body:
Sean Barrett wrote:

>Both the Board and the Arbitration Committee have endorsed the
>fact that Jimbo has the powers of a GodKing and occasionally will use
>them.  And the consensus of the community seems to me to be a vehement
>"whatever."
>
>
Note that this is conditional---Jimbo has powers that he is trusted to
use rarely and wisely.  If, for example, he blanked Wikipedia and
replaced it with furry porn, probably people would not agree that was a
legitimate use of his powers, whether legal or not.  In between is a
very large gray area, from "of course that's ok", to "that might to be
ok", to "ehh...".

My main objection is to equating Jimbo's legal authority over the
Wikimedia Foundation with his role as benevolent dictator.  The latter
derives essentially from the fact that he acts, well, benevolently.
People support that so long as it remains benevolent.

I don't claim to speak on behalf of the commuity; I'm just pointing out
that his powers derive in essence from the consent of the community, and
are not somehow separate from that.  He'll continue to be able to herd
Wikipedia so long as the vast majority of its users agree that he's
doing a good job; that's quite separate from his titular position as
Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Wikimedia Foundation.

So, if I'm wrong in criticizing his use of powers in this matter, it's
because the community agrees that his intervention was a good idea, not
because he somehow has freedom to do whatever he wants without discussion.

-Mark


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] What ever happened to Article Validation? (EOM)

body:
You can optimise unsecure code. It's still sub-optimal though.

Steve

On 2/7/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/7/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > No the last objection I heard about was due to security.
>
> I think unsecure code is non-optimised!  I'd hardly call it paranoia, either.


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] I'm not allowed to say you're attractive, but...

body:
On 2/7/06, Nick Boalch <n.g.boalch at durham.ac.uk> wrote:
> Sam Korn wrote:
>
> >> I agree. I think it would be very sweet if two Wikipedians fell in
> >> love on a talk page. But only if they were both above the statutory
> >> age of consent.
> >
> > As per the Wikiholic test, sockpuppets don't count.
>
> There's a masturbation gag here somewhere, but I'm damned if I can see
> what it is. :)
>
> Cheers,
>
> N.

"This user is believed to be a sockpuppet of User:Penis....."

Sorry, couldn't help myself. I'll go stand in the corner of shame now.

--Oskar


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] No more blocking people for who they *are*?

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

Steve Bennett stated for the record:

> Hi all,
>   Just a thought in the wake of the pedophile thing. Could we agree
> not to ever again block people for what they are? No matter how
> disgusting, unpleasant, immoral etc. Such things always being at least
> somewhat objective, we should stick instead to only blocking people
> for actions.
>
> In other words: If someone says, "I'm a pedophile", then by policy
> this should not be a reason to block them. If, on the other hand, they
> are trolling, and it works, then that becomes a blockable action -
> trolling.
>
> I worry that there is a genuine slippery slope where "I am a
> pedophile" gets confused with "I am a terrorist", then "I am a member
> of Hamas" then "I support Eta"  and so on and so forth. Is it not
> better to simply say "We do not block people for statements of who
> they are or what they believe"?
>
> Steve

Don't forget, Steve, to consider all aspects of a policy, including the
public relations concerns.  As a top-ten Web site with some minor
oopsies already on our record, we need to be careful about how eagerly
we hand the media any sort of "haven for pedophiles"-shaped club to beat
us with.

With that caveat, you will see a related statement come from our ArbComm
ruling.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | She had lost the art of conversation,
 sean at epoptic.org | but not, unfortunately, the power
                  | of speech. --George Bernard Shaw
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFD6UBNMAt1wyd9d+URAi3HAJ0R2+Y129Bp96qnjG8/Aykqe7lBggCfWyQr
/W+omqBq4dQxtM3HFLrCjLI=
=MSBh
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: kosebamse at gmx.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Counter-Stupidity Unit (was Worst. Userbox. Ever.)

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>However, anyone reading this who's been on Wikipedia more than six
>months and is flabbergasted at the levels of STUPID surrounding the
>entire {{user pedophile}} incident should consider themselves a hot
>draft prospect ...

Or draw their own conclusions. For the record, I have requested to have my
admin rights removed after holding and using them for two years and a half.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kosebamse/stuff . This is not intended
as an act of flaming public protest; I quite simply don't want to be seen as
a representative of a community in which the standards of conduct have
dropped to that level. Ceterum censeo that common sense is the
encyclopedist's prime virtue.

Kosebamse

--
Lust, ein paar Euro nebenbei zu verdienen? Ohne Kosten, ohne Risiko!
Satte Provisionen f?r GMX Partner: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/partner


from_name: Ilya N.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: No more blocking people for who they *are*?

body:
While I agree with the general point, slippery slope arguments are
usually pretty weak.

Why not take away 3RR citing the argument that "Eventually we won't be
allowed to edit. It is a slippery slope"? Or NPA on the basis that it
infringes free speech?

On 2/7/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>   Just a thought in the wake of the pedophile thing. Could we agree
> not to ever again block people for what they are? No matter how
> disgusting, unpleasant, immoral etc. Such things always being at least
> somewhat objective, we should stick instead to only blocking people
> for actions.
>
> In other words: If someone says, "I'm a pedophile", then by policy
> this should not be a reason to block them. If, on the other hand, they
> are trolling, and it works, then that becomes a blockable action -
> trolling.
>
> I worry that there is a genuine slippery slope where "I am a
> pedophile" gets confused with "I am a terrorist", then "I am a member
> of Hamas" then "I support Eta"  and so on and so forth. Is it not
> better to simply say "We do not block people for statements of who
> they are or what they believe"?
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: OpenID Support

body:
Josh Hoyt wrote:
> I think that OpenID can meet your stated requirement. Is there a list somewhere
> of the other requirements for your authentication solution?

The primary issue is the issue of unifying our username namespace so there are
no longer any 'same username, different user' cases at our hundreds of wikis
anymore.

This is outside the scope of something like OpenID, which explicitly uses
separate namespaces (something we don't want).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060207/5950ee36/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Ryan W. (Merovingian)

body:
Although I think you're right, I don't think any admins blocked people just for believing certain things.  Those who were blocked were acting in a way that justified their I-hate-to-call-it-punishment.

--Ryan

> From: Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] No more blocking people for who they *are*?
>
> Hi all,
>    Just a thought in the wake of the pedophile thing. Could we agree
> not to ever again block people for what they are? No matter how
> disgusting, unpleasant, immoral etc. Such things always being at least
> somewhat objective, we should stick instead to only blocking people
> for actions.
>
> In other words: If someone says, "I'm a pedophile", then by policy
> this should not be a reason to block them. If, on the other hand, they
> are trolling, and it works, then that becomes a blockable action -
> trolling.
>
> I worry that there is a genuine slippery slope where "I am a
> pedophile" gets confused with "I am a terrorist", then "I am a member
> of Hamas" then "I support Eta"  and so on and so forth. Is it not
> better to simply say "We do not block people for statements of who
> they are or what they believe"?
>
> Steve

--
___________________________________________________
Play 100s of games for FREE! http://games.mail.com/


from_name: W. Guy Finley

body:
> From: Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 22:49:17 +0100
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] No more blocking people for who they *are*?
>
> Hi all,
>   Just a thought in the wake of the pedophile thing. Could we agree
> not to ever again block people for what they are? No matter how
> disgusting, unpleasant, immoral etc. Such things always being at least
> somewhat objective, we should stick instead to only blocking people
> for actions.
>
> In other words: If someone says, "I'm a pedophile", then by policy
> this should not be a reason to block them. If, on the other hand, they
> are trolling, and it works, then that becomes a blockable action -
> trolling.
>
> I worry that there is a genuine slippery slope where "I am a
> pedophile" gets confused with "I am a terrorist", then "I am a member
> of Hamas" then "I support Eta"  and so on and so forth. Is it not
> better to simply say "We do not block people for statements of who
> they are or what they believe"?
>
> Steve

Umm, no.  Some things just aren't funny -- try going into an airport and
joking about having a bomb and see how far your "I was just joking!" excuse
gets while you're being cuffed and hauled to jail.  "Joking" that you are a
pedophile is no different in my mind.

What is staring to kill me is that people feel hey have a RIGHT to edit
Wikipedia.  Editing Wikipedia is a privilege and if you demonstrate you're a
dolt and can't handle that then there should be no question your ability to
edit should be revoked for a set period of time or indefinitely.  We're
talking about a user here who's vast majority of time has been spent putting
all the "funny" boxes on his user page and embarrassing the good name of a
rock and roll legend.

If we continue to allow the user space to be populated with "funny" little
boxes and statements that have no fathomable use towards writing an
encyclopedia then we might as well shut the foundation down and call up
Rupert Murdoch to tell him he forgot to buy a part of MySpace.

--Guy  (User:Wgfinley)


from_name: Philip Welch

body:
>> Stupendous, molesting children is "embarrassing".  Don't think I
>> could have
>> seen a bigger understatement or marginalization of the issue all
>> day.  This
>> just in "American Bishops Find Pedophiliac Priests to be
>> 'embarrassing'"
>> Yeah, that would go over well.
>>
> No; someone *claiming* to be a pedophile, almost certianly falsely,
> is "embarrassing".
>
> In any case, there are plenty of things people find really
> offensive.  Try telling someone in Saudi Arabia that we allow
> unrepentant homosexuals on the site (homosexuality has status in
> law actually more severe than pedophilia), and then see if they
> want their kids to read it.

Or insulting cartoon pictures of Muhammed.

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


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Habj

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Creating guidelines

body:
How many of the 'pedias out there have some formal labelling of guidelines,
saying "this is a guideline of the prtovleskian wikipedia" etc.?

Swedish Wikipedia didn't until this summer. There were some pages with
"rules" of various kinds floating around in the Wikipedia namespace. Some
people liked to say "this and that is a policy of Swedish wikipedia" but
there was no way to define which these policies were. Now we are trying to
define guidelines and policy all at once, so to speak. It seems obvious that
policies should go through some kind of more formal procedure - but what
about guidelines?

How do you do it on the other wikipedias? Do people just think to themselves
"this is a good page, we need it, people should have this in mind" and then
label it "guideline" to see if someone reverts? Are there formal procedures?
Input from as many 'pedias as possible would be appreciated.

/Habj


from_name: JuergenL

subject: [Wikitech-l] Deleting old versions

body:
Hi,

how can I delete old versions of articles in my mediawiki
installation? I know that I can delete all versions and restore the
latest. But I have to to this on about 500 articles.

greetings
Juergen


from_name: Peter Mackay

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Guettarda

> This whole mess has left me feeling bruised and shocked, and
> rethinking my role here.  If El C and Carbonite leave we have
> lost a lot more than can be counted in them just as
> individuals.  El C, for one, made this place fun, and if you
> aren't having fun there is not reason to stick around.

Are we here to have fun or to write an encyclopaedia?

While a sense of community is important, it is not the top priority. A lot
of userbox people seem to be here to have fun, and I'm of the opinion that
someone having fun with a needless userbox precipitated this latest crisis.
We should keep our eye on the ball.

I've seen people come and go here. Some say they'll go and come back after a
few weeks. Some leave for good. I say to them, thanks for your
contributions. May you take joy from your future path.

But Wikipedia endures, and I make no doubt that the sense of shock and
dismay from this episode will fade and ways will be found to deal with the
problem(s) that caused it, and the project will emerge all the stronger for
it, because there are too many good folk here to let all this effort go to
waste.

Peter (Skyring)


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEn-l] Alternative names for the Counter Vandalism Unit

body:
On 2/7/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/7/06, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > The Fencepainting Project (Shades of Tom Sawyer, with other
> > > neighborhood-building connotations.)
>
> Like it.
>
> > > Welcome Mat Project (the vast amount of vandalism is
> > > newbie-ish--enfolding handling vandalism into the concept of welcoming
> > > new users makes sense to me. I.e. there are no strangers, just friends
> > > we haven't met (and indoctrinated).)
>
> Yeah...but...there are real vandals after all.

(OT: There aren't barbarian hordes riding in from the North to ravage
the Empire. The worst anyone can do with Wikipedia, really, is piss
people off for a while (which I recognize is not meaningless). But
it's not physical property destruction or personal physical harm.)

> > > Ironically positive:
> > > Care Bear Brigade (I know this was discussed and negged earlier, but
> > > it's hilarious.)
>
> Too cryptic.
>
> > Again, [[Wikipedia:Cleaning up vandalism]]. Simple. descriptive. Non
> > us/them. And it's already on the works
>
> Didn't see this. It's perfect.

I prefer names that don't give credit to vandalism -- I mean, there's
going to be a segment of people that are excited about committing
crimes of annoyance in the world. If you clean up stuff without
crediting it as a crime, it makes it easier to deal with.

Further, as I've said before, I think *positive* rather than negative
names are healthier.

Pre-natal care and kindergarten preferable to juvenile detention
preferable to prisons.

So although I'll continue to advocate names that don't include the
word vandalism, I'd certainly support any compromise....


subject: [WikiEN-l] Most immature war ever? Are we embarrassed yet?

body:
On 2/7/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Sean Barrett wrote:
>
> >Both the Board and the Arbitration Committee have endorsed the
> >fact that Jimbo has the powers of a GodKing and occasionally will use
> >them.  And the consensus of the community seems to me to be a vehement
> >"whatever."
> >
> Note that this is conditional---Jimbo has powers that he is trusted to
> use rarely and wisely.  If, for example, he blanked Wikipedia and
> replaced it with furry porn, probably people would not agree that was a
> legitimate use of his powers, whether legal or not.  In between is a
> very large gray area, from "of course that's ok", to "that might to be
> ok", to "ehh...".

I personally think that depends on the quality of the furry porn, but
then, what do I know.

Bring on Furrypedia!

> My main objection is to equating Jimbo's legal authority over the
> Wikimedia Foundation with his role as benevolent dictator.  The latter
> derives essentially from the fact that he acts, well, benevolently.
> People support that so long as it remains benevolent.
>
> I don't claim to speak on behalf of the commuity; I'm just pointing out
> that his powers derive in essence from the consent of the community, and
> are not somehow separate from that.  He'll continue to be able to herd
> Wikipedia so long as the vast majority of its users agree that he's
> doing a good job; that's quite separate from his titular position as
> Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Wikimedia Foundation.
>
> So, if I'm wrong in criticizing his use of powers in this matter, it's
> because the community agrees that his intervention was a good idea, not
> because he somehow has freedom to do whatever he wants without discussion.

History tells us that criticism of the powerful is pretty much always
a good thing, even when it's not specifically right.

And those who attack critics should be ashamed.

But then, we're free to ignore the lessons of the past.


body:
> There are a lot of things people are greatly offended by on a
> personal level, even moreso than they are offended by pedophilia.
> Who is going to draw up the list of things one cannot say on their
> user page due to it being too blatantly insensitive?  It's been
> suggested in the past that saying "I'm a neo-Nazi" ought to be a
> bannable offense.  Does that complete the list?  Neo-Nazis and
> pedophiles out; everybody else ok?  Well, I suppose "I support
> suicide bombings" is probably out too.  Is the ArbCom going to be
> in charge of making these decisions?

We had a user once (User:The Fascist Chicken) who was, in fact, an
avowed fascist. Maybe he should have been banned for that, because,
obviously, he was implying "I murder Jews".

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] CVU -> WP:CVP? (was The Counter Vandalism Unit? Whaa?

body:
On 2/7/06, Sherool <jamydlan at online.no> wrote:
> On Tue, 07 Feb 2006 11:04:34 +0100, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > On 2/6/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Pretty much the best kinds of project names are ones that are either
> >> expressly positive (i.e. their name assumes good faith, doesn't create
> >> an us/them dichotomy), or failing that are ironicly ugly (like
> >> "bureaucrat", "benevolent dictator", or "spelling nazi" or "mediation
> >> cabal").
> >
> > Vandalism Cleaning Brigade?
> > Grafitti Purging Workforce?
> > Slaves for an Unvandalised Wikipedia?
> > The Anti-vandalism Superheroes?
> > Vandalism Posse?
> >
> > I wonder if ironically ugly is good though. Isn't CVU already sort of
> > ironically ugly? Maybe some people aren't getting the irony...
>
> Whatever happened to just plain old "Recent Changes/RC patrol".

Not sure, but I think that the idea is that this is an offshoot
designed to tackle more complicated problems, to think about long-term
strategy for managing Wikipedia's growth with the regard to the
good/bad edit issue. Or maybe it's just a bunch of excited RC
patrollers. Not sure.

Whatever the case, I think the best idea would be to enfold the
"vandalism-fighting" aspect within a broader strategy of encouraging
good edits and discouraging bad ones.


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On 2/7/06, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>
> >I don't think we require strict rules Phil Welch suggested them.
> >It's easy to make a mistake by overlooking a certain discussion or some
> >entry in a log, which could easily make the number of admins dwindle and
> >cause a lot of people to leave the project.
> >
> >I think we should encourage people to discuss more. If something turns into
> >a wheelwar, all the parties involved should receive a warning not to
> >continue. This would leave good faith unblocking after user requests open
> >without any fears for the involved admin.
> >
> >Wheelwars usually start when the overturning of a decision is overturned. At
> >such a time any further changes need to be discussed.
> >
> >Mgm
> >
> >
> I agree. We already know wheel warring is bad. Everyone does (except
> some rogue admins). If the action being (un)done is so bad that it
> destroys the encyclopedia, don't bother wheel warring when so many
> people disagree -- just take a wikibreak, fork and/or leave. If other
> people are in the wrong, an examination of the facts should bear this out.
>
> Unfortunately, cool heads rarely prevail in wheel/edit wars.

Normaly once the intial peak of intensity has died down things work
out all right.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why has everything gone to hell?

body:
On 2/7/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/7/06, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
> >
> > I strongly second (or is it third?) this. UninvitedCompany has
> > referenced the [[September That Never Ended]], which I think explains
> > why this has happened. When I became an admin January 2004, I got about
> > 20 votes of support -- today, any successful nomination with less than
> > 40 supports would be an oddity. (It's also quite likely I would not pass
> > now, what with editcountitis -- or its cousin,
> > non-article-namespace-editcountitis -- running rampant.) Our community
> > has expanded, and our decision-making mechanisms have not scaled along
> > with it. When was the last time we had a major policy change? It was the
> > 3RR, I think, and that was over a year ago. Pretty much everything since
> > then has been tinkering around the edges (although things like
> > [[WP:PROD]] haven't made me lose all hope yet).
>
>
> Not entirely. We also had the speedy deletion of unsourced images.

There have been a load of changes to speedy deletion (A7 & copyvios
being the most obvious)

The 3RR waas del facto policy already. The only chnage was it switched
to being inforced.

--
geni


from_name: Conrad Dunkerson

body:
Ryan W. (Merovingian) wrote:
> Although I think you're right, I don't think any admins blocked people just
> for believing certain things.  Those who were blocked were acting in a way
> that justified their I-hate-to-call-it-punishment.

I think you might be wrong about that.

Carbonite: "The userbox Template:User pedophile (edit ? talk ? links ?
history ? watch) is a great way of identifying those users who consider
themselves to be pedophiles. I plan on indefinitely blocking any user
who includes this template. I've already blocked the only user to
include this template, Joeyramoney (talk ? contribs ? page moves ? block
user ? block log). Wikipedia has no obligation to permit deviants to edit."

Jimbo Wales: "They said that pedophiles should be banned from editing
Wikipedia. That's a very respectable position."


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

Pedro Sanchez stated for the record:

> OT: There are words that have several meanings. Historical ethnic
> group that sacked rome is just one of the meanings for Vandal.

ObQuip: if you're a Goth, where were you when we sacked Rome?

- --
 Sean Barrett     | She had lost the art of conversation,
 sean at epoptic.org | but not, unfortunately, the power
                  | of speech. --George Bernard Shaw
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFD6VMbMAt1wyd9d+URAkdfAJ9GoVas0u9xLUWTHvqQqsqOFrlw0ACfVEla
epJFc3mp25JNq+Wz6N082RU=
=3ovG
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [WikiEN-l] Comparison with other wikis

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

Peter Mackay stated for the record:

> If we are talking about doing things legally, that is. If Tony Blair decided
> to turn the UK into a one-party fascist state using illegal means, an
> exciting possibility that would raise many British eyebrows, then the Queen
> would probably find herself unable to intervene. It would depend on which
> side the military decided to support, I suppose, and the [[King's Own
> Queens]] regiment might find itself in an impossible position. Well, more
> impossible.

I'm having way too much fun contemplating the [[King's Own Queens]]
(perhaps as portrayed by [[Monty Python]]), so please tell me what
regiment you really meant.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | She had lost the art of conversation,
 sean at epoptic.org | but not, unfortunately, the power
                  | of speech. --George Bernard Shaw
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFD6VQwMAt1wyd9d+URAuC1AJ9RAcd+tyi6Y5LHcjZc7JIkVoZyqQCfY+D8
v4ns6p2Z++votPgzTn8gSZI=
=2Mes
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [WikiEN-l] FA bot attacks -- anybody around with checkuser?

body:
The FA article, Music of Nigeria, is getting hit with a pretty vicious bot
attack -- name-change bot, a new one appears every time the old one's
reverted.  It's become necessary to semiprotect this article, as well as the
Costa Rica elections article that's also linked off the mainpage.  Each time
the semiprotection's lifted, the attacks start back up again within
minutes.  Hoping somebody around who has checkuser can look into it and see
about foiling the originating IP ...

Thanks.

k


subject: [WikiEN-l] Comparison with other wikis

body:
On 2/7/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> >Until now Jimbo has had to step in whenever
> >people (especially cabal members) need to be told to cool off. He
> >shouldn't have to. Jimbo's role is being the face of the foundation and
> >being the last court of appeal. He has to handle all the Wikimedia
> >projects -- he shouldn't be spending his time tackling problems on the
> >English Wikipedia.
>
> Agree. I suspect the only issue is getting people to trust the
> authority and good sense of other people. They *must* be appointed
> directly by Jimbo for that to happen, I think.
>
> Steve

Didn't work with Kelly Martin. In practice it is those who have been
directly elected by the community who hold the strongest position.
Jimbo apointees have the problem that they instantly pick up oposition
in the form of people wanting to blame "the cabal" for things. Elected
people have the advantage that when under pressure they can show that
community supported them. Apointees can't.

--
geni


subject: [Wikitech-l] Deleting old versions

body:
sorry, I posted to the wrong mailinglist once again :-(

> Hi,

> how can I delete old versions of articles in my mediawiki
> installation? I know that I can delete all versions and restore the
> latest. But I have to to this on about 500 articles.

> greetings
> Juergen

> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: jayjg

body:
Dynamic AOL IP, I'm afraid.

Jay.

On 2/7/06, Katefan0 <katefan0wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The FA article, Music of Nigeria, is getting hit with a pretty vicious bot
> attack -- name-change bot, a new one appears every time the old one's
> reverted.  It's become necessary to semiprotect this article, as well as
> the
> Costa Rica elections article that's also linked off the mainpage.  Each
> time
> the semiprotection's lifted, the attacks start back up again within
> minutes.  Hoping somebody around who has checkuser can look into it and
> see
> about foiling the originating IP ...
>
> Thanks.
>
> k
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
W. Guy Finley wrote:
> Umm, no.  Some things just aren't funny -- try going into an airport and
> joking about having a bomb and see how far your "I was just joking!" excuse
> gets while you're being cuffed and hauled to jail.  "Joking" that you are a
> pedophile is no different in my mind.

Joking about having a bomb in an airport or actually having one is
illegal. Joking about being a pedophile or actually being one is not.

Still no difference in your mind?

Bomb 'jokes' are illegal because they create a risk of panic which could
lead to injuries. Ditto shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater unless it
actually is on fire. Likewise verbal plans or exhortations to commit
criminal acts. Everything else is 'free speech' and allowed in most
countries.

If we want to be TECHNICAL then Wikipedia allowing people to say 'I am a
heterosexual' but not 'I am a pedophile' (or 'I am a homosexual'... as
some of the anti-pedophile crowd were also advocating banning) is
discriminatory under US law. Ditto allowing 'I am a Christian' but not
'I am a Satanist'. Since we aren't getting government funding or paying
people to work on the encyclopedia we're actually allowed to
discriminate, but don't expect it to be universally popular.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Comparison with other wikis

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

Peter Mackay stated for the record:

>>I'm having way too much fun contemplating the [[King's Own
>>Queens]] (perhaps as portrayed by [[Monty Python]]), so
>>please tell me what regiment you really meant.
>
>
> Ah, I was just using it by way of humourous illustration. It comes from
> something Redmond Simonsen or possibly Dave Isby said in Moves Magazine, way
> back when, and the phrase has stuck in what passes for my mind.
>
> Pete, grognardly

Oh, okay.  Your "more impossible" comment, together with the
[[brackets]], led me to believe it was something real.  We Merkins are
prepared to believe anything, no matter how silly, about the redcoats.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | She had lost the art of conversation,
 sean at epoptic.org | but not, unfortunately, the power
                  | of speech. --George Bernard Shaw
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFD6VlnMAt1wyd9d+URAjYtAJ9DWf7I6tRVlUNbzpyMYsEMErGEwQCbB8vK
ArP9zoBxZbCg5cNQMJEGCaM=
=cYXf
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Wikitech-l] OpenID Support

body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:
> Really? I'd think that an Interwiki-namespaced username would solve that
> problem nicely,

No, it solves a different problem.

> without requiring a big name-clash-fixing step when the

That step is inherent in the requirement of a single namespace.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060207/d8a5a337/attachment.pgp>


body:
> From: Conrad Dunkerson <conrad.dunkerson at worldnet.att.net>
> Reply-To: <conrad.dunkerson at worldnet.att.net>, English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2006 18:29:33 -0500
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] No more blocking people for who they *are*?
>
> W. Guy Finley wrote:
>> Umm, no.  Some things just aren't funny -- try going into an airport and
>> joking about having a bomb and see how far your "I was just joking!" excuse
>> gets while you're being cuffed and hauled to jail.  "Joking" that you are a
>> pedophile is no different in my mind.
>
> Joking about having a bomb in an airport or actually having one is
> illegal. Joking about being a pedophile or actually being one is not.
>
> Still no difference in your mind?

No.  Molesting children is a crime.  Let me guess, the next splitting hair
argument of "well he's a child so being attracted to children is okay".
"Pedophile" in common usage is a pejorative term.

>
> Bomb 'jokes' are illegal because they create a risk of panic which could
> lead to injuries. Ditto shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater unless it
> actually is on fire. Likewise verbal plans or exhortations to commit
> criminal acts. Everything else is 'free speech' and allowed in most
> countries.

That's right, and I'm certain having people who claim to be pedophiles as
contributors isn't going to cause any panic on the part of people or fear of
risk of exposure to an environment where molesting children is condoned, and
people are encouraged to put such ridiculous statements on their user pages.
Lovely.

>
> If we want to be TECHNICAL then Wikipedia allowing people to say 'I am a
> heterosexual' but not 'I am a pedophile' (or 'I am a homosexual'... as
> some of the anti-pedophile crowd were also advocating banning) is
> discriminatory under US law. Ditto allowing 'I am a Christian' but not
> 'I am a Satanist'. Since we aren't getting government funding or paying
> people to work on the encyclopedia we're actually allowed to
> discriminate, but don't expect it to be universally popular.

Hence my statement that this whole userbox fiasco continues to spin out of
control where no common sense can be used or a line drawn because removing
blatantly obvious and ridiculous boxes like these and blocking those who
create or use them is seen as somehow clamping down on free speech.
Wonderful.  Can't wait for "This user rapes women" and "This user bombs
Israeli markets" to make their appearance.  Those will certainly be good for
a chuckle and good guffaw and a group of folks who will snicker at just how
unbelievably clever they are while this project continues to be sullied with
their nonsense.

--Guy (User:Wgfinley)


body:
On 2/7/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wait, wait? Is the code both insecure and and non-optimal? That's two
> very excellent reasons not to implement it.....
>
> --Oskar
>

We don't know how optimal it would have been since we never gave it a
test run. Last I heard it was being rewriten in a different way which
should be more secure.
--
geni


from_name: Delirium

body:
W. Guy Finley wrote:

>What is staring to kill me is that people feel hey have a RIGHT to edit
>Wikipedia.  Editing Wikipedia is a privilege and if you demonstrate you're a
>dolt and can't handle that then there should be no question your ability to
>edit should be revoked for a set period of time or indefinitely.  We're
>talking about a user here who's vast majority of time has been spent putting
>all the "funny" boxes on his user page and embarrassing the good name of a
>rock and roll legend.
>
>
I don't think anyone is arguing that there is a fundamental right to
edit Wikipedia.  Rather, the claim is that Wikipedia's mission of
writing a neutral, high-quality encyclopedia is not well served by
excessive policing of users to cull the ones who express opinions deemed
"embarrassing".  It seems more useful to limit banning to the cases
where a user is actually disrupting the process of writing an
encyclopedia, e.g. by edit-warring or spamming.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 31, Issue 63

body:
On 2/7/06 5:54 PM, "wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org"
<wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org> wrote:

> From: Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 15:49:19 -0800
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: No more blocking people for who they *are*?
>
> On 2/7/06, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
>> While I agree with the general point, slippery slope arguments are
>> usually pretty weak.
>
> The problem is that the step from "admitted pedophiles" to
> "pedophiles" has already been taken, and from there, it's a *very*
> small step to "accused pedophiles", an illustrious group that includes
> Ta bu shi da yu, Schissel, and Lucky 6.9, all named by "Parents for
> the Online Safety of Children", Jtdirl, Gmaxwell, and me, all named by
> Jeff Merkey, and no doubt others.
>
> --
> Mark
> [[User:Carnildo]]

Straw man.  Nobody's talking about accused pedophiles, we're talking about
people who would willingly put on their page "This user is a pedophile" i.e.
"I am a pedophile".

--Guy  (User:Wgfinley)


body:
On 2/7/06 5:54 PM, "wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org"
<wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org> wrote:

> From: Delirium <delirium at hackish.org>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2006 18:58:03 -0500
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] No more blocking people for who they *are*?
>
> W. Guy Finley wrote:
>
>> What is staring to kill me is that people feel hey have a RIGHT to edit
>> Wikipedia.  Editing Wikipedia is a privilege and if you demonstrate you're a
>> dolt and can't handle that then there should be no question your ability to
>> edit should be revoked for a set period of time or indefinitely.  We're
>> talking about a user here who's vast majority of time has been spent putting
>> all the "funny" boxes on his user page and embarrassing the good name of a
>> rock and roll legend.
>>
>>
> I don't think anyone is arguing that there is a fundamental right to
> edit Wikipedia.  Rather, the claim is that Wikipedia's mission of
> writing a neutral, high-quality encyclopedia is not well served by
> excessive policing of users to cull the ones who express opinions deemed
> "embarrassing".  It seems more useful to limit banning to the cases
> where a user is actually disrupting the process of writing an
> encyclopedia, e.g. by edit-warring or spamming.
>
> -Mark

Stupendous, molesting children is "embarrassing".  Don't think I could have
seen a bigger understatement or marginalization of the issue all day.  This
just in "American Bishops Find Pedophiliac Priests to be 'embarrassing'"
Yeah, that would go over well.

Oh, and how is a wheel war amongst several admins, intervention by Jimbo and
a speedy arb case NOT considered a disruption?  All of this because a few
people thought something as sick as this was funny.

--Guy  (User:Wgfinley)


body:
charles matthews wrote:

> "Steve Bennett" wrote
>
>> Could we agree
>
> not to ever again block people for what they are?
>
> Easy to say that in the context that Wikipedia is not under siege, and
> has its reputation pretty much intact.  What about the guy who arrives
> in the middle of an election and annouces "I'm being funded to remove
> all your bias on candidates' pages"?

I don't see why that would require preemptive banning.  If he makes
problematic edits, they can be reverted; if he starts ignoring usual
community standards, e.g. by refusal to discuss on talk pages or
excessive reverts, he can be banned.

There are cases where preemptive banning makes some sense, mainly
obvious reincarnations of banned users and malicious bot-created
accounts.  In the latter, this is mainly because the potential damage a
botnet can inflict in a short amount of time is quite large, so waiting
around and cleaning up afterwards is an unappealing option.

In a case like the one you described, though, the potential damage to
Wikipedia's reputation from being too ban-happy far outweighs the
relatively minor inconvenience of waiting a bit to see if banning is
really necessary.  The clean-up there would consist of reverting a
handful of pages.

-Mark


from_name: Jake Nelson

body:
Peter Mackay wrote:
> In this case, he may have been serious. The guy identifies as "16-ish".
> Isn't he allowed to have feelings for others of a similar age? Describing
> himself as a "paedophile" might have been unwise, but not necessarily
> anything we should run around being headless chickens over.
>
> Pete, acting like a grown-up

I don't want to get into the morass of definitions for these things, but
pedophilia relates to prepubescent children, not those of a similar age
to "16-ish". The term for a fixation on teenagers is ephebophilia, and
it doesn't apply to a 16-ish person either.

Just thought I'd clarify that.

-- Jake


from_name: Brock Batsell

body:
On Feb 7, 2006, at 7:10 PM, Jake Nelson wrote:

> Peter Mackay wrote:
>> In this case, he may have been serious. The guy identifies as "16-
>> ish".
>> Isn't he allowed to have feelings for others of a similar age?
>> Describing
>> himself as a "paedophile" might have been unwise, but not necessarily
>> anything we should run around being headless chickens over.
>> Pete, acting like a grown-up
>
> I don't want to get into the morass of definitions for these
> things, but pedophilia relates to prepubescent children, not those
> of a similar age to "16-ish". The term for a fixation on teenagers
> is ephebophilia, and it doesn't apply to a 16-ish person either.
>
> Just thought I'd clarify that.

In addition, pedophilia does not imply any form of child molestation,
as it appears Wgfinley believes (if I'm incorrect in this inference,
my apologies).  Pedophilia simply refers to attraction.

Regards,
[[en:User:Bbatsell]]
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060207/a33320bd/attachment.pgp


from_name: rose.parks at att.net

body:
Dear All,

     Interesting. In the February 21, 2005, issue of PC Magazine, it mentions that Jimmy will soon establish a Stable Versions systems. " There is another independent project in the works, that requires a change to MediaWiki software that Wikipedia uses. This can be found at:
[http:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Stable_versions]
But, when I go there, I don't find it.
     Anybody?

                As Ever,

                Ruth Ifcher

--

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: geni <geniice at gmail.com>
> On 2/7/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Wait, wait? Is the code both insecure and and non-optimal? That's two
> > very excellent reasons not to implement it.....
> >
> > --Oskar
> >
>
> We don't know how optimal it would have been since we never gave it a
> test run. Last I heard it was being rewriten in a different way which
> should be more secure.
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Gordon Mohr

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: OpenID Support

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Josh Hoyt wrote:
>> I think that OpenID can meet your stated requirement. Is there a list somewhere
>> of the other requirements for your authentication solution?
>
> The primary issue is the issue of unifying our username namespace so there are
> no longer any 'same username, different user' cases at our hundreds of wikis
> anymore.
>
> This is outside the scope of something like OpenID, which explicitly uses
> separate namespaces (something we don't want).

You could settle on one master namespace (wikipedia.org?), then
gradually roll sites over to only accepting logins from that
namespace, giving people the option along the way of merging
their old separate identity histories into the new master
login(s). I suspect OpenID could help with the cross-domain
logins, even if a final single namespace is the only one
accepted for logins.

I'd also guess that after starting to unify, there could be a
backlash when people start losing their logins. Multiple
namespaces might then seem more appealing.

Is there a page or past thread capturing prior discussion and
decisions about the single-signon goal?

- Gordon


body:
On 2/7/06 7:15 PM, "wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org"
<wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org> wrote:

> From: Delirium <delirium at hackish.org>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2006 19:06:43 -0500
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] No more blocking people for who they *are*?
>
> charles matthews wrote:
>
>> "Steve Bennett" wrote
>>
>>> Could we agree
>>
>> not to ever again block people for what they are?
>>
>> Easy to say that in the context that Wikipedia is not under siege, and
>> has its reputation pretty much intact.  What about the guy who arrives
>> in the middle of an election and annouces "I'm being funded to remove
>> all your bias on candidates' pages"?
>
> I don't see why that would require preemptive banning.  If he makes
> problematic edits, they can be reverted; if he starts ignoring usual
> community standards, e.g. by refusal to discuss on talk pages or
> excessive reverts, he can be banned.
>
> There are cases where preemptive banning makes some sense, mainly
> obvious reincarnations of banned users and malicious bot-created
> accounts.  In the latter, this is mainly because the potential damage a
> botnet can inflict in a short amount of time is quite large, so waiting
> around and cleaning up afterwards is an unappealing option.
>
> In a case like the one you described, though, the potential damage to
> Wikipedia's reputation from being too ban-happy far outweighs the
> relatively minor inconvenience of waiting a bit to see if banning is
> really necessary.  The clean-up there would consist of reverting a
> handful of pages.
>
> -Mark

I can't believe where this is going.

I have it, lets form a committee to review all of his edits, maybe even stop
by his house and see if he actually IS a pedophile before we do anything!
Yes, yes, wonderful idea!!  After all, it's far more vital to the project
that people be allowed to make bold statements such as condoning or making
light of molesting children on their user page than risk losing the
incredibly valuable contributions such a person is bound to make to the
project.

Have I crossed into the frakking Bizarro world here or something?  What the
hell is this NONSENSE??  The guy puts on his page "I am a pedophile" i.e. "I
molest children" and his "joke" is more important than the obvious
disruption it causes?  More important than the blatant insensitivity to
those who have had someone in their family molested or perhaps even molested
themselves?  The fact that this has absofrakkinglutely NOTHING to do with
CREATING AN ENCYCLOPEDIA???

Yes, by all means, let's protect and hold up this fine example of a
contributor to our project, send him out on the press stops with Jimbo!
After all, if he does any damage it's just to a few pages.  Heck, who cares
if some 13-year-old girl who gets molested nightly by her father is doing
some research on "pedophiles" on Wikipedia and comes across someone who is
proclaimed to be one and we allow to continue to be here as a valued
contributor to our community.  Who cares right?  It's just a few pages.

--Guy (User:Wgfinley)


subject: [Wikitech-l] OpenID Support

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Evan Prodromou wrote:
>> Really? I'd think that an Interwiki-namespaced username would solve that
>> problem nicely,
>
> No, it solves a different problem.
>
>> without requiring a big name-clash-fixing step when the
>
> That step is inherent in the requirement of a single namespace.

Sorry to be short about this, but we've had enough fights over this issue in the
past, and as far as I'm concerned the decisions have been made. I'll get flak no
matter whether I implement the previously-agreed conversion specification or
something new, so it's lose-lose for me personally. ;)

However to summarize, my view on why a single namespace is Good includes a few
points:

* Encourages community cohesiveness across diverse projects:

Many people are active in multiple projects. While they may be numerically a
minority, these are among the most active contributors, and thus key to the
projects' success.

One of the things making it hard now to pop over to another projects is that you
have to register another account; if you instead have a "foreign" account saying
you're from another web site, this makes you stand out even more as not belonging.

We want the Wikimedia projects to be able to share people and content easily and
freely. Being an equal user on every project helps break down those borders,
where having a freakish foreign username would build them up.

* Related to that, we have projects specifically for sharing:

Commons and Meta are important. They should be as closely integrated as possible
to make media content sharing and community-wide issue discussion as easy to
dive into as possible. Being given a foreign name when you go there makes it a
foreign place instead of just a special part of the wiki.

* Avoids the 'tld problem':

Even though we all know top-level domains in the DNS system are supposed to be
disambiguators, everybody ends up trying to register their name in every
possible domain -- if you don't, the others mostly go to squatters, SEO scum,
and phishers who have no legitimate claim to the name.

The disambiguators are unsatisfying, and aren't necessarily enough to pass
casual inspection -- especially when you legitimately have a hundred accounts
named 'Angela' or 'Brion Vibber' which _mostly_ are the same person already.

It makes more sense in my view to recognize that the disambiguators don't work
that well when they're needed and make more trouble when they're not, and just
jump straight to a single namespace.

When we add OpenID/whatever in the future later, that'll allow identification
from 'foreign' sites in a limited way which is useful. (Eg a post on the
LiveJournal article claiming to be from Brad Fitzpatrick could be verified as
really having from from Brad's LJ account, and a post on LJ about Wikipedia
claiming to be from Jimbo Wales could be verified as really coming from Jimmy's
Wikimedia account.) But that works because it's *all about* the boundary, and
drawing attention to the foreign boundary is what you want in that case. That's
not, I think, what we want inside Wikimedia.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060207/2e5c2432/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
Wait, wait? Is the code both insecure and and non-optimal? That's two
very excellent reasons not to implement it.....

--Oskar

On 2/7/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> You can optimise unsecure code. It's still sub-optimal though.
>
> Steve
>
> On 2/7/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 2/7/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > No the last objection I heard about was due to security.
> >
> > I think unsecure code is non-optimised!  I'd hardly call it paranoia, either.
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Ilya N.

body:
I'd like to quickly butt in to point out that I'm 14 and totally not
happy with the pedophile thing.

Yes, we should require maturity. In older times, the encyclopedists
were the finest academics of all time.

Why not cut vandals some slack? I mean they don't know that adding a
penis to an article is harming a reputable resource. They think it's
fun. So why ban them?

On 2/7/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
> > From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> > [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of W. Guy Finley
>
> > >> Umm, no.  Some things just aren't funny -- try going into
> > an airport
> > >> and joking about having a bomb and see how far your "I was just
> > >> joking!" excuse gets while you're being cuffed and hauled
> > to jail.
> > >> "Joking" that you are a pedophile is no different in my mind.
> > >
> > > Joking about having a bomb in an airport or actually having one is
> > > illegal. Joking about being a pedophile or actually being
> > one is not.
> > >
> > > Still no difference in your mind?
> >
> > No.  Molesting children is a crime.
>
> Sure. But saying you are a paedophile isn't. It might be stupid, but last
> time I looked, stupidity wasn't a crime and the world is full of such people
> slowly driving in the fast lane and getting in the way at revolving doors.
>
> > Let me guess, the next
> > splitting hair argument of "well he's a child so being
> > attracted to children is okay".
> > "Pedophile" in common usage is a pejorative term.
>
> You say this with the benefit of your advanced years. The world may seem
> very different to a sixteen year old. Cut the lad some slack. I don't see
> too many people saying he did the right or bright thing, but he seems to
> have reacted promptly to criticism and removed the userbox.
>
> What more should we ask? Maturity, maybe? Should we have a minimum age limit
> for editing? How do we enforce that?
>
> Peter (Skyring)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Jesse W

> It certainly needs to be rewarding, or the community will
> leave - but fun is hardly the only form of reward that people
> can have.
> Achievement, social recognition, physical stimulation, all of
> these are forms of reward. (Not that Wikipedia provides much
> in the way of pleasurable physical stimulation, but let's not
> go there...)

I think that a lot of editors beaver away at their chosen field and take
satisfaction from getting an article written. I know I certainly enjoy
slotting another fact into place in this vast jigsaw.

It's silly, but the biggest thrill I had was from finding an article that
needed to be written about a historic little church in Richmond. I did some
research, wrote the article, wikified it and uploaded a photograph, all
without the input of others until after I'd finished and folk came along to
cat and dab it.

Peter (Skyring)


body:
On 2/7/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> While the conflicts do matter and need to be resolved, let's not get
> overly focussed on those. It would be interesting to see the results
> of a "friendliest admin" contest for instance - who has managed to
> do the most admin actions with the least amount of complaint, and
> what's their secret?

Probably someone like The coffee who was involved in some of the mass
image deletion.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] "Wheel war" (Worst. Userbox. Ever.)

body:
On 2/7/06, Sam Spade <samspade.thomasjefferson at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Holy crap, this guys 16?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Joeyramoney
>
> and he was blocked for this?

By quite a number of people includeing Jimbo.

--
geni


from_name: Edward Z. Yang

subject: [Wikitech-l] regarding texvc (and tex localization bugs)

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

> If they don't break anything and fix bugs, you should have no trouble
> getting the patches accepted.

Of course, it's quite hard /not/ to break anything. (especially when
you're noodling around in a system that you have little knowledge
about). :-P

- --
 Edward Z. Yang      Personal: edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com
 SN:Ambush Commander Website: http://www.thewritingpot.com/
 GPGKey:0x869C48DA   http://www.thewritingpot.com/gpgpubkey.asc
 3FA8 E9A9 7385 B691 A6FC B3CB A933 BE7D 869C 48DA
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFD6UZ9qTO+fYacSNoRAmgUAJ0WzSIVnpKaeFtdFSThBTM1/hW+aACggiCN
2chBkvtbsCS0D1kPkkPyWxA=
=uBCz
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [WikiEN-l] Comparison with other wikis

body:
On 2/7/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> >>> If people had WWJD (What Would Jimbo Do) in mind when they start
> >>> fighting over stuff, a lot of this crap would just go away.
> >
> >> Actually I think the aura of the God-King has either faded
> >> for a lot of people, or they never had a sense of it in the
> >> first place (cf, Karmafist wheel warring with Jimbo).  Our
> >> constitutional monarchy model has problems .
> >
> > That may be because it isn't a constitutional monarchy. If the
> > monarch's
> > power is unfettered and he intervenes directly in minor matters
> > that are
> > otherwise the province of government, then it is a dictatorship. A
> > benevolent dictatorship, I trust.
>
> I'm sure that if Tony Blair decided to turn the UK into a fascist one-
> party state, Queen Elizabeth would come down and say "no, stop,
> you're being stupid."
>

Doubtful. An old trick for becomeing a one party state is to suck up
to the monarch as part of your appeal to patiotism.

--
geni


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] OpenID Support

body:
Brion said:

    /It doesn't solve our specified requirement (single Wikimedia-wide
    namespace so a
    single username works on all 600+ Wikimedia wikis transparently, no
    muss no fuss).
    /

Really? I'd think that an Interwiki-namespaced username would solve that
problem nicely, without requiring a big name-clash-fixing step when the
technology rolls out. I think that having a single username across all
wikis would be nice, if you didn't have to do resolve dupes across the
system, but if you do, it's really kind of a hassle.

I'd think that, since single-signon between wikis is a feature useful
only for a minority of registered Wikimedia users (how many actually log
into more than one Wikimedia wiki, ever? 10-20%, maybe? how many log
into more than, say, 5 wikis? Or log into more than one wiki on a
regular basis? 2%? 0.2%?), it'd be a good political idea to minimize the
namespace-sorting hassle. That nameclash-fixing step is gonna suck, and
it's not even helpful most users. It seems to me that a minor effort on
the part of "interwikiists" -- just using a project+language namespace
-- would be painless for them and unnoticeable for everyone else.

I think that if we use Interwiki prefixes on the UI side, OpenID becomes
that much easier. A user could login to French Wikibooks as
/wp:en:User:EvanProdromou/ or whatever, and the UI translates that into
the right OpenID URL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:EvanProdromou)
and goes through the OpenID two-step to get credentials checked. Under
the covers, the OpenID stuff would get worked out right, but we could
use simpler Interwiki strings for the UI.

In fact, a drop-down box for project, and another for language, could
also significantly reduce the complexity for users. For example, I could
choose "Wikipedia" out of "Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wiktionary, ..." and
"English" out of "English, Fran?ais, Esperanto, ..." and then my
username on that project.

Lastly, I think having a couple of professional developers eagerly
awaiting a chance to get this implemented and who know OpenID and
authentication issues inside and out is a really good thing. We
shouldn't rollout every technology that people volunteer to throw into
the software, but this seems like a pretty good match between Mediawiki
(and Wikimedia) needs and what's being offered.

~Evan

P.S. Sorry about the broken threading -- I had some mail server problems
and missed my daily dose of wikitech-l.


body:
W. Guy Finley wrote:

>Stupendous, molesting children is "embarrassing".  Don't think I could have
>seen a bigger understatement or marginalization of the issue all day.  This
>just in "American Bishops Find Pedophiliac Priests to be 'embarrassing'"
>Yeah, that would go over well.
>
>
No; someone *claiming* to be a pedophile, almost certianly falsely, is
"embarrassing".

In any case, there are plenty of things people find really offensive.
Try telling someone in Saudi Arabia that we allow unrepentant
homosexuals on the site (homosexuality has status in law actually more
severe than pedophilia), and then see if they want their kids to read
it.  Or even in the enlightened west, you might find a lot of people
shocked that we allow open Satanists!

-Mark


from_name: Sam Spade

body:
I know alot of kids would like to contact him with a boot, or other
blunt object. Something tells me that if he made his name, address and
other contact info available, it isn't sexy circumstances he'd be
procuring.

Sam Spade

On 2/7/06, Jay Converse <supermo0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/7/06, SP <poore5 at adelphia.net> wrote:
> >
> > Pretty sure that contacting the owner of this user box would be a TOP
> > priority for some kids. Mostly roving groups of bored, thrill seekers.
> > But also some troubled kids.
>
>
> What?  I'm not aware of any children wanting to go out of their way to
> contact a pedophile.
>
> --
> Jay Converse
> I'm not stupid, just selectively ignorant.
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
W. Guy Finley wrote:

>Have I crossed into the frakking Bizarro world here or something?  What the
>hell is this NONSENSE??  The guy puts on his page "I am a pedophile" i.e. "I
>molest children" and his "joke" is more important than the obvious
>disruption it causes?  More important than the blatant insensitivity to
>those who have had someone in their family molested or perhaps even molested
>themselves?  The fact that this has absofrakkinglutely NOTHING to do with
>CREATING AN ENCYCLOPEDIA???
>
>
There are a lot of things people are greatly offended by on a personal
level, even moreso than they are offended by pedophilia.  Who is going
to draw up the list of things one cannot say on their user page due to
it being too blatantly insensitive?  It's been suggested in the past
that saying "I'm a neo-Nazi" ought to be a bannable offense.  Does that
complete the list?  Neo-Nazis and pedophiles out; everybody else ok?
Well, I suppose "I support suicide bombings" is probably out too.  Is
the ArbCom going to be in charge of making these decisions?

-Mark


list: foundation-l

from_name: Fruggo

subject: [Foundation-l] .EU domain name

body:
Does anyone know if we (foundation, a chapter, ...) applied for the
wikimedia.eu and/or wikipedia.eu (and/or all the other projects) domain
name? (see http://www.eurid.eu/en/general/)

Greetz,
Fruggo


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] .EU domain name


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Comparison with other wikis

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:

>On Mon, 6 Feb 2006, David Gerard wrote:
>
>
>
>>Heh. Since you bring it up, I'll give the list the comparable
>>experience of Uncyclopedia.
>>
>>
>>
>The following is probably off-topic, but since the subject line is
>appropriate to my subject, I'm hi-jacking this branch of the thread.
>
>Last weekend I took part in the RecentChangesCamp that was held here
>in Portland, where I had the oportunity to talk to Ward Cunningham &
>heard from him his experience with his own pioneering Wiki at
>www.c2.com. (He may have discussed it at Wikimania last summer, but the
>first time I heard about the following was last weekend.)
>
>One thing he had done -- much as Jimbo did a few years ago with Wikipedia --
>was to identify a number of contributors (either 14 in number, or a total
>of folks whose average time dedicated to Wikiwiki totalled an FTE of 14, I'm
>a little hazy here) who showed sufficient knowledge of how the Wiki & the
>community worked, & made them his assistants to help him deal with spam,
>vandalism, & other malicious behavior towards the Wiki. This allowed him
>to step back & devote more time to other things, & because he wasn't as
>closely involved in the day-to-day activities of the wiki on c2.com he
>was spreading the word of the success of the Wiki way, how the community
>was successfully managing itself & dealing with its problems. And he
>honestly believed this.
>
>He had this utopian belief corrected after a couple of years when the Wiki
>was rocked by a severe flamewar over a "trivial matter" that had gone as
>far as the opposing sides each creating bots to revert the edits of the
>other side. (For the record, the controversy was over whether to keep or
>delete a node that was a parody of the movie "Fight Club", called
>"BoogerClub".) As he spent time not only to get to the bottom of the
>matter, but also to bring himself up to date with the Wiki & the community,
>he discovered that the struggle to keep the Wiki usable & in order had
>burned out his assistants in their long, hard & unappreciated efforts.
>
>Ward said he was able to help his assistants by adding a simple bit of
>code which prevented bots from functioning on his Wiki -- which stopped
>the spamming immediately & brought a cease-fire to the major flamewar,
>but the damage had been done. People left, & WikiWiki "plateaued" in
>growth, losing something of its original excitement & attraction.
>
>I've held off on sharing this story with this mailling list because I
>feel that in telling it, it should have a moral or a lesson -- but I'm
>not smart enough to point to it. Except to belabor the obvious point
>that Wiki communities aren't as self-regulating as people think they are.
>
>Geoff
>
>(P.S. I talked about Wikipedia at the conference to quite a few interested
>people, & I hope I didn't help perpetuate too many myths. You can
>check the record at www.recentchangescamp.org & learn for yourself.)
>
>
"Self-regulating" would be a true anarchist model whereby everyone can
do anything, I think. Certainly something based on consensus. Consensus
doesn't scale. I think the moral about burned-out old editors is a good
one, though. We need to carefully avoid placing people on a pedestal
because of their past accomplishments. If you're wrong, you're wrong. I
think the solution is to expand the number of "super-trustable" users
who will have real authority around Wikipedia. Right now only the arbcom
has any authority, because authority is derived only from Jimbo and/or
the Board.

My proposal: Give the 'crats authority. Right now both 'crats and admins
are theoretically equal to normal editors, only with a few more tools. I
think this is the right attitude to take towards admins, because
adminship should be no big deal. But bureaucratship is far from "no big
deal", and I think this should be reflected in that bureaucrats should
have some higher standing in the community. They should be able to step
in and desysop in cases like wheel wars. They should be able to say,
"Ok, that's it, let's cut the crap" -- much like the arbcom or Jimbo
would/should. (This raises the problem of 'crat wheel warring, but
presumably because of the huge big dealness of this, we'll only have a
limited number of 'crats at any one time, anyhow.)

I actually think Wikipedia is headed towards a similar fate like the
site Geoff mentioned -- consensus doesn't scale when communities grow,
because consensus gives people with dug-in heels the ability to stop
change in its tracks or even go berserk (take the case of wheel warring
-- consensus presumes admins are capable of coming to a consensus, even
if there are 800+ of them). In any large number of people, you'll easily
find people who will never budge on a particular issue. Unfortunately, a
wiki works on consensus -- if there's no consensus, the wiki fails.
(Revert warring is a case where there is no consensus, and we all know
how ugly revert wars are.)

One thing I see different from Geoff's case study, however, is that the
founder of this wiki has stepped back but forgot to delegate power. The
only people around with any authority are the arbcom, and how effective
are they? They can't even intervene unless someone appeals to them or
Jimbo thrusts a case on them. They don't ever step into a dispute while
it's on-going and say "STFU, cut this out or we'll desysop/ban you lot,"
which is something Jimbo used to do (remember those naming disputes like
[[Gdansk]] or the autofellatio scandal?). IMO, Jimbo needs to delegate
this dispute-stopping power to someone, because Jimbo can't be putting
out fires all the time. Hence, the 'crats.

I know this will be controversial and unlikely to pass, but it's my
honest opinion. Something has to be done. I'm fed up of all this crap
going on. The 'crats don't have to rule who's wrong or right. They just
have to put their foot down real hard, like Jimbo would. For instance,
in the recent userbox shitfight, Jimbo/they could just have said, "Kelly
and Tony must stop deleting userboxes this instant and discuss or they
will be desysoped." This isn't a ruling that would have ruled them to be
wrong (in that the userboxes were bad). It would just have ruled that
they were wrong in wheel warring over the userboxes. The arbcom can
decide on the legality of the userboxes.

In a sense, this proposal would finally create three independent
branches of "government" (because Wikipedia does not have a real
government) -- executive, legislative and judicial. (The legislative
branch is the community, of course -- anyone can create a new policy and
get consensus for it.) Until now Jimbo has had to step in whenever
people (especially cabal members) need to be told to cool off. He
shouldn't have to. Jimbo's role is being the face of the foundation and
being the last court of appeal. He has to handle all the Wikimedia
projects -- he shouldn't be spending his time tackling problems on the
English Wikipedia.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


body:
Holy crap, this guys 16?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Joeyramoney

and he was blocked for this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&user=Carbonite&page=User:Joeyramoney

I can see why people are getting de-sysopped!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Pedophilia_userbox_wheel_war

Sam Spade

On 2/7/06, Sam Spade <samspade.thomasjefferson at googlemail.com> wrote:
> I know alot of kids would like to contact him with a boot, or other
> blunt object. Something tells me that if he made his name, address and
> other contact info available, it isn't sexy circumstances he'd be
> procuring.
>
> Sam Spade
>
> On 2/7/06, Jay Converse <supermo0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 2/7/06, SP <poore5 at adelphia.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > Pretty sure that contacting the owner of this user box would be a TOP
> > > priority for some kids. Mostly roving groups of bored, thrill seekers.
> > > But also some troubled kids.
> >
> >
> > What?  I'm not aware of any children wanting to go out of their way to
> > contact a pedophile.
> >
> > --
> > Jay Converse
> > I'm not stupid, just selectively ignorant.
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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: Sérgio Ribeiro

subject: [Foundation-l] .EU domain name

body:
The for wikipedia.eu and wikinews.eu

Best regards,

On 2/7/06, Michael Bimmler <mbimmler at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I just did a Whois for wikimedia.eu and I got "Firestorm Forces Ltd"
> as applicant.
> Are they somehow connected to "us"?
> Regards
> Michael
>
--
Edit this page @ http://pt.wikipedia.org


subject: [Foundation-l] .EU domain name


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject: [Foundation-l] .EU domain name

body:
Yes we did.

Jean-Baptiste Soufron
cersa-cnrs paris 2

Fruggo wrote:
> Does anyone know if we (foundation, a chapter, ...) applied for the
> wikimedia.eu and/or wikipedia.eu (and/or all the other projects) domain
> name? (see http://www.eurid.eu/en/general/)
>
> Greetz,
> Fruggo
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>


subject: [Foundation-l] .EU domain name


from_name: Michael Bimmler

subject: [Foundation-l] .EU domain name

body:
I just did a Whois for wikimedia.eu and I got "Firestorm Forces Ltd"
as applicant.
Are they somehow connected to "us"?
Regards
Michael

On 2/7/06, Jean-Baptiste Soufron <jbsoufron at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes we did.
>
> Jean-Baptiste Soufron
> cersa-cnrs paris 2
>
>
>
> Fruggo wrote:
> > Does anyone know if we (foundation, a chapter, ...) applied for the
> > wikimedia.eu and/or wikipedia.eu (and/or all the other projects) domain
> > name? (see http://www.eurid.eu/en/general/)
> >
> > Greetz,
> > Fruggo
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
An eternity is very, very long, especially towards the end


subject: [Foundation-l] .EU domain name


body:
Alex Schenck wrote:

>It's about friggin' time that something was done about wheel warring.
>
>I notice that Wikipedia goes through various "stages" in which the community
>will focus on one specific issue. A few months ago it was the term
>"fuckwit". Not all that long ago it was pedophilia (looks like it's back).
>Then it was the ever-lasting accusations of cabalism. Now it's wheel
>warring.
>
>Alright, look. I came back from a two-week break to witness the explosion of
>the wheel warring crap. From what Jimbo has said to me, he is very tired of
>the lack of cooperation that used to exist. What ever happened to that sense
>of respect for each other, when people actually understood that Jimbo's word
>was final, that the ArbCom is in fact the judicary body that knew what they
>were talking about, and people would respect time on the project? I mean,
>come on. When people start giving out USER WARNINGS to people such as David
>Gerard, you can tell that the times have definitely changed, and some
>oldy-moldy (or at least somewhat oldy-moldy editors such as myself) are not
>liking what we see.
>
>Mindspillage and I are on the same wavelength (I'll let her speak for
>herself beyond that): we miss the old community that was focused more on
>writing an encyclopedia instead of focusing on user pages and userboxes.
>What ever happened to writing FEATURED ARTICLES? Instead, we have people
>more focused on userboxes ("this user rebelled against the great userbox
>purge of 2006 [redirect to RFC:kelly martin] and would do it again"... wtf!)
>and arguing with others.
>
>At this point, I'm afraid desysopping people would be like placing a
>band-aid on an artery wound. Why has the community changed instead of
>adapted? We're not myspace, we're Wikipedia. Can we keep it that way?
>
>Here ends my long and horrible rant.
>
>--Alex, aka Linuxbeak
>
>
I strongly second (or is it third?) this. UninvitedCompany has
referenced the [[September That Never Ended]], which I think explains
why this has happened. When I became an admin January 2004, I got about
20 votes of support -- today, any successful nomination with less than
40 supports would be an oddity. (It's also quite likely I would not pass
now, what with editcountitis -- or its cousin,
non-article-namespace-editcountitis -- running rampant.) Our community
has expanded, and our decision-making mechanisms have not scaled along
with it. When was the last time we had a major policy change? It was the
3RR, I think, and that was over a year ago. Pretty much everything since
then has been tinkering around the edges (although things like
[[WP:PROD]] haven't made me lose all hope yet). Consensus doesn't scale.
With policy, this hinders change greatly, but it's unlikely to be a
major problem in the near future. With wheel warring or serious edit
wars, however, the fact that consensus doesn't scale is wasting a lot of
our time here. It takes being hauled in front of the arbcom to get any
results.

What I think should be done is (as I outlined in a recent post to the
list) giving the 'crats power to desysop/block anyone at will. It's next
to impossible to become a 'crat unless you're some sort of miracle
worker, and abuse leads to swift retribution (i.e. Ed Poor). I've
started a discussion on [[Wikipedia talk:Bureaucrats]] about giving
'crats the authority to step into a dispute and stop it before it gets
worse. Jimbo used to do this a fair bit (albeit after the flame war had
gone on for ages without showing any sign of stopping), i.e. the
[[Gdansk]] naming problem and [[autofellatio]], but he can't put our
fires all the time. The English Wikipedia is just one of many projects
he has to tend to. We need someone who can tell wheel/edit warriors to
just stop or face punitive action immediately.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
Peter Mackay wrote:

>>From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
>>[mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Guettarda
>>
>>
>
>
>
>>This whole mess has left me feeling bruised and shocked, and
>>rethinking my role here.  If El C and Carbonite leave we have
>>lost a lot more than can be counted in them just as
>>individuals.  El C, for one, made this place fun, and if you
>>aren't having fun there is not reason to stick around.
>>
>>
>
>Are we here to have fun or to write an encyclopaedia?
>
>While a sense of community is important, it is not the top priority. A lot
>of userbox people seem to be here to have fun, and I'm of the opinion that
>someone having fun with a needless userbox precipitated this latest crisis.
>We should keep our eye on the ball.
>
>I've seen people come and go here. Some say they'll go and come back after a
>few weeks. Some leave for good. I say to them, thanks for your
>contributions. May you take joy from your future path.
>
>But Wikipedia endures, and I make no doubt that the sense of shock and
>dismay from this episode will fade and ways will be found to deal with the
>problem(s) that caused it, and the project will emerge all the stronger for
>it, because there are too many good folk here to let all this effort go to
>waste.
>
>Peter (Skyring)
>
>
>
I think we're all here to have fun. I know I enjoy clerking for the
arbcom and writing articles -- otherwise I wouldn't be clerking and I
wouldn't have 20+ featured articles to my name. What's wrong is having
fun without involving the encyclopedia at all -- i.e. spending all or
most (>90%) of your time userboxing. I firmly believe these kinds of
users are in the minority, however. There are many userbox fanatics who
do great work around here, some of whom are admins ([[User:Firefox]] and
[[User:Karmafist]] come to mind).

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>I don't think we require strict rules Phil Welch suggested them.
>It's easy to make a mistake by overlooking a certain discussion or some
>entry in a log, which could easily make the number of admins dwindle and
>cause a lot of people to leave the project.
>
>I think we should encourage people to discuss more. If something turns into
>a wheelwar, all the parties involved should receive a warning not to
>continue. This would leave good faith unblocking after user requests open
>without any fears for the involved admin.
>
>Wheelwars usually start when the overturning of a decision is overturned. At
>such a time any further changes need to be discussed.
>
>Mgm
>
>
I agree. We already know wheel warring is bad. Everyone does (except
some rogue admins). If the action being (un)done is so bad that it
destroys the encyclopedia, don't bother wheel warring when so many
people disagree -- just take a wikibreak, fork and/or leave. If other
people are in the wrong, an examination of the facts should bear this out.

Unfortunately, cool heads rarely prevail in wheel/edit wars. This is why
I proposed on [[Wikipedia talk:Bureaucrats]] that 'crats be given the
authority to desysop/block in a wheel/edit war to defuse it and get
discussion flowing again. This doesn't have to indicate that the
warriors' initial actions were wrong -- all it indicates is that their
warring was wrong. No need for legalism when the existing rules are
already being disobeyed. Just give the rules teeth -- I can think of so
many loopholes in Phil Welch's proposal that it just wouldn't be
workable -- it'd basically make mistakes close to unpardonable.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Why has everything gone to hell?

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>On 2/7/06, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>But it removes the slippery slope argument of "Why this and not that?"
>>
>>Babel is the only box I've seen that can be directly tied to
>>encyclopedic matters
>>
>>
>
>
>What about boxes that show people live in a certain country or have studied
>a certain subject?
>Those would tell someone they have local knowledge which is helpful to
>building an encyclopedia.
>
>
>Mgm
>
>
IMO, allow those related to the encyclopedia stay in template-space.
Those that aren't can go on user subpages or be hard-coded, such as my
sole political userbox is.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


subject: [WikiEN-l] What ever happened to Article Validation? Erratum

body:
I would just perfer a seperate tab next to article and talk that just said
'stable' and then admins (or someone so designated) could set the flag for
certain revisions. Easiest way out

On 2/7/06, rose.parks at att.net <rose.parks at att.net> wrote:
>
> Dear All,
>
>      Well, I found the site. There is a proposed project called "Stable
> Versions" at:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Stable_versions
>
> This is a site where various options are being discussed. As I said
> before, this was mentioned in the current edition of PC Magazine.
>
>                         As Ever,
>
>                            Ruth Ifcher
>
> --
>
>
> -------------- Original message ----------------------
> From: rose.parks at att.net
> > Dear All,
> >
> >      Interesting. In the February 21, 2005, issue of PC Magazine, it
> mentions
> > that Jimmy will soon establish a Stable Versions systems. " There is
> another
> > independent project in the works, that requires a change to MediaWiki
> software
> > that Wikipedia uses. This can be found at:
> > [http:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Stable_versions]
> > But, when I go there, I don't find it.
> >      Anybody?
> >
> >                 As Ever,
> >
> >                 Ruth Ifcher
> >
> > --
> >
> >
> >  -------------- Original message ----------------------
> > From: geni <geniice at gmail.com>
> > > On 2/7/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Wait, wait? Is the code both insecure and and non-optimal? That's
> two
> > > > very excellent reasons not to implement it.....
> > > >
> > > > --Oskar
> > > >
> > >
> > > We don't know how optimal it would have been since we never gave it a
> > > test run. Last I heard it was being rewriten in a different way which
> > > should be more secure.
> > > --
> > > geni
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.


from_name: Sherool

body:
On Tue, 07 Feb 2006 11:04:34 +0100, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 2/6/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Pretty much the best kinds of project names are ones that are either
>> expressly positive (i.e. their name assumes good faith, doesn't create
>> an us/them dichotomy), or failing that are ironicly ugly (like
>> "bureaucrat", "benevolent dictator", or "spelling nazi" or "mediation
>> cabal").
>
> Vandalism Cleaning Brigade?
> Grafitti Purging Workforce?
> Slaves for an Unvandalised Wikipedia?
> The Anti-vandalism Superheroes?
> Vandalism Posse?
>
> I wonder if ironically ugly is good though. Isn't CVU already sort of
> ironically ugly? Maybe some people aren't getting the irony...

Whatever happened to just plain old "Recent Changes/RC patrol".

--
[[User:Sherool]]


from_name: Mark Wagner

subject: [WikiEN-l] And now, for something completely different

body:
I've finally finished my survey of biographical articles on Wikipedia.  I
randomly selected 100 biographical articles, and evaluated them on a number
of points such as the century the subject lived in, the length and quality
of coverage, the number of sources cited, the number of links to the
article, and the number of Google hits.  The results are at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Carnildo/The_100_Biography

Not surprisingly, the average coverage of subjects is fairly poor.  64% of
articles were rated "low" or "stub", indicating they did not have even a
basic chronology of the subject's life, and 29% were rated "medium",
indicating a basic chronology but nothing more.  6% were rated "good", with
a relatively complete chronology, and one article was approaching "featured"
quality.  While doing the survey, one of the biographies was deleted for
lack of notability, one as being unverifiable, and two were listed as
copyvios.

Sourcing is about average, with 13% of articles citing sources, versus 15%
for articles in general.  Given the sample size, the difference is
insignificant.  The number of sources cited per article is higher, though,
at 2.8 sources per article for biographies, versus 2.3 sources per article
in general.  The difference is even more pronounced when you take into
account that in the general survey, one article provided almost half the
total sources.

A rough categorization indicates that about 43% of biographies are of
"cultural" figures such as writers, actors, musicians, and athletes.  25%
are of "political" figures such as politicans and aristocrats.  11% are
scholars, scientists, inventors, and the like, and 6% are biographies of
fictional characters.

Coverage is generally Western-centric, with 70% of biographies being of
people from Western Europe, North America, and Australia.  The majority of
biographies are for the 1800s and 1900s, with only 22% being of people who
are currently engaged in whatever they're famous for.

More abstract results from survey are that there is no obvious correlation
between article coverage and Google hits, between inbound links and article
coverage, or between inbound links and Google hits.  More recent subjects
tend to have more Google hits, but there are significant exceptions.  For
example, [[Sandro Botticelli]] is from the 1400s, but has 345,000 Google
hits, while [[Romeo Munoz Cachola]], from the 2000s, has only 7.

There is also no apparent correlation between article coverage and sources:
four of the six "good" or "high" articles have no sources, while seven of
the thirteen articles with sources were rated "low" or "stub".

While doing the survey, I came across 303 articles that were not
biographies.  Assuming the results I got were typical, about 25% of articles
on Wikipedia are biographies.  Another 46 are "pop culture" subjects such as
albums (12), bands (6), movies (6), books (7), or fictional objects (4).
There were five schools, and 16 Rambot-created articles.  An alarming number
of articles had serious problems, including two copyvios and two articles
that needed speedy deletion.

During the survey, "random page" gave me the same article twice: [[FX-6]].

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Comparison with other wikis

body:
On Tue, 7 Feb 2006, Steve Bennett wrote:

> On 2/7/06, Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
>
> > I've held off on sharing this story with this mailling list because I
> > feel that in telling it, it should have a moral or a lesson -- but I'm
> > not smart enough to point to it. Except to belabor the obvious point
> > that Wiki communities aren't as self-regulating as people think they are.
>
> Moral: any community run entirely on good will can be permanently
> damaged by a short but serious bout of ill will?
>
Now that I've had some time to ponder this, how about "small Wikis have
many of the same problems as big Wikis" or "Wikipedia is not unique,
despite what many people think."

Geoff


from_name: geni

body:
On 2/7/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Intentionally or not, it looks like this kid started a very, very ugly
> debate with some poor judgment. A week's block isn't the end of the
> world...
>
> Steve

How often have you been blocked?
--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Comparison with other wikis

body:
On Tue, 7 Feb 2006, Guettarda wrote:

> On 2/7/06, Jay Converse <supermo0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > If people had WWJD (What Would Jimbo Do) in mind when they start fighting
> > over stuff, a lot of this crap would just go away.
> >
> >
> Actually I think the aura of the God-King has either faded for a lot of
> people, or they never had a sense of it in the first place (cf, Karmafist
> wheel warring with Jimbo).  Our constitutional monarchy model has problems
> .
>
Okay, I thought this was as obvious as the sun shines in the daylight,
but it appears to me a few people are taking this metaphor *way* too
seriously.

Jimbo is NOT a Godking. Nor a God. Nor a King.

Wikipedia is NOT a monarchy. Nor a democracy. Nor any kind of government.

If this is a suprise to you, then you are clearly lacking a clue.

Then just what *is* Wikipedia? I am not a lawyer, but I dare say that it is
a contract: two sides have entered into an agreement, each providing services
for the others' benefit.[*] On one side, Jimbo has taken responsibility for
providing servers, bandwidth & software to the other side, with the
expectation that the other side produces an encyclopedia that meets his
expectations. If that doesn't happen, then he reserves the right to
(literally) pull the plug on the project, & all of us can start looking for
something  else to do with our time.

The other side is the rest of us -- the volunteers who contribute to
Wikipedia. We contribute our efforts in the expectation that -- well, I
assume that we do this in hope of receiving some kind of satisfaction for
our efforts. Quite simply, if one, some, most or all of us don't receive
satisfaction from our contributions -- we'll leave. You may not believe
this, but there are a surprising number of projects like Wikipedia out
there & if Wikipedia's not to our liking, we'll go to one of these other
projects & contribute to them. (And I believe in the case of a few people,
they might actually be happier at one of these other projects.)

Now having stated this painfully obvious situation, I'm going state a less
obvious one: there are a number of good, responsible contributors in
Wikipedia who fear this project is drifting into rule by fiat. In other
words, they are uncomfortable with other contributors arbitrarily making
changes without explanation, while they must needs justify their actions.
(I don't know if there's any substance to these complaints, or this is
just a number of troublemakers trying to lie their way out of trouble,
but I am surprised to see a few long-term Wikipedians agree with this
opinion. And it's hard to dismiss this as clueless whining when I see
phrases like "process fetishisation" thrown around here by people who
should know a little better.)

Maybe the different sides ought to talk about this problem a bit more.
Anyone here notice that we have talk pages all over the place, an email
list, an IRC channel & face-to-face meetings? The only weakness with
this richness of communication is that not all of us are conversant with
all of these media, so don't think that asking a question on a single
talk page, or IRC or one email list alone will be seen by everyone who
does care. After all, all of the "evuhl proc3ss fetishizing" really
boils down to getting input from your fellow editors before you make
major changes; & most of the time, the input is either silence (which
one can safely assume means consent), explicit consent, or some useful
suggestions. And if the input is critical or useless . . . well,
ignoring the dumbasses & making the change anyway is going to lead to
problems anyway. Either accept that people are going to be mad, or
build a consensus before you are bold.

And before anyone starts placing me in one group or another in these
recent disputes, let me say that for the most part I don't have a beef
with anyone: I try to just contribute material, edit articles, & hope
that my writing & spelling isn't too crappy. I want Wikipedia to
succeed like everyone else, & when I see it mentioned in a newstory
or tv program I feel a mixure of pride -- & embarassment over the
faults I know it still has. As long as it's not clearly offensive,
I don't care what people do with their user pages -- but I admit I
could get worked up over this. I have Admin rights, but I rarely use
them because I rarely need to. Like Stan Shebs commented in another
thread, I learn about most of these threats that endanger Wikipedia
from reading this mailling list.

I just feel that declaring Jimbo the expert we should obey without
question, or demonizing those who disagree with him, isn't a constructive
solution. Wikis & the NPOV principle make it easy to talk with those
we disagree with: so why don't we try to emphasize *that* instead of
deciding to get tough on the other side?

BTW, the Wikipedia article on "wheel warring" (or whatever it is called)
sucks. I've read it several times, & all I've learned from it is that
it has something to do with two or more people obtaining root on the
same machine -- which surprises me, as this term has been thrown around
an awful lot lately. Maybe someone who's experienced or seen a "wheel war"
can provide a better explaination.

Geoff

[*] Technically, this is not exactly what a contract is -- but in
the most part, what I have written applies. Since a lawyer is, by
definition, an expert in technicalities & exactitude, this explanation
makes it clear that I am not one.


from_name: db

subject:
[Foundation-l] Fundraising and change to the wikipedia traffic
	rating

body:
About fundraising:

It is already pretty clear (see
http://fundraising.wikimedia.org/ongoing/index.php/2006-02/)
that Jimmy's personal appeal is more effective at
generating funds than the wikimedia fundraising page
(http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising). If
we are going to continue with a fundraising link on
every wikipedia page, shouldn't we change the link
back to Jimmy's personal appeal until we find
something else that is even more effective?

About wikipedia traffic rating:
Wikipedia is now one of the 25 (NOT 35) most visited
websites in the world:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=3m&size=large&compare_sites=&y=t&url=wikipedia.org#top

Can we update this information on the wikimedia
foundation homepage?
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home

-d

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Jan Kulveit

subject: [Foundation-l] .EU domain name

body:
On Tue, Feb 07, 2006 at 08:57:28PM +0100, Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
> Yes we did.

It seems we send a request a bit late?? And failed to provide documentation
for another? (#3)

whois wikipedia.eu
(requests during sunrise I.))

1  	07/12/2005 11:34:45.613  	Infochannel Group Ltd. & Co. KG
Details   	 Initial help   	09 January 2006  	16 January
2006  	--  	 --

2 	08/12/2005 11:23:10.615 	Infochannel Group Ltd. & Co. KG
Details 	Expired help 	-- 	17 January 2006 	-- 	--

3 	09/12/2005 13:30:24.267 	wales jimbo 	Details
Expired help 	-- 	18 January 2006 	-- 	--

4 	06/01/2006 14:30:25.558 	Firestorm Forces Ltd. 	Details
Initial help 	16 January 2006 	15 February 2006 	-- 	--

5 	31/01/2006 06:00:18.436 	Wikimedia Foundation, Inc
Details 	Initial help 	-- 	12 March 2006 	-- 	--

Both "Infochannel Group Ltd." and  "Firestorm Forces Ltd."
is IMO quite clearly enemy to Wikipedia and Wikimedia and abusing
every moral right to Wikipedia and Wikimania names we have
(see
http://www.wikimania.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Hauptseite
)

Unfortunately it seems they have some legal rights to the names.

Jan Kulveit [[:en:User:Wikimo[Bl]]


subject: [Foundation-l] .EU domain name