body:
On Wed, 20 Dec 2006, Aphaia wrote:

> On 12/20/06, SJ Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
>> It could be neat to have small icons with two-letter codes in them to
>> represent each language; they could have color to make them easy to pick
>> out of a list.  I feel I've seen a good example of this before, but can't
>> recall where.
>
> Much better, and in which script? Such letter-codes most of its
> speakers are simply unfamiliar might make no sense ...

At least the ISO code letters in latin script.  Perhaps also 2 letters
in a script native to that language, for non-latin languages (at which
point we may not be able to rely on an outside standard and might
be starting a new set of 1- or 2-character abbreviations for languages
in their own script... perhaps we could find a language organization
that wants to take on choosing and maintaining such a collection.)

SJ


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: SJ Klein

subject: [Foundation-l] Translations fundraising.wikimedia.org


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: GerardM

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Begging letters on our blogs?

body:
Hoi,
When DirtyCom donates $20.000,- to the Wikimedia Foundation, it does not
gain leverage on the WMF. So it does request us to be nice. When this gets
in the news that they operate in this way, they will have a serious public
relations issue. Not only did they raise their x level in order to raise the
repeat sales, they also have raised a lot of negative sentiment for their
brand.

Many companies understand very well who it is they deal with. Not
understanding this aspect of  the Wikimedia Foundation and its project is
seriously stupid. For the WMF organisation not to appreciate this aspect of
its projects is impossible. It is therefore extremely unlikely that a
situation like this will arise.

Thanks,
    GerardM

On 12/19/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/18/06, theProject <wp.theproject at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Someone's going to have to explain this to me. If the problem with
> Coca-Cola
> > buying advertisements on our site is that our article on them might be
> > perceived as not NPOV, then how is it any different if we accept a
> donation
> > from them? As far as I know, we do have a list of fairly big donors, and
> > some of them have articles.
>
> The nature of the relationship is different.  Consider the following
> two scenarios:
>
> 1) Starbucks signs a $20,000-a-month contract to place banner ads on
> Wikipedia.  Some time afterwards, it comes out that Starbucks has been
> manipulating the caffeine levels of their products to encourage repeat
> sales.  They tell us to keep it out of their article or they'll cancel
> the contract.  What does Wikipedia do?
>
> 2) Starbucks gives Wikipedia a $20,000 donation.  Some time
> afterwards, it comes out that Starbucks has been manipulating the
> caffeine levels of their products to encourage repeat sales.  They
> tell us to keep it out of their article.  Wikipedia puts it in the
> article and thumbs its collective nose at Starbucks.  What are they
> going to do, ask for their donation back?
>
> --
> Mark
> [[User:Carnildo]]
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


list: foundation-l

from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Foundation-l] A short report from the meeting

body:
Brane will translate longer one, also, we will add our comments on Meta.

First of all, I would like to thanks to all of the people who was in
Belgrade and who intended to come here. Special thanks to Nina and
Mathias, who was *two days* on Milano and Frankfurt airports! Also,
Delphine waited on Milano airport for more then one day, Gerard waited
for one day in Vienna, and Oscar, Martin and Florence had, also, a lot
of problems to come. Personally, I realized that there is no sense to
make anything related to Belgrade airport from November to March.

Up to Saturday afternoon everything looked like that conference have
been a totaly disaster, but, thanks to all participants, the
conference was great!

The success of the first day is dedicated to Oscar. Instead of one, he
made three lecturers: instead of Florence he talked about Foundation
and he made two lecturers about interesting things aroud wiki, free
knowledge and Wikipedia.

The second day was with a lot of content: Instead of four lecturers,
we had six. Mathias was talking about German community and Wikimedian
projects, Darko and Roberta were talking about Croatian community and
Wikimedian projects; as a mathematician, Roman made very interesting
graphics as well as he was talking about some funny problems which
Slovenian Wikipedia has (35.000 articles vs. 19.000 categories, a lot
of articles related to military; and around 50% of edits on sl.wiki is
done by only one person and his bot :) ). Slobodan had very
interesting speech about problems of small Macedonian community
(however, their Wikipedia will have 10.000 articles soon; so it is not
*so small*). Oscar was talking again, this time with video beam (it is
very good to have Oscar: as he is a professor, he may talk about lot
of things :) ). At the end, Gerard was talking about improoving wiki
world using OmegaWiki.

Finally, at Saturday evening Martin said to me the secret: how German
Wikipedian community is working without Arbitration Committee and I
think that it is a very good model for dealing with problems. In
general, Serbian Wikipedian community is working similar, but I was
afraid that it is not possible in bigger communities. However, German
community very good deals with POV pushers and nonsenses; I don't know
for any other community which is dealing with that so good (however, I
am not introduced in working of a lot of communities; maybe 10; also,
except a bigger ones, communities becoming famous only when it has
some problems).

So, this is all for now. I have some ideas and some thoughts related
to Wikimedian community and I'll write about it as soon as possible.


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

body:
Rory Stolzenberg wrote:

>On 12/19/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Aphaia wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>On 12/20/06, SJ Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>It could be neat to have small icons with two-letter codes in them to
>>>>represent each language; they could have color to make them easy to pick
>>>>out of a list.  I feel I've seen a good example of this before, but
>>>>
>>>>
>>can't
>>
>>
>>>>recall where.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Much better, and in which script? Such letter-codes most of its
>>>speakers are simply unfamiliar might make no sense ...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Aphaia,
>>
>>Can someone plug in the Cherokee translation I finished. I would like to
>>read the fundraising results on my native language.
>>
>>please?
>>
>>Jeff
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>
>As I understand it, we can't. The Fundraising CORE is based on [[Drupal]],
>which has language packs included (see
>http://drupal.org/project/Translations ). The language packs translate about
>85% of the site already, and the things translated at [[m:Fundraising
>C.O.R.E.]] are just what David Strauss added. If we just instituted that,
>most of the site still wouldn't be translated.
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
Ok. Thanks for letting me know. If and when Cherokee ??? makes it into
the language pack, I guess I will see it then ...

Jeff


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] SVN: [18372] trunk/phase3 Special:Booksources

body:
On 19/12/06, Raimond Spekking <raimond.spekking at gmail.com> wrote:
> booksources-summary is defined but not used at the special page. Could
> it be activated please?

It seems to be redundant, what with "booksources-text", but since I
don't read German all that well, I'm not sure whether I understand the
purpose of the message right.

Rob Church


subject:
[Wikitech-l] RE : Re: SVN: [18372] trunk/phase3
	Special:Booksources

body:
On 19/12/06, simo amed <maxiphone2006 at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> please stop  your message
>   stop

Please work out how to use your mail client, and read the message
footers, where you'd notice that you're receiving this email because
you're subscribed to our mailing list.

You'll even find information on how to reverse the procedure there.

Rob Church


from_name: Selina .

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] J.L.W.S. The Special One has invited you to open
	a Google mail account

body:
spammy spam :O

hey just use the solution you use for everything else.. block him ;)

--
Selina -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mistress_Selina_Kyle?oldid=55639088 /
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mistress_Selina_Kyle?oldid=41845454
http://wikipediareview.com/?showuser=1
"I *do* think criticism is good for Wikipedia [...] Good quality criticism
is valuable, and Wikipedians should listen to it, and actually make changes
based on it. Are there corrupt administrators, then we should get rid of
them." --Jimmy Wales ( http://wikipediareview.com/?showtopic=1693 )

On 19/12/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> J.L.W.S. The Special One wrote:
>
> >I've been using Gmail and thought you might like to try it out. Here's
> >an invitation to create an account.
> >
> SPAM - I don't appreciate it
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Oldak Quill

body:
On 19/12/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> J.L.W.S. The Special One wrote:
>
> >I've been using Gmail and thought you might like to try it out. Here's
> >an invitation to create an account.
> >
> SPAM - I don't appreciate it

You could always start by assuming it was an accident.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


body:
On 19/12/06, Raimond Spekking <raimond.spekking at gmail.com> wrote:
> "booksources-summary" should only be used if someone goes to the special
> page directly: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spezial:Booksources?uselang=en
>
> Maybe not very often but it's possible.
> In this case "booksources-summary" is a little summary about the whole
> purpose of this special page.
>
> The German text (shortend) in English: "On this special page you can
> enter an ISBN to get a list of libraries and bookstores. Dashes and
> spaces are not relevant..."

Ah, I see...

Rob Church


from_name: Rory Stolzenberg

body:
On 12/19/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
> Aphaia wrote:
>
> >On 12/20/06, SJ Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>It could be neat to have small icons with two-letter codes in them to
> >>represent each language; they could have color to make them easy to pick
> >>out of a list.  I feel I've seen a good example of this before, but
> can't
> >>recall where.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Much better, and in which script? Such letter-codes most of its
> >speakers are simply unfamiliar might make no sense ...
> >
> >
> >
> >
> Aphaia,
>
> Can someone plug in the Cherokee translation I finished. I would like to
> read the fundraising results on my native language.
>
> please?
>
> Jeff
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

As I understand it, we can't. The Fundraising CORE is based on [[Drupal]],
which has language packs included (see
http://drupal.org/project/Translations ). The language packs translate about
85% of the site already, and the things translated at [[m:Fundraising
C.O.R.E.]] are just what David Strauss added. If we just instituted that,
most of the site still wouldn't be translated.


list: wikien-l

from_name: Sarah

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 41, Issue 153

body:
On 12/19/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/19/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Actually, that's making things worse; we're now using weasel words
> > ("appears that", "probably is") to cover our original research ("the
> > consensus is"). If we only have primary sources, then we say what the
> > primary sources say. If we have a secondary source that says "the
> > consensus of legal opinion is", then great. If not, then *we* cannot
> > become that secondary source that draws that conclusion, partly
> > because we're not experts in this field, but mostly because it's
> > original research.  Remember, the second you say "the consensus is",
> > you need to be able to state exactly who considers there to be a
> > "consensus".  Otherwise you are "introducing an analysis or synthesis
> > of established facts, ideas, opinions, or arguments in a way that
> > builds a particular case favored by the editor, without attributing
> > that analysis or synthesis to a reputable source."
>
> Are you trying to define the pinnacle of perfection that every article
> should strive for but ultimately very few will achieve? I'm trying to
> find a workable compromise that will reduce the worst problems of OR
> and alert the reader to weaknesses in the article.
>
> If we actually have the tertiary source that tells us that there is
> consensus among secondary sources, then great, we'll obviously cite
> it. But if we don't, we're doing our readers a disservice by avoiding
> any mention of the general trend that we've found in our research. By
> contrast, we help our readers if we can convey "It looks to us that
> most researchers agree with X, but don't take our word for it".
>
Steve, it's not a question of reaching for the "pinnacle of
perfection." It isn't difficult to write articles that conform to the
content policies. The articles are better for it too, and of more use
to the reader, who can check whether we've used decent sources and
whether we've been true to them. That's of more use than an anonymous
Wikipedian adding his own opinion based on his own studies that may be
correct or may be nonsense. Even very occasional editors are coming to
see the importance of using good sources correctly and every day I see
articles improving because of it. We're getting there.

Sarah


from_name: Aphaia

body:
Hello, though I am not in charge of this part, but I think it is not
bad to input my idea as non-English speaker & translator.

On 12/19/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> Aphaia wrote:
>
> > Again, "the pun is one of most difficulties for translation".
> > There are at least two ways to deal with:
>
> C.O.R.E. is not a pun, because it isn't funny.  I'm not laughing
> when I see this user interface and this translation request.
> Most importantly, the translation request on meta doesn't provide
> any context, not even a link back to the website
> fundraising.wikimedia.org.

Now the request page has a link to English page of CORE.

> On the website fundraising.wikimedia.org, the first phrase on the
> page is "Wikimedia Fundraising C.O.R.E." and I am allowed to
> translate "Fundraising C.O.R.E.", but I cannot translate the next
> line "Central Online Reporting Engine", so I suppose that phrase
> will continue to appear in English?!  And the non-Swedish word
> Fundraising is already in the URL, so there is little point in
> trying to translate "Fundraising C.O.R.E.".

Understood. David Strauss, can we change this setting? For non-English
people, roughly half of the users it is not meaningful, I am afraid
too.. At least for Japanese, because the English word "Fundraising" is
an unfamiliar word for ordinary Japanese. I recommend you to give a
chance to translators what they decide to; to leave it or to translate
into their language entirely.

> Judging from the French and Czech translations of the website, the
> phrases "Coming soon: RSS feeds and maybe an IRC bot", "We're
> working on translating this site into multiple languages. You can
> help." and "Languages" still appear in English, as does the
> navigation bar with "Gift Policy" and "Old Fundraising Records"
>
> I give up.

I think I can understand your frustration. It is not only frustrating
but also rather waste of work, because the horizontal navigation
(blue) can be easily filled with [[Wikimedia:Template:Fundraising
menu-xx]] or just asking some additional translations.
"Languages" are better to add to the request list ... David, would you
please consider those additional stuffs?

And I have no idea if it is good or not to represent English with UK
national flag. Is it controvertial for many language communities or
not?
Cheers,
--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *


from_name: Raimond Spekking

subject: [Wikitech-l] SVN:  [18372] trunk/phase3 Special:Booksources

body:
robchurch at svn.wikimedia.org schrieb:
> Revision: 18372
> Author:   robchurch
> Date:     2006-12-16 11:20:44 -0800 (Sat, 16 Dec 2006)
>
> Log Message:
> -----------
> * (bug 8164) Special:Booksources should use GET for form submission
> * Rewrite Special:Booksources to clean up interface and remove redundant code

>
> Modified: trunk/phase3/languages/messages/MessagesEn.php
> ===================================================================
>
> +# Book sources
>  'booksources'	=> 'Book sources',
>  'booksources-summary'	=> '',

booksources-summary is defined but not used at the special page. Could
it be activated please?

See http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Booksources-summary and
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spezial:Booksources

Thanks a lot.

Raymond.

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from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-12-20

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

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Don't fall for the self-closing div... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Always escape literal '>' in output, not just after '<'... FAILED!

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

Passed 462 of 481 tests (96.05%)... FAILED!


body:
On 12/20/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/20/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We're getting there.
>
> Can you quantify that at all? Crap articles are being created far
> faster than old articles are being improved. That much seems obvious.
>
I can't quantify it in any checkable way, Steve, but it's my strong
impression. Every day I see editors producing good sources without
being asked to, and that wasn't so common this time last year. When I
click on "random article," I'm seeing a significantly higher
percentage of better written, better sourced pages. When I look at new
pages, more of them seem to have sources than used to be the case;
usually only one source, but it's a start.


body:
Rob Church schrieb:
> On 19/12/06, Raimond Spekking <raimond.spekking-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> booksources-summary is defined but not used at the special page. Could
>> it be activated please?
>
> It seems to be redundant, what with "booksources-text", but since I
> don't read German all that well, I'm not sure whether I understand the
> purpose of the message right.

Sorry for using the German text.

"booksources-summary" should only be used if someone goes to the special
page directly: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spezial:Booksources?uselang=en

Maybe not very often but it's possible.
In this case "booksources-summary" is a little summary about the whole
purpose of this special page.

The German text (shortend) in English: "On this special page you can
enter an ISBN to get a list of libraries and bookstores. Dashes and
spaces are not relevant..."

On the result page "booksources-text" is enough.

Raymond.

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from_name: Ben P.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Woz contributed?

body:
"Steve Wozniak	2006-12-20 04:16:53	USD 200.00	200.00"

Either him, or someone who used his name.

-Ben


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Completely unreasonable block and behavior by admin
 friends of Itaqallah to win a content dispute

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

> It was a complex situation. [He] tends to present it with a lot of
>
>moral conclusions that I think overstep the evidence to a degree.
>
While I can't quite grasp the arguments about the numberof dervishes
Muhammed can spin on the head of a pin, I can still appreciate a well
turned euphemism.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-stupid WikiEN-l thread - Edition 4 I think

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

>charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
>
>
>>"James Hare" wrote
>>
>>
>>>- What is your favorite article on Wikipedia, and why?
>>>
>>>
>>[[List of glaciers]] is cool. I just think having such a list is great. I started it, admittedly, in an atypical moment, but the coolness and increments are due to others
>>
>>
>Wow, it's much expanded since I last looked at it, two years ago!
>
>Looks like it's ready for the flaming debate on inclusion - "all
>glaciers are notable" vs "icecruft", which Google shows to be a term
>waiting to be coined... :-)
>
A hot flame war could melt glaciers, resulting in a loss of notability. :-)

Ec


body:
David Gerard wrote:

>>>- Favorite anything?
>>>
>>>
>>penis
>>
>>
>US Highway Penis!
>
aka the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile. :-)

Ec


from_name: Luna

subject:
[Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy affects
	other communities

body:
For what it's worth, I'm not entirely sure if the policy is a good idea.
It's a bit of a moot point, anyway -- as has been mentioned, the whole
thing'll be pretty redundant, once we get single login.

And all else aside, is this really the sort of issue the foundation needs to
deal with? Seems this thread might be more appropriate for wikipedia-l or
wikien-l, personally.

Just my thoughts,
-Luna


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy affects
 other communities

body:
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Hash: SHA1

Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> What Aphaia means is that people have asked to change their Japanese
> name because of the insistence of the English project that people have a
> Latin name. With the long hoped for single login this policy of the
> English Wikipedia HAS to go the way of the dinosaur. It is unfortunate
> that this policy is still active.

No such policy exists, far as I know. If some vigilante group is trying
to enforce it, they need to be told that Wikipedia and Wikimedia have no
such restriction.

Of course people are free to change their usernames if they wish.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising update

body:
On 12/17/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> It'd be nice if we implemented something so that on each project, it would
> check if the user is from the US or from a country where they have a branch
> that can do tax deductability, and then put a link to tax deductability info
> if they can get tax deducs.

Nope. Where you are at the time you donate does not say where you are
getting your tax deductibility. I've just received two requests for a
French (as in France based) tax-deductibility form from donors living
in Finland and the UK, among others.

So, agreed with Brad, the link should stay, even for other languages.
There might be travellers to Hungary learning Hungarian who are US
tax-payers ;-)

Cheers,

Delphine
--
~notafish
NB. This address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to
this address will probably get lost.


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising update


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric
	policy affects other communities

body:
Forwarding from foundation-l, after a brief discussion between myself and
the original poster. See more at:
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-December/thread.html

"English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy affects other communities" --
specifically, our username policy, and the practice of blocking non-Latin
usernames on sight.

Seems a number of multi-wiki users have felt pushed away or chagrined by
this policy. Single-login seems like it might render the whole thing a moot
point -- are we ready for the implications of that? Or does anything need to
be done? Do we know how single-login will affect each wiki's ability to set
and enforce a username policy, and if so, should changes to the policy
result?

Myself, I'm not sure of the answers to any of these questions, just yet. But
it seems like we may as well discuss it.

Apologies if I just happened to miss a prior thread -- if it's already
happened, I don't remember seeing it.

-Luna

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com>
Date: Dec 20, 2006 12:07 AM
Subject: [Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy affects other
communities
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>

Hello,
today a user on Japanese Wikipedia whose account is in Kana (a
Japanese script) came to our Admins' noticeboard to request for
chaning his username. He said he would have liked to do so because he
had changed his username on English Wikipedia.

I repeat again the English Wikipedia community should reconsider how
shameful and discriptive policy they has about users' identity and
respect of cultural diversity, and how badly it affects other
communities. I am very sorry to see such a request fullfiled to our
request page.

Cheers,
--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


body:
On 12/20/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Luna, I think we can watch this matter at least from three sides.
> A. It is a matter of English Wikipedia, so you should go there.
> B. It is a cross project matter so much wider area is needed.
> C. It is relevant to single sign-in and its consequences, which will
> affect all projects, so foundation-l level width of audience should be
> required.
>
> And on my side I take the view of C, so for me it is appropriate to
> bring it up here. But if you are interested in discussing it on
> wikien-l, I am happy to let you forward my mail.

Fair enough. :) Forwarded the opening post to wikien-l. If nothing else,
they'll be more aware of the discussion taking place here.

Myself, I'm still not sure what to make of it all. But it seems to be an
important discussion that's worth having.

-Luna


subject: [WikiEN-l] Woz contributed?

body:
On 12/20/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/20/06, Ben P. <blersia at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "Steve Wozniak  2006-12-20 04:16:53     USD 200.00      200.00"
> >
> > Either him, or someone who used his name.
> >
> > -Ben
>
> That's awesome! I bet that is him, seems like he would be the kind of
> guy to contribute.
>
> Incidentally, reading the list of donors and their comments is pretty
> fun. Like for instance:
>
> Anonymous
> Wiki is helping me get through medical school!! You all deserve the
> 120k I'm paying for this education. I'll give much more once I'm out!
>
> or
>
> Christian Goulet
> History will recognize Wikimedia as a breakthrough in the
> dissemination of human knowledge. Our help will reduce page loading
> delays!
>
> or
>
> Elad Yaniv
> I wish I could read Wikipedia as fast as it's being written...
>
> It's nice to read these things, you tend to forget all this stuff when
> all many of us experience are petty fights. It's nice to be reminded
> just how great wikipedia is.
>
> --Oskar
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

I agree, things like

*Anonymous*
wikipedia sucks

really brighten my day ;)


body:
On 12/20/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> > What Aphaia means is that people have asked to change their Japanese
> > name because of the insistence of the English project that people have a
> > Latin name. With the long hoped for single login this policy of the
> > English Wikipedia HAS to go the way of the dinosaur. It is unfortunate
> > that this policy is still active.
>
> No such policy exists, far as I know. If some vigilante group is trying
> to enforce it, they need to be told that Wikipedia and Wikimedia have no
> such restriction.
>
> Of course people are free to change their usernames if they wish.
>
> - -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFFiP7ZwRnhpk1wk44RAt9DAKCBq9YBmUletQK3cEVK/mnh6QnmDACgvYMu
> ufp5rPCKh04i7txTsEDV+vY=
> =Za7G
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

I also thought that the blocks were just done by admins and weren't actually
in policy, but it turns out that [[en:WP:USERNAME]] does indeed say "*Names
with non-Latin <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_alphabet>
characters:*Unfortunately, most of your fellow editors will be unable
to read a name
written in Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or other scripts. Many of
them will also be additionally burdened, as such names may be displayed for
them only as question marks ("??? ??"), squares ("??? ??"), replacement
characters ("??? ??") or worse, nonsense or
mojibake<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojibake>("?!%?s*"). If your
name is usually written in a non-Latin script, please
consider transliterating <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transliteration> it
to avoid confusion, and allow easier access to your talk page by typing your
name in the search field or URL bar." under the "Inappropriate usernames"
section. I'm about to go through the history to see when it was added.


body:
On 12/19/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> Aphaia wrote:
>
> The existing Swedish translation, made by two anonymous editors,
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_C.O.R.E./sv
> has at least two obvious spelling errors (that any spellchecker
> would reveal) and several phrases that just sound stupid.

I met a similar case on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_C.O.R.E./ja; an anon
created it and tried to help translating (considering on a good faith)
but apparently it was beyond his or her competence - translated three
Japanese phrases' n words were just stupid. Machine translation or
not. I have no idea.Only I can say it is too absurd for us to go it
online. Personally I believe in that things which happened twice would
be repeated unless some element changes drastically.

For C.O.R.E responsibile people, I recommend you to examine each
versions' history carefully and careful if all edits are submitted by
anon. No unproofread version would be welcome unless we are going to
take a risk to look as fools and  illiterate folks to make the CORE
multilingual.

Cheers,
--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *


body:
On 12/20/06, Rory Stolzenberg <rory096 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/20/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> >
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> > > What Aphaia means is that people have asked to change their Japanese
> > > name because of the insistence of the English project that people have
> > a
> > > Latin name. With the long hoped for single login this policy of the
> > > English Wikipedia HAS to go the way of the dinosaur. It is unfortunate
> > > that this policy is still active.
> >
> > No such policy exists, far as I know. If some vigilante group is trying
> > to enforce it, they need to be told that Wikipedia and Wikimedia have no
> > such restriction.
> >
> > Of course people are free to change their usernames if they wish.
> >
> > - -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
> > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
> >
> > iD8DBQFFiP7ZwRnhpk1wk44RAt9DAKCBq9YBmUletQK3cEVK/mnh6QnmDACgvYMu
> > ufp5rPCKh04i7txTsEDV+vY=
> > =Za7G
> > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
> I also thought that the blocks were just done by admins and weren't
> actually in policy, but it turns out that [[en:WP:USERNAME]] does indeed say
> " *Names with non-Latin <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_alphabet>characters:
> * Unfortunately, most of your fellow editors will be unable to read a name
> written in Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or other scripts. Many of
> them will also be additionally burdened, as such names may be displayed for
> them only as question marks ("??? ??"), squares ("??? ??"), replacement
> characters ("??? ??") or worse, nonsense or mojibake<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojibake>("?!%?s*"). If your name is usually written in a non-Latin script, please
> consider transliterating <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transliteration> it
> to avoid confusion, and allow easier access to your talk page by typing your
> name in the search field or URL bar." under the "Inappropriate usernames"
> section. I'm about to go through the history to see when it was added.
>

Surprisingly, I actually did what I said I would do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AUsername&diff=43879592&oldid=43878407is
the diff. There's nothing in the talk page archive at or before the
addition, though there is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Username/archive01#Usernames .
However, admins probably blocked for this well before the addition, and
there's all that stuff about policy reflecting current practice and whatnot.


subject: [Foundation-l] Additional Sitenotice message

body:
Hello,
I have seen it and started a translation into Japanese. I'll
appreciate your copyedit. > jafolks

Soon Brad will inform us I expect so my question will be answered
there - Is it okay to change the link target of "matching" from WMF
website to its language wikipedia or wiktionary, if a decent article
exists on the latter and there is no Fundraising FAQ available in that
language?

I confess my version of additional message is exactly such, so if
there is any problem, please rewrite it (I put a remark about this
change for our proofreader).

Cheers,
--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *


from_name: Birgitte SB

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

> On 20/12/06, Gerard Meijssen
> <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > What Aphaia means is that people have asked to
> change their Japanese
> > name because of the insistence of the English
> project that people have a
> > Latin name. With the long hoped for single login
> this policy of the
> > English Wikipedia HAS to go the way of the
> dinosaur. It is unfortunate
> > that this policy is still active.
>
>
> Ah, got it. In that case, Aphaia may care to post to
> wikien-l or to
> the various anti-vandalism pages on en:wp where the
> policy is
> implemented ... not to a list which very few en:wp
> editors actually
> read, as I believe was pointed out to her last time
> this came up.
>
> That is: actually make a slight effort to convince
> the people involved
> by consensus, rather than appearing to demand
> top-down imposition of a
> new policy on a wiki by the Foundation. That trick
> is somewhat less
> likely to work.
>
>
> - d.
>

Why are you assuming there has been not even a slight
effort to convince people?

That is: read the policy talk page

Perhaps before you criticize people for coming here
with a problem you could ask them what steps have
already been taken.  Then you will be better informed
to make reccomendations.  A slight effort to convince
people has had no effect.  If someone can come up with
actual numbers of people who are currently editing
en.WP as anons with non-latin usernames in their home
wikis, people might be more willing to listen.
Although at least one person does not believe it is a
hardship to ask these people to log out to edit en.WP.
 Information about how exactly user creation logs will
implemented would also help the discussion progress.

Birgitte SB

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


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

> On 20/12/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > The problem is fairly simple, people who speak
> only English don't
> > bother installing language support on their
> computers, even though
> > (AFAIK) it is included with all operating systems
> these days. All they
> > need to do is get their installation CD out and
> turn it on.
>
>
> The actual problem is similar characters in
> usernames (which I
> understand is being addressed) and distinguishing
> bot-gibberish from
> actual plausible names.
>
> en: gets stupendous amounts of vandalism, and it's a
> huge amount of
> botwork and semi-botwork just coping with it.
>
> Saying "you bad bad en: admins, stop doing this"
> won't make the actual
> vandalism problem go away. I eagerly await hearing
> responses on this
> thread that deal with the fact that there is an
> actual problem this
> was put in place as a response to. If ja: says "en:,
> stop doing this"
> without offering a solution, en: isn't going to take
> a whole lot of
> notice as the problem affects en: rather than ja:
>
>
> - d.
>

What is the problem with:

A) not blocking users who are obviously good faith

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/%E4%BB%A3%E8%A8%80%E4%BA%BA

B) Blocking usernames which actually vandalize

(After checking two dozen blocked account I agave up
finding an example of a non-latin vandal, but I do not
doubt that there are a few)

C) Watching the contributions of non-latin usernames
which have not made any contributions with an IRC bot
until they become either A or B

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/%EC%84%9C%EC%B0%AC%ED%98%B8

I do not see a problem that is hard to solve here.

Birgitte SB

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


from_name: sean at epoptic.com

body:
On Wed, Dec 20, 2006 at 02:48:48PM +0000, Thomas Dalton wrote:
> The issue isn't really ethnocentric, or language-centric, it's
> script-centric. SUL should have a feature that allows you to
> transliterate your name into various scripts (or even does it for you
> if possible, there isn't necessarily a one-to-one relationship between
> characters [or sequences of characters] in different scripts, so it
> could be quite hard) and it uses the appropriate one on each project.
> The same name written in two different scripts is still the same name,
> it's just written in a way that the people reading it can understand.
>
> It's not just a matter of distinguishing between two Japanese, say,
> names, it's also a matter of pronoucing them - it can slow down
> reading quite a lot of some of the words aren't pronouncible to you
> (even if you aren't reading out loud).

So ... what would you do about names like "Seabhcan" (or "Sean," for that
matter) that are pronounced in ways nonintuitive to most Anglophones?

--
 Sean Barrett     | I gazed into the abyss... the abyss gazed
 sean at epoptic.com | into me... neither of us cracked a smile.


from_name: Peter Ansell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Linksearch

body:
On 20/12/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> Anyone else think it would be good to be able to refine a linksearch
> by namespace?  Or can this be done with black magic already?
>
> Guy (JzG)

It can be done with google specials I am guessing.

I use 'site:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User: "blah" ' when I want to search
just user pages. Not sure how you would do it with article space
though.

Peter


from_name: James Hare

body:
Yes. Let's give it another 50 years for Single User Login and another 70,000
years for Stable Versions.

On 12/20/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hoi,
> It is not a matter of "you bad bad en.wikipedia admins". With single
> login there is no way this policy can be kept. Checking for characters
> that belong together is feasible. With a technology that will be
> implemented that allows for one user in all projects it is impossible to
> maintain that Latin characters are to be used throughout the whole of
> wikipedia. Suggesting that this is not to be implemented would be
> outrageous.
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
> David Gerard schreef:
> > On 20/12/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> The problem is fairly simple, people who speak only English don't
> >> bother installing language support on their computers, even though
> >> (AFAIK) it is included with all operating systems these days. All they
> >> need to do is get their installation CD out and turn it on.
> >>
> >
> >
> > The actual problem is similar characters in usernames (which I
> > understand is being addressed) and distinguishing bot-gibberish from
> > actual plausible names.
> >
> > en: gets stupendous amounts of vandalism, and it's a huge amount of
> > botwork and semi-botwork just coping with it.
> >
> > Saying "you bad bad en: admins, stop doing this" won't make the actual
> > vandalism problem go away. I eagerly await hearing responses on this
> > thread that deal with the fact that there is an actual problem this
> > was put in place as a response to. If ja: says "en:, stop doing this"
> > without offering a solution, en: isn't going to take a whole lot of
> > notice as the problem affects en: rather than ja:
> >
> >
> > - d.
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
SJ Klein schreef:
> On Tue, 19 Dec 2006, Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>
>> Aphaia wrote:
>>
>>> And I have no idea if it is good or not to represent English with UK
>>> national flag. Is it controvertial for many language communities or
>>> not?
>>>
>> Please don't use flags to represent languages, ever.
>>
>
> Seconded.
>
> It could be neat to have small icons with two-letter codes in them to
> represent each language; they could have color to make them easy to pick
> out of a list.  I feel I've seen a good example of this before, but can't
> recall where.
>
> SJ
Hoi,
Most languages do not have two-letter codes, most are what is called in
the Standard world "alpha three". They are of the ISO-639-2 and
ISO-639-3. All these codes are in lower case. Examples can be found in
some applications that deal with multiple languages.
Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [WikiEN-l] Linksearch

body:
On 20/12/06, Rory Stolzenberg <rory096 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/19/06, Peter Ansell <ansell.peter at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 20/12/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> > > Anyone else think it would be good to be able to refine a linksearch
> > > by namespace?  Or can this be done with black magic already?
> > >
> > > Guy (JzG)
> >
> > It can be done with google specials I am guessing.
> >
> > I use 'site:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User: "blah" ' when I want to search
> > just user pages. Not sure how you would do it with article space
> > though.
> >
> > Peter
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> He's referring to [[Special:Linksearch]].

Sorry, my bad.

Google doesn't let you put its link: and site: modifiers together in
any useful way for this purpose anyhow.

Peter


from_name: Rich Holton

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric
 policy affects other communities

body:
Andrey wrote:
> We talk about the English-language Wikipedia here, no? Other Wikimedia
> projects allow usernames in non-Latin scripts, as best I know. For instance,
> in Russian wikipedia, you may get a username in Cyrillic. Most complaints
> are from those editors who have a non-Latin username in their national
> wikipedia and fail to see why they can't keep it in English wikipedia. Best,
> Andrey
>
Single User Login (SUL) _is_ coming soon. This means that someone with a
login on the Russian Wikipedia will be able to have the same username on
the English Wikipedia (just as an example).

The question is, are we ready for this?

-Rich


body:
Anthere wrote:
> Rich Holton wrote:
>> Andrey wrote:
>>
>>> We talk about the English-language Wikipedia here, no? Other Wikimedia
>>> projects allow usernames in non-Latin scripts, as best I know. For instance,
>>> in Russian wikipedia, you may get a username in Cyrillic. Most complaints
>>> are from those editors who have a non-Latin username in their national
>>> wikipedia and fail to see why they can't keep it in English wikipedia. Best,
>>> Andrey
>>>
>> Single User Login (SUL) _is_ coming soon. This means that someone with a
>> login on the Russian Wikipedia will be able to have the same username on
>> the English Wikipedia (just as an example).
>>
>> The question is, are we ready for this?
>>
>> -Rich
>> _______________________________________________
>
> More than "will be able to have". "Will have to have".
> It will be one account for all projects.
>
> Ant
>
Yes. Thanks for that important clarification.
-Rich


body:
Hoi,
If a tool is used to support the Wikimedia Foundation that does not
support the languages that MediaWiki supports, the question would be to
what extend is the tool useful when it is severely lacking in the
language support. By the looks of it Drupal supports only a fraction of
the languages that MediaWiki supports.

Let me be clear, I am not saying that we should take the current Drupal
functionality immediately.. that would be expensive :) I am saying that
we need to have a strategy for the other stuff that needs localising.
When we cannot translate into the languages where we have people willing
to help like for Cherokee, the use of Drupal becomes problematic. Do not
suggest that these people are welcome to translate all of Drupal that is
not realistic.

Thanks,
    GerardM

Rory Stolzenberg schreef:
> On 12/19/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>> Aphaia wrote:
>>
>>
>>> On 12/20/06, SJ Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> It could be neat to have small icons with two-letter codes in them to
>>>> represent each language; they could have color to make them easy to pick
>>>> out of a list.  I feel I've seen a good example of this before, but
>>>>
>> can't
>>
>>>> recall where.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Much better, and in which script? Such letter-codes most of its
>>> speakers are simply unfamiliar might make no sense ...
>> Aphaia,
>>
>> Can someone plug in the Cherokee translation I finished. I would like to
>> read the fundraising results on my native language.
>>
>> please?
>>
>> Jeff
>
> As I understand it, we can't. The Fundraising CORE is based on [[Drupal]],
> which has language packs included (see
> http://drupal.org/project/Translations ). The language packs translate about
> 85% of the site already, and the things translated at [[m:Fundraising
> C.O.R.E.]] are just what David Strauss added. If we just instituted that,
> most of the site still wouldn't be translated.
> _______________________________________________


from_name: Mohamed Ibrahim

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising update

body:
Hello,

shouldn't we change [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice_id]] to 1 or sth to unhide the
message for those who already dismissed it?
I guess this's a modification that everybody should see, right?

Cheers,

On 12/20/06, Brad Patrick <bpatrick at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> A new sitenotice is being rolled out to call attention to this
> unprecedented generosity from our friend.  We sincerely appreciate our
> anonymous donor's decision to provide for the Foundation in this way.
>
> It is our sincere hope that you will take advantage of this opportunity
> to leverage your donation to support the Foundation.
>
> -Brad
>

--
[[User:Mido]]
- Arabic Wikipedia: http://ar.wikipedia.org/  "Share your knowledge"


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising update


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 20/12/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:

> I repeat again the English Wikipedia community should reconsider how
> shameful and discriptive policy they has about users' identity and
> respect of cultural diversity, and how badly it affects other
> communities. I am very sorry to see such a request fullfiled to our
> request page.

Er, what on earth? You mean, that en:wp allowing name changes is
"shameful"? Please believe me when I say that this statement of yours
makes no sense in English.

It is entirely unclear why what you are describing is a problem with
en:wp rather than a problem with this individual user.

It is also not clear what word you meant by "discriptive."

- d.


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Foundation-l] Oversight rights

body:
On 12/20/06, Jon Harald S?by <jhsoby at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> oversight globallt, much like [[m:RfCU]]. However, since requests for
> oversighting will naturally be a lot more sensitive than requests for
> checkuser information,
[snip]

This is almost off-topic because it doesn't impact the main point of
your post, we still do need a way of dealing with oversight requests,
but I think this needs to be said:

Oversight can, with great annoyance, be undone. Oversight's only real
risk is causing misleading attribution, but the same thing is true of
deletion so long as your standard of misleading is focused on casual
readers rather admins (as it should be).

The effect of an inappropriate release of checkuser data is an
irreparable loss of privacy. I wouldn't go so far as saying that a
carelessly performed checkuser could be life threatening, since if
your life is on the line over any websites ability to protect your
privacy thats your mistake.. but it is clear that often the result of
a mistake made with checkuser data can not simply be undone.

As such I don't think we should get in the practice of considering
oversight a more sensitive privilege than checkuser.


subject: [Foundation-l] Oversight rights


body:
On 20/12/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> What Aphaia means is that people have asked to change their Japanese
> name because of the insistence of the English project that people have a
> Latin name. With the long hoped for single login this policy of the
> English Wikipedia HAS to go the way of the dinosaur. It is unfortunate
> that this policy is still active.

Ah, got it. In that case, Aphaia may care to post to wikien-l or to
the various anti-vandalism pages on en:wp where the policy is
implemented ... not to a list which very few en:wp editors actually
read, as I believe was pointed out to her last time this came up.

That is: actually make a slight effort to convince the people involved
by consensus, rather than appearing to demand top-down imposition of a
new policy on a wiki by the Foundation. That trick is somewhat less
likely to work.

- d.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising update

body:
On 12/20/06, Mohamed Ibrahim <mido.architect at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> shouldn't we change [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice_id]] to 1 or sth to unhide the
> message for those who already dismissed it?
> I guess this's a modification that everybody should see, right?

Yep, and done. Any significant updates should be accompanied by a
counter update...
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising update


from_name: theProject

subject: [WikiEN-l] Woz contributed?

body:
On 12/20/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I agree, things like
> >
> > *Anonymous*
> > wikipedia sucks
> >
> > really brighten my day ;)
>
> Hey, he contributed 1 canadian dollar! That's something :)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Thank goodness it's not several years ago, when that was worth about three
American cents...

--
theProject


body:
David Gerard schreef:
> On 20/12/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> I repeat again the English Wikipedia community should reconsider how
>> shameful and discriptive policy they has about users' identity and
>> respect of cultural diversity, and how badly it affects other
>> communities. I am very sorry to see such a request fullfiled to our
>> request page.
>>
>
>
> Er, what on earth? You mean, that en:wp allowing name changes is
> "shameful"? Please believe me when I say that this statement of yours
> makes no sense in English.
>
> It is entirely unclear why what you are describing is a problem with
> en:wp rather than a problem with this individual user.
>
> It is also not clear what word you meant by "discriptive."
>
>
> - d
>
Hoi,
What Aphaia means is that people have asked to change their Japanese
name because of the insistence of the English project that people have a
Latin name. With the long hoped for single login this policy of the
English Wikipedia HAS to go the way of the dinosaur. It is unfortunate
that this policy is still active.
Thanks,
    GerardM


body:
David Gerard schreef:
> On 20/12/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> What Aphaia means is that people have asked to change their Japanese
>> name because of the insistence of the English project that people have a
>> Latin name. With the long hoped for single login this policy of the
>> English Wikipedia HAS to go the way of the dinosaur. It is unfortunate
>> that this policy is still active.
>>
>
>
> Ah, got it. In that case, Aphaia may care to post to wikien-l or to
> the various anti-vandalism pages on en:wp where the policy is
> implemented ... not to a list which very few en:wp editors actually
> read, as I believe was pointed out to her last time this came up.
>
> That is: actually make a slight effort to convince the people involved
> by consensus, rather than appearing to demand top-down imposition of a
> new policy on a wiki by the Foundation. That trick is somewhat less
> likely to work.
>
>
> - d.
>
Hoi,
It is the technology that determines that this policy cannot be
continued after the start of single login. This has nothing to do with
convincing, the decision to have single login has been made. It is just
one of its obvious consequences.

I am not really involved in the en.wikipedia and I certainly do not feel
a need to be the messenger of this "good" news.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
On 12/19/06, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 12/18/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Assuming that a {{subst:}} works recursively and automatically, which
> > I really don't know...  My MediaWiki installation is outside my
> > immediate hands-on test radius unfortunately.
> >
>
> Temporary substing is something to explore. But it would have its own
> problems, I think -- meta templates aren't substed when you subst the main
> template, from my experience. Substing all the infoboxes and other templates
> on a page can make it pretty ugly, too... unless we were thinking about
> copying all the templates to temporary subpages?

If you just want to recursively transclude all templates, there is a
page for that, [[Special:Expand templates]]. This will transform all
template code into static wikicode (including dynamic stuff like
{{#if}}s and dates and whatnot). It tends to produce a heck of a lot
of wikicode though.

> An adminbot is starting to sound a bit more tempting, from my end. Any bot
> would be able to find and protect TFA, and absolutely everything transcluded
> onto it, pretty easily, I think. Though I don't imagine that'll be an easy
> sell. Might be easier to see if we can get pgkbot to report all edits to
> that set of pages in the IRC counter-vandalism channels.
>
> Still just brainstorming, here.
> -Luna
> _______________________________________________
> 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: X P

subject:
[WikiEN-l] issue with an admin refusing to allow me "right to
	vanish"

body:
An administrator, CHAIRBOY, has accused me on User:XP of being some banned
user. I have no interest, having seen the prolonged wars that can develop
from these things, of participating further in Wikipedia. However, I choose
to exercise my right to vanish and specifically requested that my talk page
be blanked, protected, and hidden from non-admins. However, this
administrator has now twice reverted me on my own talk page, including with
use of the admin revert tool--which, as far as I know, is a violation.

Why am I not allowed to blank and vacate my own talk page, and have it
protected afterwards to keep troll comments off of it? This CHAIRBOY
individual has taken ownership of my talk page.

- XP


subject: [WikiEN-l] Woz contributed?

body:
On 12/20/06, Ben P. <blersia at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Steve Wozniak  2006-12-20 04:16:53     USD 200.00      200.00"
>
> Either him, or someone who used his name.
>
> -Ben

That's awesome! I bet that is him, seems like he would be the kind of
guy to contribute.

Incidentally, reading the list of donors and their comments is pretty
fun. Like for instance:

Anonymous
Wiki is helping me get through medical school!! You all deserve the
120k I'm paying for this education. I'll give much more once I'm out!

or

Christian Goulet
History will recognize Wikimedia as a breakthrough in the
dissemination of human knowledge. Our help will reduce page loading
delays!

or

Elad Yaniv
I wish I could read Wikipedia as fast as it's being written...

It's nice to read these things, you tend to forget all this stuff when
all many of us experience are petty fights. It's nice to be reminded
just how great wikipedia is.

--Oskar


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR (contd)

body:
On 12/20/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > 3. Sarah points out the following text from WP:NOR :
> >       "anyone--without specialist knowledge--who reads the
> >       primary source should be able to verify that the Wikipedia
> >       passage agrees with the primary source. Any interpretation
> >       of primary source material requires a secondary source."
> >   That seems to be broken.  Examples of specialist knowledge
> >   which might be required are the ability to read a foreign
> >   language and the ability to understand mathematical notation.
> >
> >   Someone who can read music should be able to report from
> >   a musical score that it is in E-flat, even though that requires
> >   specialist knowledge.  What the policy *should* require
> >   (somehow) is that anyone who can read music will agree that
> >   the score is in E-flat.  The fundamental skills of the field
> >   should be assumed, and the policy should reflect that, imo.

In all seriousness, I think the policy should be that any special knowledge
needed to understand the article should be included somewhere in Wikipedia.
For example, the above knowledge is included at [[key signature]] and at
[[E-flat major]].

Thus if the example article read

"The [[key (music)|key]] of the score is [[E-flat major]]<ref>[link to
score]</ref>..."

Any person with the knowledge contained at those links would be able to
understand the reference.


from_name: Jon Harald Søby

body:
On 12/20/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
>
> No such policy exists, far as I know. If some vigilante group is trying
> to enforce it, they need to be told that Wikipedia and Wikimedia have no
> such restriction.
>
> Of course people are free to change their usernames if they wish.
>
> - -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
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> ufp5rPCKh04i7txTsEDV+vY=
> =Za7G
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

Actually, it does; from [[WP:U#Inappropriate usernames]]:

"Names with non-Latin characters: Unfortunately, most of your fellow
editors will be unable to read a name written in Cyrillic, Chinese,
Japanese, Korean, or other scripts. Many of them will also be
additionally burdened, as such names may be displayed for them only as
question marks ("??? ??"), squares ("??? ??"), replacement characters
("??? ??") or worse, nonsense or mojibake ("?!%?s*"). If your name is
usually written in a non-Latin script, please consider transliterating
it to avoid confusion, and allow easier access to your talk page by
typing your name in the search field or URL bar."

I can understand the rationale for this policy, but it _is_
ethnocentric, and it counters the problem from the wrong side, if you
know what I mean. Instead of trying to fix the problem, they try to
remove it.

--
Best regards,
Jon Harald S?by

Website - http://www.alqualonde.com/
Wikipedia - http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Jhs
MSN messenger - jhsoby at gmail.com
Skype - jon.harald.soby


from_name: Parker Peters

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Completely unreasonable block and behavior by admin
	friends of Itaqallah to win a content dispute

body:
On 12/16/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Incidentally, RunedChozo did not consist of the 'other' side of the
> > debate.
> > > > Nobody reverted to RunedChozo when they could have,
> > >
> > >
> > > Arrow740 did.
> > >
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Muhammad_as_a_diplomat&diff=93017548&oldid=92958469
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > So did Proabivouac.
> > >
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Muhammad_as_a_diplomat&diff=93030627&oldid=93019838
> >
> > >
> >
> >
> > See:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Muhammad_as_a_diplomat&diff=92516142&oldid=92473890
> >
> > - or how about this:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Muhammad_as_a_diplomat&diff=92554279&oldid=92516142
> >
> > - Proabivouac reverts to Alecmconroy instead of one forward to
> > RunedChozo,
> > where the only diff between the two was the insertion of that OR. or;
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Muhammad_as_a_diplomat&diff=92761790&oldid=92737777
> > where Proabivouac again reverts to three versions back to Arrow instead
> > of
> > two versions back to RunedChozo, where the diff between the two is that
> > same
> > OR (minus a lead tag).
> >
> > You're out of line, mister.
> >
> >
> > Spare me the rhetoric, please.
>
>
> No, you're out of line. Every edit YOU point to predates the introduction
> of source, after which they started reverting to RunedChozo's version with
> source. And you've yet to satisfactorily provide any evidence for your
> assertion that the source doesn't support it, beyond your say-so.
>
> I don't think you are being honest here.
>
> Parker
>

Well, I'm off for the holidays, you all have fun, enjoy the season, Merry
Christmas to those who'll take it, and all that.

I'll revisit this once I return.

Parker


subject: [Foundation-l] Oversight rights

body:
On 20/12/06, Jon Harald S?by <jhsoby at gmail.com> wrote:

> Recently, Tim enabled [[m:Oversight]] on all wikis (earlier it was
> only enabled on en: and test:). En en: the situation is "under
> control", as the Arbitration Committee handles and decides upon
> requests about oversight status. For other wikis, however, there are
> no policies on the matter, so we need to make one (since oversight is
> about the same level as checkuser). My suggestion is that we should
> use the checkuser requirements for oversight as well (e.g. more than
> 25 votes, 70%-80% support, at least two users meeting these criteria).
> What do you think about this?
> Also, I think a system should be established for stewards to perform
> oversight globallt, much like [[m:RfCU]]. However, since requests for
> oversighting will naturally be a lot more sensitive than requests for
> checkuser information, I think that we should use a mailing list for
> such requests, either using the existing oversight-l or stewards-l, or
> creating a new mailing list, for example oversight-requests-l or
> something like that, so that people can send their requests there, to
> be handled by stewards. Does that sound like a good idea?

Possibly. [[:en:Wikipedia:Oversight]] is the page that explains how to
request oversighting.

Note that oversighting is only for material so sensitive that not even
admins on the wiki should be allowed to see it. We have over a
thousand admins on en:, so are at a stage where we need this. It's not
for vandalism, copyright violations, etc. - only for material that
could be personally dangerous to someone.

The en: oversighters already say "no" to a lot of requests from people
who want to remove their own silly past edits from the record, admins
who don't want to hand-check lots of boxes to delete one bad revision,
etc.

I suspect most wikis won't actually *need* oversight as yet - en:wp
gets maybe one or two actionable requests a day.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Oversight rights


subject: [WikiEN-l] Woz contributed?

body:
On 20/12/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> Rory Stolzenberg wrote:

> > I agree, things like
> > *Anonymous*
> > wikipedia sucks
> > really brighten my day ;)

> Hey, he contributed 1 canadian dollar! That's something :)

Indeed! It's someone applying {{sofixit}} in cash rather than edits!

(I've been suggesting to people that if they don't have cash they can
contribute photos and writing ...)

- d.


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
Steve Block wrote:

> Make the whole of template space editable by admins only, and loosen the
> grip on adminship.  Templates are probably an area which should be kept
> to trusted users, and admins are our trusted users.  Might make the
> community face up to rewiring RFA.

Or resurrect the middle option, like the idea of giving trusted users the
rollback function.  Even trusted users wouldn't get the admin bit if it
were loosened, but would be perfectly trusted to have access to something
like that.

-Jeff

--
If you can read this, I'm not at home.


from_name: Jason Burnett

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Suggestion for Fundraising

body:
Hey all,

Please forgive me if this is an inappropriate post as it is my first. In
reviewing a lot of the FAQs about Donations and Donation Matching, I thought
that perhaps it could be a great idea if sites could offer to their users
the ability to pledge a donation in their name.

My thought was this: a small Donate to Wikipedia in __________'s name. could
be placed on e-commerce sites that would allow people to add $1 or $2 to
their order, knowing that it would be donated to Wikipedia. I would be much
more inclined to donate $100. or more to Wikipedia if I could do it at $1
increments and wrap my donation up in my business expenditures. Then
businesses that strongly support Wikipedia could proudly post their
donations on their sites where they could show user contributions as well as
their own donations and the amount they matched, for example. This would
simultaneously boost support for Wikipedia financially, but moreover would
increase public awareness of Wikipedia (Wikimedia as well).

I have given it a great deal of thought, but wanted to pass it by the list
before I spent any more time on the issue. You see I have an expense account
that allows me to purchase equipment//software, etc. and could easily get
away with (legitimately--no deceit) rationalizing the occasional small
donation as part of my expense. But, unfortunately, I have little or no
money personally to donate and I cherish Wikipedia: A day without Wikipedia
is like a day without sunshine.

I am trying to get my company to make at least a small donation since we use
Wikipedia nearly every day and find it to be a terrific resource. Keep up
the great work.

Jase


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] Translations fundraising.wikimedia.org

body:
On 12/20/06, SJ Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
> It could be neat to have small icons with two-letter codes in them to
> represent each language; they could have color to make them easy to pick
> out of a list.  I feel I've seen a good example of this before, but can't
> recall where.

Much better, and in which script? Such letter-codes most of its
speakers are simply unfamiliar might make no sense ...

--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Linksearch

body:
On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 16:24:42 -0800, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:

>I'm not aware of any current black magic solutions to sort by namespace,
>unfortunately, although it seems like Javascript would proooobably be up to
>the task. I'd also be intrigued if we could sort [[Special:Whatlinkshere]]
>results by namespace.

OK.  Time for a feature request, then.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [Foundation-l] Oversight rights

body:
Recently, Tim enabled [[m:Oversight]] on all wikis (earlier it was
only enabled on en: and test:). En en: the situation is "under
control", as the Arbitration Committee handles and decides upon
requests about oversight status. For other wikis, however, there are
no policies on the matter, so we need to make one (since oversight is
about the same level as checkuser). My suggestion is that we should
use the checkuser requirements for oversight as well (e.g. more than
25 votes, 70%-80% support, at least two users meeting these criteria).
What do you think about this?

Also, I think a system should be established for stewards to perform
oversight globallt, much like [[m:RfCU]]. However, since requests for
oversighting will naturally be a lot more sensitive than requests for
checkuser information, I think that we should use a mailing list for
such requests, either using the existing oversight-l or stewards-l, or
creating a new mailing list, for example oversight-requests-l or
something like that, so that people can send their requests there, to
be handled by stewards. Does that sound like a good idea?

--
Best regards,
Jon Harald S?by

Website - http://www.alqualonde.com/
Wikipedia - http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Jhs
MSN messenger - jhsoby at gmail.com
Skype - jon.harald.soby


subject: [Foundation-l] Oversight rights


subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:

> A middle option sounds good. I'm not sure how it should be handed out
> - an automatic system would be good, but would probably be easy to get
> around. A manual system would be a lot of work... (there are lots of
> trustworthy wikipedians).

Yeah, but if it was on a voluntary basis, it wouldn't be that much work
after the initial rush.  Not every trusted user would want/need access to
templates, for instance.

-Jeff

--
If you can read this, I'm not at home.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Woz contributed?

body:
> I agree, things like
>
> *Anonymous*
> wikipedia sucks
>
> really brighten my day ;)

Hey, he contributed 1 canadian dollar! That's something :)


body:
On 20/12/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:

> The problem is fairly simple, people who speak only English don't
> bother installing language support on their computers, even though
> (AFAIK) it is included with all operating systems these days. All they
> need to do is get their installation CD out and turn it on.

The actual problem is similar characters in usernames (which I
understand is being addressed) and distinguishing bot-gibberish from
actual plausible names.

en: gets stupendous amounts of vandalism, and it's a huge amount of
botwork and semi-botwork just coping with it.

Saying "you bad bad en: admins, stop doing this" won't make the actual
vandalism problem go away. I eagerly await hearing responses on this
thread that deal with the fact that there is an actual problem this
was put in place as a response to. If ja: says "en:, stop doing this"
without offering a solution, en: isn't going to take a whole lot of
notice as the problem affects en: rather than ja:

- d.


from_name: Brion Vibber

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

Aphaia wrote:
> Japanese editors around me is worried when they would be forced to
> change their username and thought SUL as the Coming of such Latin-name
> age.

That is 100% FALSE.

NO SUCH REQUIREMENT WILL EXIST.

SINGLE LOGIN WILL NOT REQUIRE ANYONE TO CHANGE THEIR USERNAME TO LATIN.

PLEASE REPLY TO SUCH RUMORS THAT IT IS FALSE.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Hello

body:
On 12/19/06, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> Another example that recently occurred. In the Article on [[Sophia
> Yakovlevna Parnok]], the Categories, 'Poets', 'Russian poets', & 'Jewish
> poets' were each included. An editor came along and deleted the 'Poets'
> Category, saying it was a 'duplicate category'. If I now clicked on that
> Main Category, 'Poets' would Sophia Yakovlevna Parnok, the poet be included
> in that list?

According to the vague proposal I'm suggesting? Yes, for some
definition of "included". Probably articles should be shown grouped,
but on the same page. And there should be much more interesting things
done with categories that would also include these "subcategories".

I wonder, how should this relationship be expressed? Some extension to
the [[Category:...]] notation? [[Category:Poets||Isa]] ? Definitely a
poor man's semantic MediaWiki but a start?

Steve


from_name: Abigail Brady

body:
On 12/20/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Aren't they used to using transliterated versions of their name in other
> situations either?

I'm sure we would get less complaints about this issue if we were
still using Latin1 on en. :)

--
Abi


subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR (contd)

body:
On 12/20/06, zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>  Someone who can read music should be able to report from
>  a musical score that it is in E-flat, even though that requires
>  specialist knowledge.  What the policy *should* require
>  (somehow) is that anyone who can read music will agree that
>  the score is in E-flat.  The fundamental skills of the field
>  should be assumed, and the policy should reflect that, imo.

Not for all music. There are scores for which it requires more than
trivial music knowledge to know whether it's C major, A minor or
atonal. But I'm quibbling :)

> 4. Sarah wrote: "We use writers as sources, not databases and
>  libraries."  Nobody suggested libraries.  I don't see that
>  databases are excluded by any existing policy, provided that
>  the process of extraction of the information from the database
>  is verifiable.

More generally: We can use *anything* as a source. We just have to use
each source for the *right purpose*. You wouldn't use even the most
detailed academic research paper by the most respected researcher on
molecular biology to back up a statement about Pokemon. And it's
perfectly acceptable to use a cheap trashy blog as a source to back up
the statement "as Smith himself wrote...".

So there are no good sources and bad sources - just misuses of sources.

>  Suppose I have a book about a serial killer, which lists all the
>  victims one by one.  I think it is perfectly ok to write "all the
>  victims were women" after looking up each case in the book.

You can cite the book, and even page numbers, so yeah.

>  It comes under "research that consists of collecting and
>  organizing information from existing primary and/or secondary
>  sources is, of course, strongly encouraged."(WP:NOR)  I can't
>  see how that is different *in principle* from reporting that all
>  the articles on a particular subject in a particular database
>  give the same story about something, provided that that
>  observation is one that anyone can verify.  Of course this
>  criterion might not always be satisfied, but that shouldn't
>  eliminate the cases where it is.

All these things are sliding scales. It's easy to objectively say "all
the victims were women". It's just *harder* to objectively say "all
the papers supported notion X". Maybe it's ok. Maybe it isn't.

Steve


body:
On 12/19/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually, that's making things worse; we're now using weasel words
> ("appears that", "probably is") to cover our original research ("the
> consensus is"). If we only have primary sources, then we say what the
> primary sources say. If we have a secondary source that says "the
> consensus of legal opinion is", then great. If not, then *we* cannot
> become that secondary source that draws that conclusion, partly
> because we're not experts in this field, but mostly because it's
> original research.  Remember, the second you say "the consensus is",
> you need to be able to state exactly who considers there to be a
> "consensus".  Otherwise you are "introducing an analysis or synthesis
> of established facts, ideas, opinions, or arguments in a way that
> builds a particular case favored by the editor, without attributing
> that analysis or synthesis to a reputable source."

Are you trying to define the pinnacle of perfection that every article
should strive for but ultimately very few will achieve? I'm trying to
find a workable compromise that will reduce the worst problems of OR
and alert the reader to weaknesses in the article.

There's a hard line and a soft line on a lot of this stuff. Pick a
random article on Wikipedia. Does it meet WP:V? Probably not. Do you
rip it to shreds, moving all material to the talk page pending
sources? Or do you use common sense and only remove material for which
lack of sources is going to be harmful to someone?

If we actually have the tertiary source that tells us that there is
consensus among secondary sources, then great, we'll obviously cite
it. But if we don't, we're doing our readers a disservice by avoiding
any mention of the general trend that we've found in our research. By
contrast, we help our readers if we can convey "It looks to us that
most researchers agree with X, but don't take our word for it".

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Main site live again

body:
On 12/20/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> After some database schema changes, we have started updating the live
> software on the site again. Visibly, this introduces a field on
> Special:Recentchanges showing the number of characters added or removed
> by each edit, giving an impression of the magnitude of changes.
>
> This figure has been available for some time on the IRC feeds of
> changes, but is now stored in the database for display in the recent
> changes list.

Can this (theoretically or practically) appear on the watchlist page as well?

Steve


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
This has nothing to do with ethnocentric-ness it's language-centric-ness.
The English Wikipedia is written in English so usernames should be in a
Latin font so English administrators know who a user is and don't have to
wriggle in all sorts of odd angles to refer to such a user or to block them
for example. Also, Japanese characters are sufficiently confusing for
Westerners to fall under the "Don't make a username that's too similar to
another user's" rule.

And then there's people whose system doesn't support Japanese/Chinese/Korean
font.
It's simply impossible for the English Wikipedia to handle this from a
practical standpoint.

Mgm

On 12/20/06, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Forwarding from foundation-l, after a brief discussion between myself and
> the original poster. See more at:
> http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-December/thread.html
>
> "English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy affects other communities" --
> specifically, our username policy, and the practice of blocking non-Latin
> usernames on sight.
>
> Seems a number of multi-wiki users have felt pushed away or chagrined by
> this policy. Single-login seems like it might render the whole thing a
> moot
> point -- are we ready for the implications of that? Or does anything need
> to
> be done? Do we know how single-login will affect each wiki's ability to
> set
> and enforce a username policy, and if so, should changes to the policy
> result?
>
> Myself, I'm not sure of the answers to any of these questions, just yet.
> But
> it seems like we may as well discuss it.
>
> Apologies if I just happened to miss a prior thread -- if it's already
> happened, I don't remember seeing it.
>
> -Luna
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com>
> Date: Dec 20, 2006 12:07 AM
> Subject: [Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy affects
> other
> communities
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>
> Hello,
> today a user on Japanese Wikipedia whose account is in Kana (a
> Japanese script) came to our Admins' noticeboard to request for
> chaning his username. He said he would have liked to do so because he
> had changed his username on English Wikipedia.
>
> I repeat again the English Wikipedia community should reconsider how
> shameful and discriptive policy they has about users' identity and
> respect of cultural diversity, and how badly it affects other
> communities. I am very sorry to see such a request fullfiled to our
> request page.
>
> Cheers,
> --
> KIZU Naoko
> Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
> * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-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
>


body:
Aren't they used to using transliterated versions of their name in other
situations either?

Mgm

On 12/20/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This has nothing to do with ethnocentric-ness it's language-centric-ness.
> The English Wikipedia is written in English so usernames should be in a
> Latin font so English administrators know who a user is and don't have to
> wriggle in all sorts of odd angles to refer to such a user or to block them
> for example. Also, Japanese characters are sufficiently confusing for
> Westerners to fall under the "Don't make a username that's too similar to
> another user's" rule.
>
> And then there's people whose system doesn't support
> Japanese/Chinese/Korean font.
> It's simply impossible for the English Wikipedia to handle this from a
> practical standpoint.
>
> Mgm
>
>
>  On 12/20/06, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Forwarding from foundation-l, after a brief discussion between myself
> > and
> > the original poster. See more at:
> >
> > http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-December/thread.html
> >
> > "English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy affects other communities" --
> > specifically, our username policy, and the practice of blocking
> > non-Latin
> > usernames on sight.
> >
> > Seems a number of multi-wiki users have felt pushed away or chagrined by
> > this policy. Single-login seems like it might render the whole thing a
> > moot
> > point -- are we ready for the implications of that? Or does anything
> > need to
> > be done? Do we know how single-login will affect each wiki's ability to
> > set
> > and enforce a username policy, and if so, should changes to the policy
> > result?
> >
> > Myself, I'm not sure of the answers to any of these questions, just yet.
> > But
> > it seems like we may as well discuss it.
> >
> > Apologies if I just happened to miss a prior thread -- if it's already
> > happened, I don't remember seeing it.
> >
> > -Luna
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com>
> > Date: Dec 20, 2006 12:07 AM
> > Subject: [Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy affects
> > other
> > communities
> > To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> >
> > Hello,
> > today a user on Japanese Wikipedia whose account is in Kana (a
> > Japanese script) came to our Admins' noticeboard to request for
> > chaning his username. He said he would have liked to do so because he
> > had changed his username on English Wikipedia.
> >
> > I repeat again the English Wikipedia community should reconsider how
> > shameful and discriptive policy they has about users' identity and
> > respect of cultural diversity, and how badly it affects other
> > communities. I am very sorry to see such a request fullfiled to our
> > request page.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > --
> > KIZU Naoko
> > Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
> > * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-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: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Hoi,
Let me inform you that we support projects in languages for which all
the glyphs needed to create UNICODE compatible fonts do not exist. For
many languages you can indeed turn on the support to make the characters
available. This does however not mean that you have learned to
distinguish these characters. What is relevant and reasonable is that we
disallow mixing characters that are not part of the characters used in
one language.
Thanks,
    GerardM

Stephen Bain schreef:
> On 12/20/06, Jon Harald S?by <jhsoby at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I can understand the rationale for this policy, but it _is_
>> ethnocentric, and it counters the problem from the wrong side, if you
>> know what I mean. Instead of trying to fix the problem, they try to
>> remove it.
>>
>
> I think it's horribly rude for the other admins on en: to be blocking
> people for using non-Latin characters in their username. A more polite
> approach would be to ask them to add a transliteration to their
> signature, that would satisfy many people.
>
> The problem is fairly simple, people who speak only English don't
> bother installing language support on their computers, even though
> (AFAIK) it is included with all operating systems these days. All they
> need to do is get their installation CD out and turn it on.


from_name: George Herbert

body:
On 12/20/06, Kusma <kusma.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/20/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This has nothing to do with ethnocentric-ness it's
> language-centric-ness.
> > The English Wikipedia is written in English so usernames should be in a
> > Latin font so English administrators know who a user is and don't have
> to
> > wriggle in all sorts of odd angles to refer to such a user or to block
> them
> > for example. Also, Japanese characters are sufficiently confusing for
> > Westerners to fall under the "Don't make a username that's too similar
> to
> > another user's" rule.
> >
> Convenience for enwiki administrators is no excuse for being rude to
> contributors from other language Wikipedias.
>
> > And then there's people whose system doesn't support
> Japanese/Chinese/Korean
> > font.
> > It's simply impossible for the English Wikipedia to handle this from a
> > practical standpoint.
> >
>
> We could stop blocking users who haven't done anything wrong, and only
> annoy them when their behaviour becomes a real instead of a potential
> problem (you know, assume good faith). If a user with a username in
> Telugu does nothing but add Telugu interwikilinks, why should I care
> that I can't read their username? Once the weird-looking username is
> used for vandalism, we can assume bad faith and block it. In most
> other cases, an ASCII sig and (if the user agrees) a username change
> should be enough if the user does more than add interwikilinks.
>
> It is also not nice of us to block people who might not be speaking
> English with a block message that they can't understand. If we block
> people who are here only to make interwikilinks because they want to
> use the same username as on their home wiki, we should at least
> provide a block message in their native language.
>
> Kusma

One major issue here has been impersonations using non-latin characters.

This already happens with "1" for "l", and "0" for "o" or "O".  It *is* a
problem; we've had numerous cases of impersonators, some of whom have been
very subtle vandals.  Adding more visually indistinct characters to the
username characters list is potentially real trouble.

I don't know that anyone really thought this all the way through, the
implications for enwiki policies combined with the future single-signon for
all wikipedia sites... 8-(

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: J.L.W.S. The Special One

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Begging letters on our blogs?

body:
That's why ads should be contextual (Google AdSense), not banner ads.

On 12/20/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/18/06, theProject <wp.theproject at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Someone's going to have to explain this to me. If the problem with Coca-Cola
> > buying advertisements on our site is that our article on them might be
> > perceived as not NPOV, then how is it any different if we accept a donation
> > from them? As far as I know, we do have a list of fairly big donors, and
> > some of them have articles.
>
> The nature of the relationship is different.  Consider the following
> two scenarios:
>
> 1) Starbucks signs a $20,000-a-month contract to place banner ads on
> Wikipedia.  Some time afterwards, it comes out that Starbucks has been
> manipulating the caffeine levels of their products to encourage repeat
> sales.  They tell us to keep it out of their article or they'll cancel
> the contract.  What does Wikipedia do?
>
> 2) Starbucks gives Wikipedia a $20,000 donation.  Some time
> afterwards, it comes out that Starbucks has been manipulating the
> caffeine levels of their products to encourage repeat sales.  They
> tell us to keep it out of their article.  Wikipedia puts it in the
> article and thumbs its collective nose at Starbucks.  What are they
> going to do, ask for their donation back?
>
> --
> Mark
> [[User:Carnildo]]
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Written with passion,
J.L.W.S. The Special One


body:
On 12/20/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> The actual problem is similar characters in usernames (which I
> understand is being addressed) and distinguishing bot-gibberish from
> actual plausible names.

Wikigod? Brion has already addressed this; it is no longer possible to
create usernames which uses several scripts. So you cannot mix Latin
and Cyrillic characters, or Latin and Greek, or even Greek and
Cyrillic (or Arabic or Devanagari or ?), so that is no longer an
issue.

--
Best regards,
Jon Harald S?by

Website - http://www.alqualonde.com/
Wikipedia - http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Jhs
MSN messenger - jhsoby at gmail.com
Skype - jon.harald.soby


body:
Hoi,
It is not a matter of "you bad bad en.wikipedia admins". With single
login there is no way this policy can be kept. Checking for characters
that belong together is feasible. With a technology that will be
implemented that allows for one user in all projects it is impossible to
maintain that Latin characters are to be used throughout the whole of
wikipedia. Suggesting that this is not to be implemented would be
outrageous.
Thanks,
    GerardM

David Gerard schreef:
> On 20/12/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> The problem is fairly simple, people who speak only English don't
>> bother installing language support on their computers, even though
>> (AFAIK) it is included with all operating systems these days. All they
>> need to do is get their installation CD out and turn it on.
>>
>
>
> The actual problem is similar characters in usernames (which I
> understand is being addressed) and distinguishing bot-gibberish from
> actual plausible names.
>
> en: gets stupendous amounts of vandalism, and it's a huge amount of
> botwork and semi-botwork just coping with it.
>
> Saying "you bad bad en: admins, stop doing this" won't make the actual
> vandalism problem go away. I eagerly await hearing responses on this
> thread that deal with the fact that there is an actual problem this
> was put in place as a response to. If ja: says "en:, stop doing this"
> without offering a solution, en: isn't going to take a whole lot of
> notice as the problem affects en: rather than ja:
>
>
> - d.
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Oversight rights

body:
On 12/20/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 20/12/06, Jon Harald S?by <jhsoby at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Possibly. [[:en:Wikipedia:Oversight]] is the page that explains how to
> request oversighting.
>
> Note that oversighting is only for material so sensitive that not even
> admins on the wiki should be allowed to see it. We have over a
> thousand admins on en:, so are at a stage where we need this. It's not
> for vandalism, copyright violations, etc. - only for material that
> could be personally dangerous to someone.
>
> The en: oversighters already say "no" to a lot of requests from people
> who want to remove their own silly past edits from the record, admins
> who don't want to hand-check lots of boxes to delete one bad revision,
> etc.
>

Yes, the guidelines for what to oversight seem pretty clear-cut, and
there shouldn't be any problems regarding that. The problems, as I see
it, is to whom, and under which circumstances, oversight should be
given.

> I suspect most wikis won't actually *need* oversight as yet - en:wp
> gets maybe one or two actionable requests a day.
>

Other wikis may still need it, but not the the extent that they need
oversight users, and that's where the (proposed) mailing list and
stewards come in.

--
Best regards,
Jon Harald S?by

Website - http://www.alqualonde.com/
Wikipedia - http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Jhs
MSN messenger - jhsoby at gmail.com
Skype - jon.harald.soby


subject: [Foundation-l] Oversight rights