from_name: roc

body:
Many Chinese editors, including me, have the same concern as what
Essjay said, and that is why we currently do not have any checkusers
local to zhwiki
(http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Checkuser). People worry
about the possibility that the IP addresses of registered users may be
leaked to evil hands or regimes (the currently ruling Chinese
Communist Party is exercising more and more control over Internet for
its own interests); if that happened, both the individuals and the
Foundation would suffer; although the chance is low, one incident
would be enough. Currently, we give our trust to the few users
appointed by the Foundation, so I think that any new procedures for
cross-project checkusers need to put this worry in consideration. (The
Chinese community continue to debate whether we really need local
checkusers and what more stringent selecting criteria and monitoring
procedures for local checkusers should be adopted.)

roc (zh:User:R.O.C)
--

2006/4/15, Essjay <essjaywiki at gmail.com>:
> I don't know that the issue that concerns me is the same that concerns
> the Foundation, but I know what scares the hell out of me about
> Checkuser is this:
>
> We have users from all over the world. Not all of them live in countries
> where their safety is guaranteed; there are, most assuredly, editors
> from regimes where if their personal information was discovered, they
> could be imprisoned and perhaps even killed. That terrifies me, because
> I don't want anybody dying over Wikipedia, nor do I want them to end up
> in prison. If checkuser falls into the wrong hands (I'm no conspiracy
> theorist, but I don't think it's too hard to imagine foreign governments
> wanting to hunt down our contributors; after all, at least two have
> blocked us flat out already), the result could literally be a matter of
> life and death. *Life and death.*
>
> Some people have advocated granting checkuser liberally, and I disagree
> strongly with that; I'm not even particularly comfortable with the idea
> of it being election-based at all, although I trust the Board, and I
> don't believe they would have allowed for local elections if they
> weren't convinced it was safe. I do think, however, that it should be
> kept to as few users as possible, whether that means having guest
> checkusers as Kelly & I have advocated, or whether it means some  other
> system. I for one am certainly willing to perform checks for other
> projects (indeed, I offered to do so for Wikisource), and I am sure that
> some of the others would as well (Kelly has already stated her
> willingness to do so).
>
> As I said, I can't say that the dire scenario I laid out above is what
> the Board has in the back of their minds when thinking about checkuser,
> but I certainly know it is what is in mine. I really don't want to turn
> on CNN some morning and see "[Insert country here] dissident
> assassinated after link to Wikipedia discovered."
>
> Essjay
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
> Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
> http://www.wikipedia.org/
>
>
>
> Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> > Anthere wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Hi
> >>
> >> Let me try to address your various points the best I can.
> >>
> >> Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> Anthere wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> The reason for the 25 votes limit comes from two reasons
> >>>> * A community with less than 25 users is unlikely to really need
> >>>> frequent checkusers, because it is a project with reduced activity. So,
> >>>> it can not be a heavy load for stewards.
> >>>> * A community with less than 25 users has a rather serious risk to have
> >>>> a rather little known editor become a checkuser, rather than a trusted
> >>>> oldbie. If we start handing out status just as we do for sysop status on
> >>>> small projects, I think there will be abuse. I say this from my
> >>>> experience, as I had to unsysop several sysops on small projects (the
> >>>> guys did not know our basic rules, behaved like dictators with the
> >>>> handful of editors, put advertisements on the main page, controlled povs
> >>>> etc...).
> >>>>
> >>>> I am perplex that the en.wikibooks does not have a big enough base of
> >>>> editors to vote on a check user...
> >>>> I am quite lazy, so I will not go to the stats page to check. But can
> >>>> you roughly say how many active editors per month the project currently
> >>>> has ? How many very active editors per month ?
> >>>>
> >>>> ant
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>> Since the stats page hasn't been updated since November of last year, it
> >>> is completely useless to even gague what the current activity is on any
> >>> Wikimedia project.  I can only use the current activity on the Wikibooks
> >>> staff lounge to even remotely gague what the current user activity level
> >>> is, but I would guess it is pretty close to about 20 user at the
> >>> absolute top.  Really stretching it perhaps we can get to 25 total at
> >>> the most.
> >>>
> >>> And as for advertising this, I guess we could put it in bold 40 point
> >>> type on the project main page with a link to a special page only for
> >>> this kind of request.  I think that is way over the top and something
> >>> that is not needed in this situation.  The advertising was more than
> >>> adequate, it is just that this is a very unreasonable request.
> >>>
> >>> As for a "community with less than 25 users unlikely needing frequent
> >>> checkuser scans", I think this is mistaken totally what is going on.
> >>> en.wikibooks has numerous links from within Wikipedia, and is being
> >>> hammered by vandals that have moved on from Wikipedia, indeed with
> >>> excellent training on how to be a vandal on Wikipedia, and taking on
> >>> other projects as well that don't have quite the same pool of
> >>> administrators.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >> I see.
> >> Perhaps the number 25 was too high then. That would tend to suggest this.
> >> But again, let me explain why we put a minimum limit. We have some small
> >> projects with a number of editors of less than 5. What usually happens
> >> is that the most active one simply ask sysop status (and even sometimes
> >> bureaucrat status) on meta because their project *need* a sysop. Which
> >> means the status is given without any community voting whatsoever.
> >> Sometimes, when it is a new language in particular, the editor has been
> >> on our projects only for a couple of days and have no idea of our basic
> >> rules of operating whatsoever (npov in particular).
> >> More than once, we had problems later on. And it was not always easy for
> >> the very small growing community to have a black sheep unsysoped.
> >>
> >> What I think should NOT be allowed to happen, ever, is that the new
> >> wikiquote project in maori be created, and a total stranger be given
> >> sysop, bureaucrat and checkuser status so that he can start the
> >> community. In short, I think that only editors known by a significant
> >> number of other editors should ever be given checkuser access. Hence the
> >> 25 votes. Which may be too high a value.
> >>
> >>
> >> So, option 1 : decreasing the number of votes requirements.
> >>
> >> Now, there are other options we could follow.
> >>
> >>
> >
> > I would suggest that the standards for becoming a bureaucrat should be
> > much higher for brand new projects in this case, and this is perhaps
> > something that needs to be established on a Wikimedia-wide policy as
> > well and not just on a project by project basis.  The point about
> > becoming a bureaucrat is that they have the ability to create other
> > administrators and are presumed to be users trusted enough that they not
> > only have full editorial control over a project to do all of the
> > administrator functions, but they also have the ability to create more
> > administrators.  The charges of a cabal in some cases are justified when
> > you grant bureaucratship to somebody when there is no other means of
> > oversight about what they are doing, and they in turn grant adminship to
> > others with their same point of view but refuse to grant it to others
> > that have a different point of view, and for that reason alone.  This
> > has happened on some of the smaller projects, especially in languages
> > that Foundation board members don't speak fluently and can't monitor
> > directly.
> >
> >
> >>> As for handing out checkuser status to people who are not trusted
> >>> oldies, that is totally rediculous as well.  There are admins and
> >>> bureaucrats on en.wikibooks who are also admins on other projects,
> >>> including meta, wikinews, and even en.wikipedia.  Active ones at that.
> >>> I see absolutely no reason why the standards for giving somebody
> >>> bureaucrat status when you can't also give them checkuser status.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >> I do not know what are the standards for giving bureaucrat status.
> >> I think they are not the same at all depending on projects.
> >>
> >> I see a **major** reason for the standards for giving bureaucrat status
> >> to be different from the standards for giving checkuser status.
> >>
> >> The standards for giving bureaucrat status are different in each project
> >> and each language. On one project, it will be a vote by all editors of a
> >> project. On another project, it will be a vote by administrators only.
> >> On another project, it might even be a vote by other bureaucrats. Or it
> >> might be no vote at all (just ask on meta). It may be 80% support. It
> >> may be 66%. There are no standards.
> >>
> >> But if the bureaucrat makes a mess, it is a technical/community issue.
> >> Only the projects can be damaged (which is bad enough). So, it is the
> >> community business to define its own rules.
> >>
> >> If a checkuser makes a mess, the Foundation itself may be concerned. We
> >> might have problems with an editor for release of private data. So, the
> >> Foundation has a right to have a say in WHO is granted this access.
> >> Hence the policy being *more* standard.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> > I'm not really understanding this point of view here.  Under what area
> > is the Foundation directly threatened when this release of private data
> > occurs?  It is still a technical/community issue with the checkuser
> > data, and people with checkuser rights can still only do the scan only
> > on registered users for their individual project.  This might be a much
> > bigger concern if they had access to the general Wikimedia user
> > database, such as is being proposed with the common login project.  In
> > this situation where somebody with checkuser rights could access the
> > data on not just the users for their individual project but for anybody
> > on any Wikimedia project, you are correct that the standards should be
> > much higher.... indeed IMHO higher than perhaps even becoming a steward.
> >  That is not the situation right now, from my understanding.
> >
> > If I take the presumption that the current process of becoming a
> > registered user is still going to continue for some time, and somebody
> > with local checkuser status can only do a checkuser scan on that much
> > smaller group of users, I fail to see where the Foundation is really
> > going to be hurt if they get out of control.  The privacy policy is that
> > reasonable steps are going to happen to protect private data, but you
> > should be aware that if you log onto any website, including Amazon.com,
> > Google, CNN, Microsoft, BBC, or whatever including hackerz.com, that
> > your IP address is going to be logged together with whatever activity
> > that you do on that website.  And that information may be released to
> > interested government agencies.  All the Foundation is promising is that
> > some sort of due process is going to happen before that information is
> > released, like a supeona, and that the information may also be used
> > internally for the protection of the project, such as performing
> > checkuser scans.
> >
> > Indeed the current privacy policy doesn't even do that.  It is really
> > just a disclaimer that the data is going to be logged, and that if you
> > don't like it, you shouldn't be logging into any Wikimedia server.
> >  There are some "policies" that go into more depth about how some of
> > this data is protected, but this is more for how the Foundation is going
> > to respond to outside groups that insist on obtaining this information,
> > including not only legal proceedings but also marketing consultants and
> > outside businesses who want to do data mining on the access logs.  I
> > think it is a prudent policy in this regard.
> >
> > One thing to keep in mind is that the "personally identifying data"
> > isn't protected that well for editors.  Every editor has all of their
> > edit information logged, and not only is it logged but the information
> > is actually published in a very public area for all people to see.
> >  Indeed for most editors, the information is not only logged, but logged
> > according to IP address as well.  Only for those who have bothered to
> > become a registered user is the information partially protected, and it
> > is only on this very limited set of circumstances that the checkuser
> > policy even starts to apply.  And for many others (including myself),
> > not only by handle but it is logged by their actual legal name.  BTW,
> > this is a conscious decision I made when I created my account, knowing
> > the legal implications.
> >
> > Furthermore, somebody with checkuser privileges still don't have access
> > to the the full access logs.  Having checkuser status, I can't see what
> > pages another user has been looking at or reading.  All I can do is just
> > see what pages they have been editing, which doesn't require checkuser
> > status... or even any kind of special status on Wikimedia projects, and
> > if they happen to be a registered user, and if they happened to have
> > done something that looks suspicious, all I get to find out with the
> > increased privilege of the checkuser policy is just a list of IP
> > addresses that they have logged in the local project under.  Or just the
> > last IP address depending on the technical side and how far this should
> > go.  No other identifying information is given.  I can't get the e-mail
> > address of the person, nor can I get any of the information on
> > [[Special:Preferences]], including perhaps even mundane but identifying
> > information like what time zone they live in or what their language
> > preference is.
> >
> > In short, I fail to see where the liability is to the Foundation is
> > under even the most egregious of abuses, and even that can be dealt with
> > mostly by technical limitation, including perhaps a system that limits
> > somebody with checkuser privileges to only a limited number of checkuser
> > scans per day or some other limiting factor to keep major abuses from
> > happening.  I'm also pointing out that smaller projects are going to
> > have proportionally much smaller numbers of users and their ability to
> > damage all of the Wikimedia projects is going to also be proportionally
> > less.  Using your example of the Maori Wikibooks user request to become
> > admin, bureaucrat, and checkuser... all they are going to do is find the
> > IP addresses of the five or six people who even bothered to register on
> > that local project.  Is that really a problem?
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject:
[Foundation-l] Stewards are ignoring requests for CheckUser
	information?


list: foundation-l

from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject:
[Foundation-l] Stewards are ignoring
	requests	for	CheckUser	information?

body:
Essjay wrote:

>I don't know that the issue that concerns me is the same that concerns
>the Foundation, but I know what scares the hell out of me about
>Checkuser is this:
>
>We have users from all over the world. Not all of them live in countries
>where their safety is guaranteed; there are, most assuredly, editors
>from regimes where if their personal information was discovered, they
>could be imprisoned and perhaps even killed. That terrifies me, because
>I don't want anybody dying over Wikipedia, nor do I want them to end up
>in prison. If checkuser falls into the wrong hands (I'm no conspiracy
>theorist, but I don't think it's too hard to imagine foreign governments
>wanting to hunt down our contributors; after all, at least two have
>blocked us flat out already), the result could literally be a matter of
>life and death. *Life and death.*
>
>Some people have advocated granting checkuser liberally, and I disagree
>strongly with that; I'm not even particularly comfortable with the idea
>of it being election-based at all, although I trust the Board, and I
>don't believe they would have allowed for local elections if they
>weren't convinced it was safe. I do think, however, that it should be
>kept to as few users as possible, whether that means having guest
>checkusers as Kelly & I have advocated, or whether it means some  other
>system. I for one am certainly willing to perform checks for other
>projects (indeed, I offered to do so for Wikisource), and I am sure that
>some of the others would as well (Kelly has already stated her
>willingness to do so).
>
>As I said, I can't say that the dire scenario I laid out above is what
>the Board has in the back of their minds when thinking about checkuser,
>but I certainly know it is what is in mine. I really don't want to turn
>on CNN some morning and see "[Insert country here] dissident
>assassinated after link to Wikipedia discovered."
>
>Essjay
>
>
>
You mean to tell me that if you are using the internet in China (or
Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, or North Korea), that the government of those
countries has no clue about not only what IP address you are using, but
also what websites you are accessing?  I am telling you that regardless
of where you are from, the government is going to know not only the
activities that you do within that country, but most major governments
will be capable of monitoring their citizens that are living outside of
their countries as well.  It isn't that difficult of a task, and nothing
that the Wikimedia Foundation could do, including deliberate deleting of
all logs is going to change that.  The checkuser information in
particular is not going to stop any government (or even corporate
monitoring... as in your immediate supervisor could do this as well)
from being able to find out what your on-line activites have been.

I fail to see how checkuser information falling into the wrong hands is
going to cause a problem in this situation.  Really.  If a government
entity wants to find out that User:Chinese_Protestor who has posted over
2000 edits in zh.wikipedia is actually using a certain internet cafe in
downtown Beijing, they don't need to have access to the checkuser
facilities to find that information out, nor to even identify exactly
who that user is.  I don't even need to do that if I really cared to
find out who that person is.  On top of that, how can you be absolutely
sure that some user that is a "trusted user" by whatever standard you
are discussing isn't already a steward, but also a government agent who
is using the checkuser access to monitor dissidents?  And won't be in
the future?

Furthermore, as I was pointing out, the information actually given out
by checkuser status is practically nothing anyway.  It is not giving out
"personally identifying information", just an IP address.  And not an IP
address for what they were looking at, but only what they were doing
when they did their last edit.  Yes, in theory you could contact the
ISP, and if their own logs for IP addresses had personally identifying
information, it could be a chain of evidence to link to a particular
individual, but even in this situation for most countries it would
require going into the legal process to get that information.  For
governments this is a no-brainer and they would get it even if you tried
to block it.  Besides, official Wikimedia policy grants access to this
information to governments, so you aren't protected anyway.

Show me exactly how having specifically this tool is going to endanger
anybody's life where they wouldn't already be in danger before?

And mind you, I'm not advocating that this tool be available to any user
under any circumstances.  I'm just pointing out that by any reasonable
definition of whom you call a trusted user for access to checkuser
privileges you are also likely to grant them bureaucratship as well, and
possibly adminship only.  The only reason why somebody would have
checkuser privileges on a local project and not also bureaucratship is
because they don't want to deal with the hassles of being an
administrator and have repeatedly turned down the nomination when
offered to them.  I fail to see under what higher standard you are
possibly using to justify why somebody should be a checkuser and not be
given full bureaucrat privileges, or the other way around.  If they
can't be trusted with checkuser privileges, why are they given
bureaucrat privileges?  I'm also pointing out that the issue is scalable
as well, and that it is highly unlikely that the chinese protestor given
in the above example is going to be editing on the Maori language
Wikibooks.  On these smaller projects, the potential to do damage is
going to be considerably less as well even from this more limited
perspective.

BTW, If you are willing to perform a checkuser scan, can you help me out
with, and block the IP address of [[b:User:Bruude]]?  There is a
particularly vicious vandal going through Wikibooks right now, and it
would be appreciated if we could get some help trying to track him down
and stopping this user.  This is one of the kinds of requests that
having somebody local with checkuser privileges would be incredibly
helpful over, but the apparent policy is such that we can't have the
apparent benefits of trying to stop idiots like this particular user who
is now deliberately attacking administrators directly, since we've
thwarted all of his previous attempts to vandalize the project.  By not
giving us access to these reasonable and legitimate uses of this tool,
it is making our job at helping out the projects all that much harder.
 The whole point to this thread is that this sort of assistance from
users like yourself is not forthcomming and we need to take these
matters into our own hands if we want this level of assistance.

--
Robert Scott Horning


list: wikien-l

from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Archives as sources proposal

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

Ray Saintonge stated for the record:

> Sean Barrett wrote:

>>I maintain that mere difficulty of access should not be a criterion in
>>evaluating sources.  If a source /can/ be obtained by any editor, be it
>>by Google, by using the public library, by snail-mail, or by traveling
>>by camel to Samarkand, then it is a valid source, IMAO.  In contrast,
>>many of us have access to material that cannot be verified by those
>>outside our professions.  There is, for example, quite a lot of
>>perfectly innocuous, unclassified, public domain data that only people
>>with .mil e-mail addresses would be able to verify.
>>
>
> By making restricting access in this way the material if effectively
> classified.  It is clearly a low level classification, but classified
> nevertheless.  The key question should be, "Is the material available to
> anyone?"  Can a stranger off the street have anonymous access
> somewhere?  Is a website valid if it is the only source of the material
> but requires membership for passive access to the material.
>
> Ec

Exactly.  J.Random Wikeditor could, if he really wanted to, verify for
himself whether or not Titian's /Danae/ is in fact hanging in the
Hermitage.  He cannot personally verify the number of laptops in use by
VFA-122, /even though that number is not restricted in any way/ --
except by being published only (as far as I know) on a military network.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | All I ask is the chance to prove
 sean at epoptic.org | that money can't make me happy.
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subject:
[Foundation-l] Stewards are ignoring requests for
	CheckUser	information?

body:
roc wrote:

>Many Chinese editors, including me, have the same concern as what
>Essjay said, and that is why we currently do not have any checkusers
>local to zhwiki
>(http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Checkuser). People worry
>about the possibility that the IP addresses of registered users may be
>leaked to evil hands or regimes (the currently ruling Chinese
>Communist Party is exercising more and more control over Internet for
>its own interests); if that happened, both the individuals and the
>Foundation would suffer; although the chance is low, one incident
>would be enough. Currently, we give our trust to the few users
>appointed by the Foundation, so I think that any new procedures for
>cross-project checkusers need to put this worry in consideration. (The
>Chinese community continue to debate whether we really need local
>checkusers and what more stringent selecting criteria and monitoring
>procedures for local checkusers should be adopted.)
>
>roc (zh:User:R.O.C)
>--
>
>
This is IMHO why such a policy needs to be tailor fit for each
individual project.  The standards that are applying for zh.wikipedia
should not be the same for en.wikibooks, for example.  I agree that a
certain level of paranoia exists among Chinese speakers... even when
they don't necessarily live in or are even citizens of the People's
Republic of China.  They should have a much higher standard for their
own local project.  In addition, with over 50,000 registered users on
zh.wikipedia, trying to get the minimum number of 30 votes to support
checkuser elections isn't going to be a problem.  It still doesn't
answer my question over how you could stop a government agent from
becoming an administrator or somebody with checkuser privileges, or for
that matter the PRC government can simply demand this information
directly from the Foundation, and the Foundation would be legally
powerless to deny the request.  They (the government) could even demand
access logs and other information that is not given to people with
checkuser privileges.  Any attempts to deny this information would be
just legal roadblocks and just a matter of time before they would get
it, and cause further grief for the Foundation board.  Futhermore, such
formal requests would be made without the knowledge of any Wikimedia
user outside of the Foundation legal circle.  At least checkuser scans
are logged for public review

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Georgia/Victoria

body:
On 4/16/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> So I'm not convinced that the rule "pragmatic disambiguation over
> presumed importance" is applied all that consistency.

Sounds like some head-beating is necessary, but I already have way too
much of this to do.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Georgia/Victoria

body:
On 4/16/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> You're not talking about mine, are you? :) I'm happy to beat people
> with a fixed rule, but I'd like more confirmation that this rule
> actually exists and is accepted by the community. There is the
> guideline on disambig pages, but it's fairly vague. A hard-line "a
> city does *not* get priority over a cheese if most people would expect
> the cheese" would be helpful.

'Accepted by the community' is a hard one - partly because any
preference based on common use runs into a strong nationalist and
anti-US sentiment among certain users, despite common English usage
being generally preferable according to our naming conventions.

-Matt


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Evan Martin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Google Summer of Code

body:
On 4/15/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Mozilla's experience last year wasn't so good[1]; some of their projects didn't
> complete, and most of them haven't been touched since the end of the summer.
> Mono however had a much more positive experience[2], with most of their projects
> completing and being further developed and adopted after the end.
>
> So I think it will be important to try to engage the folks working on our
> projects if we want to keep them. :)

The students I mentored were successes, and I think (hope!) it was a
great experience for them.  Two trends I've seen from looking at the
successes and failures of projects, and how it may apply to your
selection criteria:

1) If the contribution is an external piece (like an extension as Evan
P. sensibly suggested) it may mean the student will develop in
isolation.  Since part of the SoC is to bring non-free-software types
into this world, if the student doesn't have regular discussion with
other developers or doesn't have regular exposure of their code they
can falter.  Additionally, as the Mozilla note mentioned,
contributions that aren't part of the mainline will likely bitrot.  (I
don't have a solution to this; just a cautionary note.)

2) Since writing PHP has a low barrier to entry, I expect you'll get a
lot of proposals that sound good but turn out to be poorly written.  I
urge you to consider "what else has this student done that makes us
believe they'll do a good job?" in your selection criteria -- e.g.,
encourage them to include source code or point at other projects
they've done.

I hope it turns out well for you!


from_name: Christopher Beland

subject: [Wikitech-l] enwiki dump failed

body:
In case no one has yet noticed,
http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20060402/ reports that the two
largest parts of the latest enwiki dump have failed.

The next round of dumping has not yet been started, and at least one
project is eagerly awaiting data from April.

Thanks,

Beland


subject: [Wikitech-l] Search index needs to be updated?

body:
Is it time to update the Lucene index? I am getting articles in search
results on enwiki that were deleted in January.

(Specifically, when searching for "Aetherometry".)

Thanks,

Beland


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why Wikipedia should not be a random collection of facts

body:
Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made
of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts
is not necessarily science.
                -- Henri Poincaire

Now apply this to Wikipedia:

s/science/article/

QED.

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

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from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for second opinion templates

body:
On 16/04/06, Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com> wrote:
> Hi Steve,
>
> If you're concerned about slapping an overly prominent notice at the
> top, try tacking the {{citation needed}} template onto the end of the
> questionable statement(s), since it provides a small "citation needed"
> link to [[Wikipedia:Citing sources]].

Hi,
  Yep, that's one example...{{uncat}} is another. But there are quite
a few problems that can arise with articles that don't seem to have
ready solutions. Notability for example - if you stick {{notable}} on
the top of an article, it's an incredible eyesore. Perhaps sticking
them on the talk page (even if not designed for the purpose) is a way
of letting other editors know?

I note, for example, that there is almost never anything in the
category related to {{uncat}}, and when I stuck it on a page, another
editor picked up on it very quickly. It's a question of getting the
right editors to look at the right articles in time.

(I don't have a better formulation of the exact problem I'm trying to
solve, atm)

Steve


from_name: Dirk Riehle

subject: [Foundation-l] [Wikitech-l] Google Summer of Code

body:
>can falter.  Additionally, as the Mozilla note mentioned,
>contributions that aren't part of the mainline will likely bitrot.  (I
>don't have a solution to this; just a cautionary note.)

Well, the main solution is to create an ecosystem where people get
hired to work (full-time) on providing such extensions (or additions
to the mainline) to MediaWiki. Only this setup can provide some continuity.

I'm working on getting projects setup to do exactly that. (I
mentioned this in a private note.) But for that to work the MediaWiki
community needs be accepting of (corporate) contributions (assuming
they follow the licenses and community spirit).

Are there any examples or even defined processes (on meta?) that I
could look up?

Thanks,
Dirk


subject: [Wikitech-l] Google Summer of Code


from_name: Birgitte SB

body:
--- Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Birgitte SB wrote:

>    Also since next nothing in our
> > project is available under GDFL it make the
> "freeness"
> > very complicated.  Even public domain is not
> > straightforward.  There are things that are PD in
> the
> > US bur not in England for example.  I could give
> many
> > more inconsistencies of international copyright.
>
> Which is why I did not mentionned a specific
> license. We use several
> licenses for images. Wikinews is not under GFDL.
> What we would all agree
>   probably is the freedom to use content.
>
The main difference as I see is this.  Wikipedia is
creating content.  WP could chose to make it's content
free or not; they chose to make it free.  Wikisource
has no control on whether our content is free or where
it is free.  We can only choose whether or not to make
it available.  Downstream users are going to have to
evaluate whether they are free to use Wikisource
contect individually unless they are in the United
States.  Our material is under various licenses as
well as public domain (as applicable in the US).  We
cannot give anyone a blanket guarantee the content is
free for them to use whether we include non-commercial
or not.  They are still going to have to evaluate each
license category and judge based on the laws they must
abide by.

> >>Would you be interested to create a group of
> people
> >>whose goals would
> >>be
> >>* To study which languages should be covered in
> our
> >>projects, or not
> >>* To study the wiseness to open a new language of
> a
> >>given project
> >>(according to number of interested editors etc...)
> >>* To gather a collection of pages of rules and
> >>guidelines to
> >>mandatorily
> >>translate in the future language before any
> creation
> >>of the new wiki
> >>* To collect pages to suggest new wikis to help
> them
> >>find their way in
> >>the jungle (with recommandations such as "register
> >>to foundation-l",
> >>"follow requests for permission on meta" etc...)
> >
> >
> >
> >>Do you think that would be interesting ?
> >>If so, would you agree to lead the creation of
> that
> >>group ?
> >
> >
> >>Ant
> >
> >
> >
> > I think that is very interesting and would
> definately
> > want to be involved.  I do not know that I have
> enough
> > conacts amoung people with different language
> skills
> > to start it up myself.  If such group of people
> can be
> > rounded up I would definately want to see this
> > through.  One the first things I feel is needed is
> > updated stats on the current wikis so we can see
> what
> > worked in the past and what has stalled.  Also if
> the
> > stats page gave numbers of admins and buerucrats
> (if
> > any) that might be useful.
>
> We always fall on the same issue Birgitte... many
> would think it great,
> but few would agree to lead such a project. At best
> follow another
> person doing it.
>
> Okay, so... who is motivated to start such a project
> ?
> * which entirely new languages should be accepted or
> opposed  (including
> constructed languages, dialects...)
> * when a new language should be allowed to start in
> a given project
> * making guidelines for those starting a new
> language
> * support to new languages starting (checkuser,
> sysop etc...)
>
> etc...
>
> who is motivated to start such a project ?
>
> Ant
>

I think new languages should be supported if they seem
likely to suceed establishing an active community.
Before we can judge that or set up any guidelines we
really need more information.  I would very much like
to take the first step in this.  Which I believe is
analizing what has worked or not in the past.  But
right now some of the stats pages are months old and
Wikisource has none at all for individual languages.
I don't know that the information I can get from any
updated stats would really tell what makes a community
sucessfull.  However it should allow us to see what
communities have a certain level of activity.  Then I
think we should ask people from various communities to
fill out a survey about the beginings of their
community and maybe we can find some indicators we can
use to answer your points.

BirgitteSB

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


from_name: Russell Blau

subject: [Wikitech-l] enwiki dump failed

body:
"Christopher Beland" <beland at alum.mit.edu> wrote
in message news:1145204904.19403.10.camel at diet-anarchy...
> In case no one has yet noticed,
> http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20060402/ reports that the two
> largest parts of the latest enwiki dump have failed.

Also, in case no one has noticed, the dump process has been stalled on
ruwiki for nearly a week, showing an ETA of 2006-04-10.


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Georgia/Victoria

body:
On 16/04/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>   Just to point out a case where the opposite strategy in all this has
> been involved, have a look at [[Camembert]]. What do you think this
> would be an article on? Nope - that's at [[Camembert (cheese)]].
>
> A similar pattern has been applied right throughout the category:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:French_cheeses
>
> So I'm not convinced that the rule "pragmatic disambiguation over
> presumed importance" is applied all that consistency.

Not just French cheese; see [[Stilton]] and [[Cheddar]]. Even
[[Jarlsberg]] redirects to [[Jarlsberg cheese]], so I guess that's
being held for an article on the place as well.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Georgia/Victoria

body:
Hi,
  Just to point out a case where the opposite strategy in all this has
been involved, have a look at [[Camembert]]. What do you think this
would be an article on? Nope - that's at [[Camembert (cheese)]].

A similar pattern has been applied right throughout the category:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:French_cheeses

So I'm not convinced that the rule "pragmatic disambiguation over
presumed importance" is applied all that consistency.

Steve


from_name: Sydney Poore

subject: [WikiEN-l] Slashdot story

body:
Oskar,

I first noticed them
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AQueerdaddy&diff=44730319&oldid=44728411
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AQueerdaddy&diff=44730319&oldid=44728411>
They were linking their site to Brian Peppers article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Brian_Peppers&diff=prev&oldid=44728176
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Brian_Peppers&diff=prev&oldid=44728176>
As a result I am mentioned on their website.
http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Reviews

Sydney  aka FloNight

Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
> Just wanted to point everyones attention to a slashdot story about
> wikipedia censorship, it's at
> http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/16/1656208
>
> What the hell is wikitruth.info anyway, I've never heard of it? It's
> currently offline (slashdotted) so I can't check. And who are these
> disgruntled administrators? Is it some sort of wikipedia review
> splinter?
>
> --Oskar


subject: [WikiEN-l] Georgia/Victoria

body:
On 16/04/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/16/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > So I'm not convinced that the rule "pragmatic disambiguation over
> > presumed importance" is applied all that consistency.
>
> Sounds like some head-beating is necessary, but I already have way too
> much of this to do.

You're not talking about mine, are you? :) I'm happy to beat people
with a fixed rule, but I'd like more confirmation that this rule
actually exists and is accepted by the community. There is the
guideline on disambig pages, but it's fairly vague. A hard-line "a
city does *not* get priority over a cheese if most people would expect
the cheese" would be helpful.

Steve


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] enwiki dump failed

body:
Russell Blau wrote:
> Also, in case no one has noticed, the dump process has been stalled on
> ruwiki for nearly a week, showing an ETA of 2006-04-10.

In case you didn't notice, all our servers went down last week. A new dump
hasn't started yet.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] single signon status?

body:
William Allen Simpson wrote:
> I've searched the archives for the past several months, and cannot find
> the status of this project, other than a busy fellow saying that it was
> the top priority in February.  Anybody know?

It'll be done when it's done.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Georgia/Victoria

body:
On 16/04/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> 'Accepted by the community' is a hard one - partly because any
> preference based on common use runs into a strong nationalist and
> anti-US sentiment among certain users, despite common English usage
> being generally preferable according to our naming conventions.

IMHO, pulling out "anti-US sentiment" is a bit of a cop-out. There are
lots of reasons why non-American people may object to the way American
people do things that have nothing to do with prejudices against them
as individuals.

But anyway.

Steve


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Unusual stats on "empty" 1.6.3

body:
On 16/04/06, Jelle Zijlstra <jelle.zijlstra at gmail.com> wrote:
> That number probably derives from MediaWiki messages (MediaWiki namespace).
>
> On 4/16/06, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> > a freshly installed wiki, with almost no content:
> >
> >         http://bloodgate.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:Statistics
> >
> > shows "There are 1,386 total pages in the database.".

My (slightly dubious) experiments back this up - attempting to get a
line count of http://bloodgate.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:Allmessages&ot=php
I ended up with a figure of 1719 - too high, I know, but the point is
there are a lot of pages here. If you're not aware already, MediaWiki
stores all its interface elements as pages in the database for easy
translation/customisation; this page lists them all. The other figure
on the statistics page has a number of rules to define what counts as
an "article", and gives a more interesting figure - still more than a
million on the English Wikipedia I believe!

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Tels

body:
Moin,

a freshly installed wiki, with almost no content:

	http://bloodgate.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:Statistics

shows "There are 1,386 total pages in the database.".

Huh? How is that number computed? I also noted that updating from 1.4.x to
1.5.x increased the number of "total pages" by quite a few hundred. Are
there things counting as pages that should be counted?

Best wishes,

Tels

--
 Signed on Sun Apr 16 20:02:22 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Yeah. Whatever."

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from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] wikitruth.info (Slashdot story)

body:
Wikitruth.info seems to be slashdotted, but according to the Google
cache, http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:
8yjjGVPUOb0J:www.wikitruth.info/ or http://tinyurl.com/otg6n , the
Wikitruth wiki is not editable, for our own good.

In its words: "We want you to read this website, not be locked in a
full-on piss-battle over changing varying articles to reflect the
whims and madness of a thousand people. Wikis do work, make no
mistake, but they ultimately only work when you have a small amount
of people doing the editing. Sure, it progresses a little slower...
but it progresses."

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony


body:
Christopher Beland wrote:
> Is it time to update the Lucene index? I am getting articles in search
> results on enwiki that were deleted in January.

Yep, I'll work this in to the dump process which I'm about to restart this
evening with a more even size split. (The way a lot of larger wikis took a long
time made it diffcult to get smaller, easier wikis done regularly.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] how does initial data is added in tables?

body:
On 16/04/06, Grace Pastorelly Ruiz <gpasto at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> somebody knows how the initial data is added in tables during the setup?
> any answers are appreciated.

What initial data? Which tables? A lot of data is added during
installation; some of it from the installer, and some via maintenance
scripts called during installation.

Rob Church


body:
On 16/04/06, Grace Pastorelly Ruiz <gpasto at gmail.com> wrote:
> page and text tables for example.

a. The MediaWiki namespace is populated via a call to the
rebuildMessages script during installation
b. The Main Page is added using the bog standard Article and Revision classes

Rob Church


from_name: Reinhardt WIEWE @ torg.is

body:
On Sun, 16 Apr 2006 20:03:32 +0100
 "Rowan Collins" <rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > shows "There are 1,386 total pages in the database.".
>
> My (slightly dubious) experiments back this up - attempting to get a
> line count of
> http://bloodgate.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:Allmessages&ot=php
> I ended up with a figure of 1719 - too high, ...
>
> --
> Rowan Collins BSc
> [IMSoP]

The difference might relate to messages required for extensions as email
notification etc. BTW: One can *not* login to see special:Preferences settings

best regards reinhardt [[user:gangleri]]


from_name: Jelle Zijlstra

body:
That number probably derives from MediaWiki messages (MediaWiki namespace).

On 4/16/06, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
>
> Moin,
>
> a freshly installed wiki, with almost no content:
>
>         http://bloodgate.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:Statistics
>
> shows "There are 1,386 total pages in the database.".
>
> Huh? How is that number computed? I also noted that updating from 1.4.x to
> 1.5.x increased the number of "total pages" by quite a few hundred. Are
> there things counting as pages that should be counted?
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Tels
>
> --
> Signed on Sun Apr 16 20:02:22 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
> Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
> PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.
>
> "Yeah. Whatever."
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>

--
Jelle S. Zijlstra
Rijnzichtweg 153
2342 AZ Oegstgeest
jelle.zijlstra at gmail.com


body:
Moin,

On Sunday 16 April 2006 20:47, Jelle Zijlstra wrote:
> That number probably derives from MediaWiki messages (MediaWiki
> namespace).

Ah, thanx that could be it. Maybe these messages shouldn't be counted when
they haven't been edited yet or something. :)

best wishes,

Tels

--
 Signed on Sun Apr 16 20:57:58 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "...no one would risk manipulating votes in an election because it's
 against the law and carries a heavy penalty..." -- Diebold spokesman
 David Bear

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subject: [Wikitech-l] broken documentation links

body:
Moin,

all links on

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

are broken. Seems something moved in/from sourceforge.net :)

best wishes,

Tels

--
 Signed on Sun Apr 16 20:58:37 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 I'm a Sis-sis-sis-sis-sis-sis-sis-sinnahr...

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from_name: Grace Pastorelly Ruiz

body:
Hi,

somebody knows how the initial data is added in tables during the setup?
any answers are appreciated.

--
thanks in advance,
grace


body:
page and text tables for example.
i'm adding some tables and want to know how to add default
entries during instalation setup.

On 16/04/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 16/04/06, Grace Pastorelly Ruiz <gpasto at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > somebody knows how the initial data is added in tables during the setup?
> > any answers are appreciated.
>
> What initial data? Which tables? A lot of data is added during
> installation; some of it from the installer, and some via maintenance
> scripts called during installation.
>
>
> Rob Church
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
un cordial saludo,
grace


from_name: Daniel P.B.Smith


from_name: William Allen Simpson

subject: [Wikitech-l] single signon status?

body:
I've searched the archives for the past several months, and cannot find
the status of this project, other than a busy fellow saying that it was
the top priority in February.  Anybody know?


from_name: Anthere

body:
roc wrote:
> Many Chinese editors, including me, have the same concern as what
> Essjay said, and that is why we currently do not have any checkusers
> local to zhwiki
> (http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Checkuser). People worry
> about the possibility that the IP addresses of registered users may be
> leaked to evil hands or regimes (the currently ruling Chinese
> Communist Party is exercising more and more control over Internet for
> its own interests); if that happened, both the individuals and the
> Foundation would suffer; although the chance is low, one incident
> would be enough. Currently, we give our trust to the few users
> appointed by the Foundation, so I think that any new procedures for
> cross-project checkusers need to put this worry in consideration. (The
> Chinese community continue to debate whether we really need local
> checkusers and what more stringent selecting criteria and monitoring
> procedures for local checkusers should be adopted.)
>
> roc (zh:User:R.O.C)

Ermmm, Roc... just to clarify...

None of the checkusers have been appointed by the Foundation. They were
all chosen by their local communities.
None of the stewards (who can do checkuser as well) have been appointed
by the Foundation either. They were all elected on meta, by editors.

This said, the Foundation, I believe, know all current stewards and
trust them.
We only know half of those with checkuser access though.

ant


body:
Birgitte SB wrote:
> --- Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>On one hand, our project is held together by a
>>couple of major rules,
>>which should absolutely be followed by all projects.
>>Hmmm, I see only a
>>few ones
>>1) general goal of a project should be respected,
>>whatever the language.
>>2) content should be freely usable, freely reusable
>>and free to modify.
>>3) content should follow NPOV rule
>>
>>And that's about it.
>>
>
>
> Although these three rules apply equally to the
> Wikipedias the same cannot be said of all projects.
> Wikisource and Wikiquote particularly do not hold a
> NPOV policy on material.

Oh, good point. But just because there is no need for such a policy over
there.

Of course, editorial notes
> are another story but they make up a very, very small
> part of our project.  Free to modify is also not a
> consideration on Wikisource as we explicitly forbid it
> in almost all cases.

Good point again.

   Also since next nothing in our
> project is available under GDFL it make the "freeness"
> very complicated.  Even public domain is not
> straightforward.  There are things that are PD in the
> US bur not in England for example.  I could give many
> more inconsistencies of international copyright.

Which is why I did not mentionned a specific license. We use several
licenses for images. Wikinews is not under GFDL. What we would all agree
  probably is the freedom to use content.

Actually, I have a question to wikibook editors. Do Wikibooks books
follow NPOV, or not at all ?

>>On the other hand, our project is not run in a
>>top-down fashion. There
>>is no reason why the Foundation should know or
>>approve local project
>>policies.  So, generally, I see not why "this is not
>>good" unless the
>>policy is about the goal, or the licence or the
>>npov.
>>
>
>
> I do not think things should be run completely from
> the top down.  But we should have some basic
> guidelines similar to what you gave above actually on
> the wikis somewhere and translated in the correct
> language at the very least.

Hmmm, true. I think this is particularly missing for the intermediary
projects. Wikipedia had this defined very well because Larry Sanger was
taking care of it. Wikinews had it quite well defined because we
requested a full study and description of the concept before its approval.
This never happened for projects such as wikibooks, wikiquote,
wiktionary or wikisource.

If wikiquote was proposed today, it would never be accepted for example.
But these projects were one day proposed on a mailing list and ...
simply started !

And who took care of defining basic *common* guidelines that all
projects could inspire of when starting a new language ? No one I guess.

Now, I would say that it would be more logical that a couple of editors
of each project do the description of the project and draft basic
guidelines, that the Foundation could approve afterwards.

>>Would you be interested to create a group of people
>>whose goals would
>>be
>>* To study which languages should be covered in our
>>projects, or not
>>* To study the wiseness to open a new language of a
>>given project
>>(according to number of interested editors etc...)
>>* To gather a collection of pages of rules and
>>guidelines to
>>mandatorily
>>translate in the future language before any creation
>>of the new wiki
>>* To collect pages to suggest new wikis to help them
>>find their way in
>>the jungle (with recommandations such as "register
>>to foundation-l",
>>"follow requests for permission on meta" etc...)
>
>
>
>>Do you think that would be interesting ?
>>If so, would you agree to lead the creation of that
>>group ?
>
>
>>Ant
>
>
>
> I think that is very interesting and would definately
> want to be involved.  I do not know that I have enough
> conacts amoung people with different language skills
> to start it up myself.  If such group of people can be
> rounded up I would definately want to see this
> through.  One the first things I feel is needed is
> updated stats on the current wikis so we can see what
> worked in the past and what has stalled.  Also if the
> stats page gave numbers of admins and buerucrats (if
> any) that might be useful.

We always fall on the same issue Birgitte... many would think it great,
but few would agree to lead such a project. At best follow another
person doing it.

Okay, so... who is motivated to start such a project ?
* which entirely new languages should be accepted or opposed  (including
constructed languages, dialects...)
* when a new language should be allowed to start in a given project
* making guidelines for those starting a new language
* support to new languages starting (checkuser, sysop etc...)

etc...

who is motivated to start such a project ?

Ant

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


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Slashdot story

body:
Just wanted to point everyones attention to a slashdot story about
wikipedia censorship, it's at
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/16/1656208

What the hell is wikitruth.info anyway, I've never heard of it? It's
currently offline (slashdotted) so I can't check. And who are these
disgruntled administrators? Is it some sort of wikipedia review
splinter?

--Oskar


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Slashdot story

body:
On 4/16/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just wanted to point everyones attention to a slashdot story about
> wikipedia censorship, it's at
> http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/16/1656208
>
> What the hell is wikitruth.info anyway, I've never heard of it? It's
> currently offline (slashdotted) so I can't check. And who are these
> disgruntled administrators? Is it some sort of wikipedia review
> splinter?
>
> --Oskar

Nothing to do with wikipedia review (in fact they deleted the
wikipedia review article). Site conntians a mixture of
deleted/temporelerly deleted articles (we are seriously going to have
to talk to them about the GFDL) and articles attacking various
wikipedia policies and a few wikipediains.

The critism articles show a reasonable but incomplete knowlage of
wikipedia and wikipedia events (the cut off point appears to be around
the new year). The writing style is lighthearted.

It contians maybe 50 articles.

It seems to follow the standard model of beliveing there is a cabal.
It picks up on the problems of people talking in wikispeak.

--
geni


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-04-17

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

Running test Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test Magic Word: {{NUMBEROFFILES}}... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!

Passed 300 of 303 tests (99.01%) FAILED!


from_name: Christopher Beland

body:
brion wrote:
> Yep, I'll work this in to the dump process which I'm about to restart this
> evening with a more even size split. (The way a lot of larger wikis took a long
> time made it diffcult to get smaller, easier wikis done regularly.)

Awesome.

When is the next foundation fundraiser?  How much will it cost to clone
Brion?  8)

-B.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Ticket#2006040510003988] Using the
	Wikipedia"Featured Article"

body:
Hello,

Sorry for not commenting sooner (I am a bit late in mail answering...).

The person further detailed his question by

Hello,

  I was just looking around the internet and accidently stumbled across this
  mailing list thread that regarded a question I asked awhile back about the
  Wikipedia Featured Article RSS Feed, and realised I hadn't really made
  myself clear in what I was trying to ask you permission for.

  I understand that the RSS Feed itself is unofficial and not apart of
  Wikipedia, and we are intending on contacting the owner of this feed after
  asking you guys about it. What we are asking you is, are we legally
  allowed under the licenses that the Wikipedia is published to include this
  RSS Feed of the "Today's Featured Article" section on the homepage of
www.wikipedia.org in a piece of software we are currently developing for
  schools.

  I hope this clears this up and will be happy to make it clearer if I'm
  still sounding confusing or at not understandable... it is after all
  getting close to midnight where I am and well, things don't seem as
  straight at this hour ;)

  Anyhow, the permission would be greatly appreciated.

  Regards,

-------------

Is that clearer ?
What does he mean Mark ?

Anthere

Mark Jeays wrote:
> I think he may be referring to my unofficial (screen-scraped) RSS feed of
> "Today's Featured Article" hosted on my web site at
> http://jeays.net/wikipedia/featured.xml ?
>
> I don't even know if I can officially give or deny permission?! In any case,
> everyone is free to use the feed.
>
> HTH,
>
> Mark Jeays
>
>
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
>>[mailto:wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org]On Behalf Of Wikimedia
>>Foundation
>>Sent: April 5, 2006 5:39 PM
>>To: wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>>Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] [Ticket#2006040510003988] Using the
>>Wikipedia"Featured Article"
>>
>>
>>Hi
>>
>>Does anyone have the knowledge and understanding to answer this email ?
>>
>>
>>Ant
>>
>>--
>>Wikimedia Foundation
>>http://wikimediafoundation.org/
>>---- Forwarded message from james.johnstone at ayion.com ---
>>
>>From: james.johnstone at ayion.com
>>To: board at wikimedia.org
>>Subject: Using the Wikipedia "Featured Article"
>>Date: 2006-04-05 08:23:40
>>
>>
>>>Hello,
>>>
>>>I'm writing to follow up on something I asked about a little while ago
>>>that has come up for us again.
>>>I wrote to you around two months ago asking about whether or
>>
>>not we could
>>
>>>use an RSS feed of the Wikipedia "Todays Featured Article" block to
>>>include it in a piece of educational software we are currently in the
>>>process of developing, but we never got as far as to request whether or
>>>not we could do this.
>>>
>>>So the question we are trying to get answered is, can we include the RSS
>>>feed of the "Today's Featured Article" section in this educational
>>>software package that we are developing?
>>>The include would be displayed on the students "Start page",
>>
>>the page they
>>
>>>see when they first open up the service to gain access to other
>>>information.
>>>
>>>This permission would be greatly appreciated,
>>>
>>>Regards,
>>>
>>>James Johnstone
>>>head of development
>>>ayion educational
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>---- End forwarded message ---
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikitech-l mailing list
>>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Essjay

subject:
[Foundation-l] Stewards are ignoring requests
	for	CheckUser	information?

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> At least checkuser scans are logged for public review
>
Uh, no. Unless the software has been modified for some projects, only
users with checkuser permissions can access the checkuser log. The last
time I saw it (it no longer displays automatically each time you load
the page, and I rarely have call to review it, so it's been a few weeks)
it *did* display all checks on all wikis, but not publicly. And it
shouldn't; private information could be worked out from the sequence of
checks run.

Essjay

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


subject:
[Foundation-l] Stewards are
	ignoring	requests	for	CheckUser	information?

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

<snip>
BTW, If you are willing to perform a checkuser scan, can you help me out
with, and block the IP address of [[b:User:Bruude]]?
</snip>

My apologies for not responding at length, but it's 2:30 AM here and I really should be in bed. :-)

To respond to the above, I'm more than happy to do that, but I'll need a steward to grant me checkuser/sysop to do it, as I'm neither a steward, nor do I have checkuser/sysop for  that wiki. If a steward (Anglea, Anthere?) is willing, I'm happy to do it. Just let me know.

Essjay

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


list: textbook-l

from_name: Kernigh

subject: [Textbook-l] Vandalism at en.wikibooks

body:
List of recent vandals at en.wikibooks:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibooks/Socks

I have posted a link to this Meta page from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_term_abuse/Willy_on_Wheels

I am not mentioning this list on en.wikibooks itself. However, I have protected
Template:WoW which other users are using on en.wikibooks. I give my thanks to
everyone who helped revert, report, or block these vandals.

Feel free to update the page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibooks/Socks

-- [[Wikibooks:en:User:Kernigh]]


from_name: Rob

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Finally,
	we are exposed. Wikipedia is a CIA project. Or something like that

body:
So how do we sign up for some of that CIA-NSA money from the "Absurd
Wikipedia Budget"?

On 4/17/06, Mathias Schindler <neubau at presroi.de> wrote:
>
>
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/alt.gossip.celebrities/msg/9f1da2e6d4ad21f3?&hl=en&q=insubject%3Awikipedia
>
> Wikipedia and the CIA - How US Intelligence Can Embed in Wikipedia,
> Plant Propaganda, Delete Facts, Deceive and Attack US Citizens
>
> Wikipedia An Ultimate Trojan Horse for CIA and US Government on the
> Internet
>
>
>
>
>
> The text actually made my day.
>
> Mathias
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
On 17/04/06, Christopher Beland <beland at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> brion wrote:
> > Yep, I'll work this in to the dump process which I'm about to restart this
> > evening with a more even size split. (The way a lot of larger wikis took a long
> > time made it diffcult to get smaller, easier wikis done regularly.)
>
> Awesome.
>
> When is the next foundation fundraiser?  How much will it cost to clone
> Brion?  8)

Are we planning on including his distinctive wit and irrational love
of sharp implements in said clone?

Rob Church


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Dirk Riehle wrote:

>>can falter.  Additionally, as the Mozilla note mentioned,
>>contributions that aren't part of the mainline will likely bitrot.  (I
>>don't have a solution to this; just a cautionary note.)
>>
>>
>Well, the main solution is to create an ecosystem where people get
>hired to work (full-time) on providing such extensions (or additions
>to the mainline) to MediaWiki. Only this setup can provide some continuity.
>
>I'm working on getting projects setup to do exactly that. (I
>mentioned this in a private note.) But for that to work the MediaWiki
>community needs be accepting of (corporate) contributions (assuming
>they follow the licenses and community spirit).
>
What could be more important is to ensure that anything done for free
stays free.  It would be shameful to have volunteer efforts tied up by
someone else's patents.

The question of who should benefit from online work is very much an
unsettled area with broad societal implications.  Many of us do feel a
sense of being net contributors to society when we altruistically spend
many hours in Wiktasks.  Unfortunately, as the saying goes, it does not
put bread on the table, and it does not pay for our hardware.  It is
difficult, however, to imagine a working economic model that would
insure that the benefits of our efforts are shared equitably.

Ec


body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

>This is IMHO why such a policy needs to be tailor fit for each
>individual project.  The standards that are applying for zh.wikipedia
>should not be the same for en.wikibooks, for example.  I agree that a
>certain level of paranoia exists among Chinese speakers... even when
>they don't necessarily live in or are even citizens of the People's
>Republic of China.  They should have a much higher standard for their
>own local project.  In addition, with over 50,000 registered users on
>zh.wikipedia, trying to get the minimum number of 30 votes to support
>checkuser elections isn't going to be a problem.  It still doesn't
>answer my question over how you could stop a government agent from
>becoming an administrator or somebody with checkuser privileges, or for
>that matter the PRC government can simply demand this information
>directly from the Foundation, and the Foundation would be legally
>powerless to deny the request.  They (the government) could even demand
>access logs and other information that is not given to people with
>checkuser privileges.  Any attempts to deny this information would be
>just legal roadblocks and just a matter of time before they would get
>it, and cause further grief for the Foundation board.  Futhermore, such
>formal requests would be made without the knowledge of any Wikimedia
>user outside of the Foundation legal circle.  At least checkuser scans
>are logged for public review
>
As much as I believe that we need a good level of privacy to protect us
from the nutcases, I also recognize that it takes a high level of
openness to protect us from the abuses of governments and the powerful.
The hypothetical PRC government agent is still an individual, and as
such should have the same right as anyone else to become a Wikipedia
administrator.  Such a job should be no more of a hurdle to being in
that position than which mainstream political party an American
Wikipedian supports.

The breach of trust that you suggest could be demanded by the PRC
government is already there in the United States under the Patriot Act.
We have no way of knowing whether the general trust has been betrayed in
that way.  We have no way of knowing whether our Arabic speaking
colleagues are being thus monitored, or whether a gog order has been
issued to keep the rest of us in the dark.

The PRC government may be self-styled communist, but it knows how to
dangle a capitalist carrot.  Google and the Rolling Stones can attest to
that.

Ec

Ec


from_name: wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] David Gerard's Wikitruth download?

body:
www.wikitruth.info is still down. When it was up, it suggested "If you find the wikitruth.info site is down, please contact David Gerard at Wikipedia, who has seen fit to download a copy of the entire Wikitruth site through his DSL line to serve as an official Mirror. Thank you, David!"

If you're reading this, David, could you give us the URL for the mirror?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Apologies to David Gerard...

body:
...from some material on his talk page, it appears as if wikitruth may be trolling him, in which case the comment on (one revision of) the Wikitruth main page that he maintains an "official" Wikitruth mirror might be part of that effort.

Please ignore my earlier comment.


body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

>You mean to tell me that if you are using the internet in China (or
>Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, or North Korea), that the government of those
>countries has no clue about not only what IP address you are using, but
>also what websites you are accessing?
>
Not North Korea; since it makes internet generally unavailable it
doesn't need to worry about monitoring. :-)

Beyond that, it takes considerable manpower, resources and
sophistication to sift through masses of internet material to winnow out
whatever might be significant to these governments.  A great deal of
meaningless drivel is communicated on the internet, as any kid with an
MSN account will easily prove.  How much seriousness does one attach to
the goofy plots that might be expressed there.

A friend who is currently teaching in Qatar recently had to seek medical
help, and as a result commented that the doctors there are not as good
as their equipment.  I suspect that this situation is not limited to
medicine.

>I am telling you that regardless
>of where you are from, the government is going to know not only the
>activities that you do within that country, but most major governments
>will be capable of monitoring their citizens that are living outside of
>their countries as well.  It isn't that difficult of a task, and nothing
>that the Wikimedia Foundation could do, including deliberate deleting of
>all logs is going to change that.  The checkuser information in
>particular is not going to stop any government (or even corporate
>monitoring... as in your immediate supervisor could do this as well)
>from being able to find out what your on-line activites have been.
>
>I fail to see how checkuser information falling into the wrong hands is
>going to cause a problem in this situation.  Really.  If a government
>entity wants to find out that User:Chinese_Protestor who has posted over
>2000 edits in zh.wikipedia is actually using a certain internet cafe in
>downtown Beijing, they don't need to have access to the checkuser
>facilities to find that information out, nor to even identify exactly
>who that user is.  I don't even need to do that if I really cared to
>find out who that person is.  On top of that, how can you be absolutely
>sure that some user that is a "trusted user" by whatever standard you
>are discussing isn't already a steward, but also a government agent who
>is using the checkuser access to monitor dissidents?  And won't be in
>the future?
>
To be effective any such CIA agent is not going too blow his cover by
telling everyone.  To the rest of us his behaviour will seem perfectly
normal, and perhaps even better than average.

>And mind you, I'm not advocating that this tool be available to any user
>under any circumstances.  I'm just pointing out that by any reasonable
>definition of whom you call a trusted user for access to checkuser
>privileges you are also likely to grant them bureaucratship as well, and
>possibly adminship only.  The only reason why somebody would have
>checkuser privileges on a local project and not also bureaucratship is
>because they don't want to deal with the hassles of being an
>administrator and have repeatedly turned down the nomination when
>offered to them.  I fail to see under what higher standard you are
>possibly using to justify why somebody should be a checkuser and not be
>given full bureaucrat privileges, or the other way around.  If they
>can't be trusted with checkuser privileges, why are they given
>bureaucrat privileges?
>
There are users with undoubted technical skills but poor social skills
who might be granted checkuser tools on an investigate and report
basis.  If, however, they were in a position to enforce discipline they
would likely create a lot of dissension.

>I'm also pointing out that the issue is scalable
>as well, and that it is highly unlikely that the chinese protestor given
>in the above example is going to be editing on the Maori language
>Wikibooks.  On these smaller projects, the potential to do damage is
>going to be considerably less as well even from this more limited
>perspective.
>
Agreed, but proportionally the checkuser skill is less likely to be needed.

Ec


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Textbook-l] Vandalism at en.wikibooks

body:
Kernigh wrote:

>List of recent vandals at en.wikibooks:
>
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibooks/Socks
>
>I have posted a link to this Meta page from
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_term_abuse/Willy_on_Wheels
>
>I am not mentioning this list on en.wikibooks itself. However, I have protected
>Template:WoW which other users are using on en.wikibooks. I give my thanks to
>everyone who helped revert, report, or block these vandals.
>
>Feel free to update the page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibooks/Socks
>
>-- [[Wikibooks:en:User:Kernigh]]
>
>
>
You might as well publish this formally on Staff Lounge, because the
idiot himself knows about this list and has even made a parody of it
(that I have subsequently deleted and block again).  This user in the
past had some lattitude in the past on Wikibooks, but is getting blocked
much faster in recent times, and taking it out on the admins.

Anyway, I ditto Kernigh's remarks and thank everybody who has been
helping to fight the latest round of attacks.  I agree with the
sentiment on Wikipedia that if this person were to make positive
contributions that he would be of tremendeous positive significance to
all Wikimedia projects.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Blackcap

body:
On 4/16/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:

> In its words: "We want you to read this website, not be locked in a
> full-on piss-battle over changing varying articles to reflect the
> whims and madness of a thousand people. Wikis do work, make no
> mistake, but they ultimately only work when you have a small amount
> of people doing the editing. Sure, it progresses a little slower...
> but it progresses."
>
> See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony
>

I love it when anti-Wikimedia sites use the MediaWiki engine. Makes my day.


from_name: Josh Gordon

body:
This would be Les Sachs writing. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive90#Accusations
of libel and fraud in article space

--
--jpgordon ????

On 4/17/06, Mathias Schindler <neubau at presroi.de> wrote:
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/alt.gossip.celebrities/msg/9f1da2e6d4ad21f3?&hl=en&q=insubject%3Awikipedia
>
> Wikipedia and the CIA - How US Intelligence Can Embed in Wikipedia,
> Plant Propaganda, Delete Facts, Deceive and Attack US Citizens
>
> Wikipedia An Ultimate Trojan Horse for CIA and US Government on the
> Internet


body:
Essjay wrote:

>Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>
>
>>At least checkuser scans are logged for public review
>>
>>
>>
>Uh, no. Unless the software has been modified for some projects, only
>users with checkuser permissions can access the checkuser log. The last
>time I saw it (it no longer displays automatically each time you load
>the page, and I rarely have call to review it, so it's been a few weeks)
>it *did* display all checks on all wikis, but not publicly. And it
>shouldn't; private information could be worked out from the sequence of
>checks run.
>
>Essjay
>
>
But it is available for review by others "outside" of those who are
performing the actions.  And the log is available and *may* be up for
public review again in the future.  My attitude on this is that all
actions of project related activities should be transparent where
possible, and subject to review by 3rd parties.  I know this was
something that was being discussed, and I would like to have some sort
of general activity log of some sort, even just a checkuser scan count
and the last time it was used by the user with checkuser privileges.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Finally,
 we are exposed. Wikipedia is a CIA project. Or something like that

body:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.gossip.celebrities/msg/9f1da2e6d4ad21f3?&hl=en&q=insubject%3Awikipedia

Wikipedia and the CIA - How US Intelligence Can Embed in Wikipedia,
Plant Propaganda, Delete Facts, Deceive and Attack US Citizens

Wikipedia An Ultimate Trojan Horse for CIA and US Government on the
Internet

The text actually made my day.

Mathias


from_name: Ben Lowe

body:
Yeah, it's only a matter of time before they discover those black-ops speedy
deletions we were making in [[Category:Cambodia]] while we claimed we were
trying to get [[Vietnam]] up to featured-article status.

On 4/17/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 4/17/06, Mathias Schindler <neubau at presroi.de> wrote:
>
> > Wikipedia and the CIA - How US Intelligence Can Embed in Wikipedia,
> > Plant Propaganda, Delete Facts, Deceive and Attack US Citizens
>
> He does have a point. If other secret services and governments
> released their data into the public domain, we wouldn't have to rely
> on the CIA World Factbook and the State Dept. reports so much. ;-)
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
Rob wrote:
> So how do we sign up for some of that CIA-NSA money from the "Absurd
> Wikipedia Budget"?

I would rather put it into this question: How to we get the
CIA/NSA/(don't forget DARPA and Mossad!) to increase their funding?

Mathias


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Apologies to David Gerard...

body:
On 4/17/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Bizarrely, some of the numbskulls at Wikipedia Review have interpreted
> the sign on that site mentioning David, along with Orlowski's comment
> that he believes it to be run by "Skip...[a] 30-year-old Silicon
> Valley IT professional...along with a dozen other Wikipedia
> administrators", to mean that David is involved, and constructed a
> strange conspiracy theory that has David Gerard, and by extension the
> entire Wikipedia Cabal, running WikiTruth as a kind of humor site.

Their inventiveness is only equalled by their stupidity, as always.

-Matt


from_name: Ryan Delaney

body:
On 4/17/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Shh! If you talk about it publically, they may discover how we are
> financing the corrupt regimes of Wikicommons and Wikibooks with
> revenue from our War on [[Heroin]]!
>
> ~maru

I thought we were using Wikipedia to sell drugs in the third world... did I
miss the memo?

Ryan


from_name: Guettarda

body:
On 4/17/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 4/17/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Shh! If you talk about it publically, they may discover how we are
> > financing the corrupt regimes of Wikicommons and Wikibooks with
> > revenue from our War on [[Heroin]]!
> >
> > ~maru
>
>
> I thought we were using Wikipedia to sell drugs in the third world... did
> I
> miss the memo?

No, you just misread it.  Wikipedia is a free encyclopaedia.  The drugs
distributed will be free, or just designed to cover the cost of their
production... but wait, the cheap drugs are already in the thrid world... or
are you talking about meds?


from_name: maru dubshinki

body:
On 4/17/06, Ben Lowe <ben.lowe at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah, it's only a matter of time before they discover those black-ops speedy
> deletions we were making in [[Category:Cambodia]] while we claimed we were
> trying to get [[Vietnam]] up to featured-article status.

Shh! If you talk about it publically, they may discover how we are
financing the corrupt regimes of Wikicommons and Wikibooks with
revenue from our War on [[Heroin]]!

~maru


body:
On 4/16/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I note, for example, that there is almost never anything in the
> category related to {{uncat}}, and when I stuck it on a page, another
> editor picked up on it very quickly. It's a question of getting the
> right editors to look at the right articles in time.

That is only recently. Many people have worked a lot on cleaning up that
category. There used to be a big backlog there.

Btw, another template sort of fitting (you probably heard of it) is
{{verify}}.

Garion96


from_name: Justin Cormack

subject: [WikiEN-l] Georgia/Victoria

body:
On 16 Apr 2006, at 18:11, Steve Bennett wrote:

> On 16/04/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 4/16/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> So I'm not convinced that the rule "pragmatic disambiguation over
>>> presumed importance" is applied all that consistency.
>>
>> Sounds like some head-beating is necessary, but I already have way
>> too
>> much of this to do.
>
> You're not talking about mine, are you? :) I'm happy to beat people
> with a fixed rule, but I'd like more confirmation that this rule
> actually exists and is accepted by the community. There is the
> guideline on disambig pages, but it's fairly vague. A hard-line "a
> city does *not* get priority over a cheese if most people would expect
> the cheese" would be helpful.

I would find it very odd that something named after something else
should ever get priority.

However obscure the original is, like Camembert, or Jethro Tull, I
think it should be at the article place. (Actually Jethro Tull is
now a dab page).

Justinc


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 4/17/06, Mathias Schindler <neubau at presroi.de> wrote:

> Wikipedia and the CIA - How US Intelligence Can Embed in Wikipedia,
> Plant Propaganda, Delete Facts, Deceive and Attack US Citizens

He does have a point. If other secret services and governments
released their data into the public domain, we wouldn't have to rely
on the CIA World Factbook and the State Dept. reports so much. ;-)

Erik


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Cross-namespace templates

body:
Hi all,
  A half-serious feature request. Would it be possible to extend
Wikimedia to allow templates that have effects in other namespaces?
The most obvious application would be for adding text to another
user's talk page without actually having to edit it. It would
certainly make talk discussions easier than the current situation...

Alfred writes on Bertie's talk page:
Hello, your latest addition sucks

Bertie replies on her talk page:
{{usertalk|Alfred|No it doesn't. You're mean.}}

This template makes the text appear on the talk page, but also somehow
makes an elegant link to the discussion appear on Alfred's talk page.

There may be other ways of solving this particularly awkward
situation, in which either you have to monitor other users' talk
pages, copy the entire conversation back and forth, or create two
separate conversation halves at different locations.

Steve


body:
On 17/04/06, Garion1000 <garion1000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Btw, another template sort of fitting (you probably heard of it) is
> {{verify}}.

Yep, but personally I'm not much of a fan. Has any of Wikipedia been
"verified"? What exactly are we saying when we say that a section has
not been "verified". Realistically we're saying that we don't actually
believe it, or at least that we're skeptical. But that's not quite
what the template says to the casual reader...

Steve


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 4/17/06, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> Of course. I don't think there is any way to improve brion, especially not
> by leaving parts off!

No so sure about that. For example, it might be a great move to omit
the requirement for sleep.


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Georgia/Victoria

body:
On 17/04/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
> On 16 Apr 2006, at 18:11, Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> > On 16/04/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On 4/16/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> So I'm not convinced that the rule "pragmatic disambiguation over
> >>> presumed importance" is applied all that consistency.
> >>
> >> Sounds like some head-beating is necessary, but I already have way
> >> too
> >> much of this to do.
> >
> > You're not talking about mine, are you? :) I'm happy to beat people
> > with a fixed rule, but I'd like more confirmation that this rule
> > actually exists and is accepted by the community. There is the
> > guideline on disambig pages, but it's fairly vague. A hard-line "a
> > city does *not* get priority over a cheese if most people would expect
> > the cheese" would be helpful.
>
> I would find it very odd that something named after something else
> should ever get priority.
>
> However obscure the original is, like Camembert, or Jethro Tull, I
> think it should be at the article place. (Actually Jethro Tull is
> now a dab page).

This sounds good, and you can make a decent argument even for
somewhere like "Boston", but, say, "Baltimore"? The original appears
to have been an Irish hamlet somewhere in Longford that doesn't even
exist any more...

([[Memphis]] is a pretty good example of how to handle an obscure
source and go into a disambig, though)

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Georgia/Victoria

body:
On 17 Apr 2006, at 11:54, Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> Alternatively put, is Wikipedia bound by the principle of least
> surprise?

Actually I am probably in favour of the principle of most surprise. Let
people find out about stuff they dont know about. If we put Georgia the
country at Georgia, people might get interested in a country with a
cuisine based around pomegranates and walnuts. They can speculate as
to why Jethro Tull named themselves after an agriculturalist, and
learn about the lesser known [[Claude L?vi-Strauss]].

Justinc


from_name: Tels

body:
Moin,

On Monday 17 April 2006 06:49, Rob Church wrote:
> On 17/04/06, Christopher Beland <beland at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> > brion wrote:
> > > Yep, I'll work this in to the dump process which I'm about to
> > > restart this evening with a more even size split. (The way a lot of
> > > larger wikis took a long time made it diffcult to get smaller,
> > > easier wikis done regularly.)
> >
> > Awesome.
> >
> > When is the next foundation fundraiser?  How much will it cost to
> > clone Brion?  8)
>
> Are we planning on including his distinctive wit and irrational love
> of sharp implements in said clone?

Of course. I don't think there is any way to improve brion, especially not
by leaving parts off!

best wishes,

Tels

--
 Signed on Mon Apr 17 12:26:57 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Now, admittedly, it's critical software. This is the 'let's go kill
 people' software." -- Mark A. Welsh III

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Georgia/Victoria

body:
On 17/04/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> I would find it very odd that something named after something else
> should ever get priority.
>
> However obscure the original is, like Camembert, or Jethro Tull, I
> think it should be at the article place. (Actually Jethro Tull is
> now a dab page).

Ok, so you're in favour of us making a judgment about which page
"deserves" the title as the main article? Personally, I feel that this
is the more "encyclopaedic" road. The alternative, prioritising the
page that most visitors/editors visit/expect, is the more "pragmatic"
road.

To me, the fact that "Camembert" pulls up a stub article on an
entirely unremarkable commune in France is surprising. Perhaps a
similar surprise to that that would be experienced by Americans
visiting "Georgia" and finding the birthplace of Stalin. The question
is, is this surprise good or bad?

Alternatively put, is Wikipedia bound by the principle of least surprise?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Georgia/Victoria

body:
On 17/04/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> ([[Memphis]] is a pretty good example of how to handle an obscure
> source and go into a disambig, though)

Interesting - it had forgotten to actually link to [[Memphis
(mythology)]] so I fixed that. It's funny how some disambigs, like
this one, are quite restrained - there are few entries that aren't
"genuinely ambiguous". No link to [[Memphis Belle]], for example.
Whereas on other dab pages, the standard for inclusion appears to be
"includes the word somewhere in the title", and sometimes not even
that :)

Steve


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Apologies to David Gerard...

body:
On 4/17/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Bizarrely, some of the numbskulls at Wikipedia Review have interpreted
> the sign on that site mentioning David, along with Orlowski's comment
> that he believes it to be run by "Skip...[a] 30-year-old Silicon
> Valley IT professional...along with a dozen other Wikipedia
> administrators", to mean that David is involved, and constructed a
> strange conspiracy theory that has David Gerard, and by extension the
> entire Wikipedia Cabal, running WikiTruth as a kind of humor site.

Coming in 2007, Dan Brown's _Jimbo Code_:

"A WP:OFFICE action in the silent after-hour pages of Wikipedia
reveals a sinister plot to uncover a secret that has been protected by
a clandestine society since the days of Nupedia. The victim is a
high-ranking rouge admin of this ancient cabal who, in the moments
before being banned, manages to leave gruesome clues at the scene that
only his grandson, noted vandal Willy von Wheels, and Mr. Treason, a
famed troll, can untangle. The duo become both suspects and detectives
searching for not only Willy's grandfather's blocker but also the
stunning secret of the encyclopedia he was charged to protect. Mere
steps ahead of the ArbCom and the deadly competition, the mystery
leads Willy and Treason on a breathless flight through AFD, RFA, and
the edit history of [[Wikipedia]] itself."

(with apologies to the Amazon.com review department)

Kirill Lokshin


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Dirk Riehle wrote:

>At 17.04.2006, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>Dirk Riehle wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>can falter.  Additionally, as the Mozilla note mentioned,
>>>>contributions that aren't part of the mainline will likely bitrot.  (I
>>>>don't have a solution to this; just a cautionary note.)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Well, the main solution is to create an ecosystem where people get
>>>hired to work (full-time) on providing such extensions (or additions
>>>to the mainline) to MediaWiki. Only this setup can provide some continuity.
>>>
>>>
>>...
>>What could be more important is to ensure that anything done for free
>>stays free.  It would be shameful to have volunteer efforts tied up by
>>someone else's patents.
>>
>>
>Is that mostly a legal concern? (I.e. ambiguity of OSS licenses?)
>
>I firmly believe that "commercial open-source software" won't fly in
>the long run; most companies won't reach escape velocity. (Commercial
>OSS defined here as software where a company keeps control over the
>software, e.g. MySQL's dual-license model. MySQL is a notable
>exception where it works because they got into the game early.)
>
>What you need is an Eclipse Foundation like setup where large
>corporations/system integrators make money on complementary services
>and therefore can afford "altruistic" contributions to a real
>open-source project like MediaWiki. Well, not only "afford" but "have to". :-)
>
>
As much as I support open source concepts I have to admit that most of
it remains untested in the courts.  Patents can be a bigger problem than
copyrights because they cover the ideas rather than just the expression
of the idea.  The first person to the patent office has an advantage
even over others who may have had the idea earlier.

Ec


list: commons-l

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Commons-l] Missing images and commonshelper updates

body:
FYI

I have added lots of nice functions to my "missing images" and
"commonshelper" tools [1].

Missing images
* This can now be invoked with a category name, and the script will
iterate through all articles in this category
* You can get the script source fro the page itself (so you can run it
without the 30-second-limit)
* Images ("good" and "unknown") on wikipedias now have a button leading
to a prefilled commonshelper page

Commonshelper
* Now generated a description based on the {{Information}} template
* Improved upload history parsing function thanks to a function provided
by Marco Schuster
* Now provides a direct link to save an image locally
* Now provides a button to call up the commons upload page with the
description prefilled

Magnus

[1] http://magnusmanske.de/wikipedia/


body:
Mathias Schindler wrote:

>
>http://groups.google.com/group/alt.gossip.celebrities/msg/9f1da2e6d4ad21f3?&hl=en&q=insubject%3Awikipedia
>
>Wikipedia and the CIA - How US Intelligence Can Embed in Wikipedia,
>Plant Propaganda, Delete Facts, Deceive and Attack US Citizens
>
>Wikipedia An Ultimate Trojan Horse for CIA and US Government on the
>Internet
>
>The text actually made my day.
>
It's noteworthy to consider that the top of the sponsors for the page was:

> Become a CIA Agent
> <http://www.google.com/pagead/iclk?sa=l&ai=BE-Iong9ERLKkCtCULpOFrc0Pooq2B-bsgMcBwI23AYDTDhABGAEg99uNAigDSIs5UNDx170FmAGwnI8EoAGIlL7-A6oBMm1zZ3ZpZXcrRXhwZXJpbWVudEdyb3Vwc0IwMytwdWJsaWMrbm9uYWR1bHQrdXNlbmV0yAEB2gFRL2dyb3VwL2FsdC5nb3NzaXAuY2VsZWJyaXRpZXMvbXNnLzlmMWRhMmU2ZDRhZDIxZjM_JmhsPWVuJnE9aW5zdWJqZWN0JTNBd2lraXBlZGlhlQIeiAsK&num=1&adurl=http://www.criminaljustice-degrees.com/index.cfm%3Fkey%3Dgo_2_13r%26v%3Dgoogle%26c%3D4563884%26cat%3D201771854%26mt%3DContent%26ad%3D327887324%26st%3Dcentral%2520intelligence%2520agency>
> Start a career in the CIA with
> a Criminal Justice degree.
> www.criminaljustice-degrees.com

It doesn't surprise me to see the CIA playing both sides.

Ec