from_name: John Lee

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Michael Snow said:
>
>
>>Since people would quickly get tired of me announcing this, I won't
>>keep  repeating it in future weeks. But as the word is still trickling
>>out and  people are just developing the habit of checking, I wanted to
>>let  everyone know that the second issue of our new community
>>newspaper, the  Wikipedia Signpost, is now available for you to read.
>>
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost
>>
>>
>>
>Why is this running in Wikipedia?  The first issue was perfectly
>acceptable as newspaper reporting, but very far from NPOV.  The article
>about the QuakeWatch affair was full of speculation and innuendo, for
>instance.
>I'd appreciate a newspaper, but running this one in Wikispace doesn't seem
>right to me.
>
>
Considering the first issue was done up entirely by one person...as this
becomes a community endeavour, we can expect individual POVs to dominate
less.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] The 3RR policy should not always be blindly followed

body:
<slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote

> Tony, [[Wikipedia:Cite sources]] may only be a guideline, but it's
> inextricably linked to [[Wikipedia:No original research]], which is
> policy, because the only way you can show that an edit isn't original
> research is to produce a reputable source.

Doesn't that get back to over-interpreting 'original research'?  Which was
discussed at length here, a while ago.  I distrust statements of this kind,
on principle.  Anyway it is a poor description of what goes on. A one-line
deduction from known facts is obviously not 'original research', whether or
not you can cite someone else having already done it.  Such things are the
small change of doing the research for an article.  (Obviously if I read
that A is the son of B, I deduce that B is the parent of A; put a few such
trivial moves together and you get conclusions which are possibly novel.)

Charles


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Signpost's second issue published

body:
NPOV applies to articles. It does not have to apply to community report.
I would even say "please, make it pov, that is more distracting,
relaxing and fun". That is a change.

If people want to bring another pov, they can write articles to add to
the signpost.

Ant

Jeff Cook a ?crit:
> I think it's okay to run on Wikipedia. Not EVERYTHING has to be NPOV.
> A newspaper is acceptable, I think. But nothing's stopping you from
> adding to or editing it.
>
> :)
> -cookiecaper.
>
> On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 22:40:06 +0800, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
>
>>Tony Sidaway wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Michael Snow said:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Since people would quickly get tired of me announcing this, I won't
>>>>keep  repeating it in future weeks. But as the word is still trickling
>>>>out and  people are just developing the habit of checking, I wanted to
>>>>let  everyone know that the second issue of our new community
>>>>newspaper, the  Wikipedia Signpost, is now available for you to read.
>>>>
>>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>Why is this running in Wikipedia?  The first issue was perfectly
>>>acceptable as newspaper reporting, but very far from NPOV.  The article
>>>about the QuakeWatch affair was full of speculation and innuendo, for
>>>instance.
>>>I'd appreciate a newspaper, but running this one in Wikispace doesn't seem
>>>right to me.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>Considering the first issue was done up entirely by one person...as this
>>becomes a community endeavour, we can expect individual POVs to dominate
>>less.
>>
>>John Lee
>>([[User:Johnleemk]])
>>_______________________________________________
>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] The 3RR policy should not always be blindly  followed

body:
At 03:17 PM 1/17/2005 -0700, slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
>Maybe it would be a good idea to form a team of "no original research"
>checkers who have the right to violate 3RR, and on whom any editor
>could call for help in the case of a revert war triggered by an editor
>adding unreferenced claims. The job of this team would be to ask for a
>reference and then to determine whether the reference offered was a
>reputable one. If not, the team would have the right to keep reverting
>until the POV pusher got fed up.

Since the POV pusher is someone who is repeatedly, consistently and with
malice aforethought inserting material that goes against Wikipedia policy,
I think it would be best to expedite the work of ArbCom so that the
POV-pusher can simply be banned rather than setting up a group of official
edit warriors whose job is to try out-pushing him on his own terms. I
believe edit wars would be just as troublesome when they're officially
sanctioned as when they aren't.


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
JAY JG said:
>>Cool Hand Luke wrote:
>>
>>Absolutely. If your edits really are the editorially correct thing for
>>the article, it should be no problem to get someone else to revert with
>>you. Thus only the allegedly irrational party of an edit war will break
>>the 3RR, but not the supposedly NPOV editors do.
>
> Unless, of course, it's one of the many thousands of Wikipedia articles
> that  are not watched by any other active editors, in which case it's
> just you  against the other editor.  I supposed you could take the
> issue to  Wikipedia:RFC, where the conflict could be ignored just as
> most other  article content conflicts are ignored.
>
> Jay.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
Slim writes.
>
> Some of the editors writing in this thread seem to believe there are
> teams of editors willing to delete original research wherever they find
> it, so that no editor is ever left isolated dealing with a POV pusher
> who's inserting nonsense. That just isn't true

I assure you that it is.  Any time you spot a POV pusher filling an
article with unverifiable tripe, just leave a message at [[User talk:
Tony Sidaway]] and you and I, we'll be that team.  If there are two of
them, we'll get a third guy; and that way there's no way anybody will
have to breach 3RR.


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Everyking

body:
Cool Hand Luke (failure.to.communicate at gmail.com) [050117 21:30]:

> This seems odd to me. When I block myself, I'm not able to edit
> without being unblocked. Although Everyking was unblocked by Ambi at
> 10:39, 16 Jan, he should not have been able to edit after RickK
> reapplied the block at 01:14, 17 Jan, yet he still edits.
> I'm not sure how this is possible. Is this another block bug in the
> new software, or am I missing something?

Apparently you can still do rollbacks when unblocked.

- d.


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Concern with performance issues

body:
Robert Scott Horning (robert_horning at netzero.net) [050117 22:56]:

>   I've also been involved in other
> volunteer organizations (political, social, and youth groups) and the
> need to keep the volunteers happy should never be underestimated.  The
> fickle thing about volunteers is that if they don't like what is going
> on, they will leave quietly... often without the leaders or those "at
> the top" even being able to percieve that there is a problem.  If you
> hire somebody in any role (developer, PR work, accounting, etc.), you
> have to make sure that individual is committed to the goals of the
> organization, and if possible would be a volunteer if they would not get
> paid for their work.  This is true for Wikipedia as it is for the Red Cross.

I have considerable experience in managing volunteers (both as a volunteer
and being paid to manage them). One question I'd like a better answer to is
how to keep volunteers from each others' throats better ... en: is large
enough to be qualitatively different from any other wiki, anywhere, ever.

- d.


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Christiaan Briggs

subject: [Foundation-l] New project proposal - Wikibuilder

body:
Pawe? 'Ausir' Dembowski wrote:

> Can't it be a part of Wikibooks?

It could, but then so could all the Wikimedia projects. I'm not sure it
would suit Wikibooks. I see this as a "commons" project covering the
design and construction of the built environment *in its entirety* in
all languages. Plus the prominence of being a separate Wikimedia
project will help in attracting builders and designers. It may even
need special code introduced into MediaWiki to deal with
presenting/previewing up-and-coming 2D and 3D file formats, etc.

Christiaan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for a new project - Wikibuilder

body:
Wikibuilder - a knowledge base covering the design and construction of
the built environment, in its entirety, in all languages.

Project proposal page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibuilder

See also:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects

== Basic idea ==

To create a knowledge base covering the design and construction of the
built environment, in its entirety, in all languages.

== Scope ==

Much, if not most, of the information could be presented as text (and
could start off as just that), but text presents profound and obvious
limits for describing the built environment, so much of the information
would be pictorial. With the drawing expertise of designers and
draughtspeople around the world who are intimate with CAD (computer
aided draughting) there should be no shortage of people to get the ball
rolling.

There are currently efforts going on in the graphics and architecture
industries to standardise pictorial file formats (see links below) and
the main topic of initial discussion on Wikibuilder may well revolve
around the kind of file formats to use for presenting and distributing
sketch, 2D, 3D and other kinds of pictorial information. Carrying on
from this might be discussion on graphical styles and style
standardisation.

There are a few open-content repository-type websites around for
sharing building details, et cetera, but most of them are woeful and
narrowly focused on CAD technicians looking for details to use at work.
There're a myriad of websites dotted around the internet offering
information on design but this is extremely fragmented.

== Why? ==

Ever since we as a species started manipulating our environment we have
built a vast knowledge of designing and constructing the built
environment. This knowledge belongs to everyone, but much of it is is
locked away in people's heads with no easy way to share such
information except for books (usually expensive ones) and
apprenticeship. A wiki focused on the built environment could help
unlock this knowledge and make it accessible to vast numbers of people
(builders, designers, inventors, diy'ers, knowledge lovers) who could
put it to use and continue to build on it in a open way. A wiki could
also help the push for open standards in the presentation of pictorial
information via the internet.

Kind regards,
Christiaan


from_name: Paweł 'Ausir' Dembowski

body:
Can't it be a part of Wikibooks?

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jochen Magnus

subject: [Wikitech-l] fulltext engine ioda newly released with UTF-8 support

body:
I want to announce the new release 1.1 of the fulltext indexing and
retrieving engine ioda. It has three major improvements:

- now handles UTF-8.
- direct PHP integration through import lib
   (Interfaces to C, Perl and Python are still available)
- returns alternatively search results in records (structs)
   or as CSV formatted strings.

ioda can be found under http://ioda.sourceforge.net/

ioda runs since august 2004 under http://lexikon.rhein-zeitung.de/

try
http://lexikon.rhein-zeitung.de/lexikon.html?q=(Albert%20or%20Alfred)%20and.1%20Einstein)%20and%20Quant*%20not%20Physik*

ioda indexes a complete german encyclopedia (32 million occurencies of
1.7 million different words) in approx. 50 minutes. En-wikibook (3
million occurencies of 200.000 different words) will be indexed in 3
minutes (Both on a dual Athlon processor machine with 1 GB of RAM). ioda
can update entries in real time.

Cheers

jo


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How Wikipedia behaves under heavy load

body:
Daniel P.B.Smith wrote:
> My personal observations/superstitions, which are NOT based on any
> technical insight. My mental model is that different Wikipedia
> operations require different capabilities, and perhaps in some cases
> different servers, and therefore degrade differently on heavy load.
>
> a) For some reason, reloading a page after saving an edit is one of the
> LEAST reliable operations and quickly degrades under load. The failure
> can take three different forms. The most common is that the browser
> times out. Lately, a very common one has been an error message saying
> the database is not available. A third form is that the supposedly
> edited page was reloaded, but shows the original text rather than the
> edited text.

That tallies pretty well with the technical situation. We have a single
master database server and a number of slave servers. The slave servers
repeat every write query executed on the master, but only after the
query has finished executing on the master. There is only a single
thread writing to each slave, so a long-running write causes every slave
to lag behind the master. Most of the time this doesn't matter, because
most reads can be taken from a copy of the database which is a few
seconds old. But after a save, the next article view is taken from a
slave, and that slave must have replicated writes up to and including
your last slave. Apache will wait for about 10 seconds, before giving up
and using the out-of-date copy. There should be a warning in the page
footer. This behaviour has changed in the last few days, the other two
scenarios are quite plausible.

> In ALL THREE cases, there's much better than a 50% chance that the edit
> actually took place.

Sometimes the save may be rejected, if the apaches are too heavily
loaded to accept the connection, but usually it will go through.

> In ALL THREE cases, the most sensible thing to do is save the edited
> Wiki-marked-up text of the whole article somewhere locally, wait about
> five minutes, then try to view the page and see whether the edit took.
>
> b) A very common symptom under heavy load is that actions "take," but do
> not become "visible" for many minutes. For example, when preferences
> change spontaneously (an infuriating thing which hits me about every two
> weeks) and I change them back, my changes USUALLY take effect--but do
> not become visible for many minutes afterwards. Until I discovered this,
> I was utterly baffled because I would keep trying various things to
> "fix" the problem, every possible combination of clearing caches I could
> think of and when the changes took several minutes later I had tried
> several other things and naturally assumed that it was the last thing
> I'd tried, rather than the first.
>
> c) For reasons that baffle me, the "Go" button creates some kind of
> search string and does some kind of search. Under heavy load, all search
> operations degrade. This means that manually typing
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foobar
>
> is much more reliable in retrieving the Foobar article than typing
> "Foobar" into the search box and pressing "Go."
>
> When things are slow, I usually copy the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> text out of the address box for handy pasting in later.

Go is quite a bit faster than search if it finds a match, it just checks
for the existence of the article with a few different capitalisations.
However it's necessarily slower than just typing the URL.

> d) I am trying to learn to welcome the slowdowns as nature's way of
> reminding me that I'm spending way too much time on Wikipedia. Of
> course, the most infuriating situations are the ones when I MEAN to say
> "this article should definitely not be," press SAVE, see that I
> accidentally typed "this article should definitely be", press EDIT, fix
> it, and get a database error. In these situations, I console myself with
> the thought that nobody really cares that much about my opinion.

It would be all too easy for me to take notice of complaints like these,
and put in a lot of work. But I have PhD work to do, I have to be strong.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject:
Original Research versus Point of View, was Re: [WikiEN-l] The
	3RR policy should not always be blindly followed

body:
The reason for differentiating original research from POV material is that
original research may be removed entirely while to satisfy the Neutral Point
Of View policy POV material must be included and attributed if there are
reliable references which take that point of view or comment on it. It is
never of question of cleverly "neutering" POV material, that would be a POV
violation itself.

I realize this viewpoint is at considerable divergance with the way some
folks interpret NPOV, but if you go back and read the policy, it provides
for inclusion in articles of all points of view which can be established by
reliable references.

Fred

> From: "Charles Matthews" <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 08:12:52 -0000
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The 3RR policy should not always be blindly followed
>
> JAY JG wrote
>
>> However,
>> most of the original research inserted in these articles is more on the
>> order of "George Bush knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in
>> Iraq, but he lied to the American public and invaded anyway, in order to
>> finish the job his father started, and to restore his family honor".
>
> When something is already unverifiable, highly partisan POV, I wonder why it
> needs to be labelled 'original research' as well.  That's not what OR was
> initially about, really, i.e. personal speculations/crank theories.  The
> cited instance is more naturally treated just as POV; it can be 'neutered'
> by a specific citation of someone writing the thought (which we've all read
> 100 times) somewhere.
>
> In any case, concentrating on contentious politics/contemporary history in
> the making is not necessarily going to produce a good set of general
> encyclopedia-building principles. NPOV rules; otherwise one is back to
> source-criticism and imputing motives.
>
> Charles


subject:
"Good" Edit Warriors, was Re: [WikiEN-l] The 3RR policy should
	not always be blindly  followed

body:
Edit warring is itself a violation of Wikipedia policy. There is some
difficulty in getting the Arbitration Committee to severely sanction "good"
edit warriors, but some of us keep trying. A dedicated edit warrior will
return over and over again to us and eventually the whole Committee goes
along (or the user learns other ways to resolve disputes besides endless
reverting).

Fred

> From: Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 22:57:16 -0800
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The 3RR policy should not always be blindly  followed
>
> At 03:17 PM 1/17/2005 -0700, slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
>> Maybe it would be a good idea to form a team of "no original research"
>> checkers who have the right to violate 3RR, and on whom any editor
>> could call for help in the case of a revert war triggered by an editor
>> adding unreferenced claims. The job of this team would be to ask for a
>> reference and then to determine whether the reference offered was a
>> reputable one. If not, the team would have the right to keep reverting
>> until the POV pusher got fed up.
>
> Since the POV pusher is someone who is repeatedly, consistently and with
> malice aforethought inserting material that goes against Wikipedia policy,
> I think it would be best to expedite the work of ArbCom so that the
> POV-pusher can simply be banned rather than setting up a group of official
> edit warriors whose job is to try out-pushing him on his own terms. I
> believe edit wars would be just as troublesome when they're officially
> sanctioned as when they aren't.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Yup, Japanese joinery, the works.

Christiaan

On 18 Jan 2005, at 1:42 am, cookiecaper wrote:

> So, architecture? Other things too (i.e. small-scale carpentry)?
>
>
> On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 00:50:18 +0000, Christiaan Briggs
> <christiaan at last-straw.net> wrote:
>> Wikibuilder - a knowledge base covering the design and construction of
>> the built environment, in its entirety, in all languages.
>>
>> Project proposal page:
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibuilder
>>
>> See also:
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects
>>
>> == Basic idea ==
>>
>> To create a knowledge base covering the design and construction of the
>> built environment, in its entirety, in all languages.
>>
>> == Scope ==
>>
>> Much, if not most, of the information could be presented as text (and
>> could start off as just that), but text presents profound and obvious
>> limits for describing the built environment, so much of the
>> information
>> would be pictorial. With the drawing expertise of designers and
>> draughtspeople around the world who are intimate with CAD (computer
>> aided draughting) there should be no shortage of people to get the
>> ball
>> rolling.
>>
>> There are currently efforts going on in the graphics and architecture
>> industries to standardise pictorial file formats (see links below) and
>> the main topic of initial discussion on Wikibuilder may well revolve
>> around the kind of file formats to use for presenting and distributing
>> sketch, 2D, 3D and other kinds of pictorial information. Carrying on
>> from this might be discussion on graphical styles and style
>> standardisation.
>>
>> There are a few open-content repository-type websites around for
>> sharing building details, et cetera, but most of them are woeful and
>> narrowly focused on CAD technicians looking for details to use at
>> work.
>> There're a myriad of websites dotted around the internet offering
>> information on design but this is extremely fragmented.
>>
>> == Why? ==
>>
>> Ever since we as a species started manipulating our environment we
>> have
>> built a vast knowledge of designing and constructing the built
>> environment. This knowledge belongs to everyone, but much of it is is
>> locked away in people's heads with no easy way to share such
>> information except for books (usually expensive ones) and
>> apprenticeship. A wiki focused on the built environment could help
>> unlock this knowledge and make it accessible to vast numbers of people
>> (builders, designers, inventors, diy'ers, knowledge lovers) who could
>> put it to use and continue to build on it in a open way. A wiki could
>> also help the push for open standards in the presentation of pictorial
>> information via the internet.
>>
>> Kind regards,
>> Christiaan


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blindly following the 3+ revert rule

body:
Cool Hand Luke writes:
> If your edits really are the editorially correct thing
> for the article, it should be no problem to get someone
> else to revert with you. Thus only the allegedly
> irrational party of an edit war will break the 3RR, but
> not the supposedly NPOV editors do.

Nice theory. But in practice this is simply false. Most of
our articles have very few people who actively edit on them
or who are even qualified to even edit them. Sure, hundreds
of people do edits on [[God]] or [[Prophet]]. But how many
people can recognize vandalism or abuse on [[Process
philosophy]], [[Conservative responsa]] or esoteric math
and physics articles?

In practice very often we cannot easilly get someone else
to help us revert or edit, at least not for a few days.
I've asked for help on articles, only to have other editors
say "I don't know enough about the topic; I can't do
anything."  JayJG points out this same issue.

Again, I am not saying that we should throw away the 3+
revert rule, or any other rule.  But we DO NOT blindly
enforce Wikipedia rules with 'bots.  Sysops are supposedly
human beings with some amount of common sense.  Let's see
some evidence of this.  If I want to be part of 'bot
community, I'll play Doom 3 in single-player mode.

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The all-new My Yahoo! - Get yours free!
http://my.yahoo.com


body:
JAY JG wrote

>However,
> most of the original research inserted in these articles is more on the
> order of "George Bush knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in
> Iraq, but he lied to the American public and invaded anyway, in order to
> finish the job his father started, and to restore his family honor".

When something is already unverifiable, highly partisan POV, I wonder why it
needs to be labelled 'original research' as well.  That's not what OR was
initially about, really, i.e. personal speculations/crank theories.  The
cited instance is more naturally treated just as POV; it can be 'neutered'
by a specific citation of someone writing the thought (which we've all read
100 times) somewhere.

In any case, concentrating on contentious politics/contemporary history in
the making is not necessarily going to produce a good set of general
encyclopedia-building principles. NPOV rules; otherwise one is back to
source-criticism and imputing motives.

Charles


list: textbook-l

from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] Why Wikibooks projects are not using subpages?

body:
You convinced me. I am going to use subpages now for the
textbooks that I develop. Somehow I never noticed this
before or never realized how we could use it. What a great
suggestion!

Thanks Manuel!
Karl

--- Manuel G R <mgrojo at ya.com> wrote:

> This is something I have wondering too much time. The
> subpages could
> improve the current [[Some book:Some module]] convention
> and the others.
>
> I have written a proposal to enable subpages on the main
> namespace of
> all the Wikibooks projects in Meta, see
>
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibooks_should_use_subpages
>
> Regards.
> --
> Manuel
>
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Continued concern with performance

body:
--- Rich Holton <rich_holton at yahoo.com> wrote:
> My greatest concern is that there are continuing performance issues
> with little apparent progress over an extended period. Without
> hesitation I presume that we have good people volunteering their time
> and working hard to resolve these issues.

There has been great progress and the number of servers has grown dramatically.
The trouble with exponential growth in traffic is that any set-back in trying
to keep up quickly becomes a major issue.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


from_name: Arno Lagrange

subject: Re: [Foundation-l] exposé par un enfant

body:
Oui Bravo ant !
Il me semble qu'il existe un projet Wikijunior en gestation : j'imagine
qu'il pourrait d'entr?e ?tre multilingue ainsi la nouvelle g?n?rtion
grandira tout de suite dans une dimension plan?taire et en ouverture aux
autres cultures et aux autres langues. Ceci est diff?rent de "perm?able ? la
culture MacDonald" - m?me si on la qualifie de mondiale- et ? la langue
am?ricaine comme cela est souvent pr?sent? quand on parle d'introduire
l'apprentissage "des langues" ? l'?cole et que le choix ? peu pr?s unique
voulu par le minist?re, les enseignants, les parents soit la seule langue de
Bill Gates.

----- Message d'origine -----
De : "Anthere" <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
? : <wikifr-l at wikimedia.org>; "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"
<foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Envoy? : jeudi 13 janvier 2005 08:47
Objet : [Foundation-l] expos? par un enfant


subject: Re: [Foundation-l] exposé par un enfant


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: expos� par un enfant

body:
--- Nicholas Moreau <beaubeaver at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Best that I get from this text is that you want to
> create an encyclopedia in which kids can submit their
> own works, yes?
>
> Or is it just an encyclopedia for kids?

My understating was that it would just be a set of Wikibooks. Starting a new
Wikimedia project requires a lot of discussion, a Wikimedia-wide vote, and
board approval.

-- mav

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: expos� par un enfant


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] images on commons and gfdl

body:
--- Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> While it is clearly not a feature, IMHO it is not really a bug either.
> If we can solve this by including the commons description page
> automatically on the wikipedia image description page, great.

That would work fine (it could be in its own frame). Transcluding via framing
is faily common on the net and would also prove useful in Wikibooks modules
that quote/comment on source texts hosted on Wikisource.

> For me (as
> someone who *does* upload images on the commons), it would fully suffice
> to make the commons notice more prominent.

For me, more is needed before I participate.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


body:
--- Guillaume Blanchard <gblanchard at arcsy.co.jp> wrote:
> Unify licence template ({{GFDL}}, {{CC-BY-SA}}, etc.) on all Wikipedia
> may help a lot.
> When we use an image from Commons on local Wikipedia, the software may
> include the Commons' description page next to local description (both on
> the same page). So, even if people don't enter local information (say
> translation), we may be able to see the original information.
> For example :

Transcluding the raw wikitext from Commons and running it through the local
wiki's parsar should do that automatically so long as templates with the
correct names exist on each wiki (which you already mentioned).

For this to work though, these templates will all have to be able to take an
{{{Author}}} variable - otherwise the author's name may get lost in a jumble of
words from a different language in that part of the transcluded text.

This would automatically translate the most important part of any such message
(the license) and give prominent placement to the author's name. Any other
parts of the transcluded text (such as a caption) would need to be translated
by somebody from the local wiki and placed below the original transcluded text
box on the local wiki's image description page.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone.
http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo


from_name: Yann Forget

body:
Hi,

Le Tuesday 18 January 2005 04:08, Tim Starling a ?crit :
(...)
> More system administrators are needed. My interest is in programming,
> but I end up spending most of my time on Linux system administration,
> because there's nobody else around to do it. Understand that Linux is an
> operating system I had *never even used* before I started on Wikipedia.
> I had to pick it up as I went along. It's a bizarre, flawed, buggy
> operating system which I only use because I'm forced to.

I am volunteering to help here.
I?am not a developer but a Linux system administrator for the last 6 years.
See http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ (sorry, only in French).
First I would like to help installing a basic antispam filter, as managing the
mailing lists is becoming a burden due to spams.
Now I am off upto Saturday due to RL work ;o) but I will read the archives.

> Paid system administration help may be an option, but the first priority
> for paid help should be hardware maintenance, since there are no
> volunteers in that field, and a small amount of time spent will make a
> big difference.
>
> -- Tim Starling

Regards,
Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


body:
To Brion or another helpful developer or knowlegable
person;

I got the subpage feature to work on my userpage:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Karl_Wick
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Karl_Wick/Test

but I could not get it to work on my Business English page:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Business_English

Is the feature turned-on for userpages but off for the main
wiki? I think this would be a great feature to enable on
Wikibooks if it is not currently enabled. Or maybe I am
just doing it wrong somehow ... When I tried to use the
[[/Subpage]] convention on the Business English page it
made this page:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki//English_proverbs

instead of this page:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Business_English/English_proverbs

Any advice on this?

Thanks!
Karl

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Easier than ever with enhanced search. Learn more.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


body:
Ray Saintonge (saintonge at telus.net) [050118 07:20]:
> Robin Shannon wrote:

> >Why, what is wrong with having "people dependent on the Foundation for
> >a regular source of income."? If we were to use only contract workers,
> >a new person would have to learn the whole system every 3 months, and
> >it would also make longer term projects more difficult to
> >do. Contract workers, for sys admin is just crazy talk.

> If you are looking at this from a strictly logical mechanistic
> perspective, you are of course right.  Certain efficiences are a normal
> by-product of system experience.  This all presupposes that the employee
> has a very free hand in the decisions that he must make, and that his
> orders come from a single responsible source.
> Wikipedia is as much a human environment as it is a technical one.  Not
   [....]
> At the same time the employee will be under pressure to produce, even if
> that pressure only comes from within himself.  Contracts to perform
> specific pre-determined tasks that have already been approved by the
> community will allow the person to focus on the task at hand, without
> the need to schmooz for the purpose of continuing his employment beyond
> the contract period.

If the planned employee is a sysadmin, I can tell you (as a sysadmin who
knows *lots* of sysadmins) that there are any number of highly skilled and
professional [[BOFH]]s who would *jump* at the chance to tend machines for
the Foundation. And be clueful about the Wiki way in all its interesting
glory. These people have survived Usenet, after all. Now you just need one
in St Petersburg :-D

(Dev is not my field so I cannot offer free advice worth every penny there
;-)

- d.


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [Foundation-l] Continued concern with performance

body:
> If our developers lack time, resources, or skill needed to resolve
> the
> issues, then let us immediately hire a temporary consultant to
> focus on
> this problem and resolve it.

Just a tidbit:

You do not speed up the pregnancy by assigning more women to the
project.

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


from_name: Nicolas Weeger

body:
> I am volunteering to help here.

I'm volunteering too, if i can be of any help.
I'm no linux sysadmin (ok, i can install a system & solve issues now and
then, having picked stuff managing the small LAN my company uses,
including dns, web site, and so on... but i'm at core a software
developer ;p). But if there are routine tasks, or simple maintenance
stuff i could do, i'll gladly help.

[[fr:User:Ryo|Nicolas Weeger]]


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Daniel Mayer schrieb:

>So instead of dismissing Anthere's concern by declaring this a feature
>
Hey, don't go Micro$oft on me! :-)

>, please
>instead consider this to be a bug that needs to be eventually addressed. IIRC,
>Erik has already lamented about this and I therefore thought it was on
>somebody's todo list.
>
>
While it is clearly not a feature, IMHO it is not really a bug either.
If we can solve this by including the commons description page
automatically on the wikipedia image description page, great. For me (as
someone who *does* upload images on the commons), it would fully suffice
to make the commons notice more prominent.

User on wikipedia: "Hey, great image! And clickable..." - click - "Oh,
no description. Wait, it says there's description and copyright stuff
under that link!" - click - "Ah, there we go!"

If someone made it as far as the article in the first place, is it
really such a stretch to assume (s)he'd be able to do the above?

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: images on commons and gfdl

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Daniel Mayer a ?crit:
> > For me, more is needed before I participate.
>
> Can you explain ? ant

Whatever is written on the image description page on the Commons needs to be
trancluded to the image description page on whatever wiki the image is being
used on.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Easier than ever with enhanced search. Learn more.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


body:
JAY JG said:
>
>> > Some of the editors writing in this thread seem to believe there are
>> > teams of editors willing to delete original research wherever they
>> > find it, so that no editor is ever left isolated dealing with a POV
>> > pusher who's inserting nonsense. That just isn't true
>>
>>I assure you that it is.  Any time you spot a POV pusher filling an
>>article with unverifiable tripe, just leave a message at [[User talk:
>>Tony Sidaway]] and you and I, we'll be that team.  If there are two of
>>them, we'll get a third guy; and that way there's no way anybody will
>>have to breach 3RR.
>
> Unless you're on vaction or something.  I think systemic fixes are far
> more  reliable than "don't worry, I'll make sure this doesn't happen"
> assurances.
>
You and I are not the only editors on Wikipedia.

And in the example you gave, Charles has already given a good critique of
your claim that this would constitute "original research".  There would in
any case be no need to revert in this case; simply edit the contentious
statement so that it is verifiably true and cite your sources.  Then
everybody will know that you're right and you'll encounter no problems
persuading others to deal with this chap if he tries to replace the
verifiable statement with an unverifiable one.


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca>

>Since the POV pusher is someone who is repeatedly, consistently and with
>malice aforethought inserting material that goes against Wikipedia policy,
>I think it would be best to expedite the work of ArbCom so that the
>POV-pusher can simply be banned rather than setting up a group of official
>edit warriors whose job is to try out-pushing him on his own terms. I
>believe edit wars would be just as troublesome when they're officially
>sanctioned as when they aren't.

While you have a good point about edit wars, ArbCom is an extremely slow
process even now, when it has sped up considerably.  Considering that it
would first require an attempt at resolution (e.g. RfC, mediation), then
would have to be accepted by ArbCom, evidence gathered and presented, voted
on, then closed, it's hard to imagine this process could take less than a
month.

By the way, I note with some dismay that though most of the new ArbCom
members are working hard cleaning up the backlog, some appear to be AWOL.
I'm not sure why this is the case, since they all volunteered for, and won,
a hard fought election.

Jay.


body:
>Charles Matthews wrote:
>
>When something is already unverifiable, highly partisan POV, I wonder why
>it
>needs to be labelled 'original research' as well.

Because what is "POV" is often highly contested, especially by people who
aren't that familiar with the policy.  Original research is often easier to
discern and prove when the person in question has no sources to back up his
theory or belief.  Not that I haven't run into the "this isn't original
research, these are simply the facts" defence as well.

Jay.


body:
>JAY JG said:
> >
> >> > Some of the editors writing in this thread seem to believe there are
> >> > teams of editors willing to delete original research wherever they
> >> > find it, so that no editor is ever left isolated dealing with a POV
> >> > pusher who's inserting nonsense. That just isn't true
> >>
> >>I assure you that it is.  Any time you spot a POV pusher filling an
> >>article with unverifiable tripe, just leave a message at [[User talk:
> >>Tony Sidaway]] and you and I, we'll be that team.  If there are two of
> >>them, we'll get a third guy; and that way there's no way anybody will
> >>have to breach 3RR.
> >
> > Unless you're on vaction or something.  I think systemic fixes are far
> > more  reliable than "don't worry, I'll make sure this doesn't happen"
> > assurances.
> >
>You and I are not the only editors on Wikipedia.
>
>And in the example you gave, Charles has already given a good critique of
>your claim that this would constitute "original research".  There would in
>any case be no need to revert in this case; simply edit the contentious
>statement so that it is verifiably true and cite your sources.  Then
>everybody will know that you're right and you'll encounter no problems
>persuading others to deal with this chap if he tries to replace the
>verifiable statement with an unverifiable one.

Ah, if only things typically worked that way; you must be editing in an
entirely different area of Wikipedia than I do.  In my experience other
editors rarely care to get involved in areas in which they have no interest
or expertise (if they notice the problem at all); instead the common
reaction is "well, these two guys are just edit-warring, and I don't know
who is right, so I'm not going to get worked up about it."  As for the
example, it's true it was off the top of my head, and perhaps there are many
web sites and blogs that "support" that particular claim.  A better example
would have been the many people who read the theory or opinion or argument
of a notable individual on a particular topic, well cited, and decide they
need to insert their own "rebuttal" of that person's views, on the grounds
that the cited views are completely wrong.  Though I will repeatedly state
"you can't just make up your own arguments as to why this guy is wrong, you
have to cite others who rebut or disagree with this person", it typically
has little impact.

Jay.

Jay.


from_name: Robin Shannon

body:
Two questions; does anyone have first hand knowledge of what they have
done on other major open-source projects (ie linux, openoffice.org,
mozzila etc?) How do volunteers and non-voluteers get on there. Also
if tim or brion, or any of the other really core developers are
reading this thread what are thier thoughts (as they are the ones who
will be most affected).

and finnaly an observation; contracts might be right if we were
employing them to do a specific thing, but i see that something far
more useful, would be someone whos core purpose was a facilitator. as
in, they would be making sure the 7 machines which are currently out
are working, that all the hardware is documented, that what ever the
latest emergency is, does not affect the editors, or take up developer
time. For this a more permanent type of employment is useful.
Obviously the person, should share a belief in our mission (and the
general opensource mission), and perhaps, they should be employed on a
contract for the first month or so to see if we are happy with them or
not, but after that a wage would be best.

paz y amor,
[[User:The bellman]]

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 09:17:04 +1100, David Gerard
<fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> If the planned employee is a sysadmin, I can tell you (as a sysadmin who
> knows *lots* of sysadmins) that there are any number of highly skilled and
> professional [[BOFH]]s who would *jump* at the chance to tend machines for
> the Foundation. And be clueful about the Wiki way in all its interesting
> glory. These people have survived Usenet, after all. Now you just need one
> in St Petersburg :-D
>
> (Dev is not my field so I cannot offer free advice worth every penny there
> ;-)
>
>
> - d.

--
hit me: robin.shannon.id.au
jab me: saudade at jabber.zim.net.au

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 09:59:09 +0100, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:

> User on wikipedia: "Hey, great image! And clickable..." - click - "Oh,
> no description. Wait, it says there's description and copyright stuff
> under that link!" - click - "Ah, there we go!"
>
> If someone made it as far as the article in the first place, is it
> really such a stretch to assume (s)he'd be able to do the above?

Perhaps not. But it's still an extra step that should not be
necessary. And if the person was unlucky enough to get the image from
a wiki where that particular piece of text has not been translated,
all information on source and license s/he can get is "This file is a
shared upload and may be used by other projects." Which is not very
helpful, if you ask me.

Andre Engels


subject:
Original Research versus Point of View,
	was Re: [WikiEN-l] The3RR policy sho

body:
>Fred Bauder wrote:
>The reason for differentiating original research from POV material is that
>original research may be removed entirely while to satisfy the Neutral
>Point
>Of View policy POV material must be included and attributed if there are
>reliable references which take that point of view or comment on it. It is
>never of question of cleverly "neutering" POV material, that would be a POV
>violation itself.
>
>I realize this viewpoint is at considerable divergance with the way some
>folks interpret NPOV, but if you go back and read the policy, it provides
>for inclusion in articles of all points of view which can be established by
>reliable references.

"Reliable references", there's the rub.  How do we establish that?  Just
today I've encountered someone who considered a blog to be a "reliable
reference".  A couple of days ago it was a "Israelis are Nazis" website.
Last week it was a Holocaust Denial website.  And of course, these people
consider any counter websites you bring to be "unreliable", "POV",
"propaganda", etc.  What do you do then?

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The 3RR policy should not always be blindly followed

body:
>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>This would be a month of trying to persuade the culprit to be a good boy.
>Most of us regard this as A Good Thing.

A month of unsupported original research and POV nonsense present in an
article that we are trying to promote as a reliable alternative to paper
encyclopedias.  A month in which this editor no doubt goes on to insert
similar junk into other articles.  Multiplied by dozens of editors and
thousands of articles.  And a month is a low-end estimate of the time taken.
  I would hope most of us would regard this as A Bad Thing.

I don't think the primary purpose of Wikipedia is to be a reformatory where
we gently train and cajole POV warriors into becoming fine upstanding NPOV
encyclopedia editors; rather, I think its primary purpose is to create a
great encyclopedia.

Jay.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
Original Research versus Point of View, was Re: [WikiEN-l] The3RR
	policy sho

body:
JAY JG wrote:

>> Fred Bauder wrote:
>> I realize this viewpoint is at considerable divergance with the way some
>> folks interpret NPOV, but if you go back and read the policy, it
>> provides
>> for inclusion in articles of all points of view which can be
>> established by
>> reliable references.
>
> "Reliable references", there's the rub.  How do we establish that?
> Just today I've encountered someone who considered a blog to be a
> "reliable reference".  A couple of days ago it was a "Israelis are
> Nazis" website.  Last week it was a Holocaust Denial website.  And of
> course, these people consider any counter websites you bring to be
> "unreliable", "POV", "propaganda", etc.  What do you do then?

The problem is that "reliable" itself represents a POV, and is not above
it.  Trashing each other's references is no better than trashing each
other's direct comments on the subject.  Assuming that it has some
relevance to the article, I am not bothered by a link to a
Holocaust-denial website, nor to one that takes a contrary view.  There
is a place for both, though they might be divided into "References for"
and "References against" whatever the point in dispute might be.

If it turns out that one of those references is to a site of dubious
character, as a Holocaust-denial site might be, we need to trust the
user's good judgement without trying to play the role of a parent
telling his children what to do.

Ec


from_name: Caroline Ewen

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Wiki works, wiki doesn't work, wiki works,
	wiki doesn't work...

body:
Hi

I'm sure I'm not the only one complaining about this,  but what is actually
wrong with Wikipedia at the moment ? On the english one, you can hardly edit
at all, on the german, french and luxembourgish wikis, edits work fine at
some times of the day whereas sometimes nothing seems to work. And for the
times you actually CAN edit a page, it takes about 5-10 min until the page
is saved. Now this can't be normal and we, on the lb wiki were wondering if
there's some sort of explanation to this problem.

thx :-)

Caroline aka Bris?is - lb.


body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:

>>If our developers lack time, resources, or skill needed to resolve
>>the issues, then let us immediately hire a temporary consultant to
>>focus on this problem and resolve it.
>>
>>
>Just a tidbit:
>
>You do not speed up the pregnancy by assigning more women to the
>project.
>
>
If the technology were there we might find support for changing that
task into a shared labour. :-)

Ec


body:
>JAY JG said:
>[....]
> > the common  reaction is "well, these two guys are just edit-warring,
> > and I don't know  who is right, so I'm not going to get worked up about
> > it."
>
>Do you expect this kind of thing to happen a lot?

Certain areas of Wikipedia attract conflict; that's the way of the world.

>I mean, you expect to
>get into an edit war and then ask others to either come to your assistance
>or relax the 3RR so you are permitted to continue?

I don't "expect to get into an edit war", nor have I ever suggested
"relaxing" the 3RR;.  Let's avoid straw-man arguments, and let's try to keep
the discussion on the issue, not the person.

>I think this is a highly contentious way of interacting on Wikipedia, and
>not one to be condoned.  Talk pages exist for a good purpose.

Indeed they do.  If only people used them, rather than POVing and "original
research"ing articles, and then edit-warring to preserve their POV and
original research insertions.

>Revert
>limits and guidelines counseling against edit warring also exist for a
>good purpose.  Edit warring is *not* considered a good way of dealing with
>problems.

No, it's not; however, it is sometimes the best of a number of bad choices.
If only there were other remedies that actually worked effectively all the
time.

Jay.


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

> >Just a tidbit:
> >
> >You do not speed up the pregnancy by assigning more women to the
> >project.
> >
> >
> If the technology were there we might find support for changing
> that
> task into a shared labour. :-)

I have actually been thinking about that concept, that of core
decentralization of the system, to allow for better separation of
the... Ooops, wrong list :)

But, nice pun and double-entendre.

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


from_name: Nicholas Moreau

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: exposé par un enfant

body:
Best that I get from this text is that you want to
create an encyclopedia in which kids can submit their
own works, yes?

Or is it just an encyclopedia for kids?

Nick/Zanimum

___________________________________________________________
ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun! http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: exposé par un enfant


from_name: Anthere

body:
Mark Williamson a ?crit:
> ht.wikipedia has a grand total of 0 images, and its number of articles
> is SO negligible that gfdl probably isn't much of a concern, plus the
> fact that none of them are linked from the mainpage (see for example
> http://ht.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominikani or
> http://ht.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayiti - reasonably good articles, but
> neither is linked from the mainpage).

Evidently.
This language was started a few days ago. I made the guy a sysop and
gave him a couple of quick tips. Meanwhile, I made myself a user page (I
might have over 40 user pages now) and put a picture I uploaded on
commons a couple of days ago.

> However, GFDL information SHOULD be added by a competent editor in the
> target language (ie, not in French), and if that is not possible then
> perhaps a secondary language is acceptable.

Except that practically, it is not done.
People just link images without COPYING a license and description that
someone already provided. We ain't machines. If that can be done by an
automated process, why should we bother doing it ourselves ?

> But the chances that somebody will steal content from such a small
> Wikipedia are infintessimally small, and even so not all editors are
> likely to even KNOW that their submissions are by default licensed
> under the GFDL (this requires a working knowledge of English, as
> opposed to the basic knowledge of English nessecary for editing pages
> in general).

Generally, I give my work under gfdl.
I write about twice a month to a website to request that they comply to
our license, which requires mentionning the licence type and the authors.

I feel that if I require from outside websites to comply with our
licence (sometimes, I have to hint at legalistic issues), I think
1) we should start by complying to our licence ourselves and
2) we should provide websites with means to comply with our licence as
we request.

As an editor, I would like that the images I gave to the project are
kept under the licence I gave all inside the project. Right now, on ht,
there is no author, and no licence, that is PD.

I cannot be sure there are other wikipedias where it is the case as
well. It would be nice that the commons description page link to a page
where all the cases of uses of the images are listed.

As a board member, I cant contact people to complain they did not
provide information when we fail to give them the information.

Do you see my problem Mark ?

And all these problems, we can solve. Imho. Just need time and energy :-)

> Mark
>
> On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 21:50:51 +0100, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>Magnus Manske a ?crit:
>>
>>>Anthere schrieb:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Hello,
>>>>Not sure exactly where to write about this.
>>>>
>>>>I may have not understood something very well, if not, please explain
>>>>to me.
>>>>
>>>>When someone upload an image to wikicommons and place it under gfdl
>>>>license, I would tend to say that re-using this image would have to
>>>>follow gfdl license. We know that we do not respect well gfdl license
>>>>for text, since it is very difficult to follow all authors, but for an
>>>>image, it should not be a lot of problem to respect it, since there is
>>>>only one author, the one who took the picture.
>>>>
>>>>So, normally, to follow gfdl license, when we use the image we should
>>>>1) mention the gfdl and 2) mention the author, no ? So that anyone
>>>>reusing the image would be able to follow the gfdl in turn.
>>>>
>>>>What bugs me is that if I upload a picture to say the french
>>>>wikipedia, it is written in the image comment that I took the picture,
>>>>so I am granted the authorship of my work, and anyone using the image
>>>>could either mention wikipedia or myself. But at least, he has the
>>>>information available. Besides, the reader can see a description of
>>>>the image.
>>>>
>>>>When I upload an image on wikicommons, I can write this information
>>>>over there, but this information is no more directly available to the
>>>>guy using the information.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>Neither is the GFDL or the author list on any wikipedia article. You'll
>>>have to click a link (GFDL or "history", respectively).
>>
>>Possibly. But it is not because we poorly respect the GFDL on articles
>>(where it is hard to respect it) that we should poorly respect it, if
>>none at all on images.
>>
>>Between the moment you see an image and the moment you see the
>>description, there are at least two links (at best). I think it is not good.
>>
>>
>>
>>>Those who care about license information will find the link. Those who
>>>don't care wouldn't be helped with the text in plain sight either.
>>>
>>>Magnus
>>
>>Well, on the case of the ht wikipedia, even with the best of intention,
>>no one could see the license and no one could cite the source.
>>
>>In effect, that means that Wikipedia is not respecting the  sort of
>>contract it has with the editor. Somehow, we agree to give our work
>>under a certain license, but in exchange, we could expect that at least
>>within Wikimedia project the license will be respected. And it is not.
>>
>>Somehow, how could we complain that others do not respect the gfdl when
>>we do not respect it either ?
>>
>>Hence my suggestion for an automatic and mandatory message leading to
>>the right description on commons and hence my suggestion that the
>>description is also available on local projects.
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>


body:
Magnus Manske a ?crit:

> While it is clearly not a feature, IMHO it is not really a bug either.
> If we can solve this by including the commons description page
> automatically on the wikipedia image description page, great. For me (as
> someone who *does* upload images on the commons), it would fully suffice
> to make the commons notice more prominent.

Nod. I will put a collection of bug/feature requests on bugzilla :-)

It is neither a bug, nor a fancy feature, it is more like a feature
necessary to comply with one of the few things which are mandatory on
our projects.

Well, wikicommons is a kid yet.

Ant


body:
>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>I think you're missing the point somewhat.  If I want to represent a point
>of view on Wikipedia, say something attributable to Fatah, then of course
>the best source for a reference would probably be http://www.fateh.org/ ,
>and if I want to represent a point of view that I attribute to Mr Sharon I
>might cite some Israeli government website as my reference.  At the same
>time the text must be NPOV so that it should draw a clear line between
>reporting a point of view and endorsing it.
>Similarly, holocaust denial websites are pretty useful for reporting the
>views of holocaust deniers, and websites avowing that Israelis are nazis
>are useful for reporting the views of people who believe that Israelis are
>nazis.
>One wouldn't use any of the above sites as authorities on the facts of the
>situation, and indeed where the facts are credibly disputed it would be
>inappropriate to represent the contentions of any one party to the dispute
>as wholly factual.

The problem is not when people want to use a Holocaust Denial site to
represent the views of Holocaust Deniers; the problem is when they want to
use it to represent the "truth" about the Holocaust, or Jews, or Zionism, or
Israel.  And the latter occurs infinitely more often than the former.  And
while you or I might not use them as authorities on these subjects, many
others view them as the *only* NPOV authorities on these subjects.

Jay.


body:
>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>
>Rubbish tends not to last long.  Junk references get deleted: if not by
>you, by someone else.

If only that were true.

>POV warriors will always be with us.

Right.  And we're talking about solutions for that.

>I don't think this can be solved by
>giving you and your mates encouragement to go edit warring.  especially
>since one of your primary justifications to this seems to be that others
>cannot tell which of you is POV pushing and which of you is "warring for
>truth", as it were.

Not so.  Others don't want to get involved, because they have enough to do
as it is, and they aren't particularly well informed on the subject.  That's
not the same thing.  And please try to remember this is not about me in
particular; again, let's not make strawman arguments or personalize this.

>If we armed you, we'd also be arming your opponent.
>And if he's as bad as you say he is, that would make things much worse!
>Speaking purely for myself, I wish you'd *all* stop warring.  It seems to
>me that the 3RR is a good way of doing that, and I'm not about to let that
>go.

Tony, you seem to be missing the point here.  It's not about me, it's about
how to deal with a number of systemic issues on Wikipedia.  And I wish you'd
stop bringing up the "let go of the 3RR" strawman argument; I'm all for the
3RR, and was one of the first people to vote in favour of it becoming an
enforcable policy.  In fact, I'd like stricter enforcement.

Jay.


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

body:
Unify licence template ({{GFDL}}, {{CC-BY-SA}}, etc.) on all Wikipedia
may help a lot.
When we use an image from Commons on local Wikipedia, the software may
include the Commons' description page next to local description (both on
the same page). So, even if people don't enter local information (say
translation), we may be able to see the original information.
For example :

On Commons :
------------------------------------
Picture of the Yokohama harbour take by Aoineko under GFDL.

{{GFDL}}
------------------------------------

on Fr :
------------------------------------
Photo du port de Yokohama prise par Aoineko sous licence GFDL.
------------------------------------
Picture of the Yokohama harbour take by Aoineko under GFDL.

{{GFDL}}
------------------------------------

Hope it make sense.

Aoineko

Stephen Forrest a ?crit :

> On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 16:15:11 +0100, Magnus Manske
> <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
>
>> Neither is the GFDL or the author list on any wikipedia article. You'll
>> have to click a link (GFDL or "history", respectively).
>>
>> Those who care about license information will find the link. Those who
>> don't care wouldn't be helped with the text in plain sight either.
>
> Sure, but the situation with the commons _is_ different. You have to
> follow _two_ links to find the GFDL: one to the image page on the
> Commons, and another to find the link. The real problem, however, is
> that the license information is not even _mentioned_ on the
> language-specific page. For example, see:
>
> http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Liliuokalani_of_Hawaii.jpg
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Liliuokalani_of_Hawaii.jpg
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Liliuokalani_of_Hawaii.jpg
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Liliuokalani_of_Hawaii.jpg
>
> As well, the image page on the Commons is likely to be in English,
> which makes it difficult for non-English speakers. The obvious
> solution is to translate the license information on each of the
> language-specific pages from whatever is used on the Commons to the
> given language. But an automated solution would be preferable:
> perhaps a template which depends somehow on variables set by
> user-specific language settings.
>
> Steve


body:
>From: "Charles Matthews" <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
>
>The community writes the 'pedia.  A 'great' community is actually quite
>well
>characterised by its attitude to joiners.  Particularly, here, newbies with
>other Internet experience who have something to say but are over-assertive
>and edit 'in the wrong register'.

To join and be part of a community, you have to abide by its norms.  Those
who fail to do so generally face exclusion from the community of one form or
another.  And I find Wikipedia extremely reluctant to use the tools it has
to enfore communal norms, to its detriment.  Some of the detriment is seen
in the highly variable quality of the content.  Other is seen in the many
good editors willing to abide by those norms, but not put up with those who
do not, and who end up leaving.

Jay.


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Rich Holton wrote:
> While it appears that the developers are very busy attempting to
> solve the technical issues, there seems to be little actual progress.
>  How long will we allow this situation to continue without attempting
>  solutions of a different sort? A good operational definition of
> insanity is "continuing the same actions expecting different
> results."

At this stage, I think we just need more hardware. I think we've solved
the major system administration problems. Software development will
continue with optimisation work but that's a long term goal even with
hired help. You could try using the site in off-peak times, it works
very well then. More hardware is on order.

> If our developers lack time, resources, or skill needed to resolve
> the issues, then let us immediately hire a temporary consultant to
> focus on this problem and resolve it.

What problem? You don't even understand what the problem is. I've
repeatedly given my informed opinion on what is needed, and it doesn't
involve hiring consultants at a rate of $100/hr. Long term work on
optimisation is needed. JamesDay, our database optimisation specialist,
can give you a list of features as long as your arm that would improve
performance. I've tried and mostly failed to get people interested in
writing such things. Hardware is needed, and rapid hardware repair is
needed.

More system administrators are needed. My interest is in programming,
but I end up spending most of my time on Linux system administration,
because there's nobody else around to do it. Understand that Linux is an
operating system I had *never even used* before I started on Wikipedia.
I had to pick it up as I went along. It's a bizarre, flawed, buggy
operating system which I only use because I'm forced to.

Paid system administration help may be an option, but the first priority
for paid help should be hardware maintenance, since there are no
volunteers in that field, and a small amount of time spent will make a
big difference.

-- Tim Starling


body:
Pedro Fayolle wrote:
> I don't know if anyone has ever suggested this before, but couldn't
> the software be adapted to lay a larger responsability on the client?
> I'm not saying this would be a trivial instant solution, but as far as
> I can tell it could make a huge difference in the long run.
>
> Just for a start, imagine the possibilities of having a JavaScript
> wikicode parser.

Yes, it's been suggested before. Read the wikitech-l archives for
information about this approach.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Petr Kadlec

body:
> Mark Williamson a ?crit:
> > However, GFDL information SHOULD be added by a competent editor in the
> > target language (ie, not in French), and if that is not possible then
> > perhaps a secondary language is acceptable.
>
> Except that practically, it is not done.
> People just link images without COPYING a license and description that
> someone already provided. We ain't machines. If that can be done by an
> automated process, why should we bother doing it ourselves ?

I am not sure it is a good idea. Duplication of information is usually
bad because if someone changes the licensing information, makes
corrections etc., this would result to even worse situation -- wrong
information is IMHO worse than none.

And I am reasonably sure that there was/is some help page about
Commons stating that you should _not_ include licensing information
about a file on commons on other projects' image description page. I
am not able to find it right now, but it was somewhere out there... It
said you should translate the description of the image, but leave the
licensing information on the linked Commons image description page.

I think the proper solution would be to include the Commons' image
description page contents automatically into the image description
page of any other project (probably into some framed part of the page,
in order not to scare local users with english text).

Just my 0.02 CZK.

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


from_name: Zoney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: minor issue, but still a npov warning

body:
On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 17:04:18 +1100, csherlock at ljh.com.au
<csherlock at ljh.com.au> wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
> >
> > Some already ponctually corrected a couple of things.
> > But generally, they do not believe in Wikipedia neutrality though they
> > see the efforts to try to be neutral.
> > You may not expect french people who really write a bad english to go
> > correct all what is biaised in the english wikipedia.
> >
> > This is a good question : why did not they fix it ?
> >
> > It took me three months to dare edit the english wikipedia after I met
> > it. I feared criticism of my english like hell; And still fear it very
> > much, as there are regularly unpleasant comments made about it.
> > Recently, I had to block 2 times an editor who was being extremely rude
> > with non english people on meta. A place where international people ARE
> > welcome. When editors rudely handle non english in a place such as meta,
> > you might guess how nice these editors can be on the english wikipedia
> > itself.
> >
> > Amongst french people, I am generally considered quite good in english.
> > Still, editing in good english is difficult for me and takes a lot of
> > time. Arguments which start on talk page and last dozens and dozens of
> > screens put me off. It takes too much time to read it all and try to
> > understand it all.
> >
> > Many french scientists read english, because nearly all science is in
> > english, so of course, it is their main source of information. But most
> > french scientists do not manage english well enough to become editors.
> >
> > It needs courage you may not realise. It needs efforts, and it needs to
> > overcome the comment of some people who do not think we belong there.
> >
> > So, they look at the article, they may correct a typo, but do not go any
> > further.
>
> Anthere,
>
> If you find people being rude to non-English people I think you need to
> let an admin know so we can leave a message on their talk page warning
> them not to make personal attacks. I have personally never seen this,
> but if I did the used doing this would get a stern warning from me.
>
> Ta bu shi da yu
>

en.wikipedia suffers greatly from bias in parts. I say in parts, as
obviously those topics receiving more of both US and European
attention are usually edited for NPOV/compromise (or often
unfortunately erupt into an edit war or bitter recriminations).

It's a huge problem I think, and one of Wikipedia's biggest to
overcome. And denying that it is there is absurd.

And I'm not laying the blame solely with US wikipedians, far from it -
US bias is just more apparant (to non-US editors) because there are
more US editors than not (or than any other single category). I have
no doubt there are a minority of articles biased against the US which
have perhaps only received non-US editors. And speaking for myself I
can for sure point out one or two Irish articles which have been
biased by Irish editors for example.

NPOV isn't a nonsense, it's an admirable goal, but it is highly
fraudulent to pretend that having an NPOV policy makes us neutral. It
doesn't. In fairness, we are probably only of *comparable* neutrality
to dead-wood encyclopaedias - and I'm sorry, but I do think that US
editors can't see this as much, as inherently more things will be US
biased.

Zoney

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


body:
>From: "Charles Matthews" <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
> > Jayjg stated:
> >
> >  And I find Wikipedia extremely reluctant to use the tools it has
> > to enfore communal norms, to its detriment.
>
>Yes, the reluctance is clear.  The reasons for the reluctance are clear,
>to
>most people.

Clear but misguided, as Jimbo has stated on any number of occasions.  And if
I'm wrong about that, I'm sure he'll correct me.

>The variable quality will always be there, as far as anyone can see.  The
>fact that some valued editors will leave is something WP will always have
>to
>live with.

I'm more of the "here's a problem, let's try to fix it" school than the
"here's a problem, but nothing can be done (shrug)" school.

>So I still believe the 'good editors exodus', about which
>we often here, is panicky.  We should really be worried if their
>replacements were not being recruited.

Well, I don't know all editors.  I do know of specific examples of subject
areas where this is the case.

Jay.


body:
>For this particular conflict, it would help if someone could be found who
>knows and even holds the Palestinian POV *but* understands NPOV and why
>it's good - to show those who hold that POV how to do things properly here.

We had one.  He basically left in frustration over POV warriors and
Wikipedia's failure to deal with them.   There's one more, but he isn't very
active in this area right now.

Jay.


from_name: Stephen Forrest

body:
On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 10:40:10 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Daniel Mayer a ?crit:
> > > For me, more is needed before I participate.
> >
> > Can you explain ? ant
>
> Whatever is written on the image description page on the Commons needs to be
> trancluded to the image description page on whatever wiki the image is being
> used on.

Obviously internationalized templates, as mentioned previously, will
solve some of this problem.  However, some of this translation needs
to be done by humans: there will be text specific to the page, such as
"photo taken by Bob".

A suggestion: whoever first uses an image on a given wikipedia should
be responsible for translating its Commons page on his or her
language-specific wikipedia.

Now, this has the problem that the person using the image in a page
may not be able to understand or translate the Commons text (which
would presumably be in English or some other widely-recognized
language).  I'm not sure what the best solution is to that.

It would be nice to have a Special: page on each Mediawiki
installation which indexes all image pages for Commons images
presently in use on that wiki.  Then interested people could simply
police that list and make sure the Commons text has been translated.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Database lock.

body:
Jeff Cook wrote:
> The database is locked again. The time is 9:54 P.M. CST (GMT -6). This
> is fine, but database locks give me jitters because of recent talk
> about locking for up to twenty-four hours. This would not be a
> favorable circumstance and I am worried about it. Are we going to have
> some warning before that big lockdown takes place? I think we should.
> :)

Yes, you'll get plenty of warning if we plan it rather than having it
just happen. The problem currently is binlog disk space exhaustion on
the master. This has happened to us once before. We really need to patch
MySQL to stop it from happening, or pressure the MySQL team to fix it
for us.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
JAY JG said:
>>From: Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca>
>
>>Since the POV pusher is someone who is repeatedly, consistently and
>>with  malice aforethought inserting material that goes against
>>Wikipedia policy,  I think it would be best to expedite the work of
>>ArbCom so that the  POV-pusher can simply be banned rather than setting
>>up a group of official  edit warriors whose job is to try out-pushing
>>him on his own terms. I  believe edit wars would be just as troublesome
>>when they're officially  sanctioned as when they aren't.
>
> While you have a good point about edit wars, ArbCom is an extremely
> slow  process even now, when it has sped up considerably.  Considering
> that it  would first require an attempt at resolution (e.g. RfC,
> mediation), then  would have to be accepted by ArbCom, evidence
> gathered and presented, voted  on, then closed, it's hard to imagine
> this process could take less than a  month.
>
This would be a month of trying to persuade the culprit to be a good boy.
Most of us regard this as A Good Thing. ArbCom isn't there to wag the
finger at people for not citing sources--in fact if such a case were ever
to be accepted by ArbCom for adjudication I think we could take it as a
sign that ArbCom's caseload was far too small. We should be able to sort
out our differences without resorting to drastic measures. --~~~~


body:
Robert said:
> In practice very often we cannot easilly get someone else
> to help us revert or edit, at least not for a few days.
> I've asked for help on articles, only to have other editors
> say "I don't know enough about the topic; I can't do
> anything."  JayJG points out this same issue.
>
if out of the thousands of Wikipedia editors you cannot find one single
person qualified to examine an article and spot editing so seriously bad
that it would justify your asking for us to set aside the three-revert
rule, your subject must be very arcane indeed.  How are we to tell which
of the two people editing the article is right?  What if *he* petitions
for the 3RR to be relaxed so that he can out-revert *you*?  How would we
know which was which?
You say "at least not for a few days", but you are allowed to perform
three reverts per day, so you don't have to wait for a few days to
continue with your precious edit-war.


from_name: Charles Matthews

body:
JAY JG wrote

> >Charles Matthews wrote:
> >
> >When something is already unverifiable, highly partisan POV, I wonder why
> >it
> >needs to be labelled 'original research' as well.
>
> Because what is "POV" is often highly contested, especially by people who
> aren't that familiar with the policy.

I'm not going to dispute that.  On the other hand, these are the people to
whom an explanation of the nature of POV writing, in WP terms, will be most
helpful.

>Original research is often easier to
> discern and prove when the person in question has no sources to back up
his
> theory or belief.  Not that I haven't run into the "this isn't original
> research, these are simply the facts" defence as well.

Trouble is, simply producing a source which agrees - for example some
conspiracy theorist - and citing that, then may just sanitise the
contribution, without improving the article.  Getting the poster further
along the learning curve of Wikipedianhood, rather than just making the
point, is also very relevant.  So we could perhaps agree that 'winning'
rhetoric is not always the most desirable way of handling things.

Charles


body:
JAY JG said:
[....]
> the common  reaction is "well, these two guys are just edit-warring,
> and I don't know  who is right, so I'm not going to get worked up about
> it."

Do you expect this kind of thing to happen a lot?  I mean, you expect to
get into an edit war and then ask others to either come to your assistance
or relax the 3RR so you are permitted to continue?
I think this is a highly contentious way of interacting on Wikipedia, and
not one to be condoned.  Talk pages exist for a good purpose.  Revert
limits and guidelines counseling against edit warring also exist for a
good purpose.  Edit warring is *not* considered a good way of dealing with
problems.


subject: [WikiEN-l] "See also" section heading

body:
I'm not sure where I should make this suggestion to grab the most
attention, so I shall make it here.

I hereby propose that instead of using the heading "See also" at the
end of articles, we use the title "Related articles". The latter
sounds much more encyclopaedic, clearly indicates the purpose of the
section, and should encourage only relevant links at the end of
articles.

"See also" is quite blunt, rather ineloquent and instructional in my
opinion. Do people have thoughts on this? I'm aware of how
wide-ranging this would be, but I would see the (somewhat) temporary
dual-usage of both section titles as a small enough disruption.

Zoney

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] "See also" section heading

body:
Zoney wrote

> I hereby propose that instead of using the heading "See also" at the
> end of articles, we use the title "Related articles".

As far as I'm concerned, these mean different things.  'See also' can
include non-related articles with names that are closely related, for
example  [[Gilbert O'Sullivan]] in an article on [[Gilbert and Sullivan]].

I think 'See also' is fine; I'm sure most people just treat it as advisory.

Charles


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

body:
The Lyndon LaRouche supporters provide a good example of the way
Wikipedia doesn't defend itself well against determined POV pushers.
The arbcom ruled that original research emanating from the LaRouche
movement may be used on articles "closely related" to LaRouche. A
consequence of this is that the article [[Lyndon LaRouche]] now cites
claims that LaRouche developed the Star Wars program, properly
referenced to someone interviewed on LaRouche cable television. This
is just one of scores of similar claims in the 17 articles on the
LaRouche template, but you have to be knowledgeable to sort out which
claims are LaRouche nonsense, because they're not always as obvious as
the Star Wars one.

The LaRouche editors have already been through mediation. The purpose
of mediation is to find a middle way between two sides. But this is
inappropriate when dealing with someone like LaRouche, whose views
border on insanity. The post-mediation articles were a compromise
between what reputable journalists and scholars believe (that his
movement is a fascist cult, and that he is arguably unwell), and what
LaRouche supporters believe (that he designed Star Wars, is the
greatest economist of his day, that the British royal household wants
to assassinate him, and so on.) It's like saying "some believe that 2
plus 2 = 4, while others say it's 5" in a mathematics article.

They have also been through arbitration. The arbcom ruled that
LaRouche publications count as "original research" but may be used as
sources in articles "closely related" to LaRouche and his movement. As
a result, the LaRouche editors have taken ownership of the 17 articles
on the LaRouche template, and are constantly trying to bring other
articles into the "closely related" fold. They regularly attack other
editors who stand up to them, calling us "anti-LaRouche activists",
which implies that we're out to get LaRouche, rather than out to
protect Wikipedia. Most editors become disheartened and wander off.
Some try to compromise, which is why nonsense like the Star Wars claim
is allowed to sit there.

To have Wikipedia act against these people, other editors are going to
have to return to the arbcom, make the case again, do all the diffs,
maybe be asked to do an RfC first (which the LaRouche editors would
love because it would give them a public platform to re-post all their
insults), watch their own reputations be trashed by the LaRouchites,
so that the process degenerates into claim and counter-claim, and
counter-counter claim, all of it on public pages cached by Google. Who
wants to face that?

What is needed in obvious cases like this is a "benevolent dictator",
whether it's Jimbo Wales or the arbcom, to examine the editors'
contributions then ban them, because these are not bona fide
Wikipedians who happen to have a strong POV. They are fanatics acting
to promote the views of a poltical cult, and they're here for no other
reason. Yet here they remain, making a mockery of everything Wikipedia
stands for.

Slim


subject: [WikiEN-l] "See also" section heading

body:
On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:57:01 -0000, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Zoney wrote
>
> > I hereby propose that instead of using the heading "See also" at the
> > end of articles, we use the title "Related articles".
>
> As far as I'm concerned, these mean different things.  'See also' can
> include non-related articles with names that are closely related, for
> example  [[Gilbert O'Sullivan]] in an article on [[Gilbert and Sullivan]].
>
> I think 'See also' is fine; I'm sure most people just treat it as advisory.
>
> Charles
>

Ah, but you see, that's exactly the kind of thing that would be nice
to stop (in my opinion). If for example, [[Gilbert O'Sullivan]] is
likely to be confused with [[Gilbert and Sullivan]] (and I'm not
certain about that, but yes, there are other plausible examples), it
should surely be treated as disambiguation, not lumped in with a list
of *related* articles. "See also" is too much of a "catch all" title.

Zoney

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


body:
JAY JG said:
>>Fred Bauder wrote:
>>The reason for differentiating original research from POV material is
>>that original research may be removed entirely while to satisfy the
>>Neutral  Point
>>Of View policy POV material must be included and attributed if there
>>are reliable references which take that point of view or comment on it.
>>It is never of question of cleverly "neutering" POV material, that
>>would be a POV violation itself.
>>
>>I realize this viewpoint is at considerable divergance with the way
>>some folks interpret NPOV, but if you go back and read the policy, it
>>provides for inclusion in articles of all points of view which can be
>>established by reliable references.
>
> "Reliable references", there's the rub.  How do we establish that?
> Just  today I've encountered someone who considered a blog to be a
> "reliable  reference".  A couple of days ago it was a "Israelis are
> Nazis" website.   Last week it was a Holocaust Denial website.  And of
> course, these people  consider any counter websites you bring to be
> "unreliable", "POV",  "propaganda", etc.  What do you do then?
>
I think you're missing the point somewhat.  If I want to represent a point
of view on Wikipedia, say something attributable to Fatah, then of course
the best source for a reference would probably be http://www.fateh.org/ ,
and if I want to represent a point of view that I attribute to Mr Sharon I
might cite some Israeli government website as my reference.  At the same
time the text must be NPOV so that it should draw a clear line between
reporting a point of view and endorsing it.
Similarly, holocaust denial websites are pretty useful for reporting the
views of holocaust deniers, and websites avowing that Israelis are nazis
are useful for reporting the views of people who believe that Israelis are
nazis.
One wouldn't use any of the above sites as authorities on the facts of the
situation, and indeed where the facts are credibly disputed it would be
inappropriate to represent the contentions of any one party to the dispute
as wholly factual.


body:
JAY JG said:
>>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>>This would be a month of trying to persuade the culprit to be a good
>>boy. Most of us regard this as A Good Thing.
>
> A month of unsupported original research and POV nonsense present in an
>  article that we are trying to promote as a reliable alternative to
> paper  encyclopedias.  A month in which this editor no doubt goes on to
> insert  similar junk into other articles.

Rubbish tends not to last long.  Junk references get deleted: if not by
you, by someone else.
POV warriors will always be with us.  I don't think this can be solved by
giving you and your mates encouragement to go edit warring.  especially
since one of your primary justifications to this seems to be that others
cannot tell which of you is POV pushing and which of you is "warring for
truth", as it were.  If we armed you, we'd also be arming your opponent.
And if he's as bad as you say he is, that would make things much worse!
Speaking purely for myself, I wish you'd *all* stop warring.  It seems to
me that the 3RR is a good way of doing that, and I'm not about to let that
go.


subject: [WikiEN-l] "See also" section heading

body:
Zoney wrote

> Ah, but you see, that's exactly the kind of thing that would be nice
> to stop (in my opinion). If for example, [[Gilbert O'Sullivan]] is
> likely to be confused with [[Gilbert and Sullivan]] (and I'm not
> certain about that, but yes, there are other plausible examples), it
> should surely be treated as disambiguation, not lumped in with a list
> of *related* articles. "See also" is too much of a "catch all" title.

Well, you seem to be on several crusades.  I don't myself see much future in
trying to regulate what internal links people make - it's one of those
things that wikis handle by consensus.

Charles


body:
JAY JG wrote

> I don't think the primary purpose of Wikipedia is to be a reformatory
where
> we gently train and cajole POV warriors into becoming fine upstanding NPOV
> encyclopedia editors; rather, I think its primary purpose is to create a
> great encyclopedia.

The community writes the 'pedia.  A 'great' community is actually quite well
characterised by its attitude to joiners.  Particularly, here, newbies with
other Internet experience who have something to say but are over-assertive
and edit 'in the wrong register'.

I can quite see that working at the coalface of current affairs can jade
one.  On the other hand WP is limited in what it can do about that.  There
are a few thousand other years of human history to consider, as well as a
huge range of other topics.  I think _policy_ should not primarily be led by
what are the echoes in WP of real world conflicts.

Charles


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
[[Wikipedia:Cite your sources]]

If one has a citation and the other doesn't, then the uncited one is
likely to be correct.  If neither has one, then the item probably
ought to be removed.  There would be a citation somewhere about the
correct answer to the dispute, and this ought to be displayed.

It doesn't matter how right your reverts are, if you break the 3RR,
you get blocked.  Period.

Smoddy

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:21:39 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway
<minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> Robert said:
> > In practice very often we cannot easilly get someone else
> > to help us revert or edit, at least not for a few days.
> > I've asked for help on articles, only to have other editors
> > say "I don't know enough about the topic; I can't do
> > anything."  JayJG points out this same issue.
> >
> if out of the thousands of Wikipedia editors you cannot find one single
> person qualified to examine an article and spot editing so seriously bad
> that it would justify your asking for us to set aside the three-revert
> rule, your subject must be very arcane indeed.  How are we to tell which
> of the two people editing the article is right?  What if *he* petitions
> for the 3RR to be relaxed so that he can out-revert *you*?  How would we
> know which was which?
> You say "at least not for a few days", but you are allowed to perform
> three reverts per day, so you don't have to wait for a few days to
> continue with your precious edit-war.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] kates tools?

body:
On Jan 18, 2005, at 5:04 PM, Jakob Voss wrote:
> "Kate's tools" are currently not available - I am searching for some
> information about it because I want to cite it in my Wikipedia
> research paper. Most important: Who is kate (full name)?

Kate Turner.

> [1] See http://wikimedia.org/~kate/ for a link to "count number of
> edits from a user". The application is currently not online because of
> server problems.

Kate took Kate's Tools offline for unstated personal reasons, and no
one else had the time and inclination to figure out how they work and
set them up again.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- 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/wikitech-l/attachments/20050118/03db9769/attachment.pgp>


body:
Daniel Mayer a ?crit:

>>For me (as
>>someone who *does* upload images on the commons), it would fully suffice
>>to make the commons notice more prominent.
>
>
> For me, more is needed before I participate.
>
> -- mav

Can you explain ? ant


body:
Jay JG

> >From: "Charles Matthews"
> >
> >The community writes the 'pedia.  A 'great' community is actually quite
> >well
> >characterised by its attitude to joiners.  Particularly, here, newbies
with
> >other Internet experience who have something to say but are
over-assertive
> >and edit 'in the wrong register'.

> To join and be part of a community, you have to abide by its norms.  Those
> who fail to do so generally face exclusion from the community of one form
or
> another.  And I find Wikipedia extremely reluctant to use the tools it has
> to enfore communal norms, to its detriment.

Yes, the reluctance is clear.  The reasons for the reluctance are clear,  to
most people.

>Some of the detriment is seen
> in the highly variable quality of the content.  Other is seen in the many
> good editors willing to abide by those norms, but not put up with those
who
> do not, and who end up leaving.

The variable quality will always be there, as far as anyone can see.  The
fact that some valued editors will leave is something WP will always have to
live with.

Basically, there is nothing like a consensus on any of the following:

(a) WP is failing;
(b) A harder line on banning would be an unqualified plus;
(c) POV pushing can be solved by enforcement.

Not one of the many ArbCom candidates in the recent electio, IIRC, was
_clearly_ for a more authoritarian policy, where there _was_ a consensus for
swifter action.  So I still believe the 'good editors exodus', about which
we often here, is panicky.  We should really be worried if their
replacements were not being recruited.

The thread is called 'The 3RR policy should not always be blindly followed'.
More of the same alarmist rhetoric, as far as I'm concerned.

Charles


from_name: Lee Campion

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Sorry - we have a problem"

body:
I can't tell you how frustrating it is getting this message every submission
for the past half an hour (or more):

    "Sorry- we have a problem...
    The wikimedia web server didn't return any response to your request."

Particularly annoying when it's in the middle of a series of linked edits.
Gah.

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.7.0 - Release Date: 17/01/2005


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Tim Starling (t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au) [050118 14:08]:

> More system administrators are needed. My interest is in programming,
> but I end up spending most of my time on Linux system administration,
> because there's nobody else around to do it. Understand that Linux is an
> operating system I had *never even used* before I started on Wikipedia.
> I had to pick it up as I went along. It's a bizarre, flawed, buggy
> operating system which I only use because I'm forced to.

Obviously Kate needs to port MediaWiki to VMS ;-)

(I feel your pain. I used to dislike running Linux, now I despise it.)

> Paid system administration help may be an option, but the first priority
> for paid help should be hardware maintenance, since there are no
> volunteers in that field, and a small amount of time spent will make a
> big difference.

A good Linux admin with a screwdriver?

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The 3RR policy should not always be blindly  followed

body:
Bryan Derksen (bryan.derksen at shaw.ca) [050118 16:52]:

> Since the POV pusher is someone who is repeatedly, consistently and with
> malice aforethought inserting material that goes against Wikipedia policy,
> I think it would be best to expedite the work of ArbCom so that the
> POV-pusher can simply be banned rather than setting up a group of official
> edit warriors whose job is to try out-pushing him on his own terms. I
> believe edit wars would be just as troublesome when they're officially
> sanctioned as when they aren't.

The ArbCom's reputation has rapidly shifted from "they'll get to it some
month" to "we are concerned about their speed", so I think we'll get there
;-)

When bringing a possible ArbCom case, it helps to have touched all bases.
That means a genuine attempt to fix things first, a coherent RFC, examples
ofr every assertion in your case and putting it in the format of the
template. This reduces the Pain In The Arse factor and helps us get on the
case quickly. We're not currently archiving rejections, but possibly we
should - some of the recent ones are good examples of how not to do it.

- d.