from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 13/12/05, Blackcap <snoutwood at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/13/05, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> > My browser has text search, so I can use it with the edit box open.
>
> Mine does as well (I'm using FireFox), but it doesn't seem to like to search
> the text box, instead getting everything that isn't in the box.

If memory serves, not searching inside text boxes is a problem for
Firefox generally, not just on Wikipedia. Opera can handle it, though.

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


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Fl Celloguy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration Committee Elections December 2005

body:
Just a friendly announcement: Jimbo has announced that the ArbCom elections
procedure will be his second proposal, a hybrid procedure, after closing the
straw poll. Check [[Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December
2005]] for more information. In addition, I've started some discussion at
the talk page - your input would be greatly appreciated. I'm not sure that
people have the page watchlisted, so I thought I'd bring it out here to gain
more attention. As usual, turn to the [[WP:SIGN|Wikipedia Signpost]] on
Monday for complete and comprehensive coverage. Thanks!

Flcelloguy
>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

_________________________________________________________________
Don?t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/


from_name: Sam Fentress (Asbestos)

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR Unenforceable

body:
I personally see 3RR quite useful in certain circumstances. It's quite often
a hot-headed newcomer's first block. It seems that a lot of people see the
openness of Wikipedia and say "Hey! This is great! I can do whatever I want
and push whatever viewpoint I want," and quite quickly get into edit warring
and shouting insults, paying no heed to requests to be civil and warnings
about edit warring. I think the 3RR block serves as a quick slap: "Stop
that: this is a community, and here we abide by certain principles".

I believe that as a hot-headed-newbie slap it works well. It's one of our
few cut-and-dry rules, and so doesn't rely on any subjective notion of
"being a jerk".

I don't know if in other situations the rule is broken. However, I can well
imagine the state of affairs on various disputed articles were this rule not
in place.

Sam

--
Asbestos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Asbestos

On 12/14/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 12/13/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/13/05, Jtkiefer <jtkiefer at wordzen.net> wrote:
> > > It's gotten to the point where 3RR has become unenforceable.  Any
> > > administrator who tries to enforce 3RR regulations posted on AN/3RR
> are
> > > subsequently villified, accused of bias, amd/or threatened with an RFC
> > > if they continue doing their job. Due to this many editors stay away
> > > from enforcing 3RR and I think something needs to be changed so that
> > > admnistrators can actually enforce this rule without fear.
> > >
> > >
> > The 3RR was one of those ideas that may have seemed good at the time
> > (I supported the proposal).  In practice it seems to be used for two
> > bad purposes:
> >
> > * to justify the notion that making up to three reverts per day is a
> > normal mode of editing
> > * to bait hotheads and get them into trouble
> >
>
> That is more a symptom of other problems, though (and I say this as
> someone who doesn't support the 3RR as a rule but only a guideline).
>
> There needs to be better mechanisms for dispute resolution: somewhere
> people can turn to when they disagree over an article and using the
> talk page is not resolving the problem; somewhere where there are
> established precedents for dealing with certain types of situations
> that come up over and over again; somewhere that the wise citizens of
> Wikipedia occassionally hang out in and can diffuse the situations by
> pointing to policies and precedents.  This would make both revert wars
> and the 3RR unnecessary.
>
> I see the proper place for this as the RfC page.  But the RfC page is
> not utilized very well.  But then again, maybe I'm overoptimistic as
> to how easy these things are to resolve.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] SPOV threatens NPOV

body:
stevertigo wrote:

>-- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
>
>>So what term do you suggest for the thing that is
>>currently usefully described by the word
>>"pseudoscience"?
>>
>>
>I dunno- "quasiscientific," maybe. Because 'pseudo'
>carries a prejudicial connotation of 'falseness,'
>while 'quasi' carries a perhaps more accurate
>connotation of "almost" or "partly" being something;
>in this case, as something being based in science.
>
"Parascience" or "alternate science" are often used, and do not carry
the same emotional baggage as pseudoscience.  I have also seen
"traditional science" in relation to subjects like astrology or alchemy
that predate the development of the modern scientific method.

When you look at the abortion debate there seems to be somewhat of a
truce in that the primary name for the two sides are "pro-life" and
"pro-choice".  Each of these is a term that the respective sides feel as
acceptably representing what they stand for.  If the pro-life people
start by calling the other side "baby killers" there is no room for
dialogue.

Whatever term we choose for what saome call "pseudoscience" must be
acceptable to both sides, but especially to the side so named.

>The term "pseudoscientific," to be fair, seems like a
>natural one to use in cases where non-scientific
>claims are asserted as if there was established
>scientific proof. Its probably more accurate to just
>call certain specific outlandish claims as plain
>scientific 'fraud,' though my guess would be that that
>would probably be considered POV. 'Pseudoscience' is
>not much different than calling something 'fraud,'
>though 'fraud' seems to imply deliberate deception
>rather than an honest claim, written in religionese,
>and borne of intellectual confusion (SPOV) or
>'ecstatic inspiration' (RPOV).
>
"Fraud" would be worse because of the implications of criminality.  The
profit motive is often totally absent in the minds of most believers in
a "pseudoscience".  The people who develop these ideas are usually doing
so in good faith, and they were effectively applying GFDL long before it
was invented.  They, no more than Wikipedia, could not control
commercial applications by downstream users..

>There are claims which are best described as being
>from the POV of the domain to which they belong:
>religion, philosophy, or metaphysics, etc. (ie.
>'pseudoscience' is naturally in the domain of
>science). That alone should satisfy in almost any case
>I can think of. Whether String Theory should also be
>called "quasiscientific" of course stands out as an
>interesting fulcrum for Wikipediology.
>
Many of these subjects are like comets from a mental Oort Cloud.  Like
many ideas, they show up and disappear almost as quickly.  A few are
puzzlingly persistent and leave the germ of an idea that may be quite
indirect and different from the original formulation.  The inhabitants
of Flatland found it difficult to understand the impact of a three
dimensional object on their world.  Newton depended on a set of
immutable "facts" to develop his notions; he was right as far as he
went, and it took two centuries before anyone seriously questioned his
premises.

Ec


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] More Seigenthaler fallout

body:
On 12/14/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/14/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> > Bad idea. There are way too many admins who use rollback on stuff they
> > don't like - see the list of diffs I posted from WP:DRV recently. No way
> > was that rollback of "vandalism".
>
> There are way too many admins who shouldn't be, then.
>
> Kelly

It isn't as if we have the luxery to say that.

--
geni


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Nature compares science coverage of Wikipedia
	andEncyclopaedia Britannica

body:
Delirium writes:

> _Nature_ tends to have fairly rigorous review standards
> and a high level of article quality,

That's what I thought, until I saw this:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15457248&query_hl=1

The worst article EVARR!!! I wouldn't have accepted a paper like that
in my College Algebra class.

Axel

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


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Nature compares science coverage of Wikipedia and
	Encyclopaedia Britannica

body:
On 12/14/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> If the reporting is accurate, this is a very significant finding,
> considering the general perception that Wikipedia doesn't cover
> science well.
>
>
Is that really the general perception?I've always been of the belief that
Wikipedia covers science very well, especially as the articles are often
written by experts with very little edit warring. It's the political,
social, historical and biographical articles that I have much less faith in.
People who write about, say, [[Analytic combinatorics]] generally know what
they're talking about, while the same can't necessarily be said about
[[Communism]]...

Anyway, that sounds like an interesting study.

Sam

--
Asbestos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Asbestos


from_name: jkelly at fas.harvard.edu

body:
  There is a general perception that we don't cover science well?  I thought we
were a lot stronger in the sciences than we are in the humanities.  My first
thought was that they had picked an area likely to flatter us.

              Jason

Quoting Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com>:
> If the reporting is accurate, this is a very significant finding,
> considering the general perception that Wikipedia doesn't cover
> science well.


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] SPOV threatens NPOV

body:
It's a little more complicated than this -- see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem

In some cases it is easy, in some it is difficult if not impossible,
even from a practical point of view. But this is a problem not just
for Wikipedia but is also a major problem dealt with in areas relating
to law as well (i.e. what diagnosis/assessment is admissable as
evidence).

FF

On 12/12/05, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> No, not really - pseudoscience is a term for something which adopts the
> appearances of the scientific method, and claims to be scientific, without
> actually using the scientific method.  The difference between science and
> pseudoscience is fairly clear.  It isn't really an expression of an
> opinion.  If something can be objectively described as science or
> pseudoscience, then it isn't POV.  (Of course you could go into a long
> debate about the nature of reality, but for our purposes I think we have to
> assume we know what is is).
>
> Ian (Guettarda)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Bob Mellish

body:
The Nature article is now up on the Dec 15th issue on their website
(subscribers only, though). Unfortunately it doesn't go into details
about which articles they checked, though it mentions [[Dmitri
Mendeleyev]] as particularly erronous.

Bob Mellish


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Allow searching of wikitext as well as articles

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 13/12/05, Blackcap <snoutwood at gmail.com> wrote:
>>On 12/13/05, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:

>>>My browser has text search, so I can use it with the edit box open.

>>Mine does as well (I'm using FireFox), but it doesn't seem to like to search
>>the text box, instead getting everything that isn't in the box.

> If memory serves, not searching inside text boxes is a problem for
> Firefox generally, not just on Wikipedia. Opera can handle it, though.

The Mozilla suite still searches text boxes just fine. (It was something
they explicitly *took out* of Firefox; not sure if there's a way to
switch it back on.) Haven't tried Seamonkey.

- d.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Uwe Brauer

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: are soft newlines evil?

references:
<87d5k32vz2.fsf@mat.ucm.es> <439C9AB1.1050703@pobox.com>
	<dnim9n$5nj$1@sea.gmane.org> <87k6e9j9xv.fsf_-_@mat.ucm.es>
	<9f02ca4c0512131133q52dddfe2j@mail.gmail.com>

body:
>>>>> "Rowan" == Rowan Collins  writes:
   >>
   >> [] denotes an empty line
   >> :H: denotes a hard newline
   >> :S: denotes a soft newline

   Rowan> Can you just clarify what you mean by "soft newline" and "hard
   Rowan> newline" here? I can think of three types of wrapping that are
   Rowan> relevant to our discussion:
sorry, I was confused myself by the behaviour of the editor (Xemacs)

   Rowan> 1) ASCII (or Unicode, ISO-8859-x or whatever) newline characters
   Rowan> (either CR, LF, or both, depending on the editting environment)

Soft new lines are like 1)
   Rowan> 2) [X]HTML newline tags -
, and in a sense also

   Rowan> 3) on-screen wrapping which isn't stored in the file in any
   Rowan> way, as available in most modern text editors and browser
   Rowan> textarea widgets [which is what I'd call "soft wrapping",
   Rowan> which is why I got a little confused]

Right what (X)emacs calls hard newlines is a layout  design which
corresponds to 3)

   Rowan> If by "soft newlines" you mean what I've called type (1) -
   Rowan> i.e. the ASCII newline characters produced by pressing
   Rowan> "return" - then yes, current behaviour is for MediaWiki to
   Rowan> treat these as though they didn't exist, unless there are
   Rowan> two of them in a row. Of course, what looks nice in your
   Rowan> editor may look horrible in someone else's, so playing with
   Rowan> the display wrapping in your editor (type (3)) might be
   Rowan> marginally more sociable, but the actual page output should
   Rowan> be the same either way.

Right, I did some test within the sandbox, and if I refill paragraphs
with the external editor, that is soft newlines in the sense of 1) get
changed, the internal editor of wikipedia, will represent these
paragraphs a little different but not much. So I presume I can do
that, since it looks much nicer in my editor  and only slightly
different in the internal.

   Rowan> Does this make any kind of sense and answer your question?

Yes they helped clarify my own confusion, thanks

Uwe


references:
<87d5k32vz2.fsf@mat.ucm.es> <439C9AB1.1050703@pobox.com>
	<dnim9n$5nj$1@sea.gmane.org> <87k6e9j9xv.fsf_-_@mat.ucm.es>
	<dnonnv$gc7$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
>>>>> "Phil" == Phil Boswell  writes:

   Phil> My preference is to divide long paragraphs up into sentences,
   Phil> with each one starting on a new line.

   Phil> That way, when you change something in the middle of a long
   Phil> paragraph, the "diff" can display the exact sentence which
   Phil> changed, rather than show a huge paragraph for you to hunt
   Phil> through.

Ok, this is important to know: I tested my refilling using the
external editor (X)macs and the text gets displayed slightly different
in the internal editor, but maybe diff now has a problem? Well if
chance by refilling the paragraphs of other users,

    -  the display is not changed

    -  the internal editor represent the text slightly different,

    -  but oops what about the diff versions.

I try to find out.

Uwe


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
Mathias Schindler wrote:

> Here is the article list:
> http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/multimedia/438900a_m1.html
>
> here is the full article:
> http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html
>
> Entry  	Encyclopaedia Britannica inaccuracies
> Wikipedia inaccuracies
> Acheulean industry 	1 	7
> Agent Orange 	2 	2

[snip]

What would be really interesting would be to get a list of the
inaccuracies themselves (not just the tallies of how many were found in
each article).

Then see how long it takes for Wikipedians to get the same articles to
pass peer review with No Errors in the entire sample.

If it was less than a month, that would vindicate the opennes of
Wikipedia. Less than a week would be mind-blowing.

And no fair taunting the peer reviewers with {{sofixit}}, either :-)

Ed Poor


from_name: Chip Berlet

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Where do I report editor deleting "skinhead" from
	manypages?

body:
Thanks.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of MacGyverMagic/Mgm
> Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2005 4:03 AM
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Where do I report editor deleting
> "skinhead" from manypages?
>
>
> I think [[WP:ANI]] would be a good place to put this.
>
> Mgm
>
> On 12/14/05, Chip Berlet <c.berlet at publiceye.org> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
>

<<SNIP>>


from_name: stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] http://www.wikipediaclassaction.org/

body:
Can anybody say 'asshole litigant?'

Not that there are any direct comparisons between, but
considering all recent scandals, IMHO its time to stub
[[Wikipedia:Bad press is good press]].

{{Shortcut|[[WP:BPGP]]}}

Stevertigo

--- Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 12/14/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > What is going on here? And where did they get
> permission to use our logo?
> >
> > http://www.wikipediaclassaction.org/
>
> See [[QuakeAID]] for details about this.
>
> However, I very much prefer wikipediaclassaction.com
> (read carefully
> before screaming).
>
> Mathias
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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


body:
>>>>> "Phil" == Phil Boswell writes:

   Phil> That way, when you change something in the middle of a long
   Phil> paragraph, the "diff" can display the exact sentence which
   Phil> changed, rather than show a huge paragraph for you to hunt
   Phil> through.

Ok I checked surprise surprise, if I chance the filling of paragraph
the way I described in an earlier mail, diff goes `berserk' that is
will indicate that everything   in _that_ paragraph has been changed,
while the content has been untouched only the filling has been
changed. I am sure other users would *love* such a thing :(

There is now way to tell diff to ignore such fillings and insertion of
soft  newlines?

Uwe


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Improve AFD - require rationales (2-step process)

body:
On 12/14/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > On 12/14/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
> >>It's explicitly Not A Vote, so it's hard to see how to get around this one.
> >>I am tempted to summarily remove all tally boxes as blatant invitations
> >>to abuse of AFD as a straight vote.
>
> > Oh yeah, and be forewarned.  I was once blocked for doing exactly
> > that.  In fact, I was only removing the tally boxes that were
> > incorrect!
>
>
> You were being a dick in general around AFD, leading to you being banned
> from it, so I'm not surprised really.
>
>
> - d.

Congratulations on that rewrite of history.  It's things like removing
tally boxes from VFD that got me banned from the Wikipedia project
space, not "being a dick in general".  Learn the facts before you make
accusations.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR Unenforceable

body:
On 12/14/05, Sam Fentress (Asbestos) <asbestos999 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I personally see 3RR quite useful in certain circumstances. It's quite often
> a hot-headed newcomer's first block. It seems that a lot of people see the
> openness of Wikipedia and say "Hey! This is great! I can do whatever I want
> and push whatever viewpoint I want," and quite quickly get into edit warring
> and shouting insults, paying no heed to requests to be civil and warnings
> about edit warring. I think the 3RR block serves as a quick slap: "Stop
> that: this is a community, and here we abide by certain principles".
>
> I believe that as a hot-headed-newbie slap it works well. It's one of our
> few cut-and-dry rules, and so doesn't rely on any subjective notion of
> "being a jerk".
>
And that's exactly what I think is wrong with it.  It slaps people
down whether they're "being a jerk" or not.

> I don't know if in other situations the rule is broken. However, I can well
> imagine the state of affairs on various disputed articles were this rule not
> in place.
>
> Sam

I can remember the state of affairs.  There were more reverts,
bringing more attention to the articles, and forcing things to be
resolved more quickly.

Anthony


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] The a7 speedy

body:
It's been a while since I did a speedy patrol to check how our
newpages patrollers were handling the A7 "no assertion of notability"
criterion. I was rather shocked. by what I encountered in two short
bouts of patrolling this morning and at lunchtime.

In the following, I list *only* the points of notability that were
contained in the articles at the time they were speedied as
"non-notable".

Michael J. Skindell:  member of the Ohio House of Representatives,
ranking minority member on at least one committee, co-sponsor of a
bill to establish a universal health care plan for all Ohio residents.

Brian Brolly: founder of the national UK radio station, Classic FM,
former CEO of Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber's Really Useful Theatre Company.

B C Joshi: Indian Army General, founder of a paramilitary
counter-insurgency force, the Rashtriya Rifles.

Sambit Bal: A Wisden and Cricinfo editor, founding editor of Wisden
Asia Cricket.

Jake Putnam: Emmy-winning journalist, has won other major awards.

Michael Viscardi: child prodigy, winner of the 2005 Siemens
Westinghouse Competition, won $100,000 in scholarships.

Marissa Siketa: author put it up for deletion as a misspelt article.
Should have been redirected to Marisa Siketa.  Actress in the popular
and longrunning Australian soap opera Neighbours.

The patrollers performing these deletions are all good fellows and are
doing an excellent job, but there seems to be a considerable price in
collateral damage.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The a7 speedy

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

> It's been a while since I did a speedy patrol to check how our
> newpages patrollers were handling the A7 "no assertion of notability"
> criterion. I was rather shocked. by what I encountered in two short
> bouts of patrolling this morning and at lunchtime.
> In the following, I list *only* the points of notability that were
> contained in the articles at the time they were speedied as
> "non-notable".

Did you leave notes for them all?

A7 is way too unclear, and some fools want to *expand* it.

- d.


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
G'day Sam,

> Needless to say I am offended and saddened that criticism of the
> committe is being dismissed as the ravings of extremists. That is not
> a good sign. It is no compliment when those on both sides of an issue
> sternly criticise the "neutral" referee. When that happens in sports,
> it is the clearest of signals that the umpire is in the wrong.

As an umpire in multiple sports, I've got to correct you there.  Or ...
perhaps you could correct us?

You see, it's commonly said in sporting folklore that, if both sides
hate the neutral umpire, he must be doing everything right.  If one side
loves him and the other doesn't, well ... we've got a problem.

Tell you what, if you can get yourself to Canberra, Australia, I can
arrange a series of lectures for you to give to my softball umpires.
How's that sound?

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

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.371 / Virus Database: 267.13.13/199 - Release Date: 13/12/2005


body:
This has turned into yet another debate over the brokenness of AFD, but I
was actually interested in the original idea, and wonder if we could return
the discussion to that...?

I think the idea is very good, as it forces people to think about why they
are voting to delete/keep the article, and makes it clear what the issues
are. However, I also think that Tony is right and the keepers don't need to
come up with individual reasons to keep, they just have to vote not to
delete. My one change would therefore be the addition of a "Do Not Support"
vote, or whatever it would be called:

===[[FakeBand]]===
====DELETE====
* Band yields only 12 Google hits; all on geocities, lycos and myspace
apart from official site which indicates they're not famous or having
an effect on the music industry. - [[User:Example1]]
**Support -- [[User:Example1]]
**Support -- [[User:Example2]]
**Support -- [[User:Example3]]
**Support -- [[User:Example4]]
**Do Not Support: We're really famous by word of mouth -- [[User:Example5]]
**Do Not Support -- [[User:Example6]]

* Band has no albums on Amazon. (WP:MUSIC) -- [[User:Example1]]
**Support -- [[User:Example1]]
**Support -- [[User:Example2]]
**Do Not Support: But we do have them in our local shops --
[[User:Example3]]
**Support -- [[User:Example4]]
**Support -- [[User:Example5]]
**Support -- [[User:Example6]]

* The listed albums are self-produced as admitted by creator. --
[[User:Example2]]
**Support -- [[User:Example1]]
**Support -- [[User:Example2]]
**Do Not Support: So what? -- [[User:Example3]]
**Do Not Support -- [[User:Example4]]
**Do Not Support -- [[User:Example4]]

====KEEP====
* Band DOES have 3 albums. They're listed on the official site. We
just couldn't get them in the stores yet. (www.fakeband.com). --
[[User:ArticleCreator]]
**Support -- [[User:ArticleCreator]]
______________________________

... or something like that.

Sam
--
Asbestos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Asbestos

On 12/10/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> A lot of the poisonous feelings on AFD seems to come from sheep voting
> and people voting without providing rationales. Perhaps we should
> improve the debate-percentage and require people to provide
> rationales.
>
> I suggest a two step process:
> 1) The first 24 or 48 hours people submit rationales for or against
> deletion.
> 2) After that people can vote on which of these they support.
> Similar to a finding of the facts.
>
> This would make it easier to discount votes based on outdated or
> incorrect reasons. "Article is too short" (after it was expanded), or
> "unreferenced" (when acutally the link was temporarily down).
>
> It would also make it easier to see at a glance whether it was deleted
> for being non-notable, for missing references or for being in a
> irredeemable state.
>
> Mock Up Example:
>
> ===[[FakeBand]]===
> ====DELETE====
> * Band yields only 12 Google hits; all on geocities, lycos and myspace
> apart from official site which indicates they're not famous or having
> an effect on the music industry. - [[User:Example1]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example1]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example2]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example3]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example4]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example5]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example6]]
>
> * Band has no All Music Guide entry. (WP:MUSIC)  -- [[User:Example1]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example1]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example2]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example3]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example4]]
> * Band has no albums on Amazon. (WP:MUSIC) -- [[User:Example1]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example1]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example2]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example3]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example4]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example5]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example6]]
> * The listed albums are self-produced as admitted by creator. --
> [[User:Example2]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example1]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example2]]
>
> ====KEEP====
> * Band DOES have 3 albums. They're listed on the official site. We
> just couldn't get them in the stores yet. (www.fakeband.com). --
> [[User:ArticleCreator]]
> **Support -- [[User:ArticleCreator]]
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] The a7 speedy

body:
On 12/14/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
> > It's been a while since I did a speedy patrol to check how our
> > newpages patrollers were handling the A7 "no assertion of notability"
> > criterion. I was rather shocked. by what I encountered in two short
> > bouts of patrolling this morning and at lunchtime.
> > In the following, I list *only* the points of notability that were
> > contained in the articles at the time they were speedied as
> > "non-notable".
>
>
> Did you leave notes for them all?
>
> A7 is way too unclear, and some fools want to *expand* it.
>

Yes, I left notes for them all.  Even the guy who deleted the article
about Brolly (not the same guy as the first deleting editor) while I
was cleaning it up.


subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR Unenforceable

body:
On 12/14/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> > I can remember the state of affairs.  There were more reverts,
> > bringing more attention to the articles, and forcing things to be
> > resolved more quickly.
>
>
> Yeah, that worked well on Mr-Natural-Health, while the AC case oozed
> through. Oh, wait.
>
>
> - d.

As opposed to today, when the Arb Com is never needed to resolve anything?


subject: [WikiEN-l] The a7 speedy

body:
On 12/14/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Your fair share of those could be deleted for lacking context or being
> unverifiable, but some people take CSD 7 too far. I prefer contentious
> articles taken to AFD over being speedied. Tony, did you undelete
> these articles or ask the deleting admins to do so?

Oh I don't hang around jawing, I undelete as the undeletion policy
allows.  I checked, and not one of those articles is unverifiable.
They all clearly have plenty of context.  Of these, I don't think any
of them are deletion candidates, otherwise I would have listed them.


from_name: Ryan Delaney

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

David Gerard wrote:

> It's explicitly Not A Vote, so it's hard to see how to get around
> this one.
>
>
>I am tempted to summarily remove all tally boxes as blatant invitations
>to abuse of AFD as a straight vote.

Have you been in AFD recently? It is a vote. It always has been.
"Consensus" is determined, in EVERY afd, by counting the number of
delete votes versus the number of keep votes. Period. I recognize that
the policy says it's not a vote, but the policy might as well say the
moon is made of cheese.

Ryan
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from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Stupid Mediawiki Tricks: logical templates

references:
<439A1430.5050100@thingy.apana.org.au>
	<dnk5ht$8e6$1@sea.gmane.org><dnkdt4$8af$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<Pine.LNX.4.61.0512141434370.22021@sara.aronsson.se>

body:
"Lars Aronsson" <lars at aronsson.se> wrote in
message news:Pine.LNX.4.61.0512141434370.22021 at sara.aronsson.se...
> Phil Boswell wrote:
[snip]
> Why not give up this {{{if}}} template craziness and implement a
> basic set of programming logic operators (if, for, foreach, while,
> switch, ...) in the wiki syntax?  Programming logic embedded in
> textual content is well-known from languages like PHP.

Why not indeed?

Someone explain to this good gentleman some of the history of this
particular little scenario while I go and bang my head against a nice soft
wall ...
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Stupid Mediawiki Tricks: logical templates

references:
<439A1430.5050100@thingy.apana.org.au> <dnk5ht$8e6$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<dnkdt4$8af$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Phil Boswell wrote:
> Now that I have taken another look at it, I think that it is actually doing
> something extremely clever. The wikicode is:
>
> {{{else{{{test|}}}|{{{test{{{test|}}}|{{{then|}}}}}}}}}

For quite some time (1973-1993 or so), the Unix/Linux commands
test(1), true(1) and false(1) were stand-alone programs that
required the fork(2) and exec(2) of a new process, after which the
shell would check their exit status.  In modern Unix shells (such
as bash(1)) these are built-in commands, which makes their
frequent use in scripts a lot more efficient.

Why not give up this {{{if}}} template craziness and implement a
basic set of programming logic operators (if, for, foreach, while,
switch, ...) in the wiki syntax?  Programming logic embedded in
textual content is well-known from languages like PHP.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deleletion patrol

body:
David Gerard wrote:
>     "Newpages patrol and RC patrol are unpleasant tasks, and the
> workload is such that the admirable people who do it may well make
> mistakes. As such, the emphasis here is not on policy enforcement for
> the sake of it, but recovering genuinely useful material that shouldn't
> have been deleted — to act as a [[catcher]]. Speedy deletion
> patrollers tend not to query borderline cases."

Personally I would modify this slightly by even further acknowledging
that it's _ok_ for people doing newpages patrol (especially) to err in
the defense of quality, and that resurrecting a few things here and
there behind them is a small price to pay for avoiding another
Seigenthaler incident.

--Jimbo


from_name: Delirium

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Nature compares science coverage of
	Wikipedia	andEncyclopaedia Britannica

body:
charles matthews wrote:

> Hang on, let's be scientific.  If EB consolidates articles more than
> WP, because WP uses hypertext freely to break things up, then 'per
> article' is not necessarily a good metric.  And 'per 10000 words'
> would say more.

I'd give the authors the benefit of the doubt and assume that the
analysis takes things like this into account (at least, I'll assume this
until the article is published and we can find out for sure).  _Nature_
tends to have fairly rigorous review standards and a high level of
article quality, so it's not unlikely that the apparent
over-simplifications were introduced by the journalist summarizing the
article for _The Age_, which isn't uncommon when reading
mainstream-press summaries of scientific articles.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: More DRV shenanigans

body:
On 12/13/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> As this is a straightforward matter under the undeletion policy, I've
> gone ahead and undeleted.

The history was deleted and undeleted a bit and then snowspinner made
a good call, stepping in and undeleting into his user area.  The
latest argument was that we mustn't do history undeletions because of
the Siegenthaler affair.  It doesn't make sense to me, either.  Maybe
we should just stop allowing anyone to create articles, in case
someone says something they shouldn't!


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

What is going on here? And where did they get permission to use our logo?

http://www.wikipediaclassaction.org/

- - Ryan
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from_name: Matt Brown

body:
I'd at the very least be interested in what classes of error existed.
Missing?  Outdated?  Simply wrong?


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] The a7 speedy

body:
On 12/14/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/14/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> > Tony Sidaway wrote:
> >
> > > It's been a while since I did a speedy patrol to check how our
> > > newpages patrollers were handling the A7 "no assertion of notability"
> > > criterion. I was rather shocked. by what I encountered in two short
> > > bouts of patrolling this morning and at lunchtime.
> > > In the following, I list *only* the points of notability that were
> > > contained in the articles at the time they were speedied as
> > > "non-notable".
> >
> >
> > Did you leave notes for them all?
> >
> > A7 is way too unclear, and some fools want to *expand* it.
> >
>
> Yes, I left notes for them all.  Even the guy who deleted the article
> about Brolly (not the same guy as the first deleting editor) while I
> was cleaning it up.

Your fair share of those could be deleted for lacking context or being
unverifiable, but some people take CSD 7 too far. I prefer contentious
articles taken to AFD over being speedied. Tony, did you undelete
these articles or ask the deleting admins to do so?

Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deleletion patrol

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Any biographical article can contain
>material of this nature and the more damaging libels are likely to be
>in biographies of highly significant figures.
>
The more significant a figure is, though, the less likely a libelous
statement is to remain there for a significant period of time.  It is
*much* easier to stick in erroneous information (libelous or otherwise)
in a relatively obscure article.

-Mark


body:
On 12/14/05, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> WP's been pretty decent in the sciences, but the weakness has always
> been in the medicine and anatomy-related articles.

And the readability for the non-scientist; some science articles are
very dense and don't lead the reader along well enough.  Many math
articles are even worse.

-Matt


list: foundation-l

from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Foundation-l] Status of Chinese Wikinews proposal

body:
With the current block of Chinese wikipedia I am feeling strongly about
getting this going as well.

Waerth/Walter

>The last time the Chinese Wikinews proposals were being circulated,
>they were shot down because it was feared that Wikipedia would become
>blocked in PRC due to politically-sensitive news stories on Wikinews.
>
>Now that Wikipedia has been banned in PRC for months, I feel that this
>justification is
>
>On 12/13/05, Corum O' Fallamhain <corumsmail at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>What is the current status of the Chinese Wikinews proposal? I feel quite
>>strongly about this, and want to see one set up as soon as possible. More
>>than enough people have expressed interest, why has one not been set up yet?
>>
>>


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] The a7 speedy

body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:

> Re: expansion, all I've heard on that front is people asking that band
> vanity be speediable.  This doesn't seem all that unreasonable to me,
> although the question of what to do with borderline cases is a big one.
>  Consider garage bands that formed last week and haven't even decided
> what songs they want to cover, let alone done any gigs or considered
> writing their own songs, but have definitely had time to create a
> Wikipedia entry ...

I would not allow this one. There's been a few band deletions of
Australian indie bands who *of course* they aren't on bloody allmusic,
because it's essentially a US site. So one has to wade in and fix things.

- d.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] SPOV threatens NPOV

body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Your statement that "the other ideas are normally all wrong" is a
>> POV.  If your criticism depends on a POV then it too is a POV.  A
>> scientific experiment that shows something to be wrong is not the
>> same as one that fails to show it right.  To say that something which
>> is not science is necessarily pseudoscience is a textbook application
>> of the fallacy of [[False dilemma]].
>
> I never made such an assertion (that all non-science is
> pseudoscience). I said that pseudoscience is often wrong. So could you
> give me an example of a pseudoscience which is actually 'right'?

Your request is illogical.  It asks for something right  when it is
wrong by definition.  If I see something as "right" I would not call it
pseudoscience.

Ec


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: More DRV shenanigans

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> On 12/13/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:

>>As this is a straightforward matter under the undeletion policy, I've
>>gone ahead and undeleted.

> The history was deleted and undeleted a bit and then snowspinner made
> a good call, stepping in and undeleting into his user area.  The
> latest argument was that we mustn't do history undeletions because of
> the Siegenthaler affair.  It doesn't make sense to me, either.  Maybe
> we should just stop allowing anyone to create articles, in case
> someone says something they shouldn't!

I'm sure there's a way to say "fuck off you drooling idiot" in diplomat.

- d.


body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 12/14/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

>>It's explicitly Not A Vote, so it's hard to see how to get around this one.
>>I am tempted to summarily remove all tally boxes as blatant invitations
>>to abuse of AFD as a straight vote.

> Oh yeah, and be forewarned.  I was once blocked for doing exactly
> that.  In fact, I was only removing the tally boxes that were
> incorrect!

You were being a dick in general around AFD, leading to you being banned
from it, so I'm not surprised really.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR Unenforceable

body:
JAY JG wrote:
> From: Jtkiefer <jtkiefer at wordzen.net>

>> Yes it happens with quite a few policies most recently NPOV but 3RR is
>> something that's not just like other policies where occasionally
>> issues pop up but 3RR at the fundamental level seems to be flawed by
>> the fact that it is misused by those who wish to gain an upper edge in
>> content disputes and administrators who try to enforce it have to end
>> up digging through edit warring and conflicts many times and much of
>> the time end up being villified for it even more than administrators
>> normally are for doing their jobs... and coming from someone who gets
>> threats and personal attacks against him quite a bit that's saying a
>> lot.  Enforcing 3RR has become an everyday battle. ~~~~

> The alternative is (and was) worse.

Indeed it was. Really, 3RR is FAR better than what came before it.

Remember that it is in no way mandatory for any particular admin to act
on a 3RR violation. So if you use your admin powers for other things but
don't like confrontations with fools who don't know when to cop it
sweet, you are not at all obligated to put yourself there.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: More DRV shenanigans

body:
On 12/14/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:

> > The history was deleted and undeleted a bit and then snowspinner made
> > a good call, stepping in and undeleting into his user area.  The
> > latest argument was that we mustn't do history undeletions because of
> > the Siegenthaler affair.  It doesn't make sense to me, either.  Maybe
> > we should just stop allowing anyone to create articles, in case
> > someone says something they shouldn't!
>
>
> I'm sure there's a way to say "fuck off you drooling idiot" in diplomat.
>

I think it's better to ignore than to provoke. :)


body:
If the reporting is accurate, this is a very significant finding,
considering the general perception that Wikipedia doesn't cover
science well.


from_name: Cyberjunkie

subject: [WikiEN-l] Tagline changed?

body:
>On 13/12/05, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>   Not sure if anyone has commented on this already (I don't see a
> corresponding subject), but the tagline on wikipedia pages is now
> reading "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit."
> As I commented several days ago, it used to just read "From Wikipedia,
> the free encylopedia".  Interesting.
>
> Is there any commentary on this change somewhere?

>>On 14/12/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Tagline&action=his
tory
>>seems to spell out the debate rather well.

It was changed last week (before your comment) as well, but was reverted
(by me). I prefer the original tagline (for various reasons, including
consistency with other languages and the Wiki logo), but I haven't the
motivation to argue against the change this time.

Cyberjunkie


subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deleletion patrol

body:
I've decided to make this a little more formal, to coordinate this
work in case anyone else would like to participate.

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

This page is intended to coordinate effort in patrolling the deletion
log to retrieve articles that should not have been deleted.

The undeletion policy provides for the undeletion of articles that
have clearly been deleted out-of-process--for instance, during
recent-changes or newpages patrol when there is no applicable
criterion for speedy deletion. Articles that may still be deletable
(but not speedily deletable) may be listed on Wikipedia:Articles for
deletion.

The emphasis is not on policy enforcement for the sake of it, but
recovering genuinely useful material that shouldn't have been deleted,
so speedy deletion patrollers tend not to query borderline cases.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Tagline changed?

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>Hi all,
>  Not sure if anyone has commented on this already (I don't see a
>corresponding subject), but the tagline on wikipedia pages is now
>reading "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit."
>As I commented several days ago, it used to just read "From Wikipedia,
>the free encylopedia".  Interesting.
>
>Is there any commentary on this change somewhere?
>
>
This message is the first that I have heard about this proposal.  Have
the proponents of this change nothing better to do with their time?

Ec


from_name: ABCD

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Steward elections 2006

body:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dariusz Siedlecki
Date: Dec 14, 2005 5:31 PM
Subject: [Foundation-l] Steward elections 2006
To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org

Just wanted to announce we'll be starting the 2006 Stewards elections
in a few days.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2006

Please forward this message to wikipedia-l, and every other list which
might be interested in this announcement.

--
Pozdrawiam,
Dariusz "Datrio" Siedlecki


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fwd: Steward elections 2006


subject: [WikiEN-l] The heart of the deletion problem

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>On 12/12/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I've run into editors who have been editing for years (much longer than me),
>>but haven't felt the need to abide by various newfangled rules like Cite
>>your sources, Verifiability and Neutral Point of View, which have often been
>>completely ignored, especially in the early days.
>>
>>
>NPOV has never been completely ignored, not even close. Even in the
>early days. Though I still can't stand the Sanger/Wales definition of
>the concept or the promulgation of its usage.
>
>And verifiability has pretty much always been a major bugbear. The
>only rule which is significantly new is Cite Your Sources, and until
>the software does a better job of making it dramatically easier for
>users to do so, it will continue to be a problem.
>
>Non-empty edit summaries should be mandatory except for edits marked as minor.
>
That sounds like an encouragement to mark everything minor, or at least
to have a stock of boilerplate to stick in.

Ec


from_name: Nathaniel Sheetz

subject: [WikiEN-l] reviewing edits by anons

body:
On 12/14/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> A lot of IP users add or remove something, and then immediately revert
> it. I quite often rollback these - even though there's overall no
> change - simply so that people don't waste time looking at the diff.
> Never sure if it helps or not, but...

That's a good idea, but I don't think it works -- the software won't accept
an edit of nothing, and your "edit" won't show up in the history.  That's my
experience at least.

Nathaniel (Spangineer)

On 14/12/05, Tom Cadden <thomcadden at yahoo.ie> wrote:
>
> >  Right now, because we don't know who has checked what stuff some
> > stuff is being checked to death, while other articles are not being
> checked
> > at all. It would be a big help if we could spot the checked and
> unchecked
> > articles and so focus our attentions on those that need a check.
>
> Incidentally, my understanding is that CDVF (which I must play with)
> handles this okayish; it tags individual diffs as looked at or not.
>
> This is especially a problem with watchlists. I log on, glance down
> the watchlist from the previous night... hmm. There's an eight-hour
> old edit to [[Liberalism]]; it won't be vandalism, since a dozen eyes
> will have checked it, but there's a forty-minute old one to [[Neil
> Armstrong]] that probably is. And these normally safe assumptions are
> what leads to us losing three quarters of a page for a week every now
> and again...
>
>
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Nathaniel C. Sheetz
http://www.personal.psu.edu/ncs124


subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deleletion patrol

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

> I've decided to make this a little more formal, to coordinate this
> work in case anyone else would like to participate.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Speedy_deletion_patrol
> This page is intended to coordinate effort in patrolling the deletion
> log to retrieve articles that should not have been deleted.
> The undeletion policy provides for the undeletion of articles that
> have clearly been deleted out-of-process--for instance, during
> recent-changes or newpages patrol when there is no applicable
> criterion for speedy deletion. Articles that may still be deletable
> (but not speedily deletable) may be listed on Wikipedia:Articles for
> deletion.
> The emphasis is not on policy enforcement for the sake of it, but
> recovering genuinely useful material that shouldn't have been deleted,
> so speedy deletion patrollers tend not to query borderline cases.

Newpages patrol and RC patrol are fuckers in general. So anything that
lets the brave and foolish get on with it is good, and this looks like
it'll help with that.

I've edited the wording of the explanation:

    "Newpages patrol and RC patrol are unpleasant tasks, and the
workload is such that the admirable people who do it may well make
mistakes. As such, the emphasis here is not on policy enforcement for
the sake of it, but recovering genuinely useful material that shouldn't
have been deleted — to act as a [[catcher]]. Speedy deletion
patrollers tend not to query borderline cases."

- d.


from_name: Ilya N.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: http://www.wikipediaclassaction.org/

body:
Ha ha ha :D I perfer that as well :)

Thanks for the laugh

On 12/14/05, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/14/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > What is going on here? And where did they get permission to use our logo?
> >
> > http://www.wikipediaclassaction.org/
>
> See [[QuakeAID]] for details about this.
>
> However, I very much prefer wikipediaclassaction.com (read carefully
> before screaming).
>
> Mathias
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deleletion patrol

body:
David Gerard wrote:

> I've edited the wording of the explanation:

I've also added to [[Wikipedia:Speedy deletions]] in "Advice for admins":

    "Don't worry too much ? new pages patrol is unpleasant, and people
will make mistakes. Wikipedia:Speedy deletion patrol goes through the
deletion logs to catch stuff that shouldn't have been speedied, without
rancor or excessive red tape."

- and noted it on the talk page.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deleletion patrol

body: You capture my sentiments perfectly, David.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia Class Action

body:
Phil Boswell wrote:

>"Anthony DiPierro" <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote
>
>
>>>http://www.wikipediaclassaction.org/
>>>
>>>
>>It'll be interesting to see if someone tries to force them to remove
>>the trademarked Wikipedia logo from that site.
>>
>>
>According to the footer on that page:
>"Wikipedia image, in its distorted format ? Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is
>used pursuant the fair use doctrine"
>
>IANAL but that sounds pretty demented to me :-)
>
>
The diagnosis of dementia is not the job of a lawyer, but of a psychiatrist.

Ec


from_name: sydney poore

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Reference.com displays Wikipedia edit history at the
 bottom of each article page.

body:
Hello folks,

Checking out the mirror sites, I saw that Reference.com displays
Wikipedia edit history at the bottom of each article page. In fact it is
the first link to the article. This makes vandalism and other
unacceptable edits available to more people unless we purge them.

Wikipedia contributors
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hager?action=history>

Look of the bottom of Reference.com encyclopedia article page.

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ? 2001-2005 Wikipedia contributors
(Disclaimer) This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation
License.
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org
- Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation

Sydney Poore

Go Bengals!


from_name: Axel

subject: [Wikitech-l] Daily changing spammer

body:
Hi

I've daily spams from changing usernames at:
http://www.plog4u.org

Is there a script which I can use to "rollback" all changes of this User/IP?

--
Axel Kramer
http://www.plog4u.org - Wikipedia Eclipse Plugin


subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR Unenforceable

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

> I can remember the state of affairs.  There were more reverts,
> bringing more attention to the articles, and forcing things to be
> resolved more quickly.

Yeah, that worked well on Mr-Natural-Health, while the AC case oozed
through. Oh, wait.

- d.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Daily changing spammer

body:
You're actually in luck since the spammer seems to at least use the same
username - on some wikis I host he used alternating IPs and usernames,
apparently hijacked Windows machines.

You can clean up some of the mess he made using Brion's Special:Nuke
extension:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/wikipedia/extensions/Nuke/

It allows you to mass-delete all pages created by a user IP.

You will also want to install the spam blacklist extension:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/wikipedia/extensions/SpamBlacklist/

If someone is looking for a nice project to hack on, I think for smaller
wikis a special page that searches all current revisions for a
particular text and deletes them if it contains the text (with prior
checkbox list like Special:Nuke) would be quite workable. This could be
run repeatedly if the spammers use multi-edit attacks.

We only win the war against spammers if we make all their actions easier
for us to revert than for them to perform. Captchas would be another
tool to accomplish this.

I also believe that we should fix up the Spam Blacklist extension code
and move it into MediaWiki proper, perhaps using a Poor Man's Cron in a
deferred update to get the Wikimedia blacklist every 24 hours. Spam will
be a problem for _every_ public wiki sooner or later and I can see few
good reasons to have this functionality only in an extension.

Erik


from_name: charles matthews

body:
 "Bob Mellish" wrote

>That's a rather good showing for Wikipedia. As soon as the issue is
available at Nature's webpage, I'll look for more details.

Hang on, let's be scientific.  If EB consolidates articles more than WP,
because WP uses hypertext freely to break things up, then 'per article' is
not necessarily a good metric.  And 'per 10000 words' would say more.

Charles


from_name: Guettarda

body:
As for the {{sofixit}} - in the associated podcast the author of the article
called on scientists to do just that - find the articles that apply to their
area of interest, and work to improve them.

One other thing - there's a subsection entitled 'Challenges of being a
Wikipedian' which talks about WMC and his arbcomm cases.

Ian

On 12/14/05, Steve Bennett <wiki at stevage.com> wrote:
>
>
> >I also expect that, once the complete list of evaluated articles is
> published by Nature, we will find that our articles are >longer, so that
> the error rate *per sentence* might very well be lower in Wikipedia.
>
> A few people seem to have missed this from the website:
> "All entries were chosen to be approximately the same length in both
> encyclopaedias. In a small number of cases some material, such as
> reference lists, was removed to make the lengths of the entries more
> similar."
>
> Steve
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Tom Cadden

subject: [WikiEN-l] reviewing edits by anons

body:
One problem I've noticed is that so many anons are editing that entire pages of edit histories consist of anon edits. Many are fine, some superb, but some are dodgy. In the past, with a smaller database of articles we could pretty much guarantee that most if not all would be checked by others and errors corrected. But all too often things don't seem to be being checked.

 The problem for users who see a long list of anon edits is that they don't know if they are perfectly OK edits that have been looked at by others and not thought to need correction (hence the absence of usernic edits) or if they simply have never been checked. All too often, faced with a massive list of anon edits, the approach of people (myself included) has been to look at a sample edit and see if it was a good edit or a vandalistic edit. If it was good, then we presume they were a serious contributor don't look at each edit. While reading the up-to-date article is all very well, the problem is that some perfectly valid content may well have been deleted somewhere along the line. But unless we check each edit, or go back to sample pages we don't know if something valid was dumped by someone at some stage and not noticed when a genuine user came in directly afterwards and made a good edit of the surviving test.

 What WP needs is some way to ensure that users can tell if anon edits were checked. That way we can spot those that weren't and not have people duplicating checks on good anon edits. Perhaps the page history should include a review box that could be ticked by a named user to indicate that they checked the text at that point. It doesn't have to mean a formal approval of the text, merely to let people know that someone had looked at it.

 I know there are users I from experience trust implicitly. I know the quality of their work. Seeing that say John Kenney had glanced over an edit on a royal biographical page would be enough for me to know, going by his ability, that I don't have to recheck. Similarly a review of a page had been looked over by Izehar, Michael Hardy, Mav or tons of others means I don't have to spend ages checking things.

 Right now, because we don't know who has checked what stuff some stuff is being checked to death, while other articles are not being checked at all. It would be a big help if we could spot the checked and unchecked articles and so focus our attentions on those that need a check.

 Thom

---------------------------------
How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos. Get Yahoo! Photos


from_name: Nyenyec N

subject: [WikiEN-l] SPOV threatens NPOV

body:
Hi,

if you'd like to put all the theories about POV / SPOV into practice,
how about taking a look at [[Intelligent Design]]. :)

I'm usually on the SPOV side of these debates, but what I see there is
a bit too much even for my tastes.

Thanks,
nyenyec


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deleletion patrol

body:
On 12/14/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Personally I would modify this slightly by even further acknowledging
> that it's _ok_ for people doing newpages patrol (especially) to err in
> the defense of quality, and that resurrecting a few things here and
> there behind them is a small price to pay for avoiding another
> Seigenthaler incident.
>

Absolutely. I don't want to risk resurrecting something like that, and
it doesn't make sense to undelete material that we're unsure of and
leaving it inadequately sourced.

Sadly the Seigenthaler case could probably happen again because the
man obviously existed and the article contained a defamatory statement
that was incidental to his significance as a former Assistant Attorney
General of the United States.  Any biographical article can contain
material of this nature and the more damaging libels are likely to be
in biographies of highly significant figures.


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] More Seigenthaler fallout

body:
On 12/14/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> We don't have enough active admins. Roveing the ones we do have on any
> reasonable scale is not an option.

It is better to have too few good admins than too many bad admins.

Kelly


from_name: FxParlant

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: call for calendars

body:
Hi Domas

You are absolutely right, I got myself confuse because I simple make a
call for an array with the page name, and I thought it refused to work
because it started by a number. Of course, it had nothing to do with it,
 but I forgot to make correct again.

Then, I'd also say that in french, the usual way of setting dates is
dd/MM/yyyy which didn't help me finding the best solution.

I'll change this... what you said did not solve my problem, but was
absolutely useful :-)

Fran?ois

Domas Mituzas wrote:
>> bl_to LIKE 'Dec/%/2005' AND cur_id = bl_from AND cl_to='Blog' AND
>
>
> I guess I will not be telling anything useful, but personally me, I'd
> nuke the one who'd be keeping dates this way in database. Either use
> DATETIME or at least... put most-significant-first (ergh, yyyy-mm- dd),
> so that prefix searches are efficient.
>
> Domas


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: call for calendars

body:
:-) LOL ....

Fran?ois

Magnus Manske wrote:
> FxParlant wrote:
>
>>So, in contradiction to evolution, I
>>now need to adapt the easy version of the calendar for mediawiki 1.3
>>
>
> <Anakin>Noooooooooooooo!!!</Anakin>


from_name: Mathias Schindler

body:
On 12/14/05, Bob Mellish <bobmellish at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Nature article is now up on the Dec 15th issue on their website
> (subscribers only, though). Unfortunately it doesn't go into details
> about which articles they checked, though it mentions [[Dmitri
> Mendeleyev]] as particularly erronous.

Here is the article list:
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/multimedia/438900a_m1.html

here is the full article:
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html

Entry  	Encyclopaedia Britannica inaccuracies  	Wikipedia inaccuracies
Acheulean industry 	1 	7
Agent Orange 	2 	2
Aldol reaction 	4 	3
Archimedes' principle 	2 	2
Australopithecus africanus 	1 	1
Bethe, Hans 	1 	2
Cambrian explosion 	10 	11
Cavity magnetron 	2 	2
Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan 	4 	0
CJD 	2 	5
Cloud 	3 	5
Colloid 	3 	6
Dirac, Paul 	10 	9
Dolly 	1 	4
Epitaxy 	5 	2
Ethanol 	3 	5
Field effect transistor 	3 	3
Haber process 	1 	2
Kinetic isotope effect 	1 	2
Kin selection 	3 	3
Lipid 	3 	0
Lomborg, Bjorn 	1 	1
Lymphocyte 	1 	2
Mayr, Ernst 	0 	3
Meliaceae 	1 	3
Mendeleev, Dmitry 	8 	19
Mutation 	8 	6
Neural network 	2 	7
Nobel prize 	4 	5
Pheromone 	3 	2
Prion 	3 	7
Punctuated equilibrium 	1 	0
Pythagoras' theorem 	1 	1
Quark 	5 	0
Royal Greenwich Observatory 	3 	5
Royal Society 	6 	2
Synchrotron 	2 	2
Thyroid 	4 	7
Vesalius, Andreas 	2 	4
West Nile Virus 	1 	5
Wolfram, Stephen 	2 	2
Woodward, Robert Burns 	0 	3


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: call for calendars

body:
hi Christof,

Of course I went many times on your site before :-) and you are one of
the first mediawiki I saw with a complete redesigned skin... tried to
follow the exemple :-( but not so well.

I wanted two things on the calendar and I guess that I could have this
by just hacking yours:
 - I wanted to have the name of the page in the title
 - Have more than one page by day

Maybe I should simply make a search for this naming convention:
Calendar_Name/2005/Dec/09/My_title_for_the_page

I'll try and have a look at your code over the holidays.

Thanks for reminding me of your extension.

Fran?ois
(and if you find a solution for the captcha in 1.5... let me know:-))

Christof Damian wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Dec 2005, FxParlant wrote:
>
>>I lately built a calendar extension for mediawiki 1.5+. The sql request
>>was easy to create, thanks to the re-architecting of the database.
>>Nevertheless, as nobody could yet help me transpose the captcha system
>>for 1.5, I still have to stay with my oldish version of mediawiki 1.3 :
>>I hear Rob Church gasping again:-) So, in contradiction to evolution, I
>>now need to adapt the easy version of the calendar for mediawiki 1.3
>>
>>Here is the question:
>>
>>I ask for all the pages title having a link to a page whose title has an
>>[[Dec/%/2005]] pattern.
>
>
> You could try http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Cdamian/calendar
> which is the simple wiki calendar extension I wrote. It doesn't use
> SQL queries (except to try flushing the cache). To get page titles
> like you want you would use something like this:
>
> <calendar>
> format="%M/%j/%Y"
> view="month"
> </calendar>
>
> I haven't tried the extension on 1.3 for a while, but it might still
> work.
>
> Christof
>
>


from_name: Servien Ilaino

subject: [Wikitech-l] Creation new wikis

body:
I would like to support Arbeo's request to create the wikis as soon as
possible like all others involved in these projects :)

Serv


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR Unenforceable

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 12/14/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>>Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>>>I can remember the state of affairs.  There were more reverts,
>>>bringing more attention to the articles, and forcing things to be
>>>resolved more quickly.

>>Yeah, that worked well on Mr-Natural-Health, while the AC case oozed
>>through. Oh, wait.

> As opposed to today, when the Arb Com is never needed to resolve anything?

As you know, the AC was put into place for dealing with these sort of
people. (That people now treat the AC as their mother is a problem, but
I think it does a good job of showing the door to those heartily
deserving it ... if they don't piss off so many people they get a
summary block by acclamation.)

- d.


body:
On 12/14/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:

> What is going on here? And where did they get permission to use our logo?
>
> http://www.wikipediaclassaction.org/

See [[QuakeAID]] for details about this.

However, I very much prefer wikipediaclassaction.com (read carefully
before screaming).

Mathias


subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deleletion patrol

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:

>>Personally I would modify this slightly by even further acknowledging
>>that it's _ok_ for people doing newpages patrol (especially) to err in
>>the defense of quality, and that resurrecting a few things here and
>>there behind them is a small price to pay for avoiding another
>>Seigenthaler incident.

> If there's a function I could build into my "Tasks" feature to assist
> out patrolling heroes, please let me know :-)

Post that to [[:en:Wikipedia talk:Speedy deletions]] and you should get
a pile of 'em!

- d.


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deleletion patrol

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
>
>>     "Newpages patrol and RC patrol are unpleasant tasks, and the
>> workload is such that the admirable people who do it may well make
>> mistakes. As such, the emphasis here is not on policy enforcement for
>> the sake of it, but recovering genuinely useful material that shouldn't
>> have been deleted — to act as a [[catcher]]. Speedy deletion
>> patrollers tend not to query borderline cases."
>>
>
> Personally I would modify this slightly by even further acknowledging
> that it's _ok_ for people doing newpages patrol (especially) to err in
> the defense of quality, and that resurrecting a few things here and
> there behind them is a small price to pay for avoiding another
> Seigenthaler incident.
>
If there's a function I could build into my "Tasks" feature to assist
out patrolling heroes, please let me know :-)

MAgnus


references:
<439A1430.5050100@thingy.apana.org.au>
	<dnk5ht$8e6$1@sea.gmane.org>	<dnkdt4$8af$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<Pine.LNX.4.61.0512141434370.22021@sara.aronsson.se>

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

> Why not give up this {{{if}}} template craziness and implement a
> basic set of programming logic operators (if, for, foreach, while,
> switch, ...) in the wiki syntax?  Programming logic embedded in
> textual content is well-known from languages like PHP.

Can we hold off on the "while"? Just don't make it Turing-complete ...

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] More Seigenthaler fallout

body:
On 12/14/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Define bad.

Not good.

In this context, a "bad admin" is an admin who does not respect the
spirit of policy, who bites newbies, who fuels edit wars instead of
resolving them, or who otherwise does not uphold the obligations of an
administrator in using administrative privileges.  In short, someone
who uses administrative privileges for a reason other than to improve
the encyclopedia.

Kelly


from_name: Christopher Larberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: [Foundation-l] Steward elections 2006]

body:
-------- Forwarded Message --------
> From: Dariusz Siedlecki <datrio at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Foundation-l] Steward elections 2006
> Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 23:31:11 +0100
>
> Just wanted to announce we'll be starting the 2006 Stewards elections
> in a few days.
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2006
>
> Please forward this message to wikipedia-l, and every other list which
> might be interested in this announcement.
>
> --
> Pozdrawiam,
> Dariusz "Datrio" Siedlecki
--
Christopher Larberg <christopherlarberg at gmail.com>
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from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] reviewing edits by anons

body:
On 14/12/05, Tom Cadden <thomcadden at yahoo.ie> wrote:

>  Right now, because we don't know who has checked what stuff some
> stuff is being checked to death, while other articles are not being checked
> at all. It would be a big help if we could spot the checked and unchecked
> articles and so focus our attentions on those that need a check.

Incidentally, my understanding is that CDVF (which I must play with)
handles this okayish; it tags individual diffs as looked at or not.

This is especially a problem with watchlists. I log on, glance down
the watchlist from the previous night... hmm. There's an eight-hour
old edit to [[Liberalism]]; it won't be vandalism, since a dozen eyes
will have checked it, but there's a forty-minute old one to [[Neil
Armstrong]] that probably is. And these normally safe assumptions are
what leads to us losing three quarters of a page for a week every now
and again...

A lot of IP users add or remove something, and then immediately revert
it. I quite often rollback these - even though there's overall no
change - simply so that people don't waste time looking at the diff.
Never sure if it helps or not, but...

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] More Seigenthaler fallout

body:
On 13/12/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> > Matt Brown wrote:
> > > My belief is that in general we should not remove things from page
> > > history so easily.
> >
> > My belief is that in general we should be aggressive about removing
> > vandalism from the page history.  If there was an automated way to go
> > through on a regular basis and remove reverted versions from the
> > history, I would strongly support that we do so.
>
> I think that getting that set-up should be a top development priority. One idea:
>
> A bot with sysop rights could be able to detect admin reverts fairly
> easily and delete both the vandalized versions that were reverted
> along with the admin's revert version (which would be pointless
> clutter at that point).

One problem is that this also removes the edits from the history of
that user, which makes noticing a pattern of vandalism from a single
user tougher. Not sure how significant this is, and there could well
be a workaround, but...

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


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration Committee Elections December 2005

body:
On 12/14/05, Taco Deposit <tacodeposit at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/14/05, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
> >
> > Taco Deposit wrote:
> >
> > >Does "patterned as closely as is reasonable after the RfA process" mean
> > that
> > >everyone's support/oppose vote will be visible to all? And that
> > >special:boardvote will therefore not be used?
> > >
> > >TD
> > >
> > >
> > Presumably so, yes. I don't see what's so wrong about this. This is the
> > nomination process, not the election itself.
>
>
> What's the difference between publicly opposing a candidacy, and a
> "disendorsement"?
>
> TD

Wording. Of course it wont tell us much because our more competant
wikipolictians are not going to play their cards too early.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: More DRV shenanigans

body:
On 12/14/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> I'm sure there's a way to say "fuck off you drooling idiot" in diplomat.

"perhaps with you unique insites you would be more of an asset somewhere else".

--
geni


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] More Seigenthaler fallout

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Matt Brown wrote:
>
>
>>My belief is that in general we should not remove things from page
>>history so easily.
>>
>>
>My belief is that in general we should be aggressive about removing
>vandalism from the page history.  If there was an automated way to go
>through on a regular basis and remove reverted versions from the
>history, I would strongly support that we do so.
>
>The only sensible counter-argument I know of in this area is a concern
>for future historians or contemporary researchers who would like to
>study the phenomenon of vandalism.  For this, it seems more than enough
>to make such revisions available in some limited-access way.  There's
>just no reason to keep this junk cluttering up the publicly-viewable
>article history.
>
My concern about these deletions is somewhat different.  It is about
being seen as selective about our history.  Idiots say idiotic things,
after which remains the fact that they said them.  Being willing to
delete the record when the complainer is sufficiently notable gives the
wrong impression that we are willing to do their bidding.  I wouldn't be
surprised if we already had libelous material on less notable
individuals; the target just doesn't know about it.  If he did he might
still not be in a position to act on it.

I do agree, however, that limited access is acceptable, and that in
ordinary circumstances this material is of no value to the general public.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR Unenforceable

body:
On 12/14/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> > I can remember the state of affairs.  There were more reverts,
> > bringing more attention to the articles, and forcing things to be
> > resolved more quickly.
>
>
> Yeah, that worked well on Mr-Natural-Health, while the AC case oozed
> through. Oh, wait.
>
>
> - d.

Mr-Natural-Health did tend to stay within the three revert rule.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] More Seigenthaler fallout

body:
On 12/14/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/14/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/14/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > There are way too many admins who shouldn't be, then.
>
> > It isn't as if we have the luxery to say that.
>
> Just what do you mean by that?  There's no reason why we need to
> continue to grant admin privileges to people who abuse them.
>
> Kelly

We don't have enough active admins. Roveing the ones we do have on any
reasonable scale is not an option.

--
geni


from_name: Frieda Brioschi

subject: [Foundation-l] And the winner is..

body:
We won two awards at "Premio WWW" (Price WWW) Il sole 24 ore.
One as best site in the category "Education and Work". The most
interesting is the second one: a special award assigned by Il Sole 24
ore in collaboration with the italian Ministry of Technology and
Innovation (!) for "Internet Educational".

The reasons for our winning are:
* '' for being the new benchmark in Italy for online knowledge'' (for
the 1st award)
* " because it's a free encyclopedia, born from a collective
intelligence that exalts the sharing of knowledge and its free access.
Wikipedia is a source of information in constant change that allows to
outpace the staticity of traditional paper encyclopedias, and is
subjected to a constant work of monitoring/revision made by its users"
(for the 2nd award)

Ciao,
AVeryHappyFrieda
___________________________________________
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Frieda


subject: [Foundation-l] And the winner is..


from_name: Dariusz Siedlecki

subject: [Foundation-l] Steward elections 2006

body:
Just wanted to announce we'll be starting the 2006 Stewards elections
in a few days.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2006

Please forward this message to wikipedia-l, and every other list which
might be interested in this announcement.

--
Pozdrawiam,
Dariusz "Datrio" Siedlecki


subject: [Foundation-l] Steward elections 2006


subject: [WikiEN-l] More Seigenthaler fallout

body:
geni wrote:

>On 12/14/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 12/14/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On 12/14/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>There are way too many admins who shouldn't be, then.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>It isn't as if we have the luxery to say that.
>>>
>>>
>>Just what do you mean by that?  There's no reason why we need to
>>continue to grant admin privileges to people who abuse them.
>>
>>Kelly
>>
>>
>We don't have enough active admins. Roveing the ones we do have on any
>reasonable scale is not an option.
>
You make it sound as though a perceived shortage of admins is reason
enought to keep the rogues.  Those rogues can drain as much time from
the good admins as any group of common vandals.

Ec


from_name: valdelli at bluemail.ch

subject: [Foundation-l] And the winner is..

body:
Really!!!

It's very good, not only because PremioWWW is an important national recognition,
but also because the awards are two!

;)

Ilario

>-- Messaggio originale --
>Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 23:29:36 +0100
>From: Frieda Brioschi <ubifrieda at gmail.com>
>To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>Subject: [Foundation-l] And the winner is..
>Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>
>
>We won two awards at "Premio WWW" (Price WWW) Il sole 24 ore.
>One as best site in the category "Education and Work". The most
>interesting is the second one: a special award assigned by Il Sole 24
>ore in collaboration with the italian Ministry of Technology and
>Innovation (!) for "Internet Educational".
>
>The reasons for our winning are:
>* '' for being the new benchmark in Italy for online knowledge'' (for
>the 1st award)
>* " because it's a free encyclopedia, born from a collective
>intelligence that exalts the sharing of knowledge and its free access.
>Wikipedia is a source of information in constant change that allows to
>outpace the staticity of traditional paper encyclopedias, and is
>subjected to a constant work of monitoring/revision made by its users"
>(for the 2nd award)
>
>Ciao,
>AVeryHappyFrieda
>___________________________________________
>http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Frieda
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject: [Foundation-l] And the winner is..


subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR Unenforceable

body:
geni wrote:
> On 12/14/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>>Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>>>I can remember the state of affairs.  There were more reverts,
>>>bringing more attention to the articles, and forcing things to be
>>>resolved more quickly.

>>Yeah, that worked well on Mr-Natural-Health, while the AC case oozed
>>through. Oh, wait.

> Mr-Natural-Health did tend to stay within the three revert rule.

Mr-Natural-Health was one of the *reasons* 3RR got such acclamation.
When he last came back as John Gohde, he got a short sharp 3RR and
*then* stopped.

- d.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Next experiment: switch off AFD for a month. (was
	Guardian in defense of Wikipedia)

body:
Matt Brown wrote:

>On 12/13/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I wonder how many people hold off adding references because they're
>>hoping for a better source. For instance, I used to not mention
>>using Oxford Classical Dictionary, because it's technically a
>>tertiary source, but many of its articles mention only primary
>>sources, leaving no secondaries to cite. Nowadays I just cite it
>>anyway - if somebody has something better later, they can replace
>>the OCD cite.
>>
>>
>Exactly the result I feared when people started to press not only for
>sources, but only sources that fit certain criteria.  I argued then
>that even a poor source is better than none, because it traces where
>the information came from and allows people familiar with the subject
>to dig deeper.
>
>I also believe we should cite primary, secondary or tertiary sources,
>whichever is available.  In the case of primary sources, of course,
>these should only be readily available ones.  Ideally, an encyclopedia
>is a tertiary source - a summing-up of knowledgable opinion - but I
>would not exclude primary or tertiary sources unless better are
>available.
>
I absolutely agree.  Once you start imposing serious limitations on the
acceptability of sources you set up the basis for many future arguments
of the "my source is better than yours" variety.  We need to encourage
people to use what they have, without worrying about strict criteria.

Ec


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] SPOV threatens NPOV

body:
Because it assumes standards of evidence and even standards of what
"science" is, how to define it, and whether or not all of what is generally
considered "science" fits into these normalized molds (they don't).

There are also things like string theory, psychoanalysis, SETI, and eugenics
for which the "is it science?" question is continually in debate.

Put another way, the standards of how to determine "right" and "wrong" are
exactly what are at the crux of the debate. So taking one side can easily be
argued as POV, especially when we are talking about pejorative terms which
imply deceit (at the very best, self-deceit) along with falseness.

There are good reasons, though, for leaning towards the "scientific" point
of view *when leaning is required* -- that is, not just going that direction
by default, but for sorting out the little situations where it is a question
of what gets listed first and things of that nature. The primary one is
credibility and with whom -- if Wikipedia is seen as a totally uncredible
source by scientists and academics, that's a problem, since this is the
community whose norms usually define these sorts of standards. If Wikipedia
is seen as uncredible by the Creationists, UFOlogists, and so forth -- not
as big a problem in my mind; they're a relatively small audience (whether or
not most Americans reject evolution, most are not what one would call
"Creationists" -- they are not activists about the issue) and their disdain
will not harm Wikipedia in the slightest. Again -- I think this only should
come up in a matter of emphasis, not a matter of substantive content, and
should be done very carefully in all instances.

FF

On 12/14/05, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
>
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> > Chris Jenkinson wrote:
> >
> >> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >>
> >>> Your statement that "the other ideas are normally all wrong" is a
> >>> POV.  If your criticism depends on a POV then it too is a POV.  A
> >>> scientific experiment that shows something to be wrong is not the
> >>> same as one that fails to show it right.  To say that something which
> >>> is not science is necessarily pseudoscience is a textbook application
> >>> of the fallacy of [[False dilemma]].
> >>
> >>
> >> I never made such an assertion (that all non-science is
> >> pseudoscience). I said that pseudoscience is often wrong. So could you
> >> give me an example of a pseudoscience which is actually 'right'?
> >
> >
> > Your request is illogical.  It asks for something right  when it is
> > wrong by definition.  If I see something as "right" I would not call it
> > pseudoscience.
>
> Exactly - so how is it POV to demonstrate in an article why a
> pseudoscience is wrong?
>
> Chris
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: John Lee

body:
Taco Deposit wrote:

>On 12/14/05, Fl Celloguy <flcelloguy at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Just a friendly announcement: Jimbo has announced that the ArbCom
>>elections
>>procedure will be his second proposal, a hybrid procedure, after closing
>>the
>>straw poll. Check [[Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December
>>2005]] for more information.
>>
>>
>
>
>Does "patterned as closely as is reasonable after the RfA process" mean that
>everyone's support/oppose vote will be visible to all? And that
>special:boardvote will therefore not be used?
>
>TD
>
>
Presumably so, yes. I don't see what's so wrong about this. This is the
nomination process, not the election itself.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: SPOV threatens NPOV

body:
When Newton originally presented his theory of gravity it was seriously
attacked by his contemporaries as being comprised of "occult forces" rather
than being a truly mechanistic physics (like Cartesian physics). Now we all
know how that worked out in the end -- not only did Newton triumph, but even
what science was ended up being redefined in the process. And it has been
redefined many times since then, in different ways and different fields --
each time something initially incompatible becomes the accepted norm, it
changes not only the evidence, but the entire standard of what counts as
evidence and even what counts as argumentation. This is a well-documented
phenomena, and even the most positivistic of philosophers acknowledge this
to some degree.

FF

On 12/13/05, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
>
> sockmonk at gmail.com wrote:
> > I agree of course that science and religion are not "at each other's
> > throats". However, there is one place where I think the SPOV is seen
> most
> > clearly as a POV. This is when any account of a miracle, or other
> > supernatural event, is presumed to be false, impossible, or to
> necessarily
> > have a purely scientific explanation. The 'laws of science' are
> undoubtedly
> > useful, and have produced lots of great things. Of course, people made
> some
> > progress even when the leading 'scientists' of the day thought
> everything
> > was made of just four elements. But to presume that everything
> supernatural
> > is bunk, is imposing a scientific point of view in a way that many
> people
> > think goes too far.
>
> An example of a 'supernatural phenomenon' which is not 'bunk' would be
> welcome. :)
>
> Chris
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
>
>>I find the unreferenced tag to be useless.  Either it says that the
>>article contains some unreferenced facts, in which case we'd be better
>>off tagging those few articles which don't contain unreferenced facts
>>with the opposite tag,
>>
>>
>Then it shouldn't be used to tag the article. That's not what it's for.
>
>
>>or it says that the article contains zero
>>references, which is already evident to anyone scanning the article
>>anyway.
>>
>>
>The tag puts the article in the category. It also looks like a big ugly
>box telling the editor "PLEASE DO BETTER KTHX."
>
>
>>If you want to put the tag on the talk page or use a category, in the
>>case of articles with absolutely no references, I wouldn't object.
>>But I don't think that is a solution for what I'm saying, which is
>>that we shouldn't be creating such articles in the first place.
>>
>>
>I suggest that we can only lead by example and peer pressure, and the
>template does IMO help there.
>
The crux of the problem is in what the endgame should be for an
unreferenced article.  Is it deletion or improvement?  I would easily
support improvement.  If an article is unreferenced that does not imply
that it is wrong; we just don't know if it's right.

Actions based on a deletion endgame consistently attract bitter disputes
and needless stress.  In planning new strategies this should be
considered from the beginning. in the hope of avoiding the stress.
Without that this will be no different from AfD.

Ec


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] SPOV threatens NPOV

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Chris Jenkinson wrote:
>
>> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>> Your statement that "the other ideas are normally all wrong" is a
>>> POV.  If your criticism depends on a POV then it too is a POV.  A
>>> scientific experiment that shows something to be wrong is not the
>>> same as one that fails to show it right.  To say that something which
>>> is not science is necessarily pseudoscience is a textbook application
>>> of the fallacy of [[False dilemma]].
>>
>>
>> I never made such an assertion (that all non-science is
>> pseudoscience). I said that pseudoscience is often wrong. So could you
>> give me an example of a pseudoscience which is actually 'right'?
>
>
> Your request is illogical.  It asks for something right  when it is
> wrong by definition.  If I see something as "right" I would not call it
> pseudoscience.

Exactly - so how is it POV to demonstrate in an article why a
pseudoscience is wrong?

Chris


from_name: Brian

subject:
[Foundation-l] Closer look at Nature's results: Average article
 size for Wikipedia:
 6.80 KB; Britannica: 2.60 KB. Number of errors per 2KB for Wikipedia: 1;
 Britannica: 6.5

body:
Nature has a special report at
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html ,  detailing
the results of an accuracy comparison between WP and EB. While the
Wikipedia articles often contained more inaccuracies than Britannica's,
they don't look at the article sizes in each case. With Maveric149's
help, I did:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28news%29#Nature_follow-up:__How_do_the_article_sizes_compare.3F

Result: Average article size for Wikipedia: 6.80 KB; Britannica: 2.60
KB. Number of errors per 2KB for Wikipedia: 1; Britannica: 6.

Put another way:  Wikipedia has 4 errors to their 3; our articles were
also 2 1/2 times longer on average.

Can someone please check my math, I did this pretty fast, and was half
asleep :)  It's not 100% accurate, but I was only going for a ballpark
estimate.  Note: we copied the displayed WP text, not the edit box text,
and removed the TOC, See also, references, external links, and any other
big tables or lists. The WP text came from just before the Nature
article was published.

Raul654 and I separately submitted stories to Slashdot, and I would
suggest anyone willing do something similar. The more requests they have
for this, the more likely they are to accept it.

brian0918


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Closer look at Nature's results: Average article size
 for Wikipedia:
 6.80 KB; Britannica: 2.60 KB. Number of errors per 2KB for Wikipedia: 1;
 Britannica: 6.5


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] The a7 speedy

body:
G'day David,

> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
>>It's been a while since I did a speedy patrol to check how our
>>newpages patrollers were handling the A7 "no assertion of notability"
>>criterion. I was rather shocked. by what I encountered in two short
>>bouts of patrolling this morning and at lunchtime.
>>In the following, I list *only* the points of notability that were
>>contained in the articles at the time they were speedied as
>>"non-notable".
>
> Did you leave notes for them all?

I only looked at the first one (the Congressman), and that wasn't A7.
There was no rationale given for speedying it at all, and I'm kinda
baffled as to why anyone thought it would be speediable for any reason
(check the history).  A7 may be contributing to the problem, but it's
not the sole cause: we have articles being deleted, or at least tagged
for deletion with no rationale provided, simply because they need cleanup.

> A7 is way too unclear, and some fools want to *expand* it.

How unclear is "no assertion of notability" for biographical articles?
If it says he was Secretary General of the UN, you don't delete.

Re: expansion, all I've heard on that front is people asking that band
vanity be speediable.  This doesn't seem all that unreasonable to me,
although the question of what to do with borderline cases is a big one.
  Consider garage bands that formed last week and haven't even decided
what songs they want to cover, let alone done any gigs or considered
writing their own songs, but have definitely had time to create a
Wikipedia entry ...

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

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.371 / Virus Database: 267.13.13/199 - Release Date: 13/12/2005


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: SPOV threatens NPOV

body:
On 12/15/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> When Newton originally presented his theory of gravity it was seriously
> attacked by his contemporaries as being comprised of "occult forces" rather
> than being a truly mechanistic physics (like Cartesian physics). Now we all
> know how that worked out in the end -- not only did Newton triumph, but even
> what science was ended up being redefined in the process. And it has been
> redefined many times since then, in different ways and different fields --
> each time something initially incompatible becomes the accepted norm, it
> changes not only the evidence, but the entire standard of what counts as
> evidence and even what counts as argumentation. This is a well-documented
> phenomena, and even the most positivistic of philosophers acknowledge this
  (phenomenon)
> to some degree.

What's your point? The goal of Wikipedia is not to predict the future
but to accurately reflect the present.


subject: [WikiEN-l] More Seigenthaler fallout

body:
On 12/14/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/14/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We don't have enough active admins. Roveing the ones we do have on any
> > reasonable scale is not an option.
>
> It is better to have too few good admins than too many bad admins.
>
Nope, it's worse.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Turn off AfD

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>On 12/13/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>In all fairness Googling, then adding the information is a lot of work.
>>
>>
>It's a couple of minutes.  And at the end of it you have a useful
>article instead of a hole in the ground.
>
Not really, but then I've been too focused on vocabulary where the
"evidence" is from blogs or other POV pushing sites.  Or you find people
spamming the internet to get their new pet word adopted.

>>Complaints about deleting unsourced material resulted in a separate page
>>called Requests for Verification (RfV) where supporters have a full
>>month to find sources.
>>
>>
>This sounds like exactly what I'm suggesting for Wikipedia.
>
Of course the article is not deleted while waiting for that month to pass.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] scratch that

body: Scratch that, I completely screwed up. :)


subject: [WikiEN-l] scratch that


subject: [Foundation-l] scratch that


body:
On 12/14/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
> >And verifiability has pretty much always been a major bugbear. The
> >only rule which is significantly new is Cite Your Sources, and until
> >the software does a better job of making it dramatically easier for
> >users to do so, it will continue to be a problem.
> >
> >Non-empty edit summaries should be mandatory except for edits marked as minor.
> >
> That sounds like an encouragement to mark everything minor, or at least
> to have a stock of boilerplate to stick in.

Assume good faith. Marking non-minor edits as minor would obviously be
cause for sanction. Accurate boilerplate would be fine.