from_name: jayjg

body:
>On 5/26/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Philip Welch wrote:
> > On May 25, 2006, at 9:44 PM, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> >
> > I've been sending these messages off-list for days and it hasn't
> > helped. So I'm taking it on-list. Don't feed the trolls.
> >
>
> I could have sworn that we had listmods to deal with that sort of thing.
>

You'd think, wouldn't you?  And yet they seem remarkably reluctant to
take action...


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Robin Shannon

subject: [Foundation-l] Serbia and Montenegro

body:
On 26/05/06, valdelli at bluemail.ch <valdelli at bluemail.ch> wrote:
> Do you mean about Belgium? Because a chapter is nation-based and not
> language-based,
> as you can see in Wikimedia CH (German, French, Italian, Romansh and
> Alemmanisch
> former Wikipedians in same chapter).
>
> Ilario
>

Well since our projects are language and not country based it surely
makes some sense to base our bureaucracy on a language basis no?

paz y amor,
-rjs.

--
DO NOT SEND ME WORD ATTACHMENTS - I *WILL* BITE!
<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/sylvester-response.html>

Hit me: <http://robin.shannon.id.au> [broken]
Jab me: <robin.shannon at jabber.org.au>
Upgrade to kubuntu linux: <http://releases.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/breezy/>
Faith is under the left nipple. -- Martin Luther


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Serbia and Montenegro


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

body:
Brion:
> "Who actually would go to this main office, and what would they do there?"

Good question. I suppose there are administrative tasks that will grow as
the organisation gets bigger (like sending more and more donators a Xmas
card, oops bad example ;)

Mav:
> "Cost of rent is nothing compared to the synergies that would develop my
being
> where all the action is."

Well one major task that might benefit from close contact would be
organising a printed Wikipedia for every school in Africa, if it will ever
happen. (I can't believe the $100 notebook project is a panacea). I hope and
suppose printing would be done somewhere on that continent as well, so this
puts a different light on Mavs 'where all the action is'.

Mav what kind of (financial?) action are you referring too anyway? Stock
exchange, investment banks? Guess not, forgive my irony. What kind of major
deals would you (?) strike then in NY and not anywhere else?

Wikimedia made a difference because it dared to do things in a novel way,
not copying the ways of the old establishment.

Jimmy is travelling all over the world all the time. I guess his work is not
very dependant on where a main office resides, of course he can answer that
better.

Presence of Mav or his successor (not sure which time frame we are talking)
in New York or D.C. might be beneficial, although I don't see yet how. I
would think a main office is less for policy makers and deal strikers, but
rather for dealing with administrative chores.

In the old ways a main office was also very much needed for representational
needs. Big hallway, etc. I'm sure everyone agrees we don't need that. People
know how to find us, they're willing to come to Frankfurt to meet us, so why
not to Bangalore, San Jose or any place else?

Erik Moeller:
> "We also need to take into account laws that might be relevant to our
website operations.
> This is esp. true, unfortunately, in developing countries.
> There may also be critical variations across US states."

This would indeed be a complicating factor, if the web server would fall
under the jurisdiction of the country that hosts the main office. Not sure
if that would necessarily be the case. Maybe depends on which country we
choose?

Erik Zachte


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office


from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

body:
On 5/26/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Erik Zachte wrote:
> > Erik Moeller:
> >
> >> "We also need to take into account laws that might be relevant to our
> >>
> > website operations.
> >
> >> This is esp. true, unfortunately, in developing countries.
> >> There may also be critical variations across US states."
> >>
> >
> > This would indeed be a complicating factor, if the web server would fall
> > under the jurisdiction of the country that hosts the main office. Not sure
> > if that would necessarily be the case. Maybe depends on which country we
> > choose?
> >
>
> That could be avoided by not really having a "main office" in the
> traditional sense, but just offices where and when (and if) they're
> needed.  St. Petersburg could remain the place of incorporation of the
> Foundation and its official mailing address, while actual physical
> offices can be opened as needed.  If there's a lot of work in Africa
> necessitating some local physical presence, we could have a Nairobi
> office, and it could be much bigger than the St. Petersburg office.
> What's designated "main office" is more a legal formality; there's no
> need for us to have one giant office in which everything takes place and
> designate it "Wikimedia World Headquarters".

/me *nods*

Exactly. Go with the needs.

Delphine
--
~notafish


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office


list: wikien-l

from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Usernames (was: Re:  welch and consensus)

body:
Nick Boalch wrote:
>
> For instance, the username policy forbids using the 'names of religious
> figures', but in many parts of the world it's common for people to be
> named after such figures: off the top of my head, I know several
> Spaniards called Jes?s.
>
So if someone creates a username "Jesus Gutierrez" and plonks a {{user
es-N}} box on their user-page, we'll cut them as much slack as they need.

Turn up with a name like "Jesus on Wheels" and a less warm reception is
likely.

HTH HAND
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Saladin1970+%28new+thread%29-t1668512.html#a4573619
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Isn't it getting to be time...

body:
Nod, a good option as well.

... only point... Mav is not a member of the comcom. Is that a problem ?

Ant

Michael Davis wrote:
> Fundraising is far more a public relations/communications function than
> finance or tech.  All finance needs to do is say how much money we need;
> tech can assist in the implementation but the success or failure of a
> fundraiser depends on how effective we are communicating with the
> donors.  I'd recommend fundraising be a function of the communications
> committee with significant help from other group within the foundation.
>
> Michael
>
> Anthere wrote:
>
>>Daniel Mayer wrote:
>>
>>
>>>--- Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>So, I'd say we would definitely benefit from a fundraising. It is not
>>>>*urgent* but we need to anticipate before it becomes urgent.
>>>>
>>>
>>>I told the board before that I will not run another fundraiser without the help from a duly
>>>created fundraising committee. Nobody from the board has proposed the creation of such a committee
>>>yet and I won't waste my time (as I did with trying to help staff the finance committee) until the
>>>board acts.
>>>
>>
>>Now, now...shhhh
>>
>>Right, we never succeeded to create a decent financial committee.
>>This said, I am not convinced the fundraising should be part of the
>>financial committee (it involves as well technical needs, communication
>>issues etc...) and I would suggest that we should not get stuck on such
>>bureaucratic details.
>>
>>Let's simply create a fundraising committee. If some one wants to
>>dissolve it later, or attached it to another already existing
>>committee... fine.
>>
>>Can you draft for us a resolution with
>>* the creation of a fundraising committee
>>* description of the goal
>>* a team
>>* a delegation for this fundraising
>>
>>I'll post it on the board wiki and we'll see if the board acts (votes...)
>>
>>(make it several resolutions if you feel necessary)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>We also really should pass a budget for the rest of the year before we have a fundraiser. I'm
>>>going to send the spending forecast you aleady have to the officers and committees this weekend.
>>>Hopefully, it won't take long to turn that into a proposed budget for the board to vote one.
>>>
>>>-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>>>
>>>__________________________________________________
>>>Do You Yahoo!?
>>>Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
>>>http://mail.yahoo.com
>>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Number of days new users are prevented from
 editing semi-protected pages

body:
folengo at netcourrier.com wrote:
> Could someone tell the mathematical expression that would enable me to
> calculate how many days new users are prevented from editing
> semi-protected pages on the French Wikipedia ?

Four.

> The English Wikipedia
> page [[Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy]] says "Very new" is currently
> defined as four days", but that does not seem to be the case on the
> French Wikip?dia, as a 6 day long new user tells that she still can't edit
> a semi-protected page.

Perhaps there's some other problem, then. For instance, maybe the page isn't
actually semi-protected. Maybe the user registered more recently and miscounted.
Maybe they clicked the wrong thing. Maybe something about the page or the
account changed.

There's nothing more I could possibly hope to say about it without some
information to look into the problem. For starters I will need:

1) The name of the page in question
2) The username of the user in question

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Geo meta tags on wiki pages

body:
Plyd wrote:
> On 5/26/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>> Plyd wrote:
>>> May I ask why?
>> Why would there be?
>
> I didn't take part in this project and I'm sure they could convince
> much better than me but...

[snip]

There's thousands of things that we could potentially try to add to the wiki.
That doesn't mean there's a schedule for each and every one of them. Most of
them will never be tried.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

body:
--- Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> If we have people near D.C. or NYC, they could do that without the
> office being there physically. If we have no people there, then it
> would in my opinion be stupiditiy to move our office there.

Of course we already have people (volunteers) there in the strictest sense. What I?m talking about
is having most or at least the top paid staff there instead of in a place where they won?t be as
effective (a tourist hot spot). Remember, this whole thread started with a mention of hiring a
CEO/Executive Director. I do not propose closing the St Pete office since we have two board
members there along with our main server farm.

-- mav

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office


from_name: Ceyda Lacin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unblock request

body:
   Hi,
   I am fairly new user to Wikipedia with username [[User:Light&Truth]]. Dr.
Gulerdem (with username [[User:Rgulerdem]]) informed me and my friend know
about Wikipedia. We liked the philosophy behind the project. Unfortunately
at a very early stage of our experience in Wikipedia, we face to an
inappropriate accusation. Someone claimed that we (me and my partner
[[User:Mokotok]]) are different names for Rgulerdem. It is not true. I tried
to explain it on the check user page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_CheckUser/Rgulerdem.
   I think the problem is coming from the fact that we are all living at the
same university housing complex and using the same IP's randomly. I
understand that check user made his decision based on that.
   I would like to continue to contribute to Wikipedia as much as I can. I
would like to someone please correct this mistake because we are not the
same person and this unfair accusation bothers me a great deal.
   Thank you in advance.
   Ceyda ([[Light&Truth]])

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Number of days new users are prevented
 from	editing semi-protected pages

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 5/26/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>> folengo at netcourrier.com wrote:
>>> Could someone tell the mathematical expression that would enable me to
>>> calculate how many days new users are prevented from editing
>>> semi-protected pages on the French Wikipedia ?
>> Four.
>
> Is this the canonical answer?

Yes.

> There seemed to have been a lot of
> discussion about this, and the formula being something like "older
> than 1% of users".

That used to be used for a few things. It's obsolete. Anyone who told you that
is current information is misinformed.

> In the end, was it fixed at 4 days (96 hours), or is that still an
> approximation?

4 days exactly (4*86400 seconds).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject:
[Wikitech-l] Number of days new users are prevented
 from	editing semi-pr

body:
folengo at netcourrier.com wrote:
> 1) User name :
>
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Suziecat
>
> 2) semi-protected page she says she attempted to edit :
>
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chat

Now I need:
* the exact time of the attempted edit
* the exact description of the problem
* if possible, an exact description of a current attempt to make the edit
* including details of whether there was an attempt to reload the page, log
out/in, etc

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

body:
--- Robin Shannon <robin.shannon at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is this the first time a CEO has been proposed? what on earth would be
> the point of having one? I ask if this is the first time it has been
> asked because i would like to see any wikipages or archeived email
> threads to see what the arguments are for having one.

We have been talking about this for at least a couple years; the last time we did so publicly was
just mentioned and linked to by Erik. The reason why this is necessary is due to the fact that we
long ago reached the limit on what volunteers alone can accomplish. We have therefore been missing
out on many different potential opportunities (for getting grants, very large donations and to
reach our ultimate goals) simply because we have not had proper staffing. And a staff needs a
person to manage them and the daily aspects of running the organization. Simply put, we are
transitioning from the amateur football club model to a professional organization. Staff are an
investment.

-- mav

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unblock request

body:
These check out as being the same user. Essjay also checked this. I
doublechecked.

Fred

On May 26, 2006, at 4:32 AM, Ceyda Lacin wrote:

>    Hi,
>    I am fairly new user to Wikipedia with username
> [[User:Light&Truth]]. Dr.
> Gulerdem (with username [[User:Rgulerdem]]) informed me and my
> friend know
> about Wikipedia. We liked the philosophy behind the project.
> Unfortunately
> at a very early stage of our experience in Wikipedia, we face to an
> inappropriate accusation. Someone claimed that we (me and my partner
> [[User:Mokotok]]) are different names for Rgulerdem. It is not
> true. I tried
> to explain it on the check user page:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_CheckUser/
> Rgulerdem.
>    I think the problem is coming from the fact that we are all
> living at the
> same university housing complex and using the same IP's randomly. I
> understand that check user made his decision based on that.
>    I would like to continue to contribute to Wikipedia as much as I
> can. I
> would like to someone please correct this mistake because we are
> not the
> same person and this unfair accusation bothers me a great deal.
>    Thank you in advance.
>    Ceyda ([[Light&Truth]])
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today -
> it's FREE!
> http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] Usernames (was: Re: welch and consensus)

body:
On 5/25/06, Prasad J <prasad59 at gmail.com> wrote:

> To test this theory, let someone create a username "Lynddie England"-
> after the infamous sadist of Abu-Ghraib. If nobody objects, then your
> plan will fail due to systemic bias.

How many times do people have to tell you they'd block a User:Lynddie
England on sight before you stop beating this dead horse?


from_name: Death Phoenix

body:
On 5/26/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Nick Boalch wrote:
> >
> > For instance, the username policy forbids using the 'names of religious
> > figures', but in many parts of the world it's common for people to be
> > named after such figures: off the top of my head, I know several
> > Spaniards called Jes?s.
> >
> So if someone creates a username "Jesus Gutierrez" and plonks a {{user
> es-N}} box on their user-page, we'll cut them as much slack as they need.
>
> Turn up with a name like "Jesus on Wheels" and a less warm reception is
> likely.
>

Absolutely. I was quite willing to unblock him, but I'm checking his
contribs on a regular basis. Anytime anyone sees "Jesus on Wheels" on their
watchlists or on RC, they'd be scrutinising those edits with a fine-tooth
comb.


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] welch and consensus

body:
Are we now proposing that not only is his father's name Hamza (making Abu
Hamza "his real name"), but his name is Saladin, making "Saladin1970" also
"his real name"?

Sounds improbable. Why not just ask him?

Steve

On 5/26/06, Prasad J <prasad59 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I ask once again, what is Saladin is his real name? Are any of you
> Arab? Do you know the whole list of Muslim names? Then why are you
> assuming it's his alias? I know it seems improbable, but that does not
> mean it is imposible.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Sep 11 memorial, systemic bias, lunacy in Wikipedians,
	and other fine topics (was Re: jaygy and indefinate ban)

body:
On 5/26/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:

> You'd think, wouldn't you?  And yet they seem remarkably reluctant to
> take action...

Wikien-l-owner at wikipedia.org is the place to send formal complaints about
other list members. So far, we haven't received any.

But as I said, the best response to trolls is usually to ignore them.
Feeding them and complaining that they keep trolling isn't helping a lot.

Steve


from_name: Prasad J

body:
Please just delete this obvious example of merica-centric bias. It is
an insult to the many other people across the world who have died in
terror attacks for you to make such a big deal about one incident,
just because it happened in America.


subject: [WikiEN-l] welch and consensus

body:
I ask once again, what is Saladin is his real name? Are any of you
Arab? Do you know the whole list of Muslim names? Then why are you
assuming it's his alias? I know it seems improbable, but that does not
mean it is imposible.


body:
>
>
> See whether anyone gets worked up about the name within the first two weeks,
> if not, it's ok?
>
To test this theory, let someone create a username "Lynddie England"-
after the infamous sadist of Abu-Ghraib. If nobody objects, then your
plan will fail due to systemic bias.


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Sep 11 memorial, systemic bias, lunacy in Wikipedians,
 and other fine topics (was Re: jaygy and indefinate ban)

body:
G'day Angela,

> On 5/22/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
>> It may have escaped your notice, but the "9/11 Memorial Wiki" is not a
>> part of Wikipedia (IIRC it's on Wikicities, but ICBW).
>
> That wiki is not, and never was, part of Wikia (formerly Wikicities).
> It's a Wikimedia project with a Wikipedia URL, and the vote on meta at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/9/11_wiki_move_proposal shows there was
> never any support (including from me) of it being moved to Wikicities.

Yeah, as Prasad pointed out, that was a case of shooting the ol' mouth
off without checking if the facts backed me up first (fear not, I don't
do this while writing *articles* ...).  Whoops.

While the Wikimedia Foundation is, of course, free to host what it
likes, I don't think something like this belongs at wiki*pedia*.org.

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


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

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

body:
On 5/25/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/24/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> > http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/05/the_death_of_wi.php
> >
> > It is worth noting that Nicholas Carr has taken note of this thread to
> > announce the death of Wikipedia.  Apparently, 154 articles
> > semi-protected out of 1,151,768 is the end of open editing.
>
>
> Not that your argument through statistics is in any way meaningful.
> 154 /1,151,768 is more than 100 ppm; 100 ppm of carbon monoxide, mercury,
> arsenic, sulfur dioxide, nitric oxide, vinyl chloride, formaldehyde,
> benzene, ammonia, etc. would kill you dead. Or at least give you any number
> of horrible cancers.
>
> Water is fluoridated to 1 ppm.
>
> Motorcycles cause 0.22 deaths per million vehicle miles. New Zealand has 100
> maternal deaths per million births. Drugs kill about 100 per million people
> in US urban areas.
>
> In other words, that 154 articles are semiprotected out of a population of
> 1.2 million could be insignificant, great, or terrible.
>
> But on its own it's just a factoid, not a counterargument.

This is pretty rich coming from someone who just complained that we
shouldn't argue with appeals to emotion. If comparing semi-protection
to mothers dying while giving birth to babies isn't an appeal to
emotion, I don't know what is.

All your analogies are useless. The chemistry ones are just
ridiculous, there is no analogy between how poisons damage the body to
how semi-protection damages the encyclopedia. There's to much science
you're ignoring, the way chemicals work.

The deaths per millions analogies are not only pretty cheap shots,
they are also just as flawed. The reason why 100 maternal deaths per 1
million births is not a tragedy because it's such a high number
(because it isn't), it's a tradgedy because people are *actually*
dying. 1 death per million would be tragic. 1 death per billion would
be tragic. The numbers are meaningless.

The fact is, the numbers do provide a good argument in this case.
Calling for the death of wikipedia as a wiki because of
semi-protection *is* ridiculous when there is only a vanishingly small
fraction of articles that are semi-protected (and lets remind everyone
that any user that is actually dedicated to the project can edit any
semi-protected article. It's not that horrible, semi-protection.)

So no, the numbers are not just a factiod, they're a very good counterargument.

--Oskar


subject: [WikiEN-l] Saladin1970 (new thread)

body:
On 5/26/06, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:

> False. The poster abuhamza used the screen name Saladin1970. I don't
> understand how is email address is in any way relevant. Most people
> here didn't know there is a real Abu Hamza that incites hatred and
> most people wouldn't have cared about his email address unless someone
> had accused him for it.

He used the screen name Abu Hamza here on the list.  He used the
Wikipedia username of User:Saladin1970.  Instead of assuming I don't
have "my facts straight", you might have considered that I was using
different terminology than that which you might choose to employ.  His
choice of screen name/email name/whatever is entirely relevant, as it
appears to indicate he is a racial POV warrior, just as someone who
might choose the email name of David Duke would be a racial POV
warrior.  Just because some people might not know who David Duke is
doesn't make any difference.

> Calling editors Zionists is no good. Btw, I believe the extract from
> "Zionism The Real Enemy of the Jews" was only inserted in one article,
> [[Alan Hart]].

Well that makes it okay, then.

> The user is indefinitely banned, there is no way for him to improve
> his behaviour anyway.

Yes, but he could easily be unbanned, and is posting on the list
campaigning for someone to do so.  Hence this discussion.


subject: [WikiEN-l] welch and consensus

body:
G'day Justin,

> "Most wikipedians are Christians"? This falls far short of our standards
> of citation. I suspect its not true.
>
> I dont think anyone should name themselves after other people.
> Personally I edit under my real name (slightly abbreviated) and
> I think that or an arbitrary handle for people who wish to remain
> anonymous is fine. Using someone elses name is not, whether they
> are dead or alive.

Well put.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Prasad on moderation

body:
David Gerard-2 wrote:
>
> ... I would also ask all others to
> try not to react to inflammmatory elements of posts, but Just Hit
> Delete.
>
...or if you read the list through Nabble like me, down-rate those posts and
if the sender fails to post anything helpful they will eventually become
invisible.

HTH HAND
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Prasad+on+moderation-t1687229.html#a4579946
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> We have been talking about this for at least a couple years; the last time we did so publicly was
> just mentioned and linked to by Erik. The reason why this is necessary is due to the fact that we
> long ago reached the limit on what volunteers alone can accomplish. We have therefore been missing
> out on many different potential opportunities (for getting grants, very large donations and to
> reach our ultimate goals) simply because we have not had proper staffing. And a staff needs a
> person to manage them and the daily aspects of running the organization. Simply put, we are
> transitioning from the amateur football club model to a professional organization. Staff are an
> investment.
>

This isn't without risks; many initially grass-roots organizations have
lost the essence of what initially made them work in the transition to
large, professional organization (this is especially true, for example,
of many environmentalist organizations).  It's not impossible to do
right, but IMO needs to be done slowly and cautiously.  There are plenty
of things that a grassroots organization can get people to do for free
that an organization with a large, paid staff cannot.

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office


from_name: valdelli at bluemail.ch

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

body:
For me, who live in Swiss, to see that Washington could be the seat of the
main office of WF I automatically could think about a link between it and
US government. I know that european thought is very strange! but for a non-political
association this could be a bad choice.

Ilario

>-- Messaggio originale --
>Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 20:51:24 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
>To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office
>Reply-To: dmayer at wikimedia.org,
>	Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>
>
>--- Robin Shannon <robin.shannon at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Washington is (and more importantly is thought of as) an *American*
>> not international administrative centre. It would send a bad message
>> to the rest of the world if we moved there.
>
>That is symbolism over substance and thus not a valid argument in my book.
>Besides, D.C. itself is
>too expensive, the office would be in a suburb (preferably reasonably close
>to a Metro station).
>
>-- mav
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do You Yahoo!?
>Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
>http://mail.yahoo.com
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office


from_name: Lord Voldemort

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

body:
On 5/26/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
> This isn't without risks; many initially grass-roots organizations have
> lost the essence of what initially made them work in the transition to
> large, professional organization (this is especially true, for example,
> of many environmentalist organizations).  It's not impossible to do
> right, but IMO needs to be done slowly and cautiously.  There are plenty
> of things that a grassroots organization can get people to do for free
> that an organization with a large, paid staff cannot.
>
> -Mark

But I'm not sure we lose the grassroots-type feel even if we had a
paid staff.  We still have tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of
people willing to do things for free, even with a paid staff.
Wikimedia has flourished under this volunteer oriented mindset, but I
don't see everyone suddenly saying, "Screw you WMF, you hired some
people, I ain't doing squat."  The volunteers would still be there,
and WMF would still enlist the services of them.  Or am I wrong?
--LV


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office


subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed. (was Wikimedia main office)

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Perhaps this little discussion is misleading.  Some members of the
> community, who are not board members, but who are of course highly
> respected community members, have been discussion possible new
> directions for the foundation which would apparently involve me moving
> to New York or DC (which isn't going to happen, by the way), and opening
>  an office there.

Nobody has suggested that you or any other board member would need to move. Board members need not
be in any Wikimedia office every day. The location of the main office (that is, the one where the
executive director and most of the staff work) should be, IMO, dictated by where we can most
easily maximize connections with like-minded organizations and with the relevant representatives
of the nations we want to work with.

-- mav

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


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Foundation-l] Serbia and Montenegro

body:
 <valdelli at ...> writes:
>
> Do you mean about Belgium? Because a chapter is nation-based and not language-
based,
> as you can see in Wikimedia CH (German, French, Italian, Romansh and
Alemmanisch
> former Wikipedians in same chapter).
>
> Ilario

Actually; if there comes a Wikimedia chapter for Belgium it is relative likely
that it will be "Wikimedia Flanders" and "Wikimedia Wallonia". Or that
a "Wikimedia Belgium" ends up after some time in those.

Greetings,
Walter

[[meta:user:Walter]]


subject: [Foundation-l] Serbia and Montenegro


from_name: Elliott F. Cable

body:
More the belief that it is needed. The point is not to bloat things
and confuse people, which semantic MW does.

On May 26, 2006, at 4:12 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 5/26/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>> There's thousands of things that we could potentially try to add
>> to the wiki.
>> That doesn't mean there's a schedule for each and every one of
>> them. Most of
>> them will never be tried.
> Is this any sort of discussion process for working out what does and
> doesn't make it in, or does it come down to existence of a developer
> willing to implement it, and belief of other developers that the
> change won't break stuff?
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Stephen Bain

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

body:
On 5/26/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> > On 5/25/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> >> But, she has a stalker.
> >>
> >> The stalker posts longwinded ranting criticisms and insults of her.
> >>
> >> Do we cite those?
> >
> > Depends. Who is the stalker? Who reported on the stalking?
>
> Precisely my point.  It is an editorial judgment.  We can't say "just
> because it is true and verifiable we should post it in wikipedia".

We do have a simple test to guide us:

    * If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to
substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;
    * If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should
be easy to name prominent adherents;
    * If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited)
minority, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia (except perhaps in some
ancillary article) regardless of whether it's true or not; and
regardless of whether you can prove it or not.

So the first bar to get over is, is the stalker "prominent"? I take
this to mean "could the person have an article written about him/her"?
If not, then the viewpoint doesn't need to be included.

Thoughtful judgement helps out when the test fails to give a simple
answer, for example it may be decided that the views of someone shown
to be a stalker should not be included at all, even if they were
someone notable.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Catalan Wikinews set up

body:
Just so everyone's up to date, Brion has set up, on my request, the
Catalan edition of Wikinews, which has been in the works for some time
and meets all the conditions (18 editors expressed interest, all
relevant pages were translated).

http://ca.wikinews.org/

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Catalan Wikinews set up


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

body:
2006/5/26, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>:

> A couple more thousand per month would have a very minimal impact on a multi-million dollar per
> year budget. There is a significant opportunity cost of having to set up meetings way in advance
> because all the key people need to fly into one place vs simply having key people already on the
> ground where we know contacts are already located.

I don't see how moving the office would diminish that problem. As far
as I see it, the office would not be the "key people", and as far as
they are, they are so by being who they are, not by their function.

> What key non-Wikimedia contacts are in St Pete? None outside the tourist industry and Scientology
> AFAIK. What key non-Wikimedia contacts are in D.C. and NYC? Representatives from just about every
> nation on earth along with hundreds of like-minded organizations that share different parts of our
> goals. If we had an office near D.C. or NYC, then meeting with any one of those key contacts could
> be done casually, often, and without much notice beforehand.

If we have people near D.C. or NYC, they could do that without the
office being there physically. If we have no people there, then it
would in my opinion be stupiditiy to move our office there.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office


from_name: Nicholas Moreau

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

body:
Don't you think it's kinda neat that Wikimedia is changing the world from
somewhere rather random?

I mean, we're all editing in random places in random countries around the
world. And an edit from El Cerrito, California or Randberg, South Africa is
just as valued on Wikipedia, as one from Washington, is it not?

So if we assign no value to the location of a contributor, why should we
assign value to the location of our founder?

Nick/Zanimum


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office


subject: [WikiEN-l] Unblock request

body:
There is more to it than that.

Fred

On May 26, 2006, at 9:51 AM, Raphael Wegmann wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I wonder how you can say, they are the same user,
> when all you can check is that they are using the
> same IP-address.
>
> best regards
> --
> Raphael
>
> Fred Bauder wrote:
>
>> These check out as being the same user. Essjay also checked this. I
>> doublechecked.
>>
>> Fred
>>
>> On May 26, 2006, at 4:32 AM, Ceyda Lacin wrote:
>>
>>
>>>    Hi,
>>>    I am fairly new user to Wikipedia with username
>>> [[User:Light&Truth]]. Dr.
>>> Gulerdem (with username [[User:Rgulerdem]]) informed me and my
>>> friend know
>>> about Wikipedia. We liked the philosophy behind the project.
>>> Unfortunately
>>> at a very early stage of our experience in Wikipedia, we face to an
>>> inappropriate accusation. Someone claimed that we (me and my partner
>>> [[User:Mokotok]]) are different names for Rgulerdem. It is not
>>> true. I tried
>>> to explain it on the check user page:
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_CheckUser/
>>> Rgulerdem.
>>>    I think the problem is coming from the fact that we are all
>>> living at the
>>> same university housing complex and using the same IP's randomly. I
>>> understand that check user made his decision based on that.
>>>    I would like to continue to contribute to Wikipedia as much as I
>>> can. I
>>> would like to someone please correct this mistake because we are
>>> not the
>>> same person and this unfair accusation bothers me a great deal.
>>>    Thank you in advance.
>>>    Ceyda ([[Light&Truth]])
>>>
>>> _________________________________________________________________
>>> Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today -
>>> it's FREE!
>>> http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>>
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Neil Phillips

body:
Thanks Nick,

These headers are being used by a couple of sites, mainly in the blogging
space (e.g. http://geourl.org), but getting you're right in asserting that a
large corpus would further improve their use.

geo.position and ICBM are interchangeable, an emphasis on latitude and
longitude would make more sense for the articles described below, as this
information is already in the article (region and place name are less useful
as they're inherently ambigious).

The ISBN type approach would seem (to me) to make a great deal of sense.

Cheers,

Neil

"Nick Jenkins" <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:8ed5a64e0605250007i71027316m16b20b893bfb9c14 at mail.gmail.com...
> He has a got a point. It could be nice to be able to include that
> stuff in the META headers, by having the geolinks templates ( such as
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Coordinates_templates ) include
> some wikitext like "{{GEOHEADER|long=151.21459|lat=-33.87531}}", where
> "GEOHEADER" was a magic wiki word, that did a "-01234567890." sanity
> check on the args (like RFC, ISBN, and PMID), and if it checked out
> included the appropriate headers.
>
> However, some devil's advocate questions come to mind:
> * How used are these headers, really? Is it a niche thing?
> * If it's niche thing currently, then why? Is the reason because it's
> useless / a-solution-in-search-of-a-problem, or is it a niche thing
> because nobody has put up a large corpus of useful data that uses it
> yet?
> * Are there standards that cover this stuff? Have those standards been
> ratified / broadly agreed up / standardized / progressed beyond draft
> status / reached consensus by some independent group / body /
> organisation?
> * Which of the format or formats are we talking about? For example,
> from http://webtips.dan.info/titles.html , I see there are things like
> this:
>
> <META name="geo.position" content="26.367559;-80.12172">
> <META name="geo.region" content="US-FL">
> <META name="geo.placename" content="Boca Raton, FL">
> <META name="ICBM" content="26.367559, -80.12172">
>
> ( see http://geotags.com/geo/geotags2.html and
> http://geourl.org/add.html ; seems also to be some info about Flickr
> tags on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoTagging about using yet
> another method)
> * Would it be just "ICBM" we're taking about, or just "geo.position",
> or both? Because they seem to be doing exactly the same thing.
> * What about "geo.region", and "geo.placename"?
>
> All the best,
> Nick.
>
>> This code only tells MediaWiki to embed the contents of
>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Mapit-AUS-suburbscale> into the
>> article. Right now, no template is able to modify anything within the
>> <head> tag, which is where any <meta> tag would reside. It might be
>> possible to use sitewide JavaScript to do it, but then that wouldn't be
>> useful for search engines.
>>
>> Neil Phillips wrote:
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > An increasing number of wiki pages use the
>> >
>> > {{Mapit-AUS-suburbscale|long=151.21459|lat=-33.87531}}
>> >
>> > Type notation to indicate the page relates to a specific location.
>> >
>> > Where would I go to request that this information is also embedded into
>> > a
>> > meta tag for the page e.g.
>> > <meta name="ICBM" content="-33.87531,151.21459" />
>> >
>> > So capable browsers/search engines can use this information more
>> > semantically ?
>> >
>> > Cheers,
>> >
>> > Neil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Usernames

body:
>
> As I said before, Wikipedia's biases are what we call "systemic bias".
> This is because most of our editors are male, white, and American, in
> their early to mid-twenties.  There's two ways to combat this bias.
>  Sitting around whingeing about how nobody understands
> how difficult it is to not be American is not only bloody stupid, it's
> also offensive to the rest of us who aren't American and don't
> appreciate being considered fellow travellers.
>
You're white aren't you Mark? And I'm pretty sure "Gallagher" isn't a
Muslim name. So nobody here considers you a f"ellow traveller".


from_name: Arbeo M

subject: [Foundation-l] Catalan Wikinews set up

body:
On 5/26/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Just so everyone's up to date, Brion has set up, on my request, the
> Catalan edition of Wikinews, which has been in the works for some time
> and meets all the conditions (18 editors expressed interest, all
> relevant pages were translated).
>
> http://ca.wikinews.org/

That's good news for all Catalans, quite literally.

I was just wondering were exactly they requested the creation of this new
wiki. I can tell it was _not_ on the "Requests for new languages" page on
Meta. For there are 18 new wikis which have been approved by the community,
some of them many months ago (cf.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages) and
nobody cares about setting _them_ up.

Of course, I'm all in favor of a Catalan Wikinews edition and I'm glad Brion
has found the time to set it up. But what I find kinda sad (especially since
we're supposed to be an "open" project) is when you're trying to establish a
transparent, fair and open procedure with respect to new language subdomains
where every user can have their say and that is just ignored and our fellow
editors who request a wiki by means of the "official" procedure have to wait
forever. And then there's editors that happen to "know the right people" and
they are clearly privileged.

Now, the logical conclusion of this would actually be to shut down the
"Requests for new languages" page in order not to create a false impression
of openness and transparency anymore, not welcome and help newcomers whose
language so far doesn't have a wiki anymore and instead fully rely on
backyard agreements and darwinistic selection (the "fittest" in this case
being those who spend most time on the Internet). However, that wouldn't be
the awesome project I once joined anymore and I surely would no longer feel
like dedicating precious time and money to it.

Thank you for reading this and please bear with me for being more outspoken
than usual today!

Arbeo

Approved new wikis:

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

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

Wikiquote
* Ido: io.wikiquote.org

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

Wikibooks
* Cebuano: ceb.wikibooks.org


subject: [Foundation-l] Catalan Wikinews set up


body:
How many other single terrorist attacks were captured on live television
and resulted in the deaths of almost 3000 people?

Lots of fidayeen attacks in Kashmir were captured on television,
including the most recent one at the Sher-e-Kashmir Park. Way more
than 3000 people have died as the result of Pakistan-sponsored
militancy in Kashmir over the past 15-20 years. Thousands of Hindu
Kashmiri pandits have had to flee the area because of the
Lashkar-e-Toiba. And this does not even include the hundreds of
attacks all over India. Just because 11/9 occured in the U.S and 3000
people died in one shot doesn't mean it was some sort of
"international calamity" greater than any other. And what does the
live-television thing have to do with anything?


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Foundation-l] Delhi visit, sponsorship for CWMC

body:
RedHat invited me to speak at a conference in Delhi, India, at a time
which is just before the CWMC.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CWMC_2006

I asked them, in lieu of me getting any honorarium personally, if they
would agree to pay for my flights to Delhi and Hong Kong, and also to
donate $3000 to support the CWMC.  They agreed to do so!

KJ is the main organizer of CWMC, and she is communicating the good news
to her community.

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

body:
Angela wrote:
> On 5/26/06, Robin Shannon <robin.shannon at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> I think we need to
>> engage anyone who is willing to be engaged in a debate about where we
>> should be heading and how we should go about it.
>>
>
> How? Previous public Wikimedia meetings have led nowhere and done
> nothing other than highlight how few people in the communities are
> interested in _doing_ anything - as opposed to debating on mailing
> lists.
>
Since most of us don't have sufficient funds to travel to public
meetings, nor sufficiently flexible schedules to sit around on IRC, it
should be no surprise that we're much more willing to debate on mailing
lists, which are the most inclusive.  If there were a public meeting in
Atlanta, I would certainly attend, but to my knowledge there hasn't been
one.

As for what needs doing, many of us are doing the one thing that IMO
needs most urgently to be done, and without which nothing else is
particularly useful---improving the encyclopedia.  I agree there are
other things that should get done, most notably some sort of
infrastructure for a "Wikipedia Review" or "Sifter" or "Wikipedia 1.0"
project (or whatever name it ends up going by).  I don't personally have
the expertise or free time to do that, and it seems nobody else has been
forthcoming either, so if hiring someone to do it is the best way to get
it done, that seems like a reasonable use of funds.

>> I just think that the future direction of wikimedia
>> is up to the community not the board or its officers, staff or
>> whoever.
>>
>
> Nice idea... how about you suggest how that might happen? There are
> currently two community representatives on the Board, though it's
> increasingly obvious that the community are not using either Anthere
> or myself to get anything to happen. Anything that does happen comes
> through private mailing lists and an increasing number of internal
> processes that even Board members don't always have access to.
>

I've personally been pretty happy with the community representation on
the board; IMO you and Anthere usually align with the interests of the
majority of the community.

The latter part seems a bit disturbing---is it even *legal* for the
Wikimedia Foundation to have processes that its Board doesn't have
access to?

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

body:
Delirium wrote:
> infrastructure for a "Wikipedia Review" or "Sifter" or "Wikipedia 1.0"
>

Oops; obviously I was confusing the name of one of the anti-Wikipedia
sites with the various names the "mark particular revisions with a
degree of confidence" proposal has gone under.

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office


body:
On 5/26/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This is pretty rich coming from someone who just complained that we
> shouldn't argue with appeals to emotion. If comparing semi-protection
> to mothers dying while giving birth to babies isn't an appeal to
> emotion, I don't know what is.

Um, he was arguing that the comparison was pointless and arbitrary. Not even
close to an appeal to emotion.

Steve


from_name: Nick Boalch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Usernames

body:
Phil Boswell wrote:

>> For instance, the username policy forbids using the 'names of religious
>> figures', but in many parts of the world it's common for people to be
>> named after such figures: off the top of my head, I know several
>> Spaniards called Jes?s.
>
> So if someone creates a username "Jesus Gutierrez" and plonks a {{user
> es-N}} box on their user-page, we'll cut them as much slack as they need.
>
> Turn up with a name like "Jesus on Wheels" and a less warm reception is
> likely.

Funnily enough I do actually know someone called Jes?s de Rueda, a name
for which a reasonable English transliteration would be 'Jesus on Wheels'...

Cheers,

N.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Catalan Wikinews set up

body:
Hi Arbeo,

Wikinews has a bit of an unusual process. Individual Wikinews language
editions have to meet much higher standards than, for example,
Wikipedias to be launched. Currently, there are, by my count:

234 Wikipedias
173 Wiktionaries
121 Wikibooks
87 Wikiquotes
31 Wikisources
21 Wikinews

The procedure for creating a new Wikinews edition is at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Start_a_new_edition

As you can see from this page, there needs to be a minimum number of
supporters, rather than just a consensus, to start a new edition. In
addition, a new Wikinews edition has to translate certain documents
before it is set up:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_language_pre-launch

This is because a dead Wikinews is pretty useless, whereas a dead
Wikiquote can still be useful if it contains at least a few pages.

Catalan meets these strict requirements. As for the open requests for
other projects, when a consensus is clearly visible, talk to Brion,
Tim or another developer on #wikimedia-tech, and ask them to set it
up.

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Catalan Wikinews set up


from_name: Theresa Knott

body:
On 5/26/06, Prasad J <prasad59 at gmail.com> wrote:
> If everything I say is termed trolling, then I really do not know what
> to make of the situation. I have been extremely civil and mature in
> all my messages.

The thing is -I don't have the power to delete the 911 wiki as I am a
wikipedia admin. The same is true for virtually all users on this
list. This list is for the discussion of _wikipedia_.

Discussion about another wiki on this list is therefore waaayyy off
topic. Please stop.

Theresa


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unblock Request - nothing more to similar IP's

body:
Anyone who is not very disruptive is welcome to edit Wikipedia.
Perhaps you could explain more about this matter to us. I may be the
very sysop who unblocks you, but claiming you did not have three
accounts will not wash.

Fred

On May 26, 2006, at 12:47 PM, Ceyda Lacin wrote:

>
>    No there is nothing more to that. I am afraid you are not
> looking at the
> case clearly. The accusations mentioned on the check user page are not
> legitimate and not serious. All are answered on that page. I am
> expecting a
> sysop unblock me from editing sooner than later.
>    Thank you.
>    Ceyda.
>
> Message: 9
> Date: Fri, 26 May 2006 11:06:00 -0600
> From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Unblock request
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Cc: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
> Message-ID: <1629A058-13A7-4B46-A829-B9C3B9414DFA at ctelco.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
>
> There is more to it than that.
>
> Fred
>
> On May 26, 2006, at 9:51 AM, Raphael Wegmann wrote:
>
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I wonder how you can say, they are the same user,
>> when all you can check is that they are using the
>> same IP-address.
>>
>> best regards
>> --
>> Raphael
>>
>> Fred Bauder wrote:
>>
>>
>>> These check out as being the same user. Essjay also checked this. I
>>> doublechecked.
>>>
>>> Fred
>>>
>>> On May 26, 2006, at 4:32 AM, Ceyda Lacin wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>    Hi,
>>>>    I am fairly new user to Wikipedia with username
>>>> [[User:Light&Truth]]. Dr.
>>>> Gulerdem (with username [[User:Rgulerdem]]) informed me and my
>>>> friend know
>>>> about Wikipedia. We liked the philosophy behind the project.
>>>> Unfortunately
>>>> at a very early stage of our experience in Wikipedia, we face to an
>>>> inappropriate accusation. Someone claimed that we (me and my
>>>> partner
>>>> [[User:Mokotok]]) are different names for Rgulerdem. It is not
>>>> true. I tried
>>>> to explain it on the check user page:
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_CheckUser/
>>>> Rgulerdem.
>>>>    I think the problem is coming from the fact that we are all
>>>> living at the
>>>> same university housing complex and using the same IP's randomly. I
>>>> understand that check user made his decision based on that.
>>>>    I would like to continue to contribute to Wikipedia as much as I
>>>> can. I
>>>> would like to someone please correct this mistake because we are
>>>> not the
>>>> same person and this unfair accusation bothers me a great deal.
>>>>    Thank you in advance.
>>>>    Ceyda ([[Light&Truth]])
>>>>
>>>> _________________________________________________________________
>>>> Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today -
>>>> it's FREE!
>>>> http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>>>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>>
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today -
> it's FREE!
> http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 5/25/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> > On 5/25/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> >> But, she has a stalker.
> >>
> >> The stalker posts longwinded ranting criticisms and insults of her.
> >>
> >> Do we cite those?
> >
> > Depends. Who is the stalker? Who reported on the stalking?
>
> Precisely my point.  It is an editorial judgment.  We can't say "just
> because it is true and verifiable we should post it in wikipedia".
>
> --Jimbo
>
So you believe that ranting criticisms on blogs constitute
"verifiable" information?

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Editing a featured article

body:
If you can improve it go right ahead, but frankly there are a number
of former featured articles which have seriously deteriorated due to
subsequent unprofessional edits.

Fred

On May 26, 2006, at 12:48 PM, habj wrote:

> This is from a talk page of a featured article:
>
> " Beyond which, this is an FA, and FA's really should be treated as
> more
> finalized and finished than general articles, as they have passed
> through a
> form of peer review and have a community endorsement in their present
> forms."
>
> Is this view supported anywhere? Should I be more careful when
> editing a FA,
> since it should be supposed that the article is good as it is and
> does not
> need a change?
>
> /habj
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Prasad J

subject: [WikiEN-l] welch and consensus

body:
If we ask him it will amount to invading his privacy. He would then
probably accuse us of trying to stalk him. I agree this seems like a
pseudonym, but since both Saladin and Abu Hamza appear to be
legitimate Muslim names, we should give him the benefit of the doubt.


body:
If everything I say is termed trolling, then I really do not know what
to make of the situation. I have been extremely civil and mature in
all my messages.


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] ( First post ) RE: "In which Snowspinner pwns WR."

body:
On 5/25/06, Selina . <wikipediareview at gmail.com> wrote:

> Anyway, as it's my first post I just thought I'd say hi. :) I am, of
> course, WR user #1 ( http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showuser=1 )
> otherwise known as Mistress Selina Kyle :) I expect loads will
> probably want to flame me and all but whatever, I know a lot tend to
> ignore NPA when it suits them. ;) (if you don't think that applies
> here, read this: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ,
> I did - hint, it's at the very bottom)

Hello. Thank you for showing up.  Would you mind if I asked you a
couple of questions? None of these questions are meant as attacks or
to be taken sarcastically, but I feel they are legitimate and
pertinent questions.

1) What is the point of Wikipedia Review? Do you have a goal for your project?

2) I don't have any preconceived notions about most of the posters,
not being familiar with most of their Arbcom cases or whatever
grievances they have, but based upon how they act on WR, they seem to
want nothing more than to reinforce each other's gripes and chortle
over every negative blog post about WP or every bad thing that happens
to a Wikipedian.  Do you feel this is a fair assessment?  If not,
could you point to some threads in which more positive or more
representative discussion has taken place?

3) Much of the tone of the discussion on WR regarding female
administrators of Wikipedia has been quite misogynist.  Do you feel
this is appropriate for your forum?

4) Bernie Machen, the president of the University of Florida, was
contacted via email, which led to the police investigation of
Snowspinner, a UF student.  Do you think that this mail was sent by a
member of WR?  If so, how do you feel that fits in with the goals and
aims of WR?

5) Katefan0 has left Wikipedia today due to the actions of a WR
poster, and WR members are currently discussing contacting her
employer or filing a grievance against her with Congress.
(http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=1422&st=20)  Do you
feel this is an appropriate use of your forum?  Would you feel that WR
would be responsible if Katefan0 lost her job?  How does this fit in
with the goals and aims of WR?

Thank you in advance for your replies.


from_name: geni

body:
On 5/26/06, Prasad J <prasad59 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Theresa,
> Caould you please tell me which mailing list would be more appriopate
> for this discussion? Also, the 11/9 Memorial Wiki has .wikipedia in
> its URL, so I assumed it was part of Wikipedia.

ru.wikipedia is part of wikipedia. We don't deal with that much either.

probably wikipedia-l

--
geni


body:
Robin Shannon wrote:
> I just don't think it is our role to deal with the problems
> of Africa and any of the other projects envisioned.

Could be a bit more clear about what projects you think are being
envisioned which are not about our core mission?  I ask, because I am
unaware of any.

> I'm just throwing this out there as an idea to
> start a conversation because I appreciate that although the foundation
> has worked hard to try to be inclusive, there are a large number of
> people (or at least i get the feeling that there are anyway) who feel
> like the foundation is going in a direction contrary to where they
> would like it to go.

Can you be more specific?  Where do you think the foundation is heading,
which is not driven forward primarily by the community?

As far as I can tell, we are doing exactly what we have always done, and
have made no sharp breaks or shifts.

Perhaps this little discussion is misleading.  Some members of the
community, who are not board members, but who are of course highly
respected community members, have been discussion possible new
directions for the foundation which would apparently involve me moving
to New York or DC (which isn't going to happen, by the way), and opening
 an office there.

At least two board members have pointed out that this is not likely,
that there are no plans for the future of the foundation which would
involve anything like that.

Before this conversation veers off into speculation, I would like to ask
people to be please be very specific about specific things that you
think the Foundation is doing or might be doing, that you think are
inconsistent with our traditions and community values.  I know of
nothing, although of course we can discuss and quibble about details of
how various things are organized, etc.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Death of Wikipedia

body:
On 5/25/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> Eh. I remember how explosively a big deal it was to lock the front page, and
> I don't remember locking being used before that. Maybe my memory's faulty,
> but I get the feeling I'm witnessing some minor rewriting (or let's just say
> "changing the emphasis") of history here.

Internet Archive shows when the main page was locked (made
"read-only").  It can't really be used to prove that nothing else was
locked before that, though (hard to prove a negative).

Of course, I think it's pretty clear that things have gotten more
locked-down over the years, regardless of whether or not things were
ever 100% completely open.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Death of Wikipedia

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> Eh. I remember how explosively a big deal it was to lock the front page, and
> I don't remember locking being used before that. Maybe my memory's faulty,
> but I get the feeling I'm witnessing some minor rewriting (or let's just say
> "changing the emphasis") of history here.

Interesting question.  I will try to look into the mailing list archives
to see if I can find anything.

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [WikiEN-l] katefan0 (was: First post)

body:
Rob wrote:
> 5) Katefan0 has left Wikipedia today due to the actions of a WR poster...
> (http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=1422&st=20)

Jesus Christ that's disgusting.  I couldn't read more than about
a quarter of it.


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Foundation-l] Thai project status

body:
Kim Bruning wrote:

>On Mon, May 22, 2006 at 09:49:19AM -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>This sounds like you are trying to promote a new cabal. :-)
>>
>>
>
>OMG, Cabal! :-)
>
>Actually, having heard what Waerth told me, and assuming good faith,
>it might be useful if some key people do actually get a brief
>briefing on Waerths current Thailand activities soon, if possible.
>
>5 minutes never hurt anyone, after all.
>
>After that, they can then decide for themselves.
>
>sincerely,
>	Kim Bruning
>
>
>
I am currently awaiting answers to a couple of questions Brad Patrick
send me. Unfirtunately things move slow.

Waerth/Walter


subject: [Foundation-l] Thai project status


from_name: Robin Shannon

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

body:
On 26/05/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Erik Zachte <erikzachte at infodisiac.com> wrote:
> > As on several earlier occasions I disagree with Mav on how Wikimedia money
> > would be best spent. Washington D.C. or NYC are very expensive cities.
>
> Not the suburbs of D.C. and to some extent parts of the NYC outside of
> Manhattan. The point, is to
> be in a place where we can most easily establish connections with other
> nations and like-minded
> organizations.

Washington is (and more importantly is thought of as) an *American*
not international administrative centre. It would send a bad message
to the rest of the world if we moved there.

paz y amor,
-rjs.

--
DO NOT SEND ME WORD ATTACHMENTS - I *WILL* BITE!
<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/sylvester-response.html>

Hit me: <http://robin.shannon.id.au> [broken]
Jab me: <robin.shannon at jabber.org.au>
Upgrade to kubuntu linux: <http://releases.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/breezy/>
Faith is under the left nipple. -- Martin Luther


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office


from_name: folengo at netcourrier.com

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Number of days new users are prevented from editing
	semi-protected pages

body:
Hello,

Could someone tell the mathematical expression that would enable me to
calculate how many days new users are prevented from editing
semi-protected pages on the French Wikipedia ? The English Wikipedia
page [[Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy]] says "Very new" is currently
defined as four days", but that does not seem to be the case on the
French Wikip?dia, as a 6 day long new user tells that she still can't edit
a semi-protected page.
Could we have a
{{NUMBEROFDAYSNEWUSERSCANTEDITSEMIPROTECTEDPAGES}}
magic word/variable so that we can know for sure how long this is, and tell
 new users exactly how long they will have to wait ?

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion_Utilisateur:Teofilo


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>> Perhaps this little discussion is misleading.  Some members of the
>> community, who are not board members, but who are of course highly
>> respected community members, have been discussion possible new
>> directions for the foundation which would apparently involve me moving
>> to New York or DC (which isn't going to happen, by the way), and opening
>>  an office there.
>
> Nobody has suggested that you or any other board member would need to move. Board members need not
> be in any Wikimedia office every day.

True.  I am out of the current office many more days than I am in.

> The location of the main office (that is, the one where the
> executive director and most of the staff work) should be, IMO, dictated by where we can most
> easily maximize connections with like-minded organizations and with the relevant representatives
> of the nations we want to work with.

Based on my personal experience and the kinds of things I envision the
foundation doing going forward, I don't agree at the present time.  It
is possible that if we were to take a radical change of direction, this
could make sense.

--Jimbo


from_name: Ceyda Lacin

body:
   No there is nothing more to that. I am afraid you are not looking at the
case clearly. The accusations mentioned on the check user page are not
legitimate and not serious. All are answered on that page. I am expecting a
sysop unblock me from editing sooner than later.
   Thank you.
   Ceyda.

Message: 9
Date: Fri, 26 May 2006 11:06:00 -0600
From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Unblock request
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Cc: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
Message-ID: <1629A058-13A7-4B46-A829-B9C3B9414DFA at ctelco.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed

There is more to it than that.

Fred

On May 26, 2006, at 9:51 AM, Raphael Wegmann wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I wonder how you can say, they are the same user,
>when all you can check is that they are using the
>same IP-address.
>
>best regards
>--
>Raphael
>
>Fred Bauder wrote:
>
>>These check out as being the same user. Essjay also checked this. I
>>doublechecked.
>>
>>Fred
>>
>>On May 26, 2006, at 4:32 AM, Ceyda Lacin wrote:
>>
>>
>>>    Hi,
>>>    I am fairly new user to Wikipedia with username
>>>[[User:Light&Truth]]. Dr.
>>>Gulerdem (with username [[User:Rgulerdem]]) informed me and my
>>>friend know
>>>about Wikipedia. We liked the philosophy behind the project.
>>>Unfortunately
>>>at a very early stage of our experience in Wikipedia, we face to an
>>>inappropriate accusation. Someone claimed that we (me and my partner
>>>[[User:Mokotok]]) are different names for Rgulerdem. It is not
>>>true. I tried
>>>to explain it on the check user page:
>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_CheckUser/
>>>Rgulerdem.
>>>    I think the problem is coming from the fact that we are all
>>>living at the
>>>same university housing complex and using the same IP's randomly. I
>>>understand that check user made his decision based on that.
>>>    I would like to continue to contribute to Wikipedia as much as I
>>>can. I
>>>would like to someone please correct this mistake because we are
>>>not the
>>>same person and this unfair accusation bothers me a great deal.
>>>    Thank you in advance.
>>>    Ceyda ([[Light&Truth]])
>>>
>>>_________________________________________________________________
>>>Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today -
>>>it's FREE!
>>>http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>>
>>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/


from_name: Plyd

body:
On 5/26/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Plyd wrote:
> > May I ask why?
> Why would there be?

I didn't take part in this project and I'm sure they could convince
much better than me but...

First, it's very easy to add their relations in the already existing
infoboxes (makes relations for all the articles at the same time).

My point of vue :
- With semantic, data can be used at different places and defined only
once (a bit like openrecord.com, with their views).
- It could create automatic lists (example lists of cities sorted by
country, by population, etc.).
- Relations makes browsing information much easier than with
categories. (Example: I'm looking for all english scientists born
between 1500 and 1550)
- for the wiktionnary it could help classifiying data, and make it
easier to present it in the view you like, external or not.
- RDF export could help making Wikipedia an online database (as imdb,
but for various subjects, and open), that could be used inside other
softwares. For example, music showing Wikipedia neutral info, title,
singer picture, its discs etc. while playing my mp3, or it could be
for a book). Maybe also in a map, with cities etc.

Imho semantic could help spreading wikipedia content (relations but
also text) on more supports than the actual website.

Plyd


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Usernames

body:
G'day Prasad,

>>See whether anyone gets worked up about the name within the first two weeks,
>>if not, it's ok?
>
> To test this theory, let someone create a username "Lynddie England"-
> after the infamous sadist of Abu-Ghraib. If nobody objects, then your
> plan will fail due to systemic bias.

If someone names themselves "Lynndie England" I'll block them myself,
should someone bring it to my attention.  Now, please stop complaining
about "bias".  There is only a Cabal if you want there to be one.  If
you push conspiracy theories far enough, you'll find plenty of evidence:
since the hoard of people you'll have annoyed and who are telling you to
pull your head in will surely suffice as "proof" that we're really out
to get you.

As I said before, Wikipedia's biases are what we call "systemic bias".
This is because most of our editors are male, white, and American, in
their early to mid-twenties.  There's two ways to combat this bias.
Either: a) kick out all the Americans for no good reason, or b) get
people who don't fit this category to join up and start making useful
contributions.  Sitting around whingeing about how nobody understands
how difficult it is to not be American is not only bloody stupid, it's
also offensive to the rest of us who aren't American and don't
appreciate being considered fellow travellers.

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


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Number of days new users are prevented from
	editing semi-pr

body:
1) User name :

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Suziecat

2) semi-protected page she says she attempted to edit :

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chat

----Message d'origine----
>Date: Fri, 26 May 2006 05:01:57 -0700
>De: Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>
>A: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
>Sujet: Re: [Wikitech-l] Number of days new users are prevented from
>
>folengo at netcourrier.com wrote:
>> Could someone tell the mathematical expression that would enable me to
>> calculate how many days new users are prevented from editing
>> semi-protected pages on the French Wikipedia ?
>
>Four.
>
>> The English Wikipedia
>> page [[Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy]] says "Very new" is currently
>> defined as four days", but that does not seem to be the case on the
>> French Wikip?dia, as a 6 day long new user tells that she still can't edit
>> a semi-protected page.
>
>Perhaps there's some other problem, then. For instance, maybe the page isn't
>actually semi-protected. Maybe the user registered more recently and miscounted.
>Maybe they clicked the wrong thing. Maybe something about the page or the
>account changed.
>
>There's nothing more I could possibly hope to say about it without some
>information to look into the problem. For starters I will need:
>
>1) The name of the page in question
>2) The username of the user in question
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] katefan0 (was: First post)

body:
They actually do manage a somewhat one-sided discussion. Everyking
and Skyring are not mean-spirited.

Fred

On May 26, 2006, at 1:52 PM, Death Phoenix wrote:

> On 5/26/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Rob wrote:
>>
>>> 5) Katefan0 has left Wikipedia today due to the actions of a WR
>>>
>> poster...
>>
>>> (http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=1422&st=20)
>>>
>>
>> Jesus Christ that's disgusting.  I couldn't read more than about
>> a quarter of it.
>>
>>
>
> I managed to read all of it. It was most enlightening. I got to
> understand
> WR a little more.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] welch and consensus

body:
G'day Prasad,

> I ask once again, what is Saladin is his real name? Are any of you
> Arab? Do you know the whole list of Muslim names? Then why are you
> assuming it's his alias? I know it seems improbable, but that does not
> mean it is imposible.

If Saladin's his real name, then he's obviously not impersonating or
taking the name of a real or historical figure, is he?  Please try to
keep up.

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


from_name: Delirium

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Robin Shannon wrote:
>
>> I just don't think it is our role to deal with the problems
>> of Africa and any of the other projects envisioned.
>>
>
> Could be a bit more clear about what projects you think are being
> envisioned which are not about our core mission?  I ask, because I am
> unaware of any.
>

Our "core mission" is pretty broad, so probably most of the differencees
of opinion are over what part of that mission we ought to be spending
the most effort on.

I personally think that by far the most important part of our core
mission should be to produce a Free (as in Freedom) compendium of human
knowledge, and that there should be a core organization dedicated solely
to that task with no other distracting/ancillary tasks.

That's not to say nothing else needs to get done, but it doesn't all
need to be done by the *same* core organization.  My main worry is that
if there is one giant organization, and actually producing the
encyclopedia becomes a focus of only a minority of its budget and paid
staff, that will not improve its quality.  It will also prevent
Wikipedians from being able to pick and choose which other projects they
support or don't support; instead they'll have to make one binary
decision to "support Wikimedia" or not.

For example, if an African organization (preferably run by actual
Africans, not Europeans and Americans) thought Wikipedia would be useful
in some guise (perhaps CD-ROMs in schools; perhaps paper encyclopedias)
and wanted to distribute it for that purpose, I would strongly support
that, would donate to the organization, and would support acting on any
reasonable requests for changes on the content-production end that would
make their job easier.

That's not to say that it's impossible to have one organization do both
or that any possible organization doing both would turn out horribly,
but I think it's a worse arrangement and don't support it, which seems
to me at least a reasonable opinion (of course, it's my claim, so I
would think so).

In any case, that sort of thing is already happening to some extent with
the German paper version, which I see as a positive sign.

-Mark


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Number of days new users are prevented from
	editing semi-protected pages

body:
On 5/26/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> folengo at netcourrier.com wrote:
> > Could someone tell the mathematical expression that would enable me to
> > calculate how many days new users are prevented from editing
> > semi-protected pages on the French Wikipedia ?
>
> Four.

Is this the canonical answer? There seemed to have been a lot of
discussion about this, and the formula being something like "older
than 1% of users". Then there were rumours that this would work out at
about 4 days, which most people accepted.

In the end, was it fixed at 4 days (96 hours), or is that still an
approximation?

Steve


from_name: Nick Booth

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unblock Request

body:
Hello All,

I wonder if you are able to help unblock my IP.  Many months ago I
contributed without creating an account and then decided that it was
more sociable to have an account.  I used the account name
createaccount . I know that was a stupid thing to do - at the time I
didn't know your rules for user names and just looked for the nearest
inspiration.  The account was blocked by longhair and reading the
rules I understand why.

"Autoblocked because your IP address has been recently used by
"Createaccount". The reason given for Createaccount's block is:
"Username block"." when requesting an unblock as an administrator can
not help you without that information, they might also need your IP
address (82.36.106.161), so give that too if possible."

Because my IP is blocked I cant create a new user name or request a
user name change for createaccount - so for one dumb decision I'm
permanently excluded from contributing.

It may also help you to know that I had some edits reverted because
one of the administrators was concerned that I including to many
links to my own site - which is www.podnosh.com.  In every case I was
confident that I was adding links to relevant information.  If you
check you should be able to see that my IP has been used for
constructive contributions and I would like a chance to keep doing that.

many thanks

Nick


body:
On 5/26/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> There's thousands of things that we could potentially try to add to the wiki.
> That doesn't mean there's a schedule for each and every one of them. Most of
> them will never be tried.

Is this any sort of discussion process for working out what does and
doesn't make it in, or does it come down to existence of a developer
willing to implement it, and belief of other developers that the
change won't break stuff?

Steve


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
G'day Prasad,
> Please just delete this obvious example of merica-centric bias. It is
> an insult to the many other people across the world who have died in
> terror attacks for you to make such a big deal about one incident,
> just because it happened in America.
>

How many other single terrorist attacks were captured on live television
and resulted in the deaths of almost 3000 people?

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
To discuss the closure of the project, best to do it on metawiki itself (I
think I gave the link earlier). Failing that, wikipedia-l would be a better
list.

To continue this discussion about terrorists, 9/11, Americans or other races
in general, the best place would be private email or not at all.

Thanks,
Steve

On 5/26/06, Prasad J <prasad59 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Theresa,
> Caould you please tell me which mailing list would be more appriopate
> for this discussion? Also, the 11/9 Memorial Wiki has .wikipedia in
> its URL, so I assumed it was part of Wikipedia.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Philip Welch wrote:
> On May 25, 2006, at 9:44 PM, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>
>>> Please just delete this obvious example of merica-centric bias. It is
>>> an insult to the many other people across the world who have died in
>>> terror attacks for you to make such a big deal about one incident,
>>> just because it happened in America.
>>>
>> How many other single terrorist attacks were captured on live
>> television
>> and resulted in the deaths of almost 3000 people?
>
> C'mon, Alphax, you know better than this. "You have been trolled. You
> have lost. Have a nice day." Sound familiar?
>

What do you mean, trolling? Nobody's trolling, are they?

> I've been sending these messages off-list for days and it hasn't
> helped. So I'm taking it on-list. Don't feed the trolls.
>

I could have sworn that we had listmods to deal with that sort of thing.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 26/05/06, folengo at netcourrier.com <folengo at netcourrier.com> wrote:
> 1) User name :
>
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Suziecat
>
> 2) semi-protected page she says she attempted to edit :
>
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chat

Confirmed that the user account was registered on May 20th, and that
the page itself is semi-protected.

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] Non-found page text broken?

body:
Hi,
  I'm getting this text when searching for page that doesn't exist:

No page with that title exists.
You can [[::Aoeuaouo|create this article]] or request it.

That is, in the rendered page, I'm actually seeing [[:: etc.

Someone break something?

This is on EN btw.

Steve


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

subject: [WikiEN-l] Saladin1970 (new thread)

body:
> I'm astonished not that people are willing to defend the poster Abu
> Hamza (nothing wrong with that of course), but that they are insisting
> on ripping single offences free from their context and then saying

Conversely, I'm astonished that people are willing to accuse the
poster Abu Hamza when they haven't even gotten the basic facts
straight.

> his religious background.  "Hey, Abu Hamza is the equivalent of Johnny
> Smith!"  Sure, and my real name might be Davey Duke too, but we don't
> have to be purposefully naive when we look at these issues.  In
> isolation, we can make everything he did look perfectly innocent, but
> when a user takes the screen name of a man (quoting WP) convicted of
> "racial hatred and incitement to murder", shares the same obsession

False. The poster abuhamza used the screen name Saladin1970. I don't
understand how is email address is in any way relevant. Most people
here didn't know there is a real Abu Hamza that incites hatred and
most people wouldn't have cared about his email address unless someone
had accused him for it.

> with Harold Shipman's supposed Jewish background as the convicted
> Hamza, inserts text dumps from "Zionism The Real Enemy of the Jews"
> into articles and claims he's merely "quoting the Talmud", and calls
> respected editors Zionists in a way that's clearly intended as a slur,

Calling editors Zionists is no good. Btw, I believe the extract from
"Zionism The Real Enemy of the Jews" was only inserted in one article,
[[Alan Hart]].

> well, you don't need a weatherman to know which way this wind is
> blowing.  This clearly adds up to a pattern of behavior that is

It is easy to build a castle of air. Everyone can do that, but when
you analyze each part of it you see that it is nothing more than a
castle of air. It is false that abuhamza didn't do any useful edits,
he did. It is false that his screen name was Abu Hamza, it was
Saladin1970.

> just never be permanently lifted.  If you really want to stick up for
> this guy, try to get him to improve his behavior, don't try to
> rationalize it for him.

The user is indefinitely banned, there is no way for him to improve
his behaviour anyway.

--
mvh Bj?rn


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

body:
On 5/26/06, Robin Shannon <robin.shannon at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is this the first time a CEO has been proposed? what on earth would be
> the point of having one? I ask if this is the first time it has been
> asked because i would like to see any wikipages or archeived email
> threads to see what the arguments are for having one.

There's been a brief public discussion about it in January:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-January/thread.html#5790

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office


body:
On 5/26/06, Rotem Liss <mail at rotemliss.com> wrote:
> See
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Nogomatch#Remove_the_.22:.22_before_the_.241

Weird, according to the page history, the only change (made today)
shouldn't have touched that bit. Maybe the change had been made a
while ago but for some reason wasn't taken into account, until the
page was resaved today?

Strange. Thanks for pointing me to that anyway.

Steve


from_name: Prasad J

body:
> >
>
> Liberalism gone crazy, there's nothing wrong with a memorial to 9/11...
>

But, frankly, the only people who care are the Americans. Far worse
things have happened, there's no need for so much ado about this one
incident. I am not taken in by the U.S rhetoric of 11/9 being an
"attack not just on America but on humanity and liberty and freedom
and the free world and etc. and etc." It was a terrorist attack
(mis)directed against the people of America as retaliation for the
highly questionable foriegn policies adopted by the U.S. Plain and
simple. There is really no need whatsoever to try and blow this
incident into some sort of international calamity, the likes of which
has never before been witnessed, because as I mentioned the other
189-odd nations of the world pretty much forgot about it on 12/9/2001
(despite annual attempts to get the whole world to mourn with
America). In my view, this Memorial only furthers this warped
perception about 11/9 and hence should be deleted.


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 5/26/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Nobody has suggested that you or any other board member would need to move. Board members need not
> be in any Wikimedia office every day. The location of the main office (that is, the one where the
> executive director and most of the staff work) should be, IMO, dictated by where we can most
> easily maximize connections with like-minded organizations and with the relevant representatives
> of the nations we want to work with.

Being in NYC, DC, or varrious other locations would being us closer to
some subset of interesting orginizations...  But being near a solid
airport places us near all of them.  This really is the way a lot of
business is done today.

Whenever we have a critical mass of people in a spot we should
consider opening an office, but lets not let the tail wag the dog.
The increased cost of travel doesn't justify the cost of an additional
office in a prime location and if the location is non-prime, what did
you save on travel?


body:
I am making a rational arguement. It is only Americans who really care
about the 11/9 incident. Do you guys in Melbourne mourn 11/9 each
year? Do you fly the Australian flag at halfmast?  What about
memorial-services- do you have those?Have you built a Freedom Tower
there yet? I didn't think so. Then why should a international
organisation like the Wikimedia Foundation have this Memorial
dedicated solely to 11/9?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Usernames

body: Sorry, I just assumed that you were alike.


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Prasad on moderation

body:
After much demand from list members, Prasad has been put on moderation
for wikien-l for inflammatory posting. I would also ask all others to
try not to react to inflammmatory elements of posts, but Just Hit
Delete.

- d.


body:
So what broke?

Steve

On 5/26/06, Rotem Liss <mail at rotemliss.com> wrote:
> The content of the parameter "$1" of the system message is specified by
> MediaWiki software, not by the system message itself (it just specifies
> where to put it in the message).
>
>
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> >On 5/26/06, Rotem Liss <mail at rotemliss.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>See
> >>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Nogomatch#Remove_the_.22:.22_before_the_.241
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Weird, according to the page history, the only change (made today)
> >shouldn't have touched that bit. Maybe the change had been made a
> >while ago but for some reason wasn't taken into account, until the
> >page was resaved today?
> >
> >Strange. Thanks for pointing me to that anyway.
> >
> >Steve
> >_______________________________________________
> >Wikitech-l mailing list
> >Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> #define Name RotemLiss
> #define Mail mailSTRUDELrotemlissDOTcom
> #define Site www.rotemliss.com
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>


from_name: Death Phoenix

subject: [WikiEN-l] katefan0 (was: First post)

body:
On 5/26/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>
> Rob wrote:
> > 5) Katefan0 has left Wikipedia today due to the actions of a WR
> poster...
> > (http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=1422&st=20)
>
> Jesus Christ that's disgusting.  I couldn't read more than about
> a quarter of it.
>

I managed to read all of it. It was most enlightening. I got to understand
WR a little more.


from_name: Brian Salter-Duke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Jmol extension in Wikipedia

body:
I sent this message to the list, but it never appeared, possibly because
I sent it from a second e-mail account I have and not the one I was
subscribed to this list with. I have changed my subscription to the
address this is coming from. This was my first message. Does it need to
be moderated?

Greetings,

Jmol is a molecular viewer which also contains an applet that can
display molecular structures in web pages. There is now an extension
that allows the use of this applet in wiki pages under MediaWiki. We are
very keen to allow this use in Wikipedia and I need a technical person
to assist. The ability to manipulate chemical structures in 3 dimensions
would greatly add to many chemistry pages on wikipedia.

The process is described in details in:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Using_Jmol_to_display_molecular_models

and links from that page. Basically a php extension script and various
Jmol files need to be installed in wikihome/extensions/Jmol/. Various
examples on the Jmol wiki are also linked from that page.

I discussed this with Tim Starling at a Melbourne Wikipedia meetup and
later by e-mail. This was before the extension was finalised (not by me,
but by User:NicoV on Meta) and before the latest stable release of Jmol
occurred. He seemed to think that a trial could be organised, but he now,
quite understandably, appears to be too busy to help.

Could someone please step forward and assist in getting a trial underway?
I'm happy to discuss this by e-mail or on wikipedia (I'm user Bduke
there). A knowledge of chemistry is not required.

Regards, Brian.

--
          Brian Salter-Duke            b_duke at octa4.net.au
               [[User:Bduke]]  mainly on en:Wikipedia.
 Also on fr: Wikipedia, Meta-Wiki, WikiNews, WikiBooks and Commons


subject: [WikiEN-l] Usernames

body:
I'm not sure. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the
British and the Americans and the Australians and the other "whites"
seemed to get along mighty well when they were kicking around Indians
during the Raj. And they seem to be behaving the same way down in Iraq
too. Funny coincidence is it not? I think that's what lead to me
making that error.