from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] 24

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> Stevertigo, I don't think you understand what's
> going on here.

Well, that's why I asked. :-)

> I tried.  I let him come back as EofT for as long as
> we could take it.

I see. I was under the impression that EofT was a
'covert re-assimilation' and that he was doing fine
for a while-- until his meds ran out.

> Part of the problem is that he will not email me, he
> will not join the mailing list, he will not take
part in dialog.  He calls people racists and control
freaks.  He postures about being interested in policy,
but then he always makes it >perfectly clear that he
intends to ignore any policy that he >doesn't agree
with.

This is quite a contradiction-- Im getting the
picture.

> More than once, he has frightened people, including
> me, by making
> remarks implying a personal level of intimidation...
More than once, he has been accused of writing
> things that were
> tantamount to death threats.

Ok-- Now I remember (just glimpses though) An
appropriate response would no doubt call for more
direct measures.  But these have no doubt been tried.

> But this guy, well, he's in a category all his own,
> I'm sorry to conclude, and I think there is very
little chance of him learning how
> to behave in a civilized fashion.

Thats a shame.  Because when he was (for lack of a
better word) "well," he seemed both intelligent and
(somewhat) amicable, if not exactly constructive.

Thanks,
~S~

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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Alex R.

subject: [WikiEN-l] user names

body:
From: "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
> Martin wrote:
> >It's good that people volunteer to work on Wikipedia.
> >We're grateful for their hard work. But with that work
> >comes responsibility. We ask that contributors check
> >their facts and take some pride in their work. We ask
> >that they collaborate with others. We ask that they
> >behave civilly and with respect. Asking that they use
> >an appropriate username is an extension of that, and
> >not wildly unreasonable.
>
> Wow, Martin - you just nailed it.
>
> --mav

Yes, I think what i-ctus mav has redacted  here is
the basis of any reasonable agreement bewtween
Wikipedia contributor and the other members of
the association.  It need not be written down,
discussed or decided upon, it is the reasonable terms
of behavior that is implied into every principled
exchanged between those who organize together
for a purpose. Having it articulated in a concise
manner is perhaps the beginning of corpus
juris civilis wikipedi. (excuse me if I have the Latin
declinations wrong, corrections greatfully acknowledged).

Alex756


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] C++ wiki parser

body:
Frithjof Engel wrote:

> Hello,
> looks like many people have done almost the same thing: I've also
> begun to write a parser. Mine is written is Python.
>
> It's far away from completition, but I don't want to spend my time
> writing useless code so I am asking how we want to continue:
> I don't think it's wise to have four parsers doing actually the same.
> However, everbody can do what he/she wants, but I personally
> would rather like to work on one program than doing doubled, useless
> work.
> As Magnus Manske already pointed out, such a parser could be the base
> of  several desired tools. We could write a library that could be used
> by these applications.
>
> The difference between mine program and all the others AFAIK is
> the point how the wiki data actually get loaded.
> As someone suggested on meta.wikipedia.org I have written
> a file called 'raw.php' that retrieves the raw wiki data.
> In my opinion that's quite useful for offline-editing applications
> and such things.
>
> You can get my parser, along with my adapted 'Article.php' and the
> file 'raw.php', here: www.fms-engel.de/buildHTML.tar.bz2
> (Sorry for not providing a patch, when I find time, I'll do it)
>
> I don't want to start a language-flamewar, but I probably prefer
> Magnus Manske's version. C++ is quite fast and there are several
> GUI libraries one can use for each platform to write nice GUIs.
> I did not take a look at his program, but I guess it's much more mature
> than, for example, mine.
>
> I would really like to discuss this topic as I think a parser and the
> resulting possibilities of having one is one of the most wanted
> features, at least for me :)
> There is probably a better solution than having four parsers that do
> actually the same thing...
>
> Regards,
> Frithjof
>
I would imagine that a formal grammar for Wikipedia markup (for example
using EBNF) might be a good thing.

This could then be used for three purposes:
* to define the grammar clearly for technical reference purposes
* to allow the generation of parsers using parser-generator compilers
which are available for a large number of languages, including C/C++,
Python,  Java etc.
* to help define a Document Object Model for the output of the parser
* to allow parsers to be validated as correct, by allowing the
compilation of a set of unit tests

However, what makes this difficult is that there should no invalid
documents in Wiki-markup: everything should produce some output, even if
it's partly broken: for example, opening a link body, but not closing
it, should end up with literal "[[" in the text, not a parser error.
Another way of putting it is that _all_ strings should be valid
productions of the grammar: however, done naively, this can end up with
an ambiguous grammar where the same input can be parsed two ways.

Has anyone made an attempt at defining a formal grammar for Wikipedia?

-- Neil


from_name: Frithjof Engel

subject: [Wikitech-l] C++ wiki parser

body:
Hello,
looks like many people have done almost the same thing: I've also
begun to write a parser. Mine is written is Python.

It's far away from completition, but I don't want to spend my time
writing useless code so I am asking how we want to continue:
I don't think it's wise to have four parsers doing actually the same.
However, everbody can do what he/she wants, but I personally
would rather like to work on one program than doing doubled, useless work.
As Magnus Manske already pointed out, such a parser could be the base of
  several desired tools. We could write a library that could be used by
these applications.

The difference between mine program and all the others AFAIK is
the point how the wiki data actually get loaded.
As someone suggested on meta.wikipedia.org I have written
a file called 'raw.php' that retrieves the raw wiki data.
In my opinion that's quite useful for offline-editing applications
and such things.

You can get my parser, along with my adapted 'Article.php' and the file
'raw.php', here: www.fms-engel.de/buildHTML.tar.bz2
(Sorry for not providing a patch, when I find time, I'll do it)

I don't want to start a language-flamewar, but I probably prefer
Magnus Manske's version. C++ is quite fast and there are several
GUI libraries one can use for each platform to write nice GUIs.
I did not take a look at his program, but I guess it's much more mature
than, for example, mine.

I would really like to discuss this topic as I think a parser and the
resulting possibilities of having one is one of the most wanted
features, at least for me :)
There is probably a better solution than having four parsers that do
actually the same thing...

Regards,
Frithjof


from_name: Martin Harper

subject: [WikiEN-l] user names

body:
Re: employers and dress codes.

I used to volunteer to work in a local youth club. There was an implicit dress code. A
suit would have been unacceptable. A "loud" T-shirt would also have been
unacceptable. I was doing the children a favour, but in doing that favour I had certain
responsibilities, and dressing appropriately was part of that. Compare golf clubs,
night clubs, pubs, etc, etc.

It's good that people volunteer to work on Wikipedia. We're grateful for their hard
work. But with that work comes responsibility. We ask that contributors check their
facts and take some pride in their work. We ask that they collaborate with others. We
ask that they behave civilly and with respect. Asking that they use an appropriate
username is an extension of that, and not wildly unreasonable.

There is a middle way between unrestricted freedom of speech and "the tyranny of
majorities who carry on like on-line lynch mobs" (nice turn of phrase). I think it lies in
balancing an appropriate dress code with an appropriate means of asking people to
follow that dress code.

-Martin "MyRedDice" Harper


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> I think that I meant that it seemed rather circular
> to claim that a name must be changed because it's
> "inflammatory"
> ("of a nature to rouse passion, anger, or animosity"
> -- OED)
> when the only passion, anger, and animosity that it
> raised
> was in the business of changing names in the first
> place.

Wikipedia is not a dictionary ;)

> There was no mention (there was eventually, but late
> in the process)
> of any emotions being aroused by the name /other/
> than
> the desire to ban it on the grounds that it was
> "inflammatory".

Wikipedia is not an emotionary either.

> But that is hardly what I said; which, as I
> mentioned,
> was not very coherent.  And was overly combative.
> And rude.
> Sorry about that.

No-- you were just too quick to type back in retort --
like LD was.  You both are gracious enough to
recognize it
and apologise for the minor miscommunications along
the way, and I am admirous of both of you for having
the fortitude to do so.

> Yes, I am absolutely arguing against that policy.
> A more detailed case, from principle, is in my most
> recent post,
> which is a lengthy reply to a post from mav.

The best policies are simple. Where subjective
concerns are dealt with, we need consensus.  There is
no way around it--these situations will arise, and
there will need to be decisions made.  Either there
will be a community consensus, on what that decision
will be, or there will be a Jimbo consensus.  This is
the choice.

> According to that article, Wikifaith is faith in the
> wiki process.

Its faith in people. Not the process. Wikifaith, as I
define it is simply an understanding that "Wiki works"
because "people work"-- Wiki is a name for a tool that
represents a technological extension of the human
spirits of community and collegiality.  Changes which
act to hamper this are rooted in mistrust, and are for
lack of a better term "anti-wiki"

> That's neither here nor there when it comes to
> personal usernames.
> I have a great deal of faith in the wiki process
> these days --
> more than I did when I first heard of it! ^_^

To make the argument that usernames are in some way
different is the same as saying that they are special
-- in what way are they special? Do they need to be
protected? Are they

> I also have faith that Wikipedia will generally do
> the right thing;

I have no faith in the thing called "Wikipedia"
whatsoever. My faith is reserved for the people who
happen to be on it. Nes pa?

> To the extent that
> money measures faith,

Your donation of "money" (work hours quantified,
right) is a good thing.  Are you going to compare your
donation in anyway to those of others?

> See, if that ever /really/ went through, I would
> leave.
> Hell, if it were ever a serious issue, I'd lose a
> lot of faith
> (in Wikipedia, but not much in the wiki process in
> general).

Youre an addict, Toby. ;-) Besides-- you make my
point-- nothing would come of it.  I can whip up some
annoying fuss trying to get some support for it, and
it will be over like *snap*  I'll *bet that the
namechange page would even be deleted (as inflammatory
vandalism )-- and you and I both know that there needs
be "consensus" for such a thing to stand. ;-)

> OK, that might not be entirely without doubt;

See?

> I'm having a hard time thinking of a plausible
> situation where.... for the community to attempt to
>impose on me by force.

If we acted unreasonably by your standards, then you
would leave. But because were open, we tend to attract
rather intelligent people, and this standard of reason
would no doubt have to be high.  Even in situations
where there is a close split (which reminds me:
time-limited voting, no anons, no newbies (except the
user themself)  etc. ) there is still the need for the
community to stand by its own policy. This is why its
important to hammer it out and-- if I may add-- why
your criticisms are valid.

> I suspect that the world would be a better place
> if we didn't have the technical means to enforce
> some rules.

Idea: Keep the discussion limited to the context at
hand, eh?

> If people couldn't do anything to change Drolsi's
> old name
> /other/ than to talk to him on a personal basis
> and try to convince him that it would be a good
> idea,
> then that might have been what people tried in the
> first place!

This is idealistic-- measures to enforce that which is
best for wikipedia are in place now-- Jim can pull
even pull the plug if its going to be good for wiki.
Lets keep perspective here.  This is just a name.
"There is no G-d-given right to edit Wikipedia"
remember. (Tarquin, I think) If your critique is of my
approach-- I will acknowledge that I could have been
more cordial to JiL.

> Instituting banning and page protection -- even if
> necessary,
> in the end, because of vandalism -- can be a bad
> thing too,
> like anythin that interferes with the wiki process
> (in which I have so much faith).

So, under it all-- you oppose banning itself? Then we
need a namechange for this thread.  Should we take the
step of voting on it?

~S~

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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Upgrades in progress

body:
Larousse is back up (with its old motherboard until it gets fixed up),
and very shortly Jason will be making upgrades to pliny, which
hopefully will solve its crashes-all-the-time problem. While pliny is
offline larousse will be serving cached pages for all (phase 3) wikis.

Sorry about the downtime!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names (snip)

body:
> --- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu>
> That's neither here nor there when it comes to
> personal usernames.
> I have a great deal of faith in the wiki process
> these days --
> more than I did when I first heard of it! ^_^

To make the argument that usernames are in some way
different is the same as saying that they are special
-- in what way are they special? Do they need to be
protected? Are they under some different right, or
sphere, where the rules that govern other Wikipedia
aspects are separate?  This argument works both ways--
you can say "why treat usernames so differently" if
they are not "special".

The answer is obvious-- they are different, because we
cant simply "edit" them-- we cant click change this
username and presto-- it be wikified.  Its among the
few aspects of Wiki that are beyong wiki means, and
yet are system-level in nature.  Choosing a name is a
system command, and not a wiki edit.

~S~

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from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Add new lists to gmane.org

body:
Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:

> Walter, I for one would appreciate being able to read the newly created
> lists through gmane.  I think that Gmane is great, since it is so much
> less time consuming to read the lists that way.
>
> Louis

Thank You! Nice to know that some are using the gmane.org gateway and
like it.

If no objection or no responds I will ask gmane to add the lists next week.

Walter


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
Toby wrote:
>The same goes for comments on talk pages,
>edit summaries, and, yes, even usernames.

Which are still covered by our etiquette and usernames polices. If somebody
makes a pest of themselves and wastes our time and energy that would
otherwise go into creating an encyclopedia, then they must change or leave
for the good of the project. And this /whole/ episode has misdirected a great
deal of time and effort that would otherwise have gone into creating content.

As Martin said about our volunteer effort:
"But with that work comes responsibility."

Choosing a username that offends is not a responsible thing to do.

User names should only play a nominative role, not a provocative one where
slogans, insults and POV statements reign free.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Arnaud G

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] images from one wikipedia to another (Re: Money,
	money)

body:
Sascha Noyes wrote:

>On Monday 13 October 2003 02:12 pm, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
>
>
>
>>This is a problem to be attacked ASAP.  We need one image server for
>>all wikipedias--simply because images are language independend.
>>
>>

I don't agree with the statement image are "language independent". All
the schema, map, etc are language dependant. As soon as you have text
(whatever letter or number) in an image, it becomes a language dependant
image. Moreover can you tell us why the description of the image should
contain the copyright notice in english? If we have the same image for
multiple wiki, this image should contain the copyright statement in all
the language as you cannot expect everyone to understand english, and
then the description will be not very readable. People should take care
when they import an image from another wikipedia to translate the
copyright statement and not only say: this image is ok it comes from kw: !


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] user:mediator blocked

body:
Welcome back to the cabal. :)

Angela.

 --- Martin Harper <martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk>
wrote: > Jimbo wrote:
> > Sure, but I consider this proven now.
>
> I blocked user:mediator. I guess this means I'm back
> to making full use
> of my sysop powers.
>
> Now I feel all unclean. If anyone wants to send me
> some soap, my
> mailing address is on my user page.
>
> -Martin "MyRedDice" Harper
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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from_name: Nikola Smolenski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] LanguageSr.php

body:
On Monday 13 October 2003 22:26, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Monday, Oct 13, 2003, at 01:57 US/Pacific, Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> > I have just finished translating LanguageSr.php. Could it be added to
> > the
> > Wikipedia?
>
> Cool! I'll test it out and install it once the server madness is a
> little stabilized later today (hopefully!)

Great :) I would like to present Wikipedia on a conference on use of Cyrillic
on the Internet on 25th so it would be nice if thelanguage could be instaled
up to 20th.

I have edited the linktrail, I guess it will now pick up all Cyrillic letters
(and non-letters above 0x7F also but these are rarelyused so I guess that
will not be a problem). If it doesn't work at all, return it to default.

I didn't know what to do about URLs in wfLocalUrl() function calls so I left
them untranslated but translated them when they were in the text.

I am thinking about making a function that could make strings that would use
correct singular and plural form depending on numbers inserted in them. This
is not so needed for English but is for Serbian and some other languages. But
it could wait.

So: Below are the last 3 changes in last 2 days.
But: Below is the last change in the last day.

PS: Is it OK for these messages to be crossposted to two lists?


subject: [WikiEN-l] user:mediator blocked

body:
Jimbo wrote:
> Sure, but I consider this proven now.

I blocked user:mediator. I guess this means I'm back to making full use
of my sysop powers.

Now I feel all unclean. If anyone wants to send me some soap, my
mailing address is on my user page.

-Martin "MyRedDice" Harper


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia parser specs

body:
Alfio Puglisi wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Oct 2003, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>
>
>>I guess the list of "stupid parser tricks" would start with bracket
>>notation for links:
>>
>>[http://www.edpoor.com] is a link to my outdated, static website
>>
>>[http://www.edpoor.com/images/Ae-inAndDog.jpg girl with dog] is an
>>annotated link
>>
>>[[Iraq]] links to the Wikipedia article on Iraq
>>[[Iraq|Rummyland]] links to Iraq but is shown as "Rummyland" (a
>>Doonesbury reference, okay? ;-)
>
>
> Isn't the "Editing help" page already a parser guide? At least, that's
> what I used writing mine :-)

Same here :-)

BTW, a few thoughts:
* We should get rid of the ";xxx :yyy" thing ;-)
* What to do with wiki-HTML-mixes (e.g., "This '''is bold</b>")?
* Do we have to hack HTML validation like we did in PHP, or is there
some library we could use?

Magnus


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Louis Kyu Won Ryu (Angel)

body:
> From: Angela <sloog77 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Anthere wrote:
> >It was my understanding non-english speakers were
> >welcome to the simple wikipedia. If not, I would
> like
> >Angela to confirm it, so we can change the rules of
> >the simple accordingly.
>
> Huh? Me? Since when did I become GodKing? I have
> absolutely no say whatsoever over who contributes to
> Simple. I'd kind of assumed that anyone was welcome
> to
> contribute anywhere if they were serious about
> creating an encyclopedia, and willing to adhere to

Sure not Angel.
But since you are the biggest contributor there, you
know what the rules and recommandations are. I checked
yesterday, it is written that it is intended for
people with poor english *reading* skills. In fact,
not for people with poor english writing skills.
However, it is also mentionned that Users are likely
to understand rules with difficulty, which might imply
they are not english (or kids).

You would made a beautiful pink Queen :-)
(I remember some months ago, someone said once that
Jules was the Queen of Wikipedia - who said that ?)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: C++ wiki parser

body:
user_Jamesday wrote:

>>>I don't think it's wise to have four parsers doing actually the same. <<
>
>
> On the server side it seems that speed is a desired feature, so C or C++ seems to make sense as a preferred language. They also have the advantage of being very widely understood. Broad understanding probably favors C or simple C++ (simple C++ meaning without really fancy use of classes and inheritance). Hopefully either of those would allow a lot of people to get involved in optimizing and reusing the code.

Well, I did use classes, but we do so already in PHP. I didn't do
"fancy" stuff like multiple inheritance, though. IMHO the structure of
the code is close enough to the current script that people who know
MediaWiki well should be able to read most of the code, even if they
didn't work with C++ before.

Example : What might this do?

  TUCS t = readSomeFreakingText() ;
  VTUCS v ;
  t.explode ( "\n" , v ) ;

(Hint: TUCS is my string type, VTUCS is an array of such...)

Magnus


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] 24

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>I tried.  I let him come back as EofT for as long as we could take it.
>
>Part of the problem is that he will not email me, he will not join the
>mailing list, he will not take part in dialog.  He calls people
>racists and control freaks.  He postures about being interested in
>policy, but then he always makes it perfectly clear that he intends to
>ignore any policy that he doesn't agree with.
>
>More than once, he has frightened people, including me, by making
>remarks implying a personal level of intimidation.  He likes to speak
>of death for people who disagree with him, and says things like "There
>is no co-operation with such people." "They were warned."
>
>More than once, he has been accused of writing things that were
>tantamount to death threats.
>
>But this guy, well, he's in a category all his own, I'm sorry to
>conclude, and I think there is very little chance of him learning how
>to behave in a civilized fashion.
>
What has left me pissed off in this whole episode is not the simple fact
that EofT or his multiple incarnations were banned.  Before the
User:Mediator page happened, my association with him was never more than
casual.  I had no basis for either supporting or opposing his ban,
 though I did respond to what seemed like speculative accusations until
I was satisfied that he had been properly identified.  In the
discussions about the User:Mediator I was more concerned about the
obfuscation from the lawyer games that Alec was playing; these seemed to
be an attempt to kill the idea by introducing unnecessary complications.
 I do, nevertheless, allow for the likelihood that User:Mediator might
have in due course proven himself disingenuous.

I visited the article on Ed Poor's recommendation on the mailing list.
 Pursuant to the idea that it was a "role account" I added my idea in
goood faith, as did several others.  The page has its own reason for
existence quite apart from the identity of the person who started it.
 Martin and his vengeful colleagues have been so blinded by their hatred
of User:142... that they completely ignore anyone who contributed there,
and the whole subject of the discussion.  It is clear that for them who
says something is a lot more important than what is said.

Ec


from_name: David Friedland

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Back to IPA/SAMPA and pronunciations

body:
I'll just presume the reason nobody responded to me is because I seemed
to be all talk and no code.

So I have posted everything to my personal web site:
<http://www.nohat.net/OutputPage.php.diff>
<http://www.nohat.net/wikistandard.css.diff>
<http://www.nohat.net/Makefile>
<http://www.nohat.net/sampa2unicode.lex>

You have to put the "sampa2unicode" executable built by the Makefile
into the same directory as OutputPage.php. Try it, you can put stuff
like <IPA>plEZ@`</IPA> onto pages and get nice IPA output.

If there are no objections and someone gives SF user Nohat CVS access, I
can commit these changes.

- David [[User:Nohat]]

David Friedland wrote:

> The last discussions on the lists about how to represent pronunciations
> on Wikipedia didn't end with any definitive conclusions.
>
> One of the proposed suggestions was to provide a way input IPA in an
> easy-to-use format and then have it automagically get converted into
> Unicode IPA. As a first step I wrote a Lex analyzer to convert X-SAMPA
> to Unicode IPA (which results in C code that I compiled to an
> executable). This will enable editors to enter pronunciations in the
> ugly-but-easy-to-type X-SAMPA format and have them appear in IPA using
> the Unicode IPA extensions.
>
> I also dove into the Wikipedia code and patched OutputPage.php to
> support <IPA> </IPA> tags that surround SAMPA and output it as <SPAN
> class="IPA"> </SPAN>, with the Unicode IPA HTML entities inside the SPAN
> tag. Finally, I patched style/wikistandard.css to have a .IPA style that
> explicitly sets the font-family to a list of fonts that are known to
> contain the IPA Unicode extensions. This is necessary because some
> broswers (namely Windows IE) don't display IPA Unicode characters even
> if they're installed unless the currently active font has those characters.
>
> I envision the use of <IPA> tags on Wikipedia to be fairly limited, in
> that IPA/SAMPA will only appear on pages discussing pronunciations, but
> I think it will make a good starting point, perhaps, for representing
> pronunciations on Wiktionary.
>
> I can attach the diffs for OutputPage.php and style/wikistandard.css to
> a future message (if I can ever get the sourceforge cvs server to
> respond), but what should I do with my .lex file and Makefile for
> building the parser? Should I post them too? I would guess most list
> readers would not be pleased by my spamming them with such tediums. I
> understand the hesitation developers have to handing out CVS access to
> people whose code they have never seen, so email me privately if you
> want me to send you what I've done.
>
> Thanks!
>
> - David [[User:Nohat]]
>
> Note: for most purposes, X-SAMPA is backwards compatible with SAMPA for
> various languages, but the Lex analyzer can be modified to support
> something like <IPA lang="French"> or something like that for the
> language-specific SAMPA encodings, if that is deemed desirable.


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names (snip)

body:
Stevertigo wrote:

>
>
>The answer is obvious-- they are different, because we
>cant simply "edit" them-- we cant click change this
>username and presto-- it be wikified.  Its among the
>few aspects of Wiki that are beyong wiki means, and
>yet are system-level in nature.  Choosing a name is a
>system command, and not a wiki edit.
>
Not a wiki edit! Aha! therfore not subject to POV rules. :-)


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>User names should only play a nominative role, not a provocative one where
>slogans, insults and POV statements reign free.
>
They're only provocative to those who want to be provoked.  There's too
much silly whining just because some don't like another's name.


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Money, money... (let's bribe

body:
On Mon, Oct 13, 2003 at 02:10:59PM -0700, Anthere wrote:
>
> And I am sure Brion will be a great father

Hi Anthere, Brion, is there anything we should know?

:-)


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>Stevertigo wrote:
>
>>Toby Bartels wrote:
>>
>>>Yeah, /I/ know what it means?  Do you???
>>>
>>If you dont think "Jesus is Lord!" (dont forget the
>>exclamation !) isnt inflamatory-- I dont know what to
>>tell you.
>>
>
>Eh, that post was a bit over the top, and not very sensible.
>I think that I meant that it seemed rather circular
>to claim that a name must be changed because it's "inflammatory"
>("of a nature to rouse passion, anger, or animosity" -- OED)
>when the only passion, anger, and animosity that it raised
>was in the business of changing names in the first place.
>There was no mention (there was eventually, but late in the process)
>of any emotions being aroused by the name /other/ than
>the desire to ban it on the grounds that it was "inflammatory".
>
I confess that I reacted to the name facetiously and jokingly, but I
would still defend JiL's right to the name he wants.  Toby's right,
there was no problem until those who wanted a changed name started one.

>>Youre usually pretty straightforward and
>>practical Toby--in this case you seem to be making a
>>strange quasi-principled argument against a policy --
>>let me repeat it-- 1. Wikipedians can vote to change a
>>username.  2. There are no standards, save the will of
>>the community.
>>
>
>Yes, I am absolutely arguing against that policy.
>A more detailed case, from principle, is in my most recent post,
>which is a lengthy reply to a post from mav.
>
1. A vote to limit an individual's rights is tyrannous.
2. Please don't confuse the will of the community with the will of a
small clique.

>>The second one require some wikitrust
>>or better yet: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikifaith
>>
>
>According to that article, Wikifaith is faith in the wiki process.
>That's neither here nor there when it comes to personal usernames.
>I have a great deal of faith in the wiki process these days --
>more than I did when I first heard of it! ^_^
>
>I also have faith that Wikipedia will generally do the right thing;
>perhaps that is what you meant.
>
I have more faith in the wiki process than in some of its users.

>>So, maybe LD's experiment was useful after all-- but
>>only to prove my original point (which isnt really
>>"my" point alone, is it-- 19 to 5 vote ) that "WP
>>reserves the right to rename you. "  ie:
>>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Toby_Bartels/namechange
>>
The vote was a farce.  That kind of thing tends to attract mostly those
who are right there clicking their knitting needles at the foot of the
guillotine.  Most would not participate in the vote because it's a waste
of time away from what they are here to do, assuming of course that they
knew about it in the first place..  If the turnout of voters for the
logo vote (over 170 IIRC) is to be any kind of standard, 24 is about 14%
of that.  The logo vote was extensively advertised; what advertising was
done for this one?

>I know the danger of making absolute statements.
>But I'm having a hard time thinking of a plausible situation
>where such a name change would be remotely a good idea --
>I mean for the community to attempt to impose on me by force.
>
Yes, there are exceptions.  Some months back there was the
Anthere/Anth?re/Anth?re.... issue where somebody introduced a name that
differed from that of a respected user by only an accent.  As it was the
person was trying to make some point and had no intention of continuing
to use the confusing name, otherwise this could be a situation where the
issue might be forced.

>I suspect that the world would be a better place
>if we didn't have the technical means to enforce some rules.
>
Laws depend on enforcement to be effective.  Regrettably speeding laws
work only because there's a cop there with a radar gun.  The number who
will avoid speeding out of well considered altruism is likely small.
 Technology is a double-edged sword.

>If people couldn't do anything to change Drolsi's old name
>/other/ than to talk to him on a personal basis
>and try to convince him that it would be a good idea,
>then that might have been what people tried in the first place!
>
Yes, and that reflection goes farther than Wikipedia.  We've lost the
skill of discussing our problems with our neighbors; we're afraid of the
reaction that we might get from a direct approach.  It's much easier to
surprise him with a visit from the police or a subpoena from small
claims court.

>This suspicion, like the rambling at the end of my reply to mav,
>is also much broader than just Wikipedia -- and as in that case,
>Wikipedia is much closer to my ideal than most insitutions are..
>
But still an ideal.  I often wonder about the sort of vision that
sustains the participation of some Wikipedians.

>This is even -- dare I say it? -- a big part of Wikifaith to me.
>In wikis, people /can't/ stop others from editing their text;
>and this forces collaboration instead of single authorship.
>
It's interesting that the matter of Wikifaith should come up in the
context of one user's faith-bound name.

>Instituting banning and page protection -- even if necessary,
>in the end, because of vandalism -- can be a bad thing too,
>like anything that interferes with the wiki process
>(in which I have so much faith).
>
Yes, they're analogous to imprisonment, exile and other forms of state
perpetrated violence.  I often wonder about those people who cry loudest
about "bringing a criminal to justice"; justice is often farthest from
their mind.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia parser specs

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>
> Alfio Puglisi wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 13 Oct 2003, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I guess the list of "stupid parser tricks" would start with bracket
>>> notation for links:
>>>
>>> [http://www.edpoor.com] is a link to my outdated, static website
>>>
>>> [http://www.edpoor.com/images/Ae-inAndDog.jpg girl with dog] is an
>>> annotated link
>>>
>>> [[Iraq]] links to the Wikipedia article on Iraq
>>> [[Iraq|Rummyland]] links to Iraq but is shown as "Rummyland" (a
>>> Doonesbury reference, okay? ;-)
>>
>>
>>
>> Isn't the "Editing help" page already a parser guide? At least, that's
>> what I used writing mine :-)
>
>
> Same here :-)

Me, too :)

> * What to do with wiki-HTML-mixes (e.g., "This '''is bold</b>")?
Hmm, hard to say.
The need for real specs get clearer and clearer for me the more I think
about it.

> * Do we have to hack HTML validation like we did in PHP, or is there
> some library we could use?
I think this depends on the language we use.

-- Frithjof


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Louis Kyu Won Ryu

body:
Anthere wrote:
>It was my understanding non-english speakers were
>welcome to the simple wikipedia. If not, I would like
>Angela to confirm it, so we can change the rules of
>the simple accordingly.

Huh? Me? Since when did I become GodKing? I have
absolutely no say whatsoever over who contributes to
Simple. I'd kind of assumed that anyone was welcome to
contribute anywhere if they were serious about
creating an encyclopedia, and willing to adhere to
NPOV, the GFDL and Wikilove.

Anthere wrote:
>I also think that provoking dissent over a person is
>just a nice way to shut down a discussion over an
>idea.

This doesn't shut down the discussion. It can (and
should) continue at [[Wikipedia:Mediation and
Arbitration (proposal)]] where it was originally.

Louis wrote:
>And I truly believe that the only goal of
User:Mediator was to disrupt.
Anthere wrote:
>You are entitled your opinion

I think his aim was more to twist policy to fit his
own goals, but that's just my opinion.

Angela.

________________________________________________________________________
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Server status

body:
All wikis should be up and running, as should the mailing lists.

Jason unfortunately had some trouble getting the database server to
power up with the new motherboard installed, and it's late (after 3:30
am) so he's going to try again tomorrow. In the meantime, we're at
least running on two servers again. Yay!

To add insult to injury, our new backup mailserver in Germany suffered
some sort of network outage just in time not to be able to pick up any
mail while pliny was offline. :P

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
From: Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>

On Monday, Oct 13, 2003, at 16:16 US/Pacific, Jens
Frank wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 13, 2003 at 02:10:59PM -0700, Anthere
wrote:
>>
>> And I am sure Brion will be a great father
>
> Hi Anthere, Brion, is there anything we should know?

And here, I can here people getting the chills to the
thought Brion could find himself with a baby instead
of a power book on the knees...

>Well sometimes, when two PowerBooks love each other
>very much... ;)

That work ! Really !

Please, lend me your powerbook, I am planning a
breeding session with my imac...

__________________________________
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l Images cp status (Arnaud)

body:
--- wikipedia-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:
> Send Wikipedia-l mailing list submissions to
> 	wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web,
> visit
>
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body
> 'help' to
> 	wikipedia-l-request at Wikipedia.org
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> 	wikipedia-l-owner at Wikipedia.org
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it
> is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Wikipedia-l digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Money, money... (let's bribe them) (Daniel
> Mayer)
>    2. images from one wikipedia to another (Re:
> Money,	money)
>       (Karl Eichwalder)
>    3. Re: images from one wikipedia to another (Re:
> Money,	money)
>       (Sascha Noyes)
>    4. Re: images from one wikipedia to another (Re:
> Money,	money)
>       (Arnaud G)
>    5. Money, money... (let's bribe (Anthere)
>    6. Money, money... (let's bribe (Anthere)
>    7. Re: images from one wikipedia to another (Re:
> Money,	money)
>       (Stan Shebs)
>    8. Re: images from one wikipedia to another (Re:
> Money,	money)
>       (Sascha Noyes)
>    9. Re: Money, money... (let's bribe (Jens Frank)
>   10. Re: Money, money... (let's bribe (Brion
> Vibber)
>
>
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 11:22:50 -0700
> From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Money, money... (let's bribe
> them)
> To: wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
> Message-ID:
> <200310131122.50970.maveric149 at yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain;  charset="us-ascii"
>
> Erik Zachte wrote:
> >A fool like me might come to his senses and think
> >twice before contributing for free what can be
> bought
> >on the market.
>
> This is highly flawed thinking given the large
> number of free software coders
> that are paid by their employers to create free
> software. US government
> employees do this a lot as well.
>
> Does that make pure volunteers fools? Hardly.
>
> -- mav
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 20:12:41 +0200
> From: Karl Eichwalder <ke at gnu.franken.de>
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] images from one wikipedia to
> another (Re:
> 	Money,	money)
> To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Message-ID: <shekxh80rq.fsf at tux.gnu.franken.de>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com> writes:
>
> > and those copying images from one wikipedia to
> another
> > ?
>
> This is a problem to be attacked ASAP.  We need one
> image server for
> all wikipedias--simply because images are language
> independend.
>
> It would also be good, to store the "facts"
> (numbers, numbers,...)
> somewhere independently from where it could be
> possible to feed the
> data sections of certain articles.
>
> > Drawing logos ?
>
> No new logo within the next five years, please ;)
>
> --
>
>     |      ,__o
>
>     |    _-\_<,
> http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/
>     |   (*)/'(*)
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 16:36:10 -0400
> From: Sascha Noyes <sascha at pantropy.net>
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] images from one wikipedia
> to another (Re:
> 	Money,	money)
> To: wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
> Message-ID: <200310131636.10683.sascha at pantropy.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain;  charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> On Monday 13 October 2003 02:12 pm, Karl Eichwalder
> wrote:
>
> > This is a problem to be attacked ASAP.  We need
> one image server for
> > all wikipedias--simply because images are language
> independend.
>
> This is necessary for another reason: copyright
> validation. Often images are
> uploaded with the description that they are from a
> foreign language
> wikipedia. That means that someone hunting for
> possible copyvio has to go to
> that other language wikipedia to verify the source.
> Needless to say I didn't
> succeed in reading the details on an image in the
> korean wikipedia, and the
> user copying it over has yet to respond to my
> request.
>
> Best,
> Sascha Noyes
> (in wikiland: snoyes)
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 22:53:54 +0200
> From: Arnaud G <wikipedia at amarys.com>

Moreover can you tell us why the description
> of the image should
> contain the copyright notice in english? If we have
> the same image for
> multiple wiki, this image should contain the
> copyright statement in all
> the language as you cannot expect everyone to
> understand english, and
> then the description will be not very readable.
> People should take care
> when they import an image from another wikipedia to
> translate the
> copyright statement and not only say: this image is
> ok it comes from kw: !

I never saw anything stating that.

Arnaud, I invite you to read all brand new image
policy on french wikipedia

Basic rules on image upload
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%E9dia%3AImage

Description file recommandations to respect
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%E9dia%3ADescription_d%27une_image

Recommandations to respect in case of fair use image
uploading
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%E9dia%3AFair_use

Model to put on users page who do not follow
recommandations
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%E9dia%3AMessage_de_description_des_images

Some models of description for fair use images
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%E9dia%3AMod%E8le_fair_use

Nowhere is it written the description of copyright
status had to be in english. French only is enough
(but of course, it might be beneficial to put some
description in english for other wikipedias uses)

Amicalement

Anthere

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Server status

body:
(I'm not sure my previous message made it through at the right time, so
here's again with some updates:)

All wikis should be up and running, as [now!] should the mailing lists.

Jason unfortunately had some trouble getting the database server to
power up with the new motherboard installed, and it's late (after 3:30
am) so he's going to try again tomorrow. In the meantime, we're at
least running on two servers again. Yay!

To add insult to injury, our new backup mailserver in Germany suffered
some sort of network outage just in time not to be able to pick up any
mail while pliny was offline. :P

A portion of incoming traffic* to www.wikipedia.org will be redirected
to en2.wikipedia.org, which is running on pliny, while logins and stuff
should go to en.wikipedia.org, on larousse. Cleaner, transparent load
balancing will be set up in the future when the server configuration is
a little more stable.

*chopped up by first letter of article name

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: RameezDon

subject: [Wikitech-l] AUTO EXTRACTION FROM WWW

body:
Dear Sir,
	 We are a group of 3 students currently pursuing our B.E - IT
(Bachelor of Engg. Information Technology)from the Mumbai
University, INDIA.
As of now we are working on a project titled " AUTO EXTRACTION
OF CONTENTS FROM THE WORLD WIDE WEB" as a part of our BE
project,
in the renowned institute os HBCSE-TIFR
( Homi Bhabha Center for Science Education - Tata Institute of
Fundamental Research) under the guidance of Scientist
Dr.Nagarjuna.G.

	Our project is based on
				OS	     - GNU/LINUX
				Language     - Python
				Server       - Zope
				Application  - GNOWSYS

GNOWSYS, Gnowledge Networking and Organizing System, is a web
application for developing and maintaining semantic web content
developed in Python and works as an installed product in Zope
Our project involves automatically extracting data from the
(WWW) World Wide Web) & use GNOWSYS for handling this vast
amount of data. This will not only help us store data in the
Gnowledge base in form of meaningful relationships but also see
its handling of huge amount of data.
The URL for our site is "http://www.gnowledge.org"

With this regards we could think no one but Wikipedia, which in
itself is a phenomenon.

We would be glad if u could answer to few of our queries :

1] What is the format in which the data is stored in Wikipedia
???
2] Apart from http or ftp are there any other specific protocols
that are in use,
   which will be required to communicate to the Wikipedia Server
???
3] How can we utilize the SQL dump ???

We hope you will answer our queries at the earliest
With warm regards
							      Thanking You

						[ Rameez Don , Jaymin Darbari, Ulhas Dhuri ]
________________________________
15 Mbytes Free Web-based and  POP3
Sign up now: http://www.gawab.com


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] 24

body:
> Pursuant to the idea that it was a "role account" I added my idea in
> goood faith, as did several others.  The page has its own reason for
> existence quite apart from the identity of the person who started it.

Yes, well, we can certainly talk about the "role account" idea.  If it
is a good one, we could adopt it.

I personally am not convinced by the idea, but I also admit to have
not studied it all that hard.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] mad trolls

body:
sannse wrote:
> This is just a general grump, but I do wish people would stop implying that
> our more controversial users are mentally ill.

[...]

> Not every troll has
> some deep-seated psychological reason for their difficult nature - sometimes
> people are just jerks.
>
> I'm not trying to make a big issue of this - just keep it in mind will ya :)

I think that's mostly right.  In most cases, too, it's important to
remember that it's behaviors that we care about directly, not motives
or causes.

However, some thoughts about motives or causes can be helpful, of
course, in helping to predict what someone might do.  If someone is
doing something jerky, but is a newbie, we might speculate positively
that perhaps they just need to learn our social norms.  If someone has
behaved very well for a long time, but then does something odd and
out-of-character, we can judge that most likely it was just a single
poor decision, not something to worry about.

And if someone writes intelligently but with an edge of madness, like
the Unabomber, and has been banned multiple times, and says things
that make no rational sense with an implied threat of violence, then
we should note that as well.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] user names

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
> There's also a middle way between asking people to behave and forcing them to,
> a middle way between hard rules and a lack of individual responsibility.
> Drolsi was originally hit with the demand that his name would be changed,
> whether he liked it or not.  When people (not just me, you too,
> and I'm sorry that I previous post of mine implied otherwise)
> began to talk /with/ him, rather then /tell/ him what would be done,
> then he was a reasonable person and did the right thing.

There's a lesson for us all there.  Toby is, without question, one of
our finest, and yet he had to learn this lesson again here.  I
re-learn this every couple of weeks, it seems.  :-)

--Jimbo


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject:
[Wikipedia-l]
	Stabilizing the software system  (Re: Money, money...)

body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:

> It has often been proposed, and I have repeated it myself sometimes,
> that we need to hire a database guru to study our software and find
> ways to optimize our database.  Well, even though many people have
> said that and even though I have repeated it, I'm actually very
> skeptical that it's necessary?

Don't know.  But I know for sure that the system is _very_ flaky and I'm
going to loose conficende in it.  I like to propose the following
messures to gain confidence again:

1. announce software update approx. 1 day in advance.

2. report unexepted downtimes once they did happen.

3. post access statistics.

All this info should go to a mailinglist (this list?).  Since this it
volatile info, it does not make sense to publish it as wiki articles.

[At the moment, I cannot access the German WP; it's 6 o'clock in the
morning (CET) and I don't think ths system is overloaded ATM?]

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


subject: [WikiEN-l] AstroWikipedia

body:
I'll defer to Alex's judgement on this, but yes, that's my thinking
as well.

Imran Ghory wrote:

> On Sun, 12 Oct 2003, cprompt wrote:
>
> > Don't see any reason to. They're not claiming to be connected to
> > Wikipedia, and Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and all our other sites all list
> > which sites are ours.
>
> IANAL. But, my understand is that general use of the term Wikipedia could
> generify it, thus preventing the Wikimedia foundation from gaining a
> trademark on the name at a later date.
>
> I think we should either move to stop them using the term, or take other
> actions that would prevent the name being generified.
>
> Imran
> --
> http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Upgrades in progress

body:
Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:

> Larousse is back up (with its old motherboard until it gets fixed up),
> and very shortly Jason will be making upgrades to pliny, which hopefully
> will solve its crashes-all-the-time problem. While pliny is offline
> larousse will be serving cached pages for all (phase 3) wikis.

Thanks for the info.  Good luck!

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: sannse

subject: [WikiEN-l] mad trolls

body:
This is just a general grump, but I do wish people would stop implying that
our more controversial users are mentally ill.

It seems to me that this is a tactic aimed at dismissing them and devaluing
their contributions ("Oh ignore them - they're just mad").  The problem is,
this also dismisses and devalues other users with mental health problems.
And as I've said before - not all us loonies are trolls.

Besides, I don't believe in effective on-line diagnosis (my psychiatrist
can't get it right when I'm in the same room as him!).  Not every troll has
some deep-seated psychological reason for their difficult nature - sometimes
people are just jerks.

I'm not trying to make a big issue of this - just keep it in mind will ya :)

Regards

sannse


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikitech-l] Soft ban on IP range

body:
How hard would it be to create a "soft ban" on certain IP number ranges?
To thwart a troll, we may have occasion to block, say, all IP's from
142.177.0.0 to 142.177.255.255 -- to prevent someone like EofT from
posting anonymously to Wikipedia and thereby evade a hard ban.

(See Jimbo's e-mail at
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-October/007411.html )

Contributors with IP addresses in that range would be required to log
in.

Also, would it be possible to flag users in that range automatically,
for monitoring?

Ed Poor


from_name: Dante Alighieri

subject: [WikiEN-l] User names (snip)

body:
At 12:23 AM 10/14/2003, Ray wrote:
>Stevertigo wrote:
>>The answer is obvious-- they are different, because we
>>cant simply "edit" them-- we cant click change this
>>username and presto-- it be wikified.  Its among the
>>few aspects of Wiki that are beyong wiki means, and
>>yet are system-level in nature.  Choosing a name is a
>>system command, and not a wiki edit.
>Not a wiki edit! Aha! therfore not subject to POV rules. :-)

But, since the Wiki software keeps track of every edit by username, a
username becomes a part of EVERY edit that the user makes. Therefore, while
CHOOSING the name isn't a wiki edit, every subsequent edit has the name
imbedded. This makes it subject to NPOV rules... assuming that the person
makes at least one edit ever... and if they don't, what's the point in arguing?

-----
Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321


body:
Angela wrote:
> Yes, but I don't necessarily agree with those rules. A
> lot of the 'policy' currently at Simple has been
> written by 142 over the past couple of weeks and I
> haven't got round to looking at all of it yet.

I think that's one of the biggest problems with 142 -- his complete
disregard for community policy-setting mechanisms.  I remember on
meta, a long time ago, he wrote a bunch of lunatic nonsense and tried
to pass it off as policy.  It's probably important for us to monitor
that sort of thing and disclaim it, as was done appropriately on the
'mediator' page on en.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names (snip)

body:
Dante Alighieri wrote:

> At 12:23 AM 10/14/2003, Ray wrote:
>
>> Stevertigo wrote:
>>
>>> The answer is obvious-- they are different, because we
>>> cant simply "edit" them-- we cant click change this
>>> username and presto-- it be wikified.  Its among the
>>> few aspects of Wiki that are beyong wiki means, and
>>> yet are system-level in nature.  Choosing a name is a
>>> system command, and not a wiki edit.
>>
>> Not a wiki edit! Aha! therfore not subject to POV rules. :-)
>
>
> But, since the Wiki software keeps track of every edit by username, a
> username becomes a part of EVERY edit that the user makes. Therefore,
> while CHOOSING the name isn't a wiki edit, every subsequent edit has
> the name imbedded. This makes it subject to NPOV rules... assuming
> that the person makes at least one edit ever... and if they don't,
> what's the point in arguing?

No, it is a part of the edit record, but not of the edit itself.  Simply
calling up an article does not reveal who any of the contributors are.
 One needs to look up the history to know that.

Ec


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: C++ wiki parser

body:
Magnus Manske wrote in part:

> This could be the basis for several wiki(pedia) software projects:
> * Offline editor
> * Reader, to be distributed on CD/DVD
> * Wiki(pedia) apache module

In the short term, I think it would be nice to:

* Split off the PHP parser from the OutputPage class, into a PhpParser
class.
* Create another PHP class called WaikikiParser. This would call
Waikiki, through whatever means are convenient. Ideally, it would be a
statically linked PHP extension, apparently that's the only means
available for efficiently calling C++ from PHP.
* Allow people to pick which one they want to use in LocalSettings.php

So in Setup.php we'd have:

$wgParser = new $wgParserName;

And in OutputPage.php we'd have:

function addWikiText( $text )
{
     global $wgParser;
     $this->addHTML( $wgParser->parse( $text ) );
}

Just my opinion. I don't know if I will have time to implement this myself.

-- Tim Starling.


from_name: Richard Grevers

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Wikitext to HTML translator and Wikitext language
	specification

body:
On Mon, 13 Oct 2003 17:21:15 -0400, David Friedland <david at nohat.net> gave
utterance to the following:

> There seems to be a lot of disjoint discussion on Meta about this. Viz:
>
> * There is work that has been done by Taw on an OCAML lexer at
>    <http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_lexer>
> * There are some links at
>    <http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikitext_syntax>
> * A proposal for a radically different Wiki text language at
>    <http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikitax>
> * A brief take at
>    <http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_markup_syntax>
> * A nearly content-free page at
>    <http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_syntax>
> * A draft XML syntax of Wikitext at
>    <http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_DTD>
>
> Clearly there needs to be some kind of centralized place for work on
> formalizing the language. I would suggest the recently-created
> <http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikitext_standard>
>
> Right now what we should work on, is like Ed says, to describe and
> formalize a 1.0 version of the Wikitext language, based on what is used
> currently. In other words this work should not (for right now) involve
> incorporating improvements or changes to the Wikitext language.
>
> Moving on...
>
> First, a couple issues of nomenclature that we should probably get out
> the way:
>
> (1) We need to decide on a name for the wiki markup language or Wiki
> text. I would advocate calling the language "Wikitext" (and calling it
> "The Wikitext language" when usage might be ambiguous, like "C or "The C
> Language"). This seems to be common usage.

My suggestions would be "the broken wikitext language", or the "invalid
wikitext language".
Because of its UseMod ancestry, the current parser produces some very bad
HTML code*, and in particular handles lists and nesting of blocks really
badly.
* not so bad if HTML 3.2 or 4 is our target, but it would be nice to be
able to produce clean XHTML.
A few months back I started work on a ValidWiki parser, which has a much
stronger concept of block and line elements, and uses both block and line
stacks to open and close all elements correctly.
I think I'm about 2/3 of the way through the block parser, and hadn't yet
written the line parser. I have no idea how the code would comapre for
efficiency.
Unfortunately the only language I know how to code in is MivaScript, so it
would need porting. (Miva performs okay for your mid-level merchant
application, but doesn't have the efficiency for something with the
workload of Wikipedia.
--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] mad trolls

body:
--- sannse <sannse at delphiforums.com> wrote:

> Besides, I don't believe in effective on-line
> diagnosis (my psychiatrist
> can't get it right when I'm in the same room as
> him!).  Not every troll has
> some deep-seated psychological reason for their
> difficult nature - sometimes
> people are just jerks.

I will agree with you, and disagree also.  IANAP--
therefore any opinion of mine is NAPO-- It should not
be taken as such-- nor would such 'taking' be
supportable given the long history Common Sense Law.

Not to mention-- a "mentally ill" "diagnosis" should
not be taken pejoratively -- it may in fact be a very
NPOV term to use for people whose behaviour is
extremely irrational. Compare this to calling "jerks"
for example.  Theres a difference.  I may be a jerk
for calling someone "ill" but (judge the message not
the messenger) it does not change the fact that its
true (if its true). Don't depression, low SE, anxiety,
paranoia, fits of violence, etal also fall under MI?

I dont suggest using it as a catch all- I do suggest
that imposing some made up moral standard about the
propriety of its use would be far fetched.

~S~

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subject: [WikiEN-l] User names (Consensus 101--again)

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

>  Toby's right,
> there was no problem until those who wanted a
> changed name started one.

This is like saying "the Nazis werent a problem until
England and Russia declared war on them."  There- I
invoked Godwin's Law.

> 1. A vote to limit an individual's rights is
> tyrannous.

I reserve the right to kill this thread.

> 2. Please don't confuse the will of the community
> with the will of a
> small clique.

Its an open vote, on an open thing-- a username. For
each situation either a consensus be the rule or a
Jimbo dictate be the rule-- Im sure JW has better
things to do.

> I have more faith in the wiki process than in some
> of its users.

"*My wikifaith is stronger than *yours" -- no its not
about that-- Wikifaith is about understanding that if
you whether you think your fellow humans are a glass
half-empty or half-full-- this sentiment will show up
in how you deal with things on wiki. Wiki is just a
medium for interaction-- its not a destination.

> The vote was a farce.

No, it wasnt. Sorry. Youre wrong.
Wrong, I say.

> Yes, there are exceptions.

Um, yeah. Thats the point. Do we treat people
consistently or "exception"ally.

> Yes, and that reflection goes farther than
> Wikipedia.  We've lost the
> skill of discussing our problems with our neighbors;
> we're afraid of the
> reaction that we might get from a direct approach.

"You've lost... that lovin' feelin'...
Who-oh, that lo-vin feelin.'
You've lost thAT LO-VIN FEE-LIN--
NOW ITS GONE, Gone, gone...
Wo-o-o-o..."

~S~

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Advertising for expert volunteers

body:
--- Imran Ghory <imran at bits.bris.ac.uk> wrote:

> If someone designed an A4 poster for Wikipedia I'd
> be happy to print off
> lots of copies and stick them up around my
> university. And there are
> probably wikipedians at other universities who could
> do the same, and it'd
> be a lot cheaper than advertising in a major
> journal.

Muy generoso Senor Imran.
~S~

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] Re: Intlwiki-l Alsatian

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> Ignore Stevertigo, that's my advice.
-Speaking of being rude, Wales.

Considering my batting record where I come down on how
things work-- regardless of the fact that occasionally
I say something that will piss you off-- Ive every
right to be wrong on occasion. You clearly didnt read
all the posts -- didnt pick up on my playing Devils
advocate-- you just picked up on the fact that someone
with no sense for English subtlety complained about my
challenges.  I should have known better and used
English more plain.  So sorry.

If a language cant stand to scrutiny, what basis for
inclusion are you asking for.  Should there be a
Castellano wiki? Do you understand the
ethnic/linguistic differences between Espanol and
Castellano? If someone wanted one--how would you know
if someone didnt bother to ask?

~S~

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subject: [WikiEN-l] User names (snip)

body:
Stevertigo wrote:
> >>system command, and not a wiki edit.
Ray claimed:
> >Not a wiki edit! Aha! therfore not subject to POV
> rules. :-)
Dante Alighieri pounced:

> But, since the Wiki software keeps track of every
> edit by username, a  username becomes a part of
EVERY edit that the user makes. Therefore, while
> CHOOSING the name isn't a wiki edit, every
> subsequent edit has the name
> imbedded. This makes it subject to NPOV rules...
> assuming that the person
> makes at least one edit ever... and if they don't,
> what's the point in arguing?

Dante is right. This whole thread is silly. To say
that wikipedians shouldnt have a means to enforce NPOV
in usernames is essentially saying "lets ask Jimbo to
handle each and every case."

~S~

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body:
--- Angela <sloog77 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Yes, but I don't necessarily agree with those rules.
> A
> lot of the 'policy' currently at Simple has been
> written by 142 over the past couple of weeks and I
> haven't got round to looking at all of it yet.

> I see no reason why people with poor English writing
> skills shouldn't contribute to it. IMO, it is better
> to have poorly written content that none at all, and

Some one anon (I assume now it was 172 ) was writing
on Simple Talk -- advocating, it seemed, my old idea
of using Simple as a translation warehouse --still a
good idea.

I responded to them saying that it was still unclear
that simple be used for such a purpose--but that such
a wiki might be a useful experiment.

~S~

__________________________________
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from_name: Alex R.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fw: [Wikipedia-l] Re: AstroWikipedia

body:
It appears the below post did not get through
at the time it was posted or maybe it was
posted to the wrong mailing list
(another reason it might be a good idea
to  have Wikipedia-legal-l at wikipedia.org
as a legal issue specific list).

I  might have thought it was more a general
Wikipedia question than a Wikien-l question
and posted it there.

I also generally agree with
Imran's statement of the most recent post
on the English Wikipedia list concerning
this topic (reproduced below) but would
like more information before deciding how
to present it to them. It appears that their
claim to the name is weak and pl.wikipedia.org
has already made inroads in Polish speaking
communities for use of the name as a
distinguishing "mark" associated it
with other Wikimedia projects. Knowing
when they started using the name (hopefully
after the date that the Polish Wikipedia was
started) will help to convince them that they
have little or no claim to the name.

Alex756

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alex R." <alex756 at nyc.rr.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org>; "Daniel Ehrenberg"
<littledanehren at yahoo.com>
Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2003 8:43 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: AstroWikipedia

> From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
>
> > This is probably something that Alex can comment on helpfully.
> >
> > We probably do need to setup a wiki-legal.  In any event, althugh
> > Daniel posted this on wikien-l, I'm moving it to Wikipedia-l.
> >
> > Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> >
> > > I just found AstroWikipedia, a small polish-language
> > > wiki of astrology using PhpWiki at astrowikipedia.com.
> > > It seems that they created the name independently of
> > > us. Should we do anything? It would be bad to force
> > > them to change their name, but should we at least get
> > > them to say they're not connected with Wikipedia?
> > > LDan
>
> Would be good to get some more information. Did they
> come up with the name independently? I don't know much
> Polish, but they appear to be a new site. If they didn't know
> about Wikipedia (or the Polish Wikipedia) perhaps someone
> from pl.wikipedia.org should try and contact them and
> find out more information before deciding what to do. The
> information:  Why did they chose that name? Do they know
> there is a Polish language Wikipedia?  When did they
> start using the name?
>
> Once we know the answers to those questions perhaps
> we can make an informed decision about what to do.
>
> Alex756
>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2003 10:23 AM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] AstroWikipedia

> I'll defer to Alex's judgement on this, but yes, that's my thinking
> as well.
>
> Imran Ghory wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 12 Oct 2003, cprompt wrote:
> >
> > > Don't see any reason to. They're not claiming to be connected to
> > > Wikipedia, and Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and all our other sites all list
> > > which sites are ours.
> >
> > IANAL. But, my understand is that general use of the term Wikipedia
could
> > generify it, thus preventing the Wikimedia foundation from gaining a
> > trademark on the name at a later date.
> >
> > I think we should either move to stop them using the term, or take other
> > actions that would prevent the name being generified.
> >
> > Imran
> > --
> > http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: Fw: [Wikipedia-l] Re: AstroWikipedia


from_name: Imran Ghory

subject: [WikiEN-l] AstroWikipedia

body:
On Sun, 12 Oct 2003, cprompt wrote:

> Don't see any reason to. They're not claiming to be connected to
> Wikipedia, and Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and all our other sites all list
> which sites are ours.

IANAL. But, my understand is that general use of the term Wikipedia could
generify it, thus preventing the Wikimedia foundation from gaining a
trademark on the name at a later date.

I think we should either move to stop them using the term, or take other
actions that would prevent the name being generified.

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran


body:
On Sun, 12 Oct 2003, Neil Harris wrote:
> Places to advertise:
> * scientific journals (Nature ...)
> * medical journals (NEJM, JAMA, The Lancet)
> * popular science magazines (New Scientist, Scientific American)
> * engineering journals (IEEE Spectrum ...)
> * specialist games magazines, music magazines ...
> * etc.

If someone designed an A4 poster for Wikipedia I'd be happy to print off
lots of copies and stick them up around my university. And there are
probably wikipedians at other universities who could do the same, and it'd
be a lot cheaper than advertising in a major journal.

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Server status update

body:
Jason has successfully replaced the motherboard and CPUs on Pliny, the
database/mail/some web server. With luck, this will solve the crashing
problems that have been particularly bad of late. Also, the CPUs are a
smidge faster than the old ones, which is nice.

For the moment Larousse is still up with its old (much slower) CPU, but
it is up and serving en.wikipedia.org. Hits to www.wikipedia.org will
be sent to either en.wikipedia.org or en2.wikipedia.org (on pliny) to
help split the load (a more transparent load-balancing system will be
set up once things are a little more stable). All logins should go to
en.wikipedia.org.

Our backup mailserver should be running again; if you send mail to the
lists at wikiMedia.org instead of wikiPedia.org, it should go through
the regular channels normally and _ought_ to still make it through even
if pliny is down.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>

> Yes, and that reflection goes farther than Wikipedia.  We've lost the
> skill of discussing our problems with our neighbors; we're afraid of the
> reaction that we might get from a direct approach.  It's much easier to
> surprise him with a visit from the police or a subpoena from small
> claims court.

But then they quickly learn that going to court is rarely a quick
fix, there are a million and one rules, the police often refused to
intervene
in civil disputes and even if they get a judgment against their neighbor
it may be difficult to enforce it.  If they are intelligent (and know a
lawyer who is not just out to create disputes and billable hours)
 they find out quickly that it is much more effective (and cost
efficient) to find a resolution mechanism that can help deal
with the problems and minimizes animosity in the process.

Quite frankly I think most serious people do try to discuss their problems
and do try and find an amicable approach before turning to some "official
power" this is what was behind my points about mediation, it is not
some "appeal to officiated power" it is a sincere attempt (without legal
procedure) to resolve differences, not creating all kinds of rules, roles
and rhetoric.  It does not need another structure as User:Mediator was
suggesting. It needs people who can listen and are listening to
all the sides of a dispute and who wish to try to help those on different
sides of the issues to better appreciate a different point of view and
find what is good and reasonable  in the differing perspectives. Mediation
is not an institution it is a creative process in which people particulate
if they have the willingness to do so. A mediator should be impartial
and should not take sides or state to people that they "need" mediation
because they appear to have violated some norm.

Those who run to court quickly learn that judges and
the police and prosecutors do not want to deal with most of  the disputes
that have no real legal basis but are based upon personality differences.
That is one reason those TV court shows so popular, you see how
ridiculous people can be.  Reasonable people usually resolve their
differences, the rules are only there for the hard cases or for those
who interpret events through some idiosyncratic theory.

Some of this talk about "rights" should be tempered with the
recognition that what is being discussed may be a "privilege" or
an "obligation" that has been violated. The aphorism we often
hear from HR professors is: "Freedom of the press is freedom
to own the press" not freedom to tell the owners of the press
what to do.  Anyone has the right to start their own press, their
own wiki or even their own encyclopedia, not to impose their
ideas or opinions on others, but to put it out there on their own
into the "marketplace of ideas". It is perfectly reasonable for
Wikipedia to have limits on all sorts of kinds of behaviours.

Alex756


from_name: Arnaud G

body:
>
>Nowhere is it written the description of copyright
>status had to be in english. French only is enough
>(but of course, it might be beneficial to put some
>description in english for other wikipedias uses)
>
>
>
>
I never said that! I was just answering the centralized image repository
proposition and how the descritption text for this architecture should
be done. Another participant state that he was unable to understand the
copyright notice of an image coming from the korean wikipedia and that a
centralized repository might solve this. That's why I said that even if
a centralized db is used for images, the copyright notice may not be
written in english and will not solved the problem (execpt if you expect
people to write the notice in english). Morevover if the description of
the image should contain the copyright in all langue + description it
will be very unpratical.

Arnaud


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Soft ban on IP range

body:
Poor,-
> How hard would it be to create a "soft ban" on certain IP number ranges?
> To thwart a troll, we may have occasion to block, say, all IP's from
> 142.177.0.0 to 142.177.255.255 -- to prevent someone like EofT from
> posting anonymously to Wikipedia and thereby evade a hard ban.

If necessary, can be done using a small script, but I'm strongly opposed
to it. That's the IP of an entire large Canadian ISP with thousands of
customers. I also find it a bit problematic how easily it is assumed these
days that two users with somewhat similar IP numbers are the same person.
Let's try to establish strong standards of evidence here.

Regards,

Erik


list: textbook-l

from_name: Sanford Forte

subject: [Textbook-l] Re: history texts

body:
11-10-2003, om 20:18 schreef Sanford Forte:
>> Question: The Connexions Project at Rice http://cnx.rice.edu/ has the
>> facility to be able to create printed pages quite easily, or so I've been
> >led to believe by several people who have participated in that project.
Is
> >here any possibility of hooking up this pilot project with Connexions, or
> >learning from them, as regards the printing constraints in Wikipedia?

>Wouter Vanden Hove:
>The Connexions-software platform will be released to the public in
>december. Connexions uses masterfiles in XML (CNXML) that can be
>converted to other formats.
--------
This is wonderful news; thanks Wouter!

Several months ago someone who had been given a thorough demo of Connexions'
software told me that they had "solved the web-to-print problems that open
source content models have heretofore lacked". He claimed that the
Connexions software was very facile, transparent, and was able to nicely
format text-to-print. He was also very excited about the formatting control
with mathematical and scientific notation.

Essentially, with their software release, Connexions will be enabling anyone
who wants to do open source text-to-print models. Again, a perfect scenario
for school systems that want to perform POD (print-on-demand) or larger,
scaled print runs for a whole district, state, etc.

With licensing issues being ironed out, and the release of this software, we
should be on our way to a successful pilot in US History (assuming that
topic remains a consensus choice), with other curriculum topics soon to
follow.

Sanford

----- Original Message -----
From: "Wouter Vanden Hove" <wouter.vanden.hove at pandora.be>
To: "Wikimedia textbook discussion" <textbook-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2003 1:13 PM
Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] Re: history texts

> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Crazy jerks

body:
No, Steve, you'd be "crazy" to call someone you met online mentally ill.
You'd only be a "jerk" if you called someone a jerk.

However, you would be "correct" if you called me a troll for pointing
all of this out! ;-)

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: AUTO EXTRACTION FROM WWW

body:
> We would be glad if u could answer to few of our queries :
>
> 1] What is the format in which the data is stored in Wikipedia
> ???
> 2] Apart from http or ftp are there any other specific protocols
> that are in use,
>    which will be required to communicate to the Wikipedia Server
> ???
> 3] How can we utilize the SQL dump ???

I already answered your questions, the first time you posted this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User%3ARameez

-- Tim Starling.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mailing list reorg

body:
Walter wrote:
>Now all list (so far i know) use the
>mail.wikipedia.org/* url.
>The "old" lists use "wikipedia.org" email adress and
>some new lists a "wikimedia.org" email adress.
>
>Will this stay so? If not please announce so i can
>update gmane.

The plan, as I understand it, is to move all mailing
lists to mail.wikimedia.org which would have
@wikimedia.org email addresses. I'm pretty sure
@wikipedia.org will be then forwarded to
@wikimedia.org. We may then need to then rename
language-specific lists from WikiXx-l to
WikipediaXx-l. All that, however, is lower priority
than many other things, me thinks.

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] image deletion on fr:

body:
On Tuesday, Oct 14, 2003, at 17:28 US/Pacific, Luc Van Oostenryck wrote:

> On fr: it is impossible to delete images.
> Is this related to the status of the servers?

Image deletion is temporarily unavailable until some bugs related to it
are fixed, sorry.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: "Mental Health Service Consumer" Trolls was Re: [WikiEN-l] mad trolls

body:
From: "sannse" <sannse at delphiforums.com>
> Stevertigo wrote (in part)
>
> > Not to mention-- a "mentally ill" "diagnosis" should
> > not be taken pejoratively -- it may in fact be a very
> > NPOV term to use for people whose behaviour is
> > extremely irrational. Compare this to calling "jerks"
> > for example.  Theres a difference.
>
> A very good point.  I think such a "diagnosis" /is/ often taken
> pejoratively, but you are very right that it shouldn't be.  And as Jimbo
> said (paraphrasing) some speculation about causes and motives can be
useful.
>
> I guess I need to look at my own attitudes to mental illness here.
>
> Regards
>
> sannse

This organization is a good place to start understanding
what "mental health service consumers" or just "mental
health consumers" (the terms used by most individuals
who are or should be under some kind of treatment)
have to deal with on a daily basis:
http://www.nami.org/template.cfm?section=Living_With

Alex756


from_name: Angela

body:
Anthere wrote:
>But since you are the biggest contributor there, you
know what the rules and recommendations are.

Yes, but I don't necessarily agree with those rules. A
lot of the 'policy' currently at Simple has been
written by 142 over the past couple of weeks and I
haven't got round to looking at all of it yet. Of the
pages I have seen; look at the talk pages of those
articles and you will see that I have stated I
disagree with quite a bit of it.

I see no reason why people with poor English writing
skills shouldn't contribute to it. IMO, it is better
to have poorly written content that none at all, and I
personally find it easier to edit what someone else
has written than to write it from scratch.

Anthere wrote:
>However, it is also mentioned that users are likely
to understand rules with difficulty, which might imply
they are not English (or kids).

I think that was something 142 wrote. I am against
making generalisations about the characteristics of
the people that might be reading or editing the
encyclopedia.

Angela.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Crazy jerks

body:
What if I just thanked Ed for being Ed, Ed?

~S~

--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> No, Steve, you'd be "crazy" to call someone you met
> online mentally ill.
> You'd only be a "jerk" if you called someone a jerk.
>
> However, you would be "correct" if you called me a
> troll for pointing
> all of this out! ;-)
>
> Ed Poor
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Soft ban on IP range

body:
Erik wrote:

> Poor,-
> > How hard would it be to create a "soft ban" on certain IP number ranges?
> > To thwart a troll, we may have occasion to block, say, all IP's from
> > 142.177.0.0 to 142.177.255.255 -- to prevent someone like EofT from
> > posting anonymously to Wikipedia and thereby evade a hard ban.
>
> If necessary, can be done using a small script, but I'm strongly opposed
> to it. That's the IP of an entire large Canadian ISP with thousands of
> customers. I also find it a bit problematic how easily it is assumed these
> days that two users with somewhat similar IP numbers are the same person.
> Let's try to establish strong standards of evidence here.

I feel the same.  It always worries me to see people accused of being a
repeat account on what appears to be very circumstantial evidence.  But
/are/ there any ways to improve this?  Presumably ISPs could give exact
identities - but I guess they are difficult (and maybe expensive?) to
persuade to help in IDing problem users.

So what other options are there?

(Or maybe an open list is the wrong place to discuss security options and
this is something Jimbo needs to look at away from the list?)

Regards

sannse


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] 24

body:
Please recall that, in his guise as EntmootsOfTrolls, he made threats to sic Palestinian terrorists on RK.  Death threats are not grounds for reinstatement.

RickK

Stevertigo <utilitymuffinresearch2 at yahoo.com> wrote:
Im not entirely keen on the beef with 24, save that
his arguments and comments were sharp enough to
warrant a detailed response from Jimbo on meta-- much
of which read like "mine website-mine rules." I
understand he made some legal threats, though I'm not
sure what the real deal is. Is it that he was just a
troll-adding little content?

Would there be any problem (situation permitting) for
user 24 to re-join the collective, as Adam and even RK
have had the opportunity to do? Would it not be more
practical?

~S~

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from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
Maveric149 wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>The same goes for comments on talk pages,
>>edit summaries, and, yes, even usernames.

>Which are still covered by our etiquette and usernames polices.

Yes, usernames are covered by the usernames policies.
I'm not advocating some weird situation is that is not true!
I'm really having a hard time trying to figure out what you mean here.

>If somebody
>makes a pest of themselves and wastes our time and energy that would
>otherwise go into creating an encyclopedia, then they must change or leave
>for the good of the project. And this /whole/ episode has misdirected a great
>deal of time and effort that would otherwise have gone into creating content.

Well, /that/ is certainly true!!!
And a good reason why the entire matter of Drolsi's name
ought to have been ignored by the community entirely.
Not because Drolsi's name was good -- I think that it was bad.
(I reiterate this point, even though I've said it numerous times,
because you seem to think otherwise below.)
But because we have better things to do than to bother with it.

>As Martin said about our volunteer effort:
>"But with that work comes responsibility."
>Choosing a username that offends is not a responsible thing to do.
>User names should only play a nominative role, not a provocative one where
>slogans, insults and POV statements reign free.

I have agreed with all of this from the very beginning.
That is so completely not my point.

It is a great fallacy to believe that everything that is wrong
should be forbidden.  Such a principle is the antithesis of freedom.
Wikipedia, for the most part, does not accept this principle;
and the wiki way, in the broad sense, denies it utterly.
I shouldn't have to point that out to you, but I do;
because otherwise I can't see how you could have believed
that quoting Martin was the least bit relevant.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names (snip)

body:
Stevertigo wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>That's neither here nor there when it comes to personal usernames.
>>I have a great deal of faith in the wiki process these days --
>>more than I did when I first heard of it! ^_^

>To make the argument that usernames are in some way
>different is the same as saying that they are special
>-- in what way are they special? Do they need to be
>protected? Are they under some different right, or
>sphere, where the rules that govern other Wikipedia
>aspects are separate?  This argument works both ways--
>you can say "why treat usernames so differently" if
>they are not "special".

>The answer is obvious-- they are different, because we
>cant simply "edit" them-- we cant click change this
>username and presto-- it be wikified.  Its among the
>few aspects of Wiki that are beyong wiki means, and
>yet are system-level in nature.  Choosing a name is a
>system command, and not a wiki edit.

So why did you bring up Wikifaith in the first place?

I'm further from understanding your position than I've ever been.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] mad trolls

body:
Stevertigo wrote (in part)

> Not to mention-- a "mentally ill" "diagnosis" should
> not be taken pejoratively -- it may in fact be a very
> NPOV term to use for people whose behaviour is
> extremely irrational. Compare this to calling "jerks"
> for example.  Theres a difference.

A very good point.  I think such a "diagnosis" /is/ often taken
pejoratively, but you are very right that it shouldn't be.  And as Jimbo
said (paraphrasing) some speculation about causes and motives can be useful.

I guess I need to look at my own attitudes to mental illness here.

Regards

sannse


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
And Hitler had no problem until people decided he didn't have the right to rule the world.

Besides, what you're saying isn't true.  He came in making POV edits in the homosexuality articles and was willing to be cofrontational from the first.  I have a feeling he's a previous user with a different name.

RickK

Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

there was no problem until those who wanted a changed name started one.

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from_name: James Duffy

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Upgrades in progress

body:
>brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com) wrote Larousse is back up (with its old
>motherboard until it gets fixed up), and very shortly Jason will be making
>upgrades to pliny, which hopefully will solve its crashes-all-the-time
>problem. While pliny is offline larousse will be serving cached pages for
>all (phase 3) wikis.
>
>Sorry about the downtime!
>
God's speed. :-)

JT

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subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
Eclecticology wrote:

[many things that pleased me greatly; I respond to a part]

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>I know the danger of making absolute statements.
>>But I'm having a hard time thinking of a plausible situation
>>where such a name change would be remotely a good idea --
>>I mean for the community to attempt to impose on me by force.

>Yes, there are exceptions.  Some months back there was the
>Anthere/Anth?re/Anth?re.... issue where somebody introduced a name that
>differed from that of a respected user by only an accent.  As it was the
>person was trying to make some point and had no intention of continuing
>to use the confusing name, otherwise this could be a situation where the
>issue might be forced.

I agree that this is a pretty clear case for forcing a name change
(although in the end the impostor relented and nothing was forced).
I still have a hard time thinking of a plausible situation
where that would apply to /my/ username -- which was the topic
in the bit that you replied to.  But more generally, yes,
these situations do exist.

>>I suspect that the world would be a better place
>>if we didn't have the technical means to enforce some rules.

>Laws depend on enforcement to be effective.  Regrettably speeding laws
>work only because there's a cop there with a radar gun.  The number who
>will avoid speeding out of well considered altruism is likely small.
>Technology is a double-edged sword.

Technology, yes; but the point here is, so are laws.
If there were no cop with a radar gun, then we might have safer cars.
There is a whole anarchist literature (some bad ideas, some good)
on how to have safe streets (etc) without having cops with guns.

>But still an ideal.  I often wonder about the sort of vision that
>sustains the participation of some Wikipedians.

Ultimately, I write on Wikipedia because it's fun and interesting.
Why I get involved in policy, must be some sort of idealism.
I often drop out of that, actually; although usually real life
plays a big role in those temporary disappearances
(which less often extend to encyclopaedia articles as well).

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names (snip)

body:
Dante Alighieri wrote:

>But, since the Wiki software keeps track of every edit by username, a
>username becomes a part of EVERY edit that the user makes. Therefore, while
>CHOOSING the name isn't a wiki edit, every subsequent edit has the name
>imbedded. This makes it subject to NPOV rules... assuming that the person
>makes at least one edit ever... and if they don't, what's the point in
>arguing?

I don't know why we're trying to draw some connection
between making a wiki edit and the application of NPOV;
a special command (like creating the username in the first place)
is not exempt from NPOV simply because it's not an ordinary edit.
These are entirely separate matters.

NPOV was developed for the content of encyclopaedia articles.
It extends easily to other reference material (like Wikibooks).
I don't believe that it adapts well to personal statements
(posts on talk pages, user pages, edit summaries, usernames),
and I would oppose any attempt to apply it directly to them.
To do so would be a category error.

This is yet separate from /other/ reasons to monitor those things,
such as etiquette, avoiding offence to other users, and the like.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
Alex756 wrote in part:

>Eclecticology wrote:

>>Yes, and that reflection goes farther than Wikipedia.  We've lost the
>>skill of discussing our problems with our neighbors; we're afraid of the
>>reaction that we might get from a direct approach.  It's much easier to
>>surprise him with a visit from the police or a subpoena from small
>>claims court.

>But then they quickly learn that going to court is rarely a quick
>fix, there are a million and one rules, the police often refused to intervene
>in civil disputes and even if they get a judgment against their neighbor
>it may be difficult to enforce it.  If they are intelligent (and know a
>lawyer who is not just out to create disputes and billable hours)
>they find out quickly that it is much more effective (and cost
>efficient) to find a resolution mechanism that can help deal
>with the problems and minimizes animosity in the process.

This is not surprising.
I agree with Ec that ?Call the authorities!? can be seductive,
without disagreeing with you that it can also be ineffective.

>Quite frankly I think most serious people do try to discuss their problems
>and do try and find an amicable approach before turning to some "official
>power" this is what was behind my points about mediation, it is not
>some "appeal to officiated power" it is a sincere attempt (without legal
>procedure) to resolve differences, not creating all kinds of rules, roles
>and rhetoric.

Right; the difference between mediation (people talking together)
and arbitration (an authority imposing a difference) is huge!

>Some of this talk about "rights" should be tempered with the
>recognition that what is being discussed may be a "privilege" or
>an "obligation" that has been violated. The aphorism we often
>hear from HR professors is: "Freedom of the press is freedom
>to own the press" not freedom to tell the owners of the press
>what to do.  Anyone has the right to start their own press, their
>own wiki or even their own encyclopedia, not to impose their
>ideas or opinions on others, but to put it out there on their own
>into the "marketplace of ideas". It is perfectly reasonable for
>Wikipedia to have limits on all sorts of kinds of behaviours.

Wikipedia can have any limits on behaviour here whatsoever,
in the sense that it would not interfere with societal "rights".
Whether such limits are a good idea is, of course, another matter;
sometimes they will be, and sometimes they won't be.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names (snip)

body:
Stevertigo wrote:

>Dante is right. This whole thread is silly. To say
>that wikipedians shouldnt have a means to enforce NPOV
>in usernames is essentially saying "lets ask Jimbo to
>handle each and every case."

Well, I guess that I must fall under SV's hypothesis here.
So let me just note that I emphatically deny the conclusion.
What a silly thing that would be, indeed!

-- Toby