body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> geni wrote:
>
>>You haven't told us the IP so there isn't really every much that can
>>be done about it
>>
>
>
> I didn't really expect to get that level of cooperation out of him, so on
> Wednesday when I was fixing this, I just looked up his IP addresses in the
> recentchanges table (i.e. the checkuser data). Unfortunately there was no
> obvious IP range that the ISP was using for proxies, so it's entirely
> possible I missed some. I'll do another search of the logs now and see if
> I can find some more proxies. Unfortunately given his present mood, it
> will be rather difficult to tell whether I've found them all. Maybe I
> should try to make contact with a calmer representative of the Thai
> Wikipedian community. It's not really fair on them to leave this as it is
> just because Waerth is being so unhelpful.
>
> -- Tim Starling

I'll add that I do not think Tim should spend hours looking for an
information, when someone has this information at hand and could save
him (and consequently the whole project) time to do other tasks which
are also much needed.

Ant


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Anthere

subject:
[Foundation-l] One week later and I am still blocked,
 nobody is doing a fucking thing


list: foundation-l

from_name: geni

subject:
[Foundation-l] One week later and I am still blocked,
	nobody is doing a fucking thing

body:
On 2/18/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Waerth chooses to be rude and disruptive to the extend that he literally
> wishes that all Dutch mods are to drop dead. I am glad that I will
> survive this ordeal by not being a Dutch Wikipedia moderator... Given
> that Waerth is his own worst enemy and given that he states that he is
> leaving, I wish he does. He may be back if he wants to, but I wish for
> the nl.wikipedia community that when he does come back, it will be with
> a modified attitude.
> Thanks,
>     GerardM

I know this. However the Thailand IPs should not be hard blocked and
we don't appear to have a list of them anywhere.

--
geni


list: wikien-l

from_name: Keitei

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rx Dosage Instructions in Wikipedia

body:
On Feb 18, 2007, at 15:06, George Chriss wrote:
> Having a vandal change specific dosage amounts is a scary prospect,
> as some people may actually trust our information at face value.

These are prescription drugs? If so, I'm sure said people will trust
their doctors and the labels on their drugs and the inserts which
come with the drugs far more than an online encyclopedia. Perhaps
they will call their doctor and say, "I read that the usual dosage
was much higher/lower, what gives?" And their doctor will tell them
the information was wrong. Even if they trusted the information,
that's no reason to act on it.

--keitei


subject: [Foundation-l] all of my edits are copyrightviolations

body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:
> All of my edits are a copyrightviolation of books in my posession. All
> texts were literally copied and because of that all of my edits on
> wikipedia and pictures I added should be removed immediately as they are
> in violation of the GFDL. Also all of my sources seem to be non
> reputable and non trustworthy so many falsehoods consist in these edits.
>
> Since I am blocked from editting the mistakes myself the foundation
> should do better and delete all of my edits.
>
> Waerth/Walter

I have a memory of an editor who was also frequently accidentaly blocked
on the english wikipedia in the past: Danny. I think he was an AOL user.
I remember him frequently asking "can you unblock me ?". He always did
it polity, even if firmly. And never issued threats or disrupted to make
a point.

I know you are angry. I know you are a good editor. I know you tend to
get hot headed very quickly, which is fine by me.

However, I do not accept curses and insults. Regardless of your anger, I
do want the people on this list to consider it is acceptable language.
It is not. So you are now moderated.

I can not fix a technical issue myself. So, please get some help from
the devs (Tim probably) for this. Just ask politely.

Thanks

Ant


from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Foundation-l] List of True Internet proxy IP addresses (was Re:
 One week later and I am still blocked, time for another tantrum)

body:
geni wrote:
> On 2/18/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Waerth chooses to be rude and disruptive to the extend that he literally
>> wishes that all Dutch mods are to drop dead. I am glad that I will
>> survive this ordeal by not being a Dutch Wikipedia moderator... Given
>> that Waerth is his own worst enemy and given that he states that he is
>> leaving, I wish he does. He may be back if he wants to, but I wish for
>> the nl.wikipedia community that when he does come back, it will be with
>> a modified attitude.
>> Thanks,
>>     GerardM
>
> I know this. However the Thailand IPs should not be hard blocked and
> we don't appear to have a list of them anywhere.

These are the ones I have found:

61.91.190.242
61.91.190.246
61.91.190.248
61.91.190.249
61.91.190.250
61.91.190.251
61.91.191.2
61.91.191.4
61.91.191.6
61.91.191.8
61.91.191.9
61.91.191.10
61.91.191.11
203.144.143.2
203.144.143.3
203.144.143.4
203.144.143.5
203.144.143.6
203.144.143.7
203.144.143.8
203.144.143.9
203.144.143.10
203.144.143.11
203.144.144.163
203.144.160.250
203.144.160.251

-- Tim Starling


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Distributed content hosting

body:
Andy Spencer wrote:
>
> Even if the central server had to ping the volunteers after every
> single request to check status, that would still be a fraction of the
> bandwidth taken up by sending wiki page.

It would use less bandwidth, yes, but it would take much longer to serve
a page.

Timwi


from_name: Samuel L Bronkowitz

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Fwd: I have a problem with CheckUser as administered
	by JPGordon

body:
On 2/18/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
Hi, Samuel. Good pseudonym choice, by the way; I loved that movie.

It's my favorite movie. Until I was falsely railroaded by your abusive
admins, my userpage had a reference to it.

People here do care a lot about systemic abuse.

They have a very "unique" way of showing it.

I think the problem you're running into is that a lot of people who end
> up on the unhappy end of some administrative action feel they are being
> abused, so we don't see a lot of correlation between accusations of
> abuse and actual abuse. That doesn't mean we don't care, but it does
> mean you probably won't get the instant and vigorous reaction you were
> hoping for.

So far, the reaction hasn't been just to me. Multiple users on your
administrators noticeboard have raised questions on this ongoing issue and
not one of them have received any sort of reply.

Responses from administrators have uniformly been attempts to squelch any
and all investigation or complaint, from FayssalF's making of comments
saying it is a "waste of time" to Asterion and others' premature "closing"
of threads, to bots and administrators alike deliberately "archiving"
threads to hide them, to bbatsell's nonsensical attack claiming that
complaints over the threads being prematurely archived and the behavior of
the admins are on the "wrong place" when filed to the administrator
noticeboard.

There has been NO reasonable response at all. Even on this list, instead of
a response, I'm seeing messages written to attack me.

Further, you sent a lot of long messages in a short span of time,
> without waiting for a reaction.

I had no idea it was a "moderated" list, because the moderation notices did
not arrive until well after I sent the final message. I did not feel that
filing an update to an ongoing situation was an abuse. I think it looks more
like complaints about this are simply reaching for one more excuse to try to
excuse systemic abuses or ignore that they are occurring.

When writing to a large mailing list,
> anything you send takes up a lot of human time. I'm sure you didn't mean
> to give this impression, but demanding that people pay attention to that
> kind of volume doesn't demonstrate much respect for their time. A better
> approach would be to write one short, clear email and then wait for
> somebody to ask you for more details.

Nobody has done so. On the administrators noticeboard, all they did was make
attack and falsehood repeatedly.

And lastly, your messages came across to me as strident and demanding,
> messages from somebody who felt slighted and upset.

I felt slighted and upset. Yes, I did. I was systematically abused by a
number of both users and administrators, and nothing was done, and the
response so far has looked more like a coverup than anything else.

I'm sorry you felt
> that way, but expressing that so strongly in your emails doesn't help
> your cause. The people here see a lot of drama, most of it unnecessary,
> and all of it wearying. There's also a negative correlation between the
> amount of strong negative emotion in a message and its utility. So in
> the future you're probably better off waiting until you cool down some.
>
> Does that help?

Has anything been done yet, at all? No? Then it doesn't help.


from_name: Walter van Kalken

references:
<45D1DDB6.7000907@vankalken.net>	<45D1DFD8.3060200@fourkitchens.com>	<45D1E220.8090601@vankalken.net>	<48502b480702130844h26e914bdn81e14fe0aa26b5b8@mail.gmail.com>
	<eqvfrs$aul$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
As you can see the Dutch mods have done NOTHING, ZERO, NADA. And people
here say I have NO reason to be angry!

I have written over a 1000 articles to the wikipedia and now I am not
able to edit them. I am raging in anger.

Here is a screenshot I took today:

http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/8069/stillblocked1cv4.jpg

Sofar for EVERYONE can edit. I am not even a vandal. And people tell me
to calm down. It has been TWO WEEKS now! And NO FUCKING BODY is doing
anything at all.

Fuck everyone with their stupid advices about being nice. I am leaving.

Fuck the board for putting this stupid block all proxies in effect and
refusing to do anything.

Waerth

>>Hi Walter,
>>
>>I would like to ask you to donate at least 10% of your efforts which
>>are usually spent on this list by you to convince the Thailand
>>government or the Thai ISPs to fix their internet access so we might
>>be able to ban "just the right people" in the future. 10% should be
>>more than enough to convince them.
>>
>>Mathias
>>
>>
>
>If i correctly geussed what's happening:
>a) Thai ISPs put their users under transparent proxies.
>b) A nl admin regularly blocks them as "open proxy"
>
>
>a1) If the ISP proxy provides X-Fordwarded-For: header, talk with Tim
>Starling to add them to the XFF list.
>a2) Convince the ISP to remove the Proxy (almost imposible).
>
>b) No admin should block "open proxys" unless he confirms they're open
>proxys.
>
>
>Trick: Accesing via
>https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/nl/wiki/Hoofdpagina will probably
>bypass transparent proxys.
>
>
>I have found myself several times blocked on en.wikipedia due of being
>behind a proxy. Sometimes it was there were previous vandalism by other
>users. Others, it was alledged an "Open Proxy", either without reason or
>pointing to a proxy-list page.
>Astounishing, as neither the admin or the page mainteiners could have
>checked that proxy (maybe the lists were done by listing visitors behind
>it?).
>I sent several mails stating this, and asking for a lesser block (some
>were infinite hard blocks!). Well, i had no answer about this matter
>(could be unblocked without answering, however).
>
>Worse, my ISP doesn't provide means for stating if a given ip is one of
>their proxys or not. If an ip vandalised a page and -being accused of
>doing it- a checkuser showed that i had used that ip, i'd have no way to
>prove that ip being a transparent proxy, and not my personal ip. I'd
>probably be blocked forever. :(
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>


list: wikipedia-l

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] One week later and I am still blocked,
 nobody is doing a fucking thing


from_name: Jared Williams

body:
Hi

http://isr.uncc.edu/repliwiki/

Jared

-----Original Message-----
From: wikitech-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikitech-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Anthony
Sent: 18 February 2007 11:21
To: Guillaume Pierre; wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Distributed content hosting

On 2/18/07, Guillaume Pierre <gpierre at cs.vu.nl> wrote:
> As Gerard said, the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is working on
> distributed decentralized hosting of a wikipedia-like site. Our first
> results are summarized in an article available here:
> http://www.globule.org/publi/DWECWH_webist2007.html
>

The meat of the idea seems to be to use distributed hash tables to allow the
main database to be moved onto multiple mostly-independent computers (i.e.
break away from the inefficient MySQL replication/cluster model).  This is
absolutely something which should be done.  Wikipedia's data model screams
for the adoption of this solution.

I question the benefit of then allowing untrusted third parties to run the
servers, though, because at the end of the paper you acknowledge that all
the data is going to have to pass back through trusted parties anyway.  I'm
not convinced that there would be a significant cost savings to the
introduction of untrusted third parties in this case.  Once you've achieved
an approximately linear scaling of the database servers, which the
appropriate use of DHTs will do, it seems to me that the costs of
downloading the data from untrusted third parties (doubling the bandwidth)
and checking the signatures (eating up CPU) is going to be nearly as great
as the cost of simply adding another database server.

Of course, I see why you're proposing it - allowing untrusted third parties
to interact directly with the end-user would require end-users to install
some sort of client software if they want to authenticate the content.  But
I really think that's the way you've gotta go if you're going to achieve a
real cost savings (or cost distribution).
Let the end-user software check the signatures.

Anthony

_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


body:
No, it only requires some alterations of the site configuration file.
Nothing major, actually. The main issue here is if it is acceptable to the
Foundation.

Titoxd.

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Casey Brown
Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2007 2:58 PM
To: 'Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Restriction on page moves
inpt.wikipedia.orgThankyou

Hi Daniel, one question:  Was this conclusion reached from a "straw poll" or
discussion?  Otherwise, it seems good, but it would probably involve a
site-wide semi-protection against moves and upping the "new account cut-off"
to 45-days.

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Nix
Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2007 4:25 PM
To: foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Foundation-l] Restriction on page moves in
pt.wikipedia.orgThankyou

Hi everybody,

In a recent poll on pt.wikipedia it was decided to restrict move
pages to users with at least a 45-day-old registered account, the same
minimum period to grant right to vote (but without the request of 100 valid
editions).

I made a request on http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9024 and
it was suggested to consult the Foundation because the decision seems to be
very restrictive.

Well, the community decision was:

First question (pro or con):
*52 pro restriction
*11 contro restriction

Second (time restriction):
*15 votes - 5 days
*8 votes - 15 days
*38 votes - 45 days

So, I'd like to know what you think about it and what could be done after
this decision.

Thank you,
Dantadd
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usu%C3%A1rio_Discuss%C3%A3o:Dantadd

 __________________________________________________
Fale com seus amigos  de gra?a com o novo Yahoo! Messenger
http://br.messenger.yahoo.com/
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject:
[Foundation-l] Restriction on page moves
	inpt.wikipedia.orgThankyou


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 14:02:12 +0000, "Fred Bauder"
<fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:

>The opera case was a hard fought arbitration case, mostly over the absence of women on the list. Sources were demanded and provided. See Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Jean-Thierry Boisseau

I know, I was there.  It's still special pleading.  The highest ranked
woman is on four lists, second-highest is on two, the lowest ranked
man is on six.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 09:08:30 -0500, Jeff Raymond
<jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:

>And the article on Gregory Kohs was kept deleted even though it meets
>all of our standards.  It's broke in both directions, and I'm even more
>frustrated than you are.

Really?  Can you point to an independent biographical source for Kohs?
Or only something which discusses him in the context of Wikipedia and
conflict of interest, in which case we should mention him in a project
page on that?

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


body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> More relevantly it uses a fraction of the costs. Given that we grow
> exponentially and given that we do not have a healthy balance sheet,
> this is extremely relevant. When the nodes that serve user requests are
> close to the user, it will also mean that the Internet as a whole will
> have less traffic. This is particularly relevant in countries where
> access to the International backbone is a limiting factor.
>
> With a decentralised infrastructure it is a sound strategy to have
> trusted nodes in many countries. This will alleviate the problem even more.

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

-- Tim Starling


body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Timwi schreef:
>
>>It would use less bandwidth, yes, but it would take much longer to serve
>>a page.
>
> Hoi,
> More relevantly it uses a fraction of the costs.

Which not something an end-user will see. If end-users see it become
noticeably slower, they'll complain, full-stop. "It's cheaper for us!"
is not a good excuse in the minds of most consumers.

> When the nodes that serve user requests are close to the user,

What good is a node that is close to the user if it's dead?

Timwi


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> On 2/18/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>> George Chriss wrote:
>>
>>> If the AMA does provide such recommendations.  Having a vandal change
>>>
>> specific dosage amounts is a scary prospect, as some people may actually
>> trust our information at face value.
>>
>> Seems to me that having people trust information from Wikipedia about
>> drug dosages at face value _at all_ is the scary prospect. I wouldn't
>> bake a cake using a recipe from Wikipedia without checking against
>> outside sources first, whether the article's history showed vandalism or
>> not. We already have medical disclaimers specifically intended to cover
>> this, IMO we shouldn't have to go to great lengths to protect idiots
>> against themselves.
>>
>
>
>  I wonder if you think the same thing when someone dies because they trusted
> the info.
>
I would be thinking "Darwin Award, Special Wikipedia Category". Of
course then we'd have the all-important [[List of Darwin Award winners
who died from trusting Wikipedia]].

:-)

But to be serious, I think it's reasonable to be ruthless about sourcing
and quoting this kind of info, and deleting if none is found. If a
pharma company recommends a dosage on their website, and we phrase our
text as "As of 2007, BigPharmaCo's website recommends 75mg [1]", then
we're just transcribing what is already on the net, not playing doctor.
(It would be ultra-clever to develop some kind of tool that tracks
these, and flags the WP text for review if the website changes.)

Stan


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

references:
<1d9gt25b5nnuc5g0b5ckkns5cmq7ps6qbn@4ax.com>
	<20070218161006.GA486@alva.mail.gmail.com>
	<nr2ht2tcn47l5rd2l0sahlttn6mn4up0ia@4ax.com> <45D89AF2.7070006@shaw.ca>
	<or7ht2l2icej8vvroklvl3p480cvb7qiql@4ax.com> <45D8BA99.8010405@shaw.ca>
	<vpght2htdh75b1780ohdjr54eg2cldecgn@4ax.com>

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 13:44:09 -0700, Bryan Derksen
> <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>> Well, so what? The list's criteria are based on _absolute_ height, not
>> _relative_ height, and as long as this is pointed out explicitly in the
>> description of the list I don't see the problem. We've got a list of the
>> largest asteroids in absolute terms too.
>
> Right, so it's only geographically, temporally and ethnically biased,
> which makes it - er, still crap :-)

It doesn't include or exclude based on geography, time period, or
ethnicity, so it's actually _un_biased on those criteria. The exclusion
based on whether one plays basketball is a bit of an odd exception to
that, I admit, but could be handled with that subarticle split I
suggested earlier.

In any event, I still don't see the problem with selective lists in
general as long as the criteria for selection is objectively described.
This is a list of people who are taller than a specific height, a clear
criteria on which to judge inclusion or exclusion. Whether the subject
is "crap" or not is a separate issue.


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] An RSS extension I'd like to see

body:
On 18/02/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > So you reject links to categories as well, presumably. And
> > > disambiguation links to mediawiki and wikipedia namespaces?
[snippety snip]

Hang on, hang on; this thread started out with Erik posting a
brainstorm for a new extension. How the hell did this turn into a
debate about cross-namespace links, and the evilness of portals?
Change the thread subject, at the least, please. Better still, get it
off our mailing list.

Rob Church


from_name: Marc Riddell

body:
on 2/18/07 4:13 PM, David Gerard at dgerard at gmail.com wrote:

> We have enough of a problem protecting people from other people's
> stupidity on the mailing list ...
>
>
> - d.

:-)

Marc


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

references:
<1d9gt25b5nnuc5g0b5ckkns5cmq7ps6qbn@4ax.com>
	<20070218161006.GA486@alva.mail.gmail.com>
	<nr2ht2tcn47l5rd2l0sahlttn6mn4up0ia@4ax.com> <45D89AF2.7070006@shaw.ca>
	<45D8A51A.1030201@telus.net>
	<esght2da91fl8as59s6pcl76is4f8k865t@4ax.com>

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> Plus, I am advocating replacing it with a verifiable and objective
> list, which they can still play with, just not adding their favourite
> basketball star.  They might have to do some research.  Something they
> could - you know - learn from.

I think I've found the article you were complaining about
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tall_men>?) and it's got 150
references already, very few of the entries don't have one. It's also
divided into sections by both the centimeter and the inch, so my earlier
suggestion about making it so that individual readers could decide for
themselves what "tall" meant was already implemented.

Other than the basketball exception I'm really not sure what else can be
done with this, it looks fine to me.


from_name: Steve

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] One week later and I am still blocked,
	nobody is doing a fucking thing

body:
While I certainly can't respect his delivery, I can definitely
understand his angst in feeling unimportant, especially given his
consistent contribution to the project.

Can nobody help him? Even if it takes seeing past his disgusting presentation.

-S

On 2/18/07, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> As you can see the Dutch mods have done NOTHING, ZERO, NADA. And people
> here say I have NO reason to be angry!
>
> I have written over a 1000 articles to the wikipedia and now I am not
> able to edit them. I am raging in anger.
>
> Here is a screenshot I took today:
>
> http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/8069/stillblocked1cv4.jpg
>
> Sofar for EVERYONE can edit. I am not even a vandal. And people tell me
> to calm down. It has been TWO WEEKS now! And NO FUCKING BODY is doing
> anything at all.
>
> Fuck everyone with their stupid advices about being nice. I am leaving.
>
> Fuck the board for putting this stupid block all proxies in effect and
> refusing to do anything.
>
> Waerth
>
>
> >>Hi Walter,
> >>
> >>I would like to ask you to donate at least 10% of your efforts which
> >>are usually spent on this list by you to convince the Thailand
> >>government or the Thai ISPs to fix their internet access so we might
> >>be able to ban "just the right people" in the future. 10% should be
> >>more than enough to convince them.
> >>
> >>Mathias
> >>
> >>
> >
> >If i correctly geussed what's happening:
> >a) Thai ISPs put their users under transparent proxies.
> >b) A nl admin regularly blocks them as "open proxy"
> >
> >
> >a1) If the ISP proxy provides X-Fordwarded-For: header, talk with Tim
> >Starling to add them to the XFF list.
> >a2) Convince the ISP to remove the Proxy (almost imposible).
> >
> >b) No admin should block "open proxys" unless he confirms they're open
> >proxys.
> >
> >
> >Trick: Accesing via
> >https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/nl/wiki/Hoofdpagina will probably
> >bypass transparent proxys.
> >
> >
> >I have found myself several times blocked on en.wikipedia due of being
> >behind a proxy. Sometimes it was there were previous vandalism by other
> >users. Others, it was alledged an "Open Proxy", either without reason or
> >pointing to a proxy-list page.
> >Astounishing, as neither the admin or the page mainteiners could have
> >checked that proxy (maybe the lists were done by listing visitors behind
> >it?).
> >I sent several mails stating this, and asking for a lesser block (some
> >were infinite hard blocks!). Well, i had no answer about this matter
> >(could be unblocked without answering, however).
> >
> >Worse, my ISP doesn't provide means for stating if a given ip is one of
> >their proxys or not. If an ip vandalised a page and -being accused of
> >doing it- a checkuser showed that i had used that ip, i'd have no way to
> >prove that ip being a transparent proxy, and not my personal ip. I'd
> >probably be blocked forever. :(
> >
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >Wikipedia-l mailing list
> >Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> >http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

references:
<1d9gt25b5nnuc5g0b5ckkns5cmq7ps6qbn@4ax.com>
	<20070218161006.GA486@alva.mail.gmail.com>
	<nr2ht2tcn47l5rd2l0sahlttn6mn4up0ia@4ax.com> <45D89AF2.7070006@shaw.ca>
	<or7ht2l2icej8vvroklvl3p480cvb7qiql@4ax.com> <45D8BA99.8010405@shaw.ca>
	<vpght2htdh75b1780ohdjr54eg2cldecgn@4ax.com> <45D8DD31.5040101@shaw.ca>
	<mgnht29ipn8okq4cj629c6umlo5q56nt0a@4ax.com>

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 16:11:45 -0700, Bryan Derksen
> <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>>> Right, so it's only geographically, temporally and ethnically biased,
>>> which makes it - er, still crap :-)
>> It doesn't include or exclude based on geography, time period, or
>> ethnicity, so it's actually _un_biased on those criteria. The exclusion
>> based on whether one plays basketball is a bit of an odd exception to
>> that, I admit, but could be handled with that subarticle split I
>> suggested earlier.
>
> Yes, it is.  Check out the stats on average height by country.  There
> is a 10" difference between the lowest and the highest

The list is about tall men. Excluding short men from it hardly seems
like bias. It's like complaining that a list of the world's tallest
trees doesn't have any representatives from Saudi Arabia on it; it's not
bias because Saudia Arabia simply doesn't have any really tall trees in
it (I'm assuming for purposes of argument, anyway).

>> In any event, I still don't see the problem with selective lists in
>> general as long as the criteria for selection is objectively described.
>> This is a list of people who are taller than a specific height, a clear
>> criteria on which to judge inclusion or exclusion. Whether the subject
>> is "crap" or not is a separate issue.
>
> But the "objective" value of tall is subjective, and largely based on
> the number of hits it gets, looking at the history.

"This is a list of notable tall men, starting at 198 cm (6 ft 6 in)."
That's an objective number, and I'm not sure what you mean by it being
"based on the number of hits it gets." If you think it's not short
enough you could try reducing it, the entries appear to be in order of
height so it should be relatively easy to start tacking more on at the
end. But there has to be a cutoff somewhere or the list would eventually
encompass all of humanity, so why not there? One might also ask why the
list of largest asteroids cuts off at 9 Metis, but that doesn't mean
keeping any sort of list of the largest asteroids is improper.

I'm really not sure I'm understanding your objection any more. What
would you change about the inclusion criteria if you had carte blanche?


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>On 18/02/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Yes, exactly.  Actually I think we should have a list of people
>>notable for their height, but I don't know how you'd exclude all dwarf
>>actors, since their notability is founded on dwarfism, which implies
>>stature.
>>
>>
>Have a "see separate list" link. If there isn't a good list of dwarf
>actors, there should be one.
>
Dwarf basketball players would be significant. ;-)

Ec


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Timwi schreef:
> Andy Spencer wrote:
>
>> Even if the central server had to ping the volunteers after every
>> single request to check status, that would still be a fraction of the
>> bandwidth taken up by sending wiki page.
>>
>
> It would use less bandwidth, yes, but it would take much longer to serve
> a page.
>
> Timwi
Hoi,
More relevantly it uses a fraction of the costs. Given that we grow
exponentially and given that we do not have a healthy balance sheet,
this is extremely relevant. When the nodes that serve user requests are
close to the user, it will also mean that the Internet as a whole will
have less traffic. This is particularly relevant in countries where
access to the International backbone is a limiting factor.

With a decentralised infrastructure it is a sound strategy to have
trusted nodes in many countries. This will alleviate the problem even more.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Casey Brown

body:
Hi Daniel, one question:  Was this conclusion reached from a "straw poll" or
discussion?  Otherwise, it seems good, but it would probably involve a
site-wide semi-protection against moves and upping the "new account cut-off"
to 45-days.

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Nix
Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2007 4:25 PM
To: foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Foundation-l] Restriction on page moves in
pt.wikipedia.orgThankyou

Hi everybody,

In a recent poll on pt.wikipedia it was decided to restrict move
pages to users with at least a 45-day-old registered account, the same
minimum period to grant right to vote (but without the request of 100 valid
editions).

I made a request on http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9024 and
it was suggested to consult the Foundation because the decision seems to be
very restrictive.

Well, the community decision was:

First question (pro or con):
*52 pro restriction
*11 contro restriction

Second (time restriction):
*15 votes - 5 days
*8 votes - 15 days
*38 votes - 45 days

So, I'd like to know what you think about it and what could be done after
this decision.

Thank you,
Dantadd
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usu%C3%A1rio_Discuss%C3%A3o:Dantadd

 __________________________________________________
Fale com seus amigos  de gra?a com o novo Yahoo! Messenger
http://br.messenger.yahoo.com/
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject:
[Foundation-l] Restriction on page moves in
	pt.wikipedia.orgThankyou


body:
Do you mind providing links to the discussions that took place? That can
help us understand the arguments a bit more, even though I do not think this
is controversial.

Titoxd.

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Nix
Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2007 4:59 PM
To: foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Foundation-l] Restriction on page moves inpt.wikipedia.org

Thank you for the answers.

Well, the decision was taken after almost three months of discutions,
followed by a regular voting poll (the same used to choose official
policies).

The option that requires a 45-day-old account to move page was clearly the
will of majority.

If the decision is way to restrictive according to the Foundation,
we'll have to choose the best option available.

Well, that's it. Thank you in advance
Dantadd

************************************************************
In my opinion, but of course i can not speak in any way for the foundation,
this is not an issue that is up to the foundation. The local community knows
best what they need, and I guess that if they find a developer that wants to
implement this, they can just ask him (her) to do it. I see no need to
discuss it all over here :-) It would perhaps be something different if you
prohibit editing for unregistered users etc maybe :-)

Lodewijk

2007/2/18, Titoxd op Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia op gmail.com>:
>
> No, it only requires some alterations of the site configuration file.
> Nothing major, actually. The main issue here is if it is acceptable to the
> Foundation.
>
> Titoxd.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces op lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces op lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Casey
Brown
> Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2007 2:58 PM
> To: 'Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List'
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Restriction on page moves
> inpt.wikipedia.orgThankyou
>
> Hi Daniel, one question:  Was this conclusion reached from a "straw poll"
> or
> discussion?  Otherwise, it seems good, but it would probably involve a
> site-wide semi-protection against moves and upping the "new account
> cut-off"
> to 45-days.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces op lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces op lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Daniel
Nix
> Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2007 4:25 PM
> To: foundation-l op lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Foundation-l] Restriction on page moves in
> pt.wikipedia.orgThankyou
>
> Hi everybody,
>
> In a recent poll on pt.wikipedia it was decided to restrict move
> pages to users with at least a 45-day-old registered account, the same
> minimum period to grant right to vote (but without the request of 100
> valid
> editions).
>
> I made a request on http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9024 and
> it was suggested to consult the Foundation because the decision seems to
> be
> very restrictive.
>
> Well, the community decision was:
>
> First question (pro or con):
> *52 pro restriction
> *11 contro restriction
>
> Second (time restriction):
> *15 votes - 5 days
> *8 votes - 15 days
> *38 votes - 45 days
>
> So, I'd like to know what you think about it and what could be done after
> this decision.
>
> Thank you,
> Dantadd
> http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usu%C3%A1rio_Discuss%C3%A3o:Dantadd

 __________________________________________________
Fale com seus amigos  de gra?a com o novo Yahoo! Messenger
http://br.messenger.yahoo.com/
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject: [Foundation-l] Restriction on page moves inpt.wikipedia.org


body:
Daniel Nix wrote:

>Well, the decision was taken after almost three months of discutions,
>followed by a regular voting poll (the same used to choose official policies).
>
>The option that requires a 45-day-old account to move page was clearly the will of majority.
>
>If the decision is way to restrictive according to the Foundation,
>we'll have to choose the best option available.
>
>Well, that's it. Thank you in advance
>Dantadd
>
I personally think that 45 days is too long, but then I don't edit on
pt:wp.  So I'm not affected.  Seeking divine intervention from the
outside is dangerous because you can too easily become dependent on such
a process.  For the most part projects need to sort out their own
problems; that's the price of autonomy.

Ec


from_name: Eugene van der Pijll

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG schreef:
> I am very frustrated.
<snip>

> Sadly, although we managed to delete the list of tall men once, that
> was sent back to AfD and there is no consensus to delete it.

The problem here is that AfD is working as designed. In my opinion,
there is certainly room for a list of really tall men on wikipedia. It
should however be limited to those who are notable for being tall; which
would mean a lower limit of around 2.40 m, and a smaller list of
"legendary" tall men, whose names are almost synonymous with "giant",
such as Goliath.

In the current state, it's just a very bad article, as the inclusion
criteria are vague, and do not only depend on the ostensible subject of
the article: tallness. There are an awful lot of basketball players on
the list, for example, compared to e.g. volleyball players. But that is
a clean-up job, which means that the article shouldn't be deleted
according to the AfD rules.

It may be useful to take a look at our article [[Oldest people]]. I
think that's a good example of what a page like this should look like.

Eugene


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 17:10:06 +0100, Eugene van der Pijll
<eugene at vanderpijll.nl> wrote:

>The problem here is that AfD is working as designed. In my opinion,
>there is certainly room for a list of really tall men on wikipedia. It
>should however be limited to those who are notable for being tall; which
>would mean a lower limit of around 2.40 m, and a smaller list of
>"legendary" tall men, whose names are almost synonymous with "giant",
>such as Goliath.

And 2.4m comes from?...  This is the problem.

Sure, we could have a list of men who are or were notable for their
height, as identified by independent reliable sources.  That would be
a completely different list, and most of the entries on the current
one would not make it.  I'm almost minded to start it myself.

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


body:
Hoi,
Have you been paying attention lately; our costs and our traffic are
growing exponentially. We do not have a rosy balance sheet as it is.
Users will be extremely unhappy when we are not able to continue to
provide our service. They are used to our service not being the fastest
around.

Why would a node that is close by be dead ??

NB when our customers find the argument "it's cheaper for us" not a good
one, they have to realise that they are not paying customers. TANSTAAFL

Thanks,
    GerardM

Timwi schreef:
> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>> Timwi schreef:
>>
>>
>>> It would use less bandwidth, yes, but it would take much longer to serve
>>> a page.
>>>
>> Hoi,
>> More relevantly it uses a fraction of the costs.
>>
>
> Which not something an end-user will see. If end-users see it become
> noticeably slower, they'll complain, full-stop. "It's cheaper for us!"
> is not a good excuse in the minds of most consumers.
>
>
>> When the nodes that serve user requests are close to the user,
>>
>
> What good is a node that is close to the user if it's dead?
>
> Timwi


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 18/02/07, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> I ran a gigabyte of access logs through it and sorted the output, only
> took about a minute. Awk is quite a neat language, maybe we should rewrite
> MediaWiki in it ;)

I can see A, W and K reaching for the sporks as I read this.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

references:
<1d9gt25b5nnuc5g0b5ckkns5cmq7ps6qbn@4ax.com>	<20070218161006.GA486@alva.mail.gmail.com>	<nr2ht2tcn47l5rd2l0sahlttn6mn4up0ia@4ax.com>	<45D89AF2.7070006@shaw.ca>
	<45D8A51A.1030201@telus.net>
	<esght2da91fl8as59s6pcl76is4f8k865t@4ax.com>

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 11:12:26 -0800, Ray Saintonge
><saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>>This is one of those so-what articles.  I would have no interest to go
>>there in search of information; it's fundamentally useless.  Still, I'm
>>not about to complain about it, and there are ways of dealing with the
>>how-tall-is-tall criterion.  There are people who love to play with this
>>kind of list, and I am glad to see these eager little minds diverted
>>into harmlessly useless endeavours.  What we end up with is a handful of
>>old-fashioned school principals who have forgotten their principles and
>>a bunch of kindergartners who are learning through play.  The rest of us
>>are learning or teaching somewhere else in the school; we don't directly
>>give a damn about what's happening in the kindergarten.  For us,
>>Wikipedia's reputation does not depend on self-righteous principals
>>suppressing kindergarten activity.  We mostly don't get involved in
>>specific deletion arguments; that would be too time-consuming.  But we
>>do resent being assumed to belong to some imagined consensus.
>>
>>
>That's terribly harsh.  Your analogy is also flawed, because the
>kindergarteners here are learning through play (using someone else's
>toys) that original research is just fine, making up your own
>subjective criteria is no problem and all you need to do is gather
>together lots of people to shout "I like it!" and it gets kept
>regardless of failing core policy. I fail to see how this is good.
>
>Plus, I am advocating replacing it with a verifiable and objective
>list, which they can still play with, just not adding their favourite
>basketball star.  They might have to do some research.  Something they
>could - you know - learn from.
>
It may be a little harsh, but it's also easy to end up spending a lot of
time debating something that doesn't matter.  Kindergartners usually do
play with someone else's toys, and a progressive school will choose to
provide toys that better accomplish the learning goal.  In our
kindergarten the desired learning outcome may be the ability to reach a
consensus about what is meant by "tall".  I don't think that original
research has a big importance in "Lists" since these articles are really
pathways to the real articles.  To the extent that the contents are red
links, I view them as suggestions for future articles where that
person's membership in the list can be questioned or documented.  We
need extra caution when list membership could be libellous, but those
lists are exceptions.

People love lists and are fascinated by them even if they make scholars
cringe.  Some interesting books published over the last two centuries
(like Haydn's Book of Dates) have had lists as a prominent feature.  To
me lists are a stepping stone to more informative material.

Ec


from_name: Sean Whitton (Xyrael)

subject: [Foundation-l] What's OTRS?

body:
You can find out about OTRS the open-source software package (we use a
slightly different version) at http://otrs.org/ - it's free and
there's a nice demo on there if you want to play around.

On 2/15/07, CJ King <cjkingwiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks very much, that helps a lot!!
>
> On 2/15/07, CJ King <cjkingwiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi everybody, my name is CJ King. I would really like to know what OTRS
> > is. Thanks and have a great day!!
> > On 2/15/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > The "problem with your article?" page for en:wp is:
> > >
> > >
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us/Article_problem/Factual_error_%28from_enterprise%29
> > >
> > > It directs people to either the Help Desk or to OTRS. The Help Desk
> > > appears to be getting a few reasonable queries from organisations,
> > > which are being dealt with properly.
> > >
> > > No flood of crap yet, which is good :-)
> > >
> > > OTRS volunteers - how's it looking from your side?
> > >
> > >
> > > - d.
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > You've got an email from cjkingwiki at gmail.com.
>
>
>
>
> --
> You've got an email from cjkingwiki at gmail.com.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
?Sean Whitton (Xyrael/xyr)
sean at silentflame.com
http://xyrael.net/


subject: [Foundation-l] What's OTRS?


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

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

> Seems to me that having people trust information from Wikipedia about
> drug dosages at face value _at all_ is the scary prospect.

I think many Wikipedians have enough of an academic background to
know that it is not necessarily true just because I Read It In A
Book." And they are familiar enough with Wikipedia to use it cautiously.

I do _not_ think this is true of the general public. The general
public takes advice from the Reader's Digest, pharmaceutical direct-
to-consumer advertising, and paperback books in racks at health-food
stores quite seriously.

I think the whole medical-advice business is potentially quite
dangerous to Wikipedia's health.

I worked for an extended period of time with the spiny black
Caribbean sea urchin, Diadema antillarum. During that time I got
innumerable spines and bits of spine stuck, embedded, etc. in my
flesh and regarded them as no more than a nuisance. I didn't do
anything in particular about them, and in a few days they would
apparently dissolve or get absorbed or go away, leaving not much more
than a purple tattoo-dot. They never got infected or caused much
pain. On a scale of 0 to 10, where a bee sting is 5, brushing lightly
against fire coral is 4, and an ordinary wood splinter is 3, these
were about a 1. These are of course _my_ results. Your pain and
suffering may vary.

I knew that the locals "treated" sea urchin spine injuries by
urinating on them, but, well, that was gross, and I didn't bother.

I also knew that a Diadema spine injury plays a role in Ian Fleming's
novel "Thunderball," in which James Bond indulges in what seems to me
to be a bit of sadomasochistic foreplay by biting a sea urchin spine
out of a lovely young woman's foot; in reality I'd think a human bite
would be far more dangerous to a lovely young woman's foot than an
urchin spine wound. But I digress.

In our sea urchin article, over the years people keep dropping in
hints and tips about treating injuries from sea urchin spines. At
first I thought it was the sort of entertaining and possibly useful
folklore that should say in the article.

When I started checking things out, I found that the range of
published opinion on recommended treatment of sea urchin wounds was
astonishing. But what really freaked me out was that the range of
published opinion on their _seriousness_ was even more astonishing.
Thus http://scuba-doc.com/irritants.htm says

"Sea urchin spine injury is usually a benign process that rarely
comes to the attention of a physician. Aside from the transient
episode of excruciating pain which responds dramatically to hot water
soaks, there is usually no residual disability.

Pretty innocuous-sounding, right? I wonder, incidentally, whether
"hot-water soaks" is a euphemism for the folk remedy I mentioned. Of
course, it goes on a little ominously to say "As in any puncture
wound, tetanus prophylaxis and observation for latent infection is
advised. Complications arise, however, when spines are embedded over
bony prominences, within joints, or in contact with nerves. Cases are
associated with sea urchin injuries has not been previously reported
in the literature. When such injuries necessitate exploration,
aseptic surgical technique is required."

And an emergency medicine text (whose online link has, alas, gone
dead) said:

"External percussion to achieve spine fragmentation is
contraindicated" and "Spines within a joint or adjacent to a
neurovascular structure should be referred to a surgeon to extract
all fragments as soon as possible, and surgical exploration for
embedded particles should be delayed until a diagnosis can be made by
soft tissue radiography or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)"

And I just Googled a book called "Learning from Medical Errors,"
http://books.google.com/books?
vid=ISBN1857757688&id=3EMWy_Hj9EYC&pg=PA194&lpg=PA194&dq=sea+urchin
+spine+injury&sig=OdSzTSr7c0_oxp6rjcLAPa33TxM which describes a sea
urchin wound that wasn't properly diagnosed (and, yes, was part of a
biggish laceration), as a result of which the patient "underwent a
long and complicated hospital course of course" involving multiple
surgeries, skin grafts, and ultimately a lawsuit that was settled for
$450,000.

In other words, a sea urchin spine is usually no big deal, but
sometimes it _is_ a big deal. It is exactly the sort of thing for
which it is worth while spending the money for a doctor's advice.

And exactly the sort of thing for which I would hate to have _any_
connection with a Wikipedia page that said "no big deal, just pee on
it."

I'm not saying it's likely that anyone could successfully sue
Wikipedia for the bad consequences of bad Wikipedia advice, but, as
with l'affaire Seigenthaler, the potential for serious unpleasantness
is real.

I intend to make sure that the sea urchin article does _not_ discuss
treatment of sea urchin wounds... or, at the very, very most, if it
says anything at all, says something uselessly vague and CYA like
"sea urchin wounds have the potential for being quite serious, and
advice should be sought from physician or a reliable book on
treatment of wounds from venomous marine animals."


body:
All of my edits are a copyrightviolation of books in my posession. All
texts were literally copied and because of that all of my edits on
wikipedia and pictures I added should be removed immediately as they are
in violation of the GFDL. Also all of my sources seem to be non
reputable and non trustworthy so many falsehoods consist in these edits.

Since I am blocked from editting the mistakes myself the foundation
should do better and delete all of my edits.

Waerth/Walter


subject: [Wikipedia-l] all of my edits are copyrightviolations


body:
Hoi,
A research project is a research project because it helps to learn
something new. I support the VU project because it may bring us an
alternate way of providing information in a reliable way. Your argument
is that there is no example yet. My argument is that this research may
prove how to do exactly what has never been done before.

When you read the VU paper, you will find that security is addressed.
You will also find how the distribution of content is modelled. I know
that the VU will use a GRID to do the simulation of traffic. These guys
have the tools to do a decent job !!

When you state that we do not need to use cheaper hardware, it does not
mean at all say that we have a healthy balance sheet. Our auditors
indicate that we should have a reserve of a specific size; we do not
have it. We expect that our growth will continue unabated; our efforts
to get more money will have to be in line with these expectations. No,
your assessment  that our income is satisfactory is wrong. There are
other costs other than hardware. I think we are asking too much from
people like Anthere and the other board members; remember they are
volunteers and I would not be surprised if it is like a full time job
for them.

Thanks,
    GerardM

Simetrical schreef:
> On 2/18/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>> Have you been paying attention lately; our costs and our traffic are
>> growing exponentially. We do not have a rosy balance sheet as it is.
>> Users will be extremely unhappy when we are not able to continue to
>> provide our service.
>>
>
> Costs are growing exponentially, but so is income.  Wikipedia has
> enough money to continue operations.  It's not going to disappear due
> to hardware costs, as a board member has recently stated:
> <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-February/027762.html>.
>  Notice the emphasis on needing to get more money, not needing to use
> cheaper hardware.
>
> If you think that a SETI at home-style computing model for a high-load
> webpage-serving application is practicable, could you point to a
> single example of anyone pulling this off successfully?  Specifically,
> concerns over trustworthiness (how do we stop agents from putting ads
> or other content on their copies?) and latency (needs to be routed
> through extra servers) appear insuperable.
>


references:
<45D1DDB6.7000907@vankalken.net>	<45D1DFD8.3060200@fourkitchens.com>	<45D1E220.8090601@vankalken.net>	<48502b480702130844h26e914bdn81e14fe0aa26b5b8@mail.gmail.com>	<eqvfrs$aul$1@sea.gmane.org>	<45D81031.3000306@vankalken.net>
	<er9bdq$l1a$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
>>Fuck everyone with their stupid advices about being nice. I am leaving.
>>
>>Fuck the board for putting this stupid block all proxies in effect and
>>refusing to do anything.
>>
>>
>
>You're welcome.
>
>
>
I am happy to see that as the chairwoman of the foundation you take your
responsibility for foundationpolicies which keep editors blocked so
seriously. I had expected better from you.

Wikipedia:Anyone can edit .......yes as long as you do not life outside
of the western countries in a country where ISP's force you into
proxies. And the foundation in it's arrogance doesn't give rats ass. Oh
how noble. What is worse me ranting or the foundation not caring?

Waerth


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] One week later and I am still
 blocked, nobody is doing a fucking thing


subject:
[Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] One week later and I am
 still	blocked, nobody is doing a fucking thing

body:
So the victim for over a year of a policy cannot be angry. This is
typical BIG COMPANY arrogance, I see it has now come to the wiki-projects.

Waerth

>Hoi,
>We may start caring when you stop ranting and raving. They shoot horses
>don't they ?
>Thanks,
>   GerardM
>
>On 2/18/07, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>
>>
>>
>>>>Fuck everyone with their stupid advices about being nice. I am leaving.
>>>>
>>>>Fuck the board for putting this stupid block all proxies in effect and
>>>>refusing to do anything.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>You're welcome.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>I am happy to see that as the chairwoman of the foundation you take your
>>responsibility for foundationpolicies which keep editors blocked so
>>seriously. I had expected better from you.
>>
>>Wikipedia:Anyone can edit .......yes as long as you do not life outside
>>of the western countries in a country where ISP's force you into
>>proxies. And the foundation in it's arrogance doesn't give rats ass. Oh
>>how noble. What is worse me ranting or the foundation not caring?
>>
>>Waerth
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>>
>>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] One week later and I am
 still	blocked, nobody is doing a fucking thing


body:
On 18/02/07, Ronald Beelaard <rbeelaard at gmail.com> wrote:

> 4. From a mail sent this morning by Waerth to various people, I have derived
> the originating IP. This IP is currently not and has never been blocked in
> the past (except maybe autoblocks). Some weeks ago I've spent considerable
> time to figure out what IP's could possibly be used by Waerth's provider as
> a cache. One such IP has been unblocked then as a precaution, although it
> was very unlikely this one could be the source of any trouble.

But you know as well as I do that if someone screams abuse at you when
making a request, it magically gives you the precise information you
need to help them!

- d.


body:
On 18/02/07, Domas Mituzas <midom.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
> Serving a wiki isn't hosting an .iso file, where of course, bandwidth
> is main cost, and it is easy to offload. ISO files don't change,
> people don't care about how fast they start getting ISO file, because
> the transfer is long enough to forget all startup costs.
> Serving a wiki isn't looking for aliens. If someone turns off the
> computer, or DSL will go down, aliens won't disappear, now the
> request will. Nobody really cares about individual packet containing
> alien information, because it is sent to multiple nodes. Some will
> reply, some won't.
> Serving a wiki isn't serving a personal website. It is not single
> person editing, there's great deal of conflict resolution, possible
> race conditions, versioning and metadata information.
> Serving a wiki isn't serving a conventional media website, because it
> is far more organic in terms of load pattern evolution, or accidental
> surges. Content formats also come bottom->up, requiring agile
> development of systems.
> Serving a wiki means delivering user contributed content thousands
> collaborated on in few tens of milliseconds. We do succeed this
> mission and every time we increased responsiveness of the site, we
> had more users coming.

Fucking *excellent* post, Domas.

Rob Church


from_name: Daniel Nix

subject:
[Foundation-l] Restriction on page moves in pt.wikipedia.orgThank
	you

body:
Hi everybody,

In a recent poll on pt.wikipedia it was decided to restrict move
pages to users with at least a 45-day-old registered account, the same minimum period to grant right to vote (but without the request of 100 valid editions).

I made a request on http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9024 and it was suggested to consult the Foundation because the decision seems to be very restrictive.

Well, the community decision was:

First question (pro or con):
*52 pro restriction
*11 contro restriction

Second (time restriction):
*15 votes - 5 days
*8 votes - 15 days
*38 votes - 45 days

So, I'd like to know what you think about it and what could be done after this decision.

Thank you,
Dantadd
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usu%C3%A1rio_Discuss%C3%A3o:Dantadd

 __________________________________________________
Fale com seus amigos  de gra?a com o novo Yahoo! Messenger
http://br.messenger.yahoo.com/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
on 2/18/07 5:08 PM, K P at kpbotany at gmail.com wrote:

> Ec is correct, there is no consensus, besides that which the ownership of
> Wikipedia by the cyber-living has already established.  At some point, imo,
> it has to be decided, is Wikipedia a general online encyclopedia that
> anybody can edit, or is it an elitist workspace for an elitist group of
> people who live in cyberspace?  Because this latter group is none too fond
> of the anybodies of the world.
>
>
> KP

This entire post is excellent and, I'm sure for some, painfully insightful,
and deadly accurate. Solutions? A societal structure needs a cultural one to
support it. And a culture is created, promoted and nurtured from the very
top of an organization. None of this is going to change until the ethic at
the top does.

Marc Riddell


from_name: Cheney Shill

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:

> I am very frustrated.
...
> Sadly, although we managed to delete the list of tall me
> once, that
> was sent back to AfD and there is no consensus to delete
> it.  No
> consensus in this case means that there is no clear
> majority of !votes
> - policy and guidelines (which reflect a much wider
> consensus) are
> that we do not have original research, and there is no
> credible
> rebuttal of the assertion that the list of tall men is
> based on just
> that.

I'd support you, but, sadly, I have been blocked since last
year for doing nothing more then trying to apply policy and
remove original research (known as knowledge by consensus
of users, not NPOV sources).  If one can make an argument
for content to exist within an article based purely on user
consensus determined by talk page votes - not on NPOV
sources - one can certainly make the same argument for an
entire article.  Such is the wikiality.

~~Pro-Lick
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Halliburton_Shill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pro-Lick
http://www.wikiality.com/User:Pro-Lick (now a Wikia supported site)

--spam may follow--

____________________________________________________________________________________
Have a burning question?
Go to www.Answers.yahoo.com and get answers from real people who know.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

references:
<1d9gt25b5nnuc5g0b5ckkns5cmq7ps6qbn@4ax.com>
	<20070218161006.GA486@alva.mail.gmail.com>
	<nr2ht2tcn47l5rd2l0sahlttn6mn4up0ia@4ax.com>
	<45D89AF2.7070006@shaw.ca>

body:
On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 11:29:06 -0700, Bryan Derksen
<bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

>It's not like we don't have lots of other arbitrary criteria for
>inclusion already, both in lists and in article retention. But in this
>case as long as the list's criteria can be evaluated reasonably
>objectively I see nothing inherently wrong with it.

OK, so try this:

* Average height increases over time, so the criterion excludes people
who were notable for their height in their time (e.g. Edward I of
England).

* Average height varies with over 10" difference between the average
height of the tallest nation (Netherlands) and the shortest (I think
that's Vietnam, but can't remember offhand).

* The tallest true pygmy would be notable as such while still
remaining well below the criterion.

* There is a special "fudge rule" to stop it being a list of
basketball players, which is a really, really bad sign.

* Heights of circus giants and historical figures are not necessarily
(!) accurate.

* Acromegaly and giantism produce extremes of height which exceed in
many cases the effects of normal variation (see Robert Wadlow)

* A notably tall ballet dancer would be well under the limit (there
are ballerinas who are under the 6ft mark but still remarkably tall
/for ballerinas/ - same would apply to male dancers).

So: the list is completely arbitrary in that it excludes many who are
notable for their height while including many who are just - well,
tall.

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


list: textbook-l

from_name: Andrew Whitworth

subject: [Textbook-l] Regarding fair use

body:
Microsoft has licensing agreements with multiple book publishers, and even
has it's own "Microsoft Press" that makes good money selling books about
Microsoft applications. To that effect, I would be highly surprised if
microsoft gave us any special permission to include it's images in our
books.

I think at this point, the best thing that we can do is to wait and see what
exactly the WMF has to say on this matter before we do anything. I will
change back the text of [[Wikibooks:Copyrights]] because that is an enforced
policy, but I won't change the text of [[Wikibooks:Fair use policy]] and
[[Wikibooks:Image use policy]], because those are just proposals at this
point.

If the WMF chooses to ban such works that are "with permission", then any
efforts on our part to secure such images will have been futile. Once we
know what the WMF has to say on the issue officially, we can decide if and
by how much we want to differ from their standpoint (without being less
restrictive).

--Andrew Whitworth

>From: Iamunknown <iamunknown at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: Wikimedia textbook discussion <textbook-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>To: "Wikimedia textbook discussion" <textbook-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] Regarding fair use
>Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2007 18:27:21 -0700
>
>I totally agree that if the WMF board decides to outright ban fair use
>then we have no choice but to comply. I, on a certain level, hope that
>they do not. I think what we should focus more on, however, is asking
>permission from copyright holders to use their copyrighted media.
>
>For example, Webaware recently created {{Microsoft screenshot}} out of
>his recent research into Microsoft policy. Microsoft screenshots are
>still essentially fair use: for our purposes as an educational
>website, we can technically use them for free, but because our goal is
>also to allow for downstream use in any context, it is definitely
>-not- free. What I wonder is if anyone has tried to contact Microsoft
>asking for permission to include low-resolution screenshots of their
>copyright software and interface in Wikibooks or in Wikimedia
>Foundatio projects? How would we even find that out? In particular,
>could we (or someone else on our behalf) access the OTRS archives?
>
>-Iamunknown
>
>On 2/16/07, Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > >From: Iamunknown <iamunknown at gmail.com>
> > >In particular, we should allow very very limited use of non-free
> > >media when it would be practically impossible to use free media -- the
> > >media
> > >used in the European History wikibook comes to mind -- and for small
> > >textual
> > >quotations. What are everyone else's feelings?
> >
> > it would have to be very very limited, and in that case it would likely
>be a
> > few exceptions to the rule as opposed to a rule in and of itself. And
> > regardless of what we choose to do with fair use media, if the WMF
>mandates
> > a position one way or the other, we have to go with that. I doubt highly
> > that the WMF is going to say "all fair use images must be deleted now",
>it
> > is more likely that they will be phased out over a period of time.
> >
> > Even the fact that fair use images might be hard to replicate doesn't
>change
> > the fact that the use of these images is still illegal in most
>countries.
> > Books like the European history book are illegal to print and distribute
>in
> > much of europe, for instance. I can think of maybe a dozen instances
>where
> > fair use images might be indispensible, and in those cases we would have
>to
> > create workarounds so the books could be printed without them anyway.
> >
> > I think the best course of action for us is to disallow new fair use
>images
> > from being uploaded, and evaluate the old fair use images, on a
>case-by-case
> > basis. Most can likely be deleted (as mistagged and a copyright
>violation)
> > many more will likely be duplicatable, and the remainder we can deal
>with
> > later.
> >
> > --Andrew Whitworth
> >
>
>_______________________________________________
>Textbook-l mailing list
>Textbook-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l

_________________________________________________________________
Mortgage rates as low as 4.625% - Refinance $150,000 loan for $579 a month.
Intro*Terms  http://www.NexTag.com


body:
On 18/02/07, George Chriss <GChriss at psu.edu> wrote:

> Is there a substantive reason that we provide dosage information on prescription drugs?  I generally remove the following sections on sight:

Please don't do that. It's useful knowledge to know what dosages are
typically given for what.

e.g. amitryptyline, which has quite different dosages for depression
and for chronic pain relief (and has come into its own for the latter
after SSRIs beat it for the former).

- d.


from_name: Ronald Beelaard

subject:
[Foundation-l] One week later and I am still blocked,
	nobody is doing a fucking thing

body:
*** This post is intended for people with some basic technical expertise ***

The facts:

1. Waerth has posted this
http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/8069/stillblocked1cv4.jpg as "evidence".
Everyone, at any place in the world, can find lists of open proxies that
have been blocked on nl:w: (see
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorie:Wikipedia:Open_proxies). An IP can be
picked from those lists and any browser can be configured to use that number
as proxy. The port is not published, but some ports could be obvious and
after some trial and error one could find a working combination. Regardless
the geo location of the IP tried as proxy. Make the screenshot and here you
are.

2. Waerth has disclosed in the Dutch village pump this list
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lijst_van_geblokkeerde_exit_servers
to be my source for blocking "the whole of Thailand". However, this page
lists the exit nodes of cascaded open proxies as these are discovered by my
scanning program and is generated automatically. Besides the blocking of
these exit nodes is done by a bot with a standard phrase in the remark
field. The readable text is "Open proxy - Nadere informatie". The clickable
part brings you to: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blockreason3
3. The screenshot above is NOT the result of being blocked by one of the
exit nodes as referred to in 2 (btw a similar mechanism is used when
auto-blocking TOR exit nodes, obviously with slightly different text), but
the result of a manual block of a (normal) open proxy. Such type of open
proxies are only blocked in the case of noticed vandalism of any kind.

4. From a mail sent this morning by Waerth to various people, I have derived
the originating IP. This IP is currently not and has never been blocked in
the past (except maybe autoblocks). Some weeks ago I've spent considerable
time to figure out what IP's could possibly be used by Waerth's provider as
a cache. One such IP has been unblocked then as a precaution, although it
was very unlikely this one could be the source of any trouble.

For more reading on this topic in general, see
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebruiker:RonaldB/Open_proxy_fighting (in
English).

Rgds Ronald


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
>
>At least, that's what I read from a discussion at IRC and the Dutch
>Wikipedia page about the policy. The sysop who actually does the blocking
>has not said anything about the issue yet.
>
>

And that sysop has a history of never ever answering any questions.

Waerth


from_name: Timwi

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Users will be extremely unhappy when we are not able to continue to
> provide our service.

Users will be somewhat unhappy if all of Wikipedia goes down and never
comes back. Users will be *much more* unhappy if Wikipedia continues to
operate but is extremely slow, unreliable, and often down.

> Why would a node that is close by be dead ??

Because people tend to turn off their own computers whenever they want
to. And because computers sometimes crash, or Internet connections go down.

> NB when our customers find the argument "it's cheaper for us" not a good
> one, they have to realise that they are not paying customers.

(Note that I didn't use the word "customer".)

Timwi


from_name: Domas Mituzas

body:
Hi!

> I'm new around here so I'm not exactly sure what the next step
> should be :)
You are forgiven. :-) Anyway, I'll repeat excerpt from my old email
message:

Serving a wiki isn't hosting an .iso file, where of course, bandwidth
is main cost, and it is easy to offload. ISO files don't change,
people don't care about how fast they start getting ISO file, because
the transfer is long enough to forget all startup costs.
Serving a wiki isn't looking for aliens. If someone turns off the
computer, or DSL will go down, aliens won't disappear, now the
request will. Nobody really cares about individual packet containing
alien information, because it is sent to multiple nodes. Some will
reply, some won't.
Serving a wiki isn't serving a personal website. It is not single
person editing, there's great deal of conflict resolution, possible
race conditions, versioning and metadata information.
Serving a wiki isn't serving a conventional media website, because it
is far more organic in terms of load pattern evolution, or accidental
surges. Content formats also come bottom->up, requiring agile
development of systems.
Serving a wiki means delivering user contributed content thousands
collaborated on in few tens of milliseconds. We do succeed this
mission and every time we increased responsiveness of the site, we
had more users coming.

--
Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]


from_name: geni

subject:
[Foundation-l] List of True Internet proxy IP addresses (was
	Re: One week later and I am still blocked, time for another tantrum)

body:
On 2/18/07, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> Whether people believe me or not it is not much me I am pissed about,
> actually not just the IP addresses but all the IP addresses in many
> countries that get blocked because their providers force them through
> open or exit proxies. I have heard it is a problem in Indonesia as well.
> Instead of just blocking we should try to find out which other
> countries/providers do this so we can help users (Qatar springs to mind)
>

We know the Qatar adresss. We do not know the IPs for other countries.

--
geni


from_name: Jack

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Otrs-en-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] If you don't object
	to this, you're consenting

body:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us/Article_problem/Factual_error_%28from_enterprise%29
>
> I posted about this to both these lists and have had no replies or
> comment whatsoever so far.
>
> So unless someone comes up with really convincing reasons not to push
> this as the place to send companies with article concerns - and I mean
> as in, sending out a press release - then that's precisely what's
> going to happen.
>
> In particular, are there any OTRS volunteers who can tell me if that's
> the best way to raise a substantial legal concern about something on
> en:wp?

That's fine - OTRS volunteers will forward valid requests to the OTRS
legal queue, and close/deal with the insane/hysterical ones.
--
user:Jeandr?


from_name: Bradypus

body:
Obvious, but worth saying.

Bradipus

----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthere" <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>
>
>
> I'll add that I do not think Tim should spend hours looking for an
> information, when someone has this information at hand and could save
> him (and consequently the whole project) time to do other tasks which
> are also much needed.
>
> Ant
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Foundation-l] One week later and I am still blocked,
 nobody is doing a fucking thing

body:
Ronald Beelaard wrote:
> *** This post is intended for people with some basic technical expertise ***
>
> The facts:
>
> 1. Waerth has posted this
> http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/8069/stillblocked1cv4.jpg as "evidence".
> Everyone, at any place in the world, can find lists of open proxies that
> have been blocked on nl:w: (see
> http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorie:Wikipedia:Open_proxies). An IP can be
> picked from those lists and any browser can be configured to use that number
> as proxy. The port is not published, but some ports could be obvious and
> after some trial and error one could find a working combination. Regardless
> the geo location of the IP tried as proxy. Make the screenshot and here you
> are.

I don't think there's any need to start on the conspiracy theories. You
blocked several True Internet proxy IPs, such as 203.144.143.2,
203.144.143.3, 203.144.143.6, 203.144.143.7, 203.144.143.10,
203.144.144.163, 203.144.160.250 and 61.91.190.249.

>
> 2. Waerth has disclosed in the Dutch village pump this list
> http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lijst_van_geblokkeerde_exit_servers
> to be my source for blocking "the whole of Thailand". However, this page
> lists the exit nodes of cascaded open proxies as these are discovered by my
> scanning program and is generated automatically. Besides the blocking of
> these exit nodes is done by a bot with a standard phrase in the remark
> field. The readable text is "Open proxy - Nadere informatie". The clickable
> part brings you to: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blockreason3

Cascaded open proxies? Do you mean to say that you are blocking these
secure ISP proxies because there is an open proxy behind them, on a
customer computer?

> 3. The screenshot above is NOT the result of being blocked by one of the
> exit nodes as referred to in 2 (btw a similar mechanism is used when
> auto-blocking TOR exit nodes, obviously with slightly different text), but
> the result of a manual block of a (normal) open proxy. Such type of open
> proxies are only blocked in the case of noticed vandalism of any kind.

We often see vandalism from shared IPs. That's why we have the trusted XFF
list.

> 4. From a mail sent this morning by Waerth to various people, I have derived
> the originating IP. This IP is currently not and has never been blocked in
> the past (except maybe autoblocks). Some weeks ago I've spent considerable
> time to figure out what IP's could possibly be used by Waerth's provider as
> a cache. One such IP has been unblocked then as a precaution, although it
> was very unlikely this one could be the source of any trouble.

He's accessing the web through a load-balanced cluster of HTTP proxies. It
should be obvious that whatever IP address you see on mail is not going to
be the same as the one you see on Wikipedia, unless the XFF list is
properly configured.

Please read http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/XFF_project if you haven't done
so already.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikitech-l] Distributed content hosting

body:
Hi!

> The meat of the idea seems to be to use distributed hash tables to
> allow the main database to be moved onto multiple mostly-independent
> computers (i.e. break away from the inefficient MySQL
> replication/cluster model).

DHTs aren't holy grail either. Google somehow uses InnoDB too for
their critical apps, as well as other major shops (though everybody
knows about the BigTable!)
If our only data access method would be getByKey(), we'd think about
other types of storage, but it is not.

MySQL has the "cluster" product, which allows to distribute data over
multiple boxes, but that adds somewhat not that efficient methods to
do joins, sorts, etc.

Of course, right now we have multiple mostly-independent computers
for revision text storage (as it, obviously, allows getByKey()-only
access ;-)

> This is absolutely something which should
> be done.  Wikipedia's data model screams for the adoption of this
> solution.

Wikipedia's data model can always use more appropriate tools, if
they'd exist. ;-)

> I question the benefit of then allowing untrusted third parties to run
> the servers, though, because at the end of the paper you acknowledge
> that all the data is going to have to pass back through trusted
> parties anyway.

Trust is fairly complex issue - if incoming request is HTTP, it
contains private information as (source ip, destination page).
That means setting up a network of wiki at home extended clients and
finding who's browsing the questionable articles. In case of geo-
proximity, that may be an issue.

> Once you've achieved an approximately linear scaling of the
> database servers, which the appropriate use of DHTs will do, it seems
> to me that the costs of downloading the data from untrusted third
> parties (doubling the bandwidth) and checking the signatures (eating
> up CPU) is going to be nearly as great as the cost of simply adding
> another database server.

Scaling databases with current dataset and accesses means adding
another database server.
The only issue is enwiki master, which is not a bottleneck [yet]. I'm
not against adding more efficiency though.

> Let the end-user software check the signatures.

Most of our requests come from anonymous internet users. End-user
software is out of question.

Best regards,
--
Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]


body:
Hi!

> Have you been paying attention lately; our costs and our traffic are
> growing exponentially.

Not forever.

> Users will be extremely unhappy when we are not able to continue to
> provide our service.

We can continue the service at our current service levels.

> They are used to our service not being the fastest
> around.

Of course, and Pompeii is still visited by tourists too.

> Why would a node that is close by be dead ??

It is HTTP. It is designed to throw error messages ASAP.

> NB when our customers find the argument "it's cheaper for us" not a
> good
> one, they have to realise that they are not paying customers.
> TANSTAAFL

They pay attention.

--
Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Hoi,
Domas describes the status quo. He does describe it well. It does
however not detract one iota from the usefulness of doing this research.
Mechanisms are developed that may work at a fraction of our current (ie
WMF) cost, for the WMF it is irresponsible to be against such a research
project. It does not matter if you think the VU will succeed or not,
what matters is that serious effort is put into this endeavour. Just
wait and watch what will transpire when it does.

It is not as if there is no need to maintain and improve our current
code. It is not as if this project will be finished at the end of the
year. Domas is right in that nothing changes for now.

It is however a really relevant project and I believe we should cheer
them on for trying this in the first place.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Rob Church schreef:
> On 18/02/07, Domas Mituzas <midom.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Serving a wiki isn't hosting an .iso file, where of course, bandwidth
>> is main cost, and it is easy to offload. ISO files don't change,
>> people don't care about how fast they start getting ISO file, because
>> the transfer is long enough to forget all startup costs.
>> Serving a wiki isn't looking for aliens. If someone turns off the
>> computer, or DSL will go down, aliens won't disappear, now the
>> request will. Nobody really cares about individual packet containing
>> alien information, because it is sent to multiple nodes. Some will
>> reply, some won't.
>> Serving a wiki isn't serving a personal website. It is not single
>> person editing, there's great deal of conflict resolution, possible
>> race conditions, versioning and metadata information.
>> Serving a wiki isn't serving a conventional media website, because it
>> is far more organic in terms of load pattern evolution, or accidental
>> surges. Content formats also come bottom->up, requiring agile
>> development of systems.
>> Serving a wiki means delivering user contributed content thousands
>> collaborated on in few tens of milliseconds. We do succeed this
>> mission and every time we increased responsiveness of the site, we
>> had more users coming.
>>
>
> Fucking *excellent* post, Domas.
>
>
> Rob Church


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

body:
Due to Internet censorship by the Singapore government, I am forced to
edit through a proxy shared by 300,000 users. Many anonymous vandals
use that IP address, and being the collateral damage of blocks is
common. Note, however, that this is not an open proxy.

On 2/18/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> To put this thing to something that actually belongs on foundation-l: I
> would favor repealing the foundation policy that open proxies are blocked.
>
> My reasons are:
> * Main reason for the policy is that there is no reason for editing
> Wikipedia from a proxy. I disagree, seeing already three;
> ** Editing on subjects where one could get problems for writing from a
> searching POV and/or NPOV
> ** People who always use a proxy for extra anonymity and have to switch it
> off to work on Wikipedia now
> ** Cases like Waerth who are automatically sent through an anonymous proxy
> by their provider
> * Large-scale vandalism using many proxies does occur, but is rare enough
> that blocking the proxies when they are being used for vandalism is no big
> issue.
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: George Chriss [mailto:GChriss at psu.edu]
>Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2007 12:00 PM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Rx Dosage Instructions in Wikipedia
>
>
>
>Hi all,
>
>Is there a substantive reason that we provide dosage information on prescription drugs?  I generally remove the following sections on sight:
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diazepam#Dosagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimipramine#Dosagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromazepam#Dosage
>
>Even with a general site disclaimer, the above information may be non-encyclopedic.  Wikipedia is not a how-to guide, a doctor, a pharmacist, a drug buddy, the FDA, or an informational insert packaged with prescription drugs.  Wikipedia is simply a bad place to get medical advice.  A section done well, however:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSD#Dosage
>Please let me know what you think, or any links to pre-existing discussion.
>Thanks, George
>en: [[User:GChriss]]

I think such information varies considerably in usefulness. In the case of Niacin, which is readily available, but quite dangerous in the quantities used in prescriptions, I think some information would be useful. This sort of information is inherently dangerous when we don't have rigorous fact checking and tight control over revisions. It seems that "The usual dose is..." would often be helpful, as would such drug interactions as Paracetamol (Acetaminophen) with alcohol.

Fred


from_name: Parker Peters

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rx Dosage Instructions in Wikipedia

body:
On 2/18/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 18/02/07, George Chriss <GChriss at psu.edu> wrote:
>
> > Is there a substantive reason that we provide dosage information on
> prescription drugs?  I generally remove the following sections on sight:
>
>
> Please don't do that. It's useful knowledge to know what dosages are
> typically given for what.
>
> e.g. amitryptyline, which has quite different dosages for depression
> and for chronic pain relief (and has come into its own for the latter
> after SSRIs beat it for the former).
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

It may be useful knowledge, but it opens wikipedia up to some SEVERE
liability concerns if someone tries to use that information to
self-medicate, and even worse if it turns out someone takes an overdose
because of vandalism that wasn't caught in time or vandalism that was
archived to some site that mirrors...

That's a good enough reason alone to remove those entries. Let the doctors
handle it, or let someone look it up on an actual medical site.

Parker
--
====
Parker Peters
http://parkerpeters.livejournal.com


from_name: Jossi Fresco

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On Feb 18, 2007, at 3:39 PM, Marc Riddell wrote:

>> or is it an elitist workspace for an elitist group of
>> people who live in cyberspace?

A common complaint by these that have much to say but show little
interest in contributing of their valuable free time to keep
Wikipedia ticking.

Administrators perform an admirable job and a thankless one, by the
look if it.

-- Jossi


body:
Thank you for the answers.

Well, the decision was taken after almost three months of discutions,
followed by a regular voting poll (the same used to choose official policies).

The option that requires a 45-day-old account to move page was clearly the will of majority.

If the decision is way to restrictive according to the Foundation,
we'll have to choose the best option available.

Well, that's it. Thank you in advance
Dantadd

************************************************************
In my opinion, but of course i can not speak in any way for the foundation,
this is not an issue that is up to the foundation. The local community knows
best what they need, and I guess that if they find a developer that wants to
implement this, they can just ask him (her) to do it. I see no need to
discuss it all over here :-) It would perhaps be something different if you
prohibit editing for unregistered users etc maybe :-)

Lodewijk

2007/2/18, Titoxd op Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia op gmail.com>:
>
> No, it only requires some alterations of the site configuration file.
> Nothing major, actually. The main issue here is if it is acceptable to the
> Foundation.
>
> Titoxd.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces op lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces op lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Casey Brown
> Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2007 2:58 PM
> To: 'Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List'
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Restriction on page moves
> inpt.wikipedia.orgThankyou
>
> Hi Daniel, one question:  Was this conclusion reached from a "straw poll"
> or
> discussion?  Otherwise, it seems good, but it would probably involve a
> site-wide semi-protection against moves and upping the "new account
> cut-off"
> to 45-days.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces op lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces op lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Nix
> Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2007 4:25 PM
> To: foundation-l op lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Foundation-l] Restriction on page moves in
> pt.wikipedia.orgThankyou
>
> Hi everybody,
>
> In a recent poll on pt.wikipedia it was decided to restrict move
> pages to users with at least a 45-day-old registered account, the same
> minimum period to grant right to vote (but without the request of 100
> valid
> editions).
>
> I made a request on http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9024 and
> it was suggested to consult the Foundation because the decision seems to
> be
> very restrictive.
>
> Well, the community decision was:
>
> First question (pro or con):
> *52 pro restriction
> *11 contro restriction
>
> Second (time restriction):
> *15 votes - 5 days
> *8 votes - 15 days
> *38 votes - 45 days
>
> So, I'd like to know what you think about it and what could be done after
> this decision.
>
> Thank you,
> Dantadd
> http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usu%C3%A1rio_Discuss%C3%A3o:Dantadd

 __________________________________________________
Fale com seus amigos  de gra?a com o novo Yahoo! Messenger
http://br.messenger.yahoo.com/


from_name: William Pietri

body:
Brian Salter-Duke wrote:
> We have to also think about the fact that "prescription drugs" and "call
> your doctor" are First World things. In West Africa for example, what we
> call prescription drugs are often frequently available in the market.
> Their misuse is one of the factors that leads to drug resistent bacteria.
> Maybe reliable information about doses may be usefull here. I'm not
> sure.
>

And not just in West Africa. When I lived in Chicago, the immigrant-run
corner store near my house had a variety of black-market prescription
drugs. At first I was horrified, but when I did the math on exactly how
many hours your average illegal immigrant had to work to pay for one
doctor's visit, it made a lot more sense.

William


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 18/02/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

>  I wonder if you think the same thing when someone dies because they trusted
> the info.

We have enough of a problem protecting people from other people's
stupidity on the mailing list ...

- d.


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

references:
<1d9gt25b5nnuc5g0b5ckkns5cmq7ps6qbn@4ax.com>
	<20070218161006.GA486@alva.mail.gmail.com>
	<nr2ht2tcn47l5rd2l0sahlttn6mn4up0ia@4ax.com>
	<45D89AF2.7070006@shaw.ca>
	<or7ht2l2icej8vvroklvl3p480cvb7qiql@4ax.com>
	<45D8BA99.8010405@shaw.ca>

body:
On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 13:44:09 -0700, Bryan Derksen
<bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

>Well, so what? The list's criteria are based on _absolute_ height, not
>_relative_ height, and as long as this is pointed out explicitly in the
>description of the list I don't see the problem. We've got a list of the
>largest asteroids in absolute terms too.

Right, so it's only geographically, temporally and ethnically biased,
which makes it - er, still crap :-)

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


from_name: Christiano Moreschi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
Criminy, those lists survived, did they? Grrrr.

Cheers,

Moreschi

_________________________________________________________________
Click Here To Find Your Perfect Match This Valentines!
http://msnuk.match.com/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

references:
<1d9gt25b5nnuc5g0b5ckkns5cmq7ps6qbn@4ax.com>	<20070218161006.GA486@alva.mail.gmail.com>	<nr2ht2tcn47l5rd2l0sahlttn6mn4up0ia@4ax.com>
	<45D89AF2.7070006@shaw.ca> <45D8A51A.1030201@telus.net>

body:
On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 11:12:26 -0800, Ray Saintonge
<saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

>This is one of those so-what articles.  I would have no interest to go
>there in search of information; it's fundamentally useless.  Still, I'm
>not about to complain about it, and there are ways of dealing with the
>how-tall-is-tall criterion.  There are people who love to play with this
>kind of list, and I am glad to see these eager little minds diverted
>into harmlessly useless endeavours.  What we end up with is a handful of
>old-fashioned school principals who have forgotten their principles and
>a bunch of kindergartners who are learning through play.  The rest of us
>are learning or teaching somewhere else in the school; we don't directly
>give a damn about what's happening in the kindergarten.  For us,
>Wikipedia's reputation does not depend on self-righteous principals
>suppressing kindergarten activity.  We mostly don't get involved in
>specific deletion arguments; that would be too time-consuming.  But we
>do resent being assumed to belong to some imagined consensus.

That's terribly harsh.  Your analogy is also flawed, because the
kindergarteners here are learning through play (using someone else's
toys) that original research is just fine, making up your own
subjective criteria is no problem and all you need to do is gather
together lots of people to shout "I like it!" and it gets kept
regardless of failing core policy. I fail to see how this is good.

Plus, I am advocating replacing it with a verifiable and objective
list, which they can still play with, just not adding their favourite
basketball star.  They might have to do some research.  Something they
could - you know - learn from.

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


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
I don't think giving dosage info is a smart idea. Besides the obvious fact
that there's going to be people who will take them at face value, the whole
point of prescription drugs is that a doctor needs to determine a dosage.

Dosages change per condition and from person to person (kids should get less
than adults and weighty adults should get more than lighter ones, and then
there's adjustments needed for big drinkers, pregnant people and people with
lung or heart conditions, just to name a few). There's no way Wikipedia can
give reliable information on dosages -ever- there's just too many
possibilities.

Mgm


body:
On 2/18/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
> George Chriss wrote:
> > If the AMA does provide such recommendations.  Having a vandal change
> specific dosage amounts is a scary prospect, as some people may actually
> trust our information at face value.
>
> Seems to me that having people trust information from Wikipedia about
> drug dosages at face value _at all_ is the scary prospect. I wouldn't
> bake a cake using a recipe from Wikipedia without checking against
> outside sources first, whether the article's history showed vandalism or
> not. We already have medical disclaimers specifically intended to cover
> this, IMO we shouldn't have to go to great lengths to protect idiots
> against themselves.

 I wonder if you think the same thing when someone dies because they trusted
the info.
There's so many different ways to dose medicine that there's not one
all-inclusive dose.
If we can't include one reliable dose, we shouldn't include any at all.