the option of
> modification of the article. It is excluded to ask volunteers to do most
> of the bulk work, and to ask to an expert to just take care of the
> polishing".

"We wish to create a stable version of all articles, checked and
approved by the community, using a process which meets or exceeds the
quality level of traditional encyclopedias.  Such a process should
involve people with expertise, of course, but it would not be acceptable
for us to take the attitude that "ah, thank you to the volunteers, but
now we have experts to come in and finish the job".  Rather, we seek to
extend our community process in new ways over time, always remaining
open to new ideas for higher quality."

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed


subject: [Wikitech-l] Creation of new wikis

body:
On 5/30/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hoi,
> Would it not make better sense to have a wuu in stead of a zh-wuu? In
> ISO-639-3 wuu IS a language so there is no need to suggest that Wuu is
> second to Mandarin.

I've noticed that, too. The main reason why I specified "zh-wuu"
was consistency with the existing "zh-min-nan" ("Taiwanese") and "zh-yue"
(Cantonese) Wikipedias. Apart from that I fully agree with you that an
individual three-letter code, where available, is to be preferred. I for one
have no objections against picking "wuu".

Arbeo

P. S. Sorry, I misspelled the domain name for the Min Nan (Taiwanese)
Wikisource. It should read zh-min-nan.wikisource.org, of course.


from_name: Conrad Dunkerson

body:
* A. Nony Mouse wrote:

> Excuse me while I have a good laugh. You've been trying to drive people
> like me, who honestly want wikipedia reformed, onto wikipediareview (so
> that you can say "oh it's just whining from wikipediareview, we should
> destroy them") for months now.

As none of that sounds remotely familiar I'll assume you are using some
sort of collective form of "you".

> I'm just going to sit back and eat some popcorn and enjoy watching them
> make fun of YOU now, Conrad, because that's all they're doing.

That's ok. I'm a big boy. I can take it.

> You've
> raised valid points just as I did, and they're not taking you seriously,
> just reiterating the same old Judge Dredd "I AM THE LAW" bullshit.

Bizarrely enough, >I< am also 'the law'... making these generalizations
perhaps somewhat simplistic. Wikipedia and its administration are made up
of a wide variety of people with different backgrounds and viewpoints.
Thus, attacking the institution or members/admins in general based on the
actions of individuals will always include an element of unjustified
criticism. Deal with individual problems rather than trashing the whole.


body:
On 5/30/06, Redvers @ the Wikipedia <wikiredvers at yahoo.ie> wrote:
>People who whine on about admins and admin abuse
broadly seem to fall into two categories.
<snip>
<snip>
<snip>
<snip>
<snip>
<snip>
<snip>
<snip><snip> ...
> -> REDVERS

You forgot "They write 800+ word diatribes to anyone who will listen,
and, in most instances, to those who won't".  ;-)  But yes, I agree
for the most part.  Feels good to let it out, eh?
--LV


from_name: Anittas Hatti

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked for disruption and trolling?

body:
The recent days have been very confusing to me. I'll keep it short. User:Zoe demanded a certain part of the article to be sourced. That part of the article was sourced, but had no footnotes attached to it. Zoe asked what the sources were, and I gave them the two souces: one was a book and another was a Doc-file. These sources had been included in the article.

  Zoe claimed that they didn't have the book and that the Doc-file could not be accessible for all people. After much discussion, Zoe agreed to restore the part of the article, until it was found that the text was plagiarized from another site and was again removed. All was fine.

  Meanwhile, I went to a few articles started by two other users and removed the unsourced material. I was reverted and warned for being disruptive. After some negotiations, I started instead to discuss the issue, as Zoe said that I should do. I  went to ANI to ask questions about the Wiki policy on sources. I didn't care about the text that was removed due to plagiarization, as I deemed the decission to be a correct one. I went to ANI to ask whether an article about a comicbook could use that same comic as a source. I then asked if an article about a movie could use the same movie as a source. I thought it was original research, because the author of the article needs to interpret the art by himself and then write about it. No-one gave me any answer to the topic; instead, Zoe blocked me for disruption and trolling.

  I'm sure that most admins will agree with Zoe's decission, even tho I was being polite the whole time and even tho I was ultimately blocked for asking questions on ANI (which ironically, saw a couple of admins contradict themselves) by an admin who was involved in the dispute. That's fine with me: you can agree with Zoe and everyone else that disagreed with me. Perhaps I was being disruptive by asking too many questions. But I would still like to know if an article about a movie can use the movie as a source; and if an article about a comicbook can use that same comicbook as a source. If the answer is no, can any action be taken against such articles? And where can this info be found?

  I don't want to be accused of taking things out-of-context or for whatever else, so I will include the links to the relevant discussions.

  The question on ANI that ultimatelly got me blocked:

  * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Another_question_about_sources

  * My first question on ANI:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Articles_without_references

  * Vlad III Dracula source conflict:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Vlad_III_Dracula#Nine_anecdotes

  * My talkpage (accused of vandalism, trolling, disruption, etc.)

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anittas#Vlad_III_Dracula

  * The discussion on ANI:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Vlad_III_Dracula.2C_redux

  * Discussion on one of the related articles:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Abin_Sur

User:Anittas

---------------------------------
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from_name: Claudi Meneghin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Hiding titles of pages

body:
Hello,
I am admin in Lombard wikipedia: we would like to hide the titles of some pages, for matters related to dialect fragmentation of Lombard tongue.
An exemple of this feature can be found at:
http://ca.wikipedia.org.
Unfortunately, I have got no idea about how we could proceed.
Do you have any suggestions, please?
Many thanks.
Sincerely yours,
Claudi

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body:
* charles matthews wrote:
> I think it is very naive about the Internet and its denizens to
> assume 'no smoke without fire applies'.

Heh... two decades on the 'net' and still "naive" ("very" so no less)
about it and its denizens. Somehow, I don't think that's it.

> Criticism of admins does not imply,
> necessarily, that there are admins who deserve such criticism.

Necessarily? No. You can have criticism without justification. However,
seething hatred from former contributors? An entire community of them? And
complaints of admin behaviour commonplace amongst the ACTIVE contributors?
Perhaps these are indications that there just might be some small thing
which ought to be done differently.

> You do
> concede that some very difficult 'customers' are rightly banned from WP?
> And that subsequent comment from them may have a malicious component?

Also, that the sun is hot. :]


body:
It will be a lot easier for a community to build an encyclopedia.

Fred

On May 30, 2006, at 4:04 AM, Nick Boalch wrote:

> We're here to build an encyclopaedia, not a community. Usually the
> interests of the encyclopaedia and those of the community go hand in
> hand. Where they don't, the encyclopaedia comes first. Always and
> without exception.


body:
* Nick Boalch wrote:

> This is simply not the case. If an admin is acting in the interests of
> the encyclopaedia then he is doing the right thing, regardless of what
> the majority of the community thinks.

Good to know.

The other day a fellow named Linuxbeak acted in the interests of the
encyclopedia (as he saw it). Some people disagreed, but clearly he was
"doing the right thing" because HE thought so. No need for that silly
'consensus' stuff. :]


from_name: Petr Kadlec

subject: [Wikipedia-l] How to edit the bookshop list?

body:
Hi!

> As a matter of fact, there are online magazine selling books in the pms
> language, but Amazon is obviously not one of those. Is there anyway to add a
> link to the list? I suppose it's many editions having this problem.

Edit [[Wikipedia:Andoa trov? dij l?ber]] (which is defined in
[[MediaWiki:Booksources]]), and use MAGICNUMBER in place of ISBN; see
e.g. [[en:Wikipedia:Book sources]].

HTH
-- [[cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]]


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 5/26/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 5/25/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 5/24/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/05/the_death_of_wi.php
> > >
> > > It is worth noting that Nicholas Carr has taken note of this thread to
> > > announce the death of Wikipedia.  Apparently, 154 articles
> > > semi-protected out of 1,151,768 is the end of open editing.
> >
> >
> > Not that your argument through statistics is in any way meaningful.
> > 154 /1,151,768 is more than 100 ppm; 100 ppm of carbon monoxide,
> mercury,
> > arsenic, sulfur dioxide, nitric oxide, vinyl chloride, formaldehyde,
> > benzene, ammonia, etc. would kill you dead. Or at least give you any
> number
> > of horrible cancers.
> >
> > Water is fluoridated to 1 ppm.
> >
> > Motorcycles cause 0.22 deaths per million vehicle miles. New Zealand has
> 100
> > maternal deaths per million births. Drugs kill about 100 per million
> people
> > in US urban areas.
> >
> > In other words, that 154 articles are semiprotected out of a population
> of
> > 1.2 million could be insignificant, great, or terrible.
> >
> > But on its own it's just a factoid, not a counterargument.
>
>
> This is pretty rich coming from someone who just complained that we
> shouldn't argue with appeals to emotion. If comparing semi-protection
> to mothers dying while giving birth to babies isn't an appeal to
> emotion, I don't know what is.
>
> All your analogies are useless. The chemistry ones are just
> ridiculous, there is no analogy between how poisons damage the body to
> how semi-protection damages the encyclopedia. There's to much science
> you're ignoring, the way chemicals work.
>
> The deaths per millions analogies are not only pretty cheap shots,
> they are also just as flawed. The reason why 100 maternal deaths per 1
> million births is not a tragedy because it's such a high number
> (because it isn't), it's a tradgedy because people are *actually*
> dying. 1 death per million would be tragic. 1 death per billion would
> be tragic. The numbers are meaningless.

I was only pulling out death statistics because they're easy to find and
because death is the topic. I stuck in the floridation example. I could have
(and probably should have) put in more random stats, say of how much zinc we
need.

I wasn't attempting to make any analogies between semi-protection in
floridation or motorcycle crashes. I don't think there's any equivalency. I
was merely pointing out that being "vanishingly small" is dependent on the
situation.


from_name: maru dubshinki

body:
On 5/30/06, Redvers @ the Wikipedia <wikiredvers at yahoo.ie> wrote:
> From: Molu <loom91 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] To: Jimmy Wales - Admin-driven
> death of Wikipedia
>
> > If you are unpopular, then you are doing something
> > wrong.
>
> People who whine on about admins and admin abuse
> broadly seem to fall into two categories. Either
> they're people with an agenda (or a model for the
> 'pedia that the majority don't support) to push or
> they're admin-wannabies who see the post as some sort
> of reward and want it for themselves and are
> frustrated they don't think they'll get it.
>
> Interestingly, people who criticise Jimbo fall into
> similar categories - either they have an agenda to
> push or they think they can do a better job of being
> figurehead and are frustrated they won't get it.
.....
> The company you keep often tells more about you than
> you do yourself, I find.
>
> -> REDVERS

But y'know, one or the other is probably right. It is *very* unlikely
that the current situations are completely optimal (if you think they
are, the onus is on you to demonstrate that- see [[Status quo bias]]).

The question is, overall, and in specific instances, which side is
more correct than the other or the status quo? Simply writing such
people off as irrational is itself irrational. Minds must be kept
open.

~maru
consistency is the hobgoblin....


body:
On 5/27/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
>
> On May 27, 2006, at 10:42 AM, Raphael Wegmann wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > even though I haven't touched the J-P Muhammad cartoons since
> > my last block one month ago, I have now again been blocked
> > for a week for criticizing administrators, who unjustifiably
> > blocked editors for "Censorship" resp. "removing Muhammad
> > images" and literally called editors vandals, who merely
> > removed an insult on their religious belief.
> >
> > I am not a Muslim myself, but discrimination bothers me wherever
> > I see it. Therefore I created a page in my userspace, where
> > I documented cases, in which editors apparently only have been
> > blocked, because of the strong "free speech" convictions of
> > some administrators: [[User:Raphael1/Persecution of Muslims]]
>
> Wikipedia is not a place to post lengthy tracts denouncing Wikipedia
> and its administrators. Wikipedia is a project to build an
> encyclopedia. I'm sorry this didn't seem obvious to you when you
> started, but it's not exactly prudent to go around attacking the
> people you're supposed to work with.

Making a list of people who took an action you disagree with shouldn't be
grounds for blocking, though.


from_name: Uwe Brauer

subject: [Wikitech-l] wikipedia-mode.el (version 0.5) for Emacs released

body:
Hello

That might be a little of topic but I just released the latest version
of wikipedia-mode.el which is a mayor mode for GNU Emacs for editing
wikipedia files, best using mozex.

You will find it either in the  gnu.emacs.sources newsgroup or in
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/wikipedia-mode.el

Enjoy

Uwe Brauer
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body:
On 5/29/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:

>
> But I don't see the elimination of barriers to contribution as being
> exclusive to being a wiki.  Is DMOZ a wiki?  Would it become one if
> you eliminated the rules about signing up and getting approved before
> you can "become an editor"?
>
> Jimmy Wales tried applying "the wiki part" to a web directory
> (Wikiasari).  The project failed miserably.
>
> I dunno, maybe DMOZ *would* be "a wiki" if you eliminated just a
> couple of the stupid rules.  And maybe it would be enormously more
> successful if you did so.  Of course, maybe Nupedia would have
> overtaken Wikipedia by now if Bomis had just funded it for a few more
> years.  I've read before that Larry Sanger thinks this.

DMOZ is a creepy mess; Wikipedia's starting to develop some of the same
self-congratulating culture of admins that it has (or had last time I
checked). It freaks me out.


from_name: jf_wikipedia at mac.com

body:
Admins that block a users for 24 hrs without placing warning notices
(minimum one, better three, have done so outside of the blocking
policy. All editors, including anons, need to be warned before
blocking. I would argue that Cyde Weys, could have been reminded of
the procedure by placing a notice at [[WP:ANI]]

-- Jossi

On May 30, 2006, at 2:34 PM, Raphael Wegmann wrote:

> Take a look yourself:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/148.81.117.224
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/68.173.27.37
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/62.135.119.144


from_name: Mark Gallagher

body:
Molu,

<snip/>

> If however an admin ceases to be popular within the community, that
> means he has overstayed his welcome and immediately needs to be
> kicked out, call it a lynchmob if you will. An admin is a janitor,
> not the member of some elite aristocracy and if they perform actions
> unpopular to the majority of the community then they are abusing
> their powers.

Nonsense.  Admins make calls all the time that are recognised by the
community as necessary, but still make one unpopular with certain
subsections nonetheless.  RfAs are extraordinarily easy to stack, as
opposers count for more than supporters and the wider community does not
generally take an interest in them.  Requests for adminship tend to
involve only a very small subset of the community, who, fortunately, are
usually considered sane (editcountitis notwithstanding); requests for
confirmation will have all the problems of RfA, with the added drawback
of being inhabited by trolls and idiots who are too concerned with
advancing their own agendas to bother learning what admins do and why.

Until RfA can realistically be considered The Voice of the People, it is
not an appropriate or safe mechanism for reconfirming admins.  ArbCom
and Jimbo Wales are very well aware of what makes an abusive admin (far
more than users such as, well, *you*), and rest assured, if there's a
problem, they can deal with it far better than a lynch mob of
disgruntled users miffed that they weren't able to turn Wikipedia into
their private playgrounds.

I am not the only person who has noticed that, in your brief time on
this list, you have rarely posted anything that could not be considered
"nonsense".  I would like to suggest you spend more time on Wikipedia,
attempting to learn what we're about and how we work, before you try to
instruct the Wikipedia Grannies in advanced egg-sucking procedures.  The
views of someone ignorant of Wikipedia procedures can be useful, at
times; fresh eyes, etc., but at others it's damned annoying to see
someone who doesn't know what he's talking about attempt to lecture us.
  Please, give it a rest, and fill your head instead of this list.

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Are phone books reliable sources?

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 5/30/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>You extrapolated the frequency of the name "Ng" in the Melbourne
>>directory as an argument to prove the much broader hypothesis that phone
>>books are not valid sources.  That name was the straw man.  Choosing a
>>much rarer name may have resulted in the quite different conclusion that
>>a phone book is _sometimes_ a valid source.  If among all those Ngs
>>there is only one Egg Foo Ng it might still be useful there.  And we
>>haven't even mentioned the usefulness of the yellow pages in
>>establishing the existence of a business over a time frame.
>>
>>
>I did what?
>
>I was asked for an example of a phone book being a reliable source for a claim.
>
>I gave one.
>
>Now you're just being nasty.
>
Huh????  What's nasty about it?  Why should it seem nasty to point out
an apparent error in logic?  There was absolutely nothing personal in that.

It did strike me that your example was designed to show exactly the
opposite of what you now claim.  This would certainly seem the effect of
citing that there are so many Ngs in the Melbourne phone book.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletions

body:
On 5/20/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Absolutely.  What we *mustn't* do is delete good articles.  Crappy
> articles we can live without and we should be happily deleting them.

To paraphrase Sturgeon, 90% of Wikipedia is crap.


from_name: Berto

body:
Hi!

As a matter of fact, there are online magazine selling books in the pms
language, but Amazon is obviously not one of those. Is there anyway to add a
link to the list? I suppose it's many editions having this problem.

Berto