body:
I think anthere tried to explain that those changes have to be made on every
wiki. Not technically, but regarding policy. If I read correct, the
foundtaion wants that the technical side of every language project is about
the same, to make it easy to switch from one project to another.

In that case, I would like to add that the move page functionality should be
given to both users with a certain time of existance, but also to sysops.
That is because of the stewards, reverting vandalism on small wiki's then.
But that might be logical anyway. I think in that case two weeks makes more
sense then one and a half month. That is imho just far too long. In one
month a person is usually able to vote in votes, and is already sometimes
part of the hardcore community. Two weeks might even be too long.

Lodewijk

2007/2/20, Titoxd at Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at gmail.com>:
>
> Well, this is a technical change to one site's configuration of a
> magnitude
> similar to adding an extra namespace to a wiki. More technically, it means
> modifying one wiki's LocalSettings.php file. I'm not entirely sure how
> changing $wgAutoConfirmAge on pt.wikipedia.org will affect
> en.wikipedia.org,
> for example. Technically, those settings are completely independent of one
> another, as they reside on separate files. The only way one wiki's
> technical
> requests affect everyone is when there is something *added* to MediaWiki,
> and those effects are due to a new setting added to MediaWiki's
> DefaultSettings.php file. As this isn't the case, since the functionality
> is
> already there (that's the reason there's a four-day page-move restriction
> in
> *all* Wikimedia wikis), changing it on one should not affect the other
> ones.
> I'm not sure if Anthere's worry is that a setting of 45 days in pt: will
> mean changing the setting to 45 days everywhere else, but if that is it,
> then there is no reason to worry. Looking at the code, there is absolutely
> no reason why the change would impact other wikis outside the Portuguese
> Wikipedia.
>
> Titoxd.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Anthere
> Sent: Monday, February 19, 2007 3:17 PM
> To: foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Restriction on page
> movesinpt.wikipedia.orgThankyou
>
> Thomas Dalton wrote:
> >>First, having a software displaying different behavior depending on the
> >>language/project is a bad idea. It makes things very complex and users
> >>travelling from one language to another are likely to find this
> disturbing.
> >
> >
> > That same logic could be used to say all languages should have the
> > same system for RFA, AFD, etc. It was decided a long time ago that
> > different languages would be allowed to decide their own policies.
> > Policies which are enforced by the software are no different from any
> > other policies.
>
> No, it is not the same. Policies with social implications (such as RFA,
> AFD) may be developped independently by each community, without having
> any consequences on the choice made by other communities.
>
> Policies with technical implications may imply that a decision made by
> one community, will be forced over the other communities. This is what
> happened for many many months, as all software evolutions were driven by
> the english community and forced over the other communities along the
> way. We are no more in these times. If a change of software is
> suggested, which could impact all communities, then there must be a
> general agreement that this is a good idea.
>
> Note that I do not say the suggestion is good or bad. I simply say "do
> not expect a top down decision".
>
> ant
>
> >
> > Personally, I think 45 days is rather long, and I'm a little
> > uncomfortable with it apparently being handled as a vote (although the
> > results of the vote don't leave much room for interpretation, so it
> > probably makes no difference), but if that's how pt want to do things,
> > it's entirely up to them.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Steve Bennett

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

body:
On 2/20/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Not everything belongs in here.
> Travel info belongs in Wikitravel.
> Dictionary stuff belongs in Wiktionary and so on.

The first problem with this simplistic view is that there is a huge
amount of overlap. For example: "Lyon is a city in France with 1
million inhabitants" - WikiTravel, Wikipedia, or both? Its main
visitor attractions are its churches, renowned gastronomic restaurants
and art galleries - Wiki travel, Wikipedia or both? It is served by
two airports and is a major stop on the Paris-Marseille TGV line -
same question.

I think the answer to those three is all "both". Probably even true
for a statement like "According to the Lonely Planet, Lyon is not a
must-see destination, but a worthwhile detour while heading south to
Provence."

The second problem is that the different projects aren't really
"complementary" in the sense that they fit nicely together. WikiTravel
isn't even a WMF project. The standard at Wiktionary is far below that
of Wikipedia. And Wikibooks? The format is so different, and the
standard even lower. And at the end of the day, I'm really not
interested in the other projects - Wikipedia is *the one*. Not a
single other project (including commons, wiktionary, wikispecies etc)
has yet to make the slightest impact on popular culture.

Rather than say "this would be better in project X", let's restrict
ourselves to saying "this must not go in Wikipedia under any
circumstances".

> You may think giving the advice is useful, but it isn't unless it comes from
> an expert.

I'm not saying we should give medical advice. What I'm saying is that
a cake recipe can be perfectly encyclopaedic, if it comes from the
right source.

Steve


body:
On 2/20/07, George Chriss <GChriss at psu.edu> wrote:
borrow the example:  I know that a pancake comes from a Bisquick box,
but what if I want to know what a pancake **really** is?

How is your question better answered by "flour, eggs and milk in
various proportions", than by "According to Mrs Beeton, 8 oz flour, 4
eggs..."?

Steve


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Moderation on this mailing list

body:
Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:

>On 2/20/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
>>But David, this takes me back to the original question: Is it really
>>offensive to call someone abusive? I, personally, would not use the word to
>>define someone, I would, instead, describe their behavior as abusive; but
>>isn't that, in the context of this List, somewhat nickpicky?
>>
>>
>It totally depends on the context. If you have a serious complaint
>that you present properly with solid evidence to back it up, then
>calling an admin abusive isn't all that big of a deal. If you can't do
>that well and you are just throwing the word around, then hell yeah
>it's offensive.
>
It's still a judgement call that needs to be viewed in context.  Enough
needs to be let through to provide the context.

>Historically speaking, something like 95% of all incidents of people
>calling admins "rouge" or "abusive" have been wholly without merit.
>It's been people that have been reverted, people who want a specific
>agenda but isn't allowed, annoying vandals, etc. After a while, when
>you hear about an email such as was sent to the list and rejected, you
>kinda get the picture of what is in it, and you're glad when it is
>moderated out.
>
I'm willing to concede your 95% figure, but it's good to know what
problems are being raised.  The ones who act consistently without merit
will soon develop a reputation, and no-one on the list will be willing
to take up their cause.  A moderator should not be painting a target on
himself to take the flaming arrows intended for a less than wholesome
complainant.

Ec


list: wikitech-l

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Instant Messenger / Email integration with
	MediaWiki

body:
On 2/20/07, Jim Wilson <wilson.jim.r at gmail.com> wrote:
> When a POST submission arrives, it's tagged with information regarding when
> the originating form was generated.  I'm not sure where all this information
> is stored.  It may be session or hidden form vars - I can't be sure without
> digging.  In any case, the server then checks to make sure that the article
> hasn't changed since the time the form was created and alerts the user if
> this is the case with as "Page has been changed" message.

I don't think that's the case. As I understood it, MediaWiki just
checks to see if the content that's changing has been changed. The
following sequence of events is acceptable:

User A starts modifying article
User B starts modifying article
User B submits changes which only affect section 1
User A submits changes which only affect section 5

No warning messages of any kind are given.

> Because of the very asynchronous behavior of SMTP/POP/IMAP, chances of this
> kind of collision are much more likely then with the wiki's web interface.
> The resolution is to send more emails explaining the condition and providing
> a resend request - or direct the colliders to the web interface.

Well, much like the current edit conflict resolution.

> I don't know, but there used to be Email-a-Webpage services whereby you
> could Email a URL as the subject line to some entity and get a response
> which was the requested page.  I'm having trouble locating one now though
> ... Googling for "webpage by email" doesn't produce anything useful :(

Bugger, thanks for looking though :)

Steve


body:
On 2/20/07, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> If i had such free service, i'd set a server doing it for me :P
> If it's a 'private' service, things gets easier:
> -Authentication: Use a variable account name as password.

A "variable account name"?

> -Stripping out signatures: You use the same email ssystem -> Always the
> same signature.

Well, not strictly true. Friend of mine puts his server's uptime in his sig...

> Is merging really a safe option when the article may have been
> downloaded 6 hours earlier?
> If it hasn't changed, yes ;)
> If it's a poppular article, probably not. But merging could wait until i
> sit in front of a proper computer.

The more I think about the way the current merging algorithm works,
the more I think it's probably ok. Because if I'm not mistaken, the
system compares what you originally saw with what you're submitting
now, and applies those *changes*. So if the original text you're
modifying read like this:

John is happy. John is rich.

And you submit this text:
John is happy. John is extremely rich.

And meanwhile someone has modified the text thusly:
John is sad. John is rich.

Then the final text looks like this:
John is sad. John is extremely rich.

(though I think the actual granularity is much higher, like paragraph level).

So depending on the frequency of updates, this may be ok. Certainly I
edit many pages which don't receive as much as an edit a week, and the
few they receive are predominantly typos, interwiki links, categories,
new stub tags...

Steve


from_name: Jim Wilson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Trick Parser to render full links?

body:
Dear list - nevermind, I finally found a way to trick the Parser into
rendering full links as though action were set to render.

I'll have a write-up of the technique in the next few days.  When I do, I'll
post a link to this list so the next poor sap who's looking for the answer
can find it.

I'm also considering logging an enhancement request for a parser property
called "ForceAbsoluteLinks" (or something like that).  Would anyone find
this useful?  If not, I won't bother with creating the bug and associated
patch.

No use bothering everybody if I'm the only one with this problem.

-- Jim

On 2/19/07, Jim Wilson <wilson.jim.r at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I got no response on the IRC channel when I asked there either - does no
> one know?  Is this an uncommon request?  Thanks in advance.
>
> -- Jim
>
> On 2/19/07, Jim Wilson <wilson.jim.r at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Is there a way to trick the Parser into rendering fully qualified URLs
> > _other than_ setting "action=render" at the URL level?
> >
> > The last time I wanted this feature was circa MW 1.5.1 - and I know at
> > that time you had to hijack global $action to get any results.  I'm hoping
> > this is no longer the case?
> >
> > I'm developing an extension that needs to run on 1.6.x, 1.8.x, 1.9.x and
> > 1.10 - Thanks in advance for any help.
> >
> > -- Jim R. Wilson (jimbojw)
> >
>
>


list: foundation-l

from_name: Thomas Dalton

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

references:
<44690.30556.qm@web62301.mail.re1.yahoo.com>
	<45d8cbf3.17c2429e.1193.ffffb173SMTPIN_ADDED@mx.google.com>
	<003401c753ae$83ac4ab0$6401a8c0@TitoLap>
	<73f3ff1b0702181452h4e65e0dcqd05b401f2c977d36@mail.gmail.com>
	<erbsib$hfe$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<a4359dff0702191224p6e198ddescef832e6e0e4ce06@mail.gmail.com>
	<erd7ik$vf9$1@sea.gmane.org> <001f01c754b5$f7c5af10$6401a8c0@TitoLap>
	<73f3ff1b0702200200q2a912a4bic8295a5caaa1a110@mail.gmail.com>
	<erelkt$kut$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
> No, I said that if a technical change was required and would impact the
> entire community, then the entire community should agree.

I don't think anyone would disagree with that, but it's not relevant.
This change will have no effect anywhere else.


list: wikimedia-l


body:
> Ah, but the emails in question contained diffs which they claimed
> shewed that the administrators in question were "abusive". Should
> those have been let through?

It's a judgement call. I trust your judgement of the situation. This
mailing list isn't the place for complaining about abusive admins,
anyway.


from_name: Annabel

subject: [Foundation-l] Database dumps

body:
Hi all,

Bot users are able download database dumps of the wikimedia projects at
http://download.wikimedia.org/backup-index.html.
These bzipped dumps can be fairly large (especially for the English
language). Would not it be handy to have a bitorrent link to lower the
load on the download server?

Greetings,
Annabel


subject: [Foundation-l] Database dumps


body:
On 2/20/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
> setup. My ideal for the Lyon article would be to say only "Lyon has 30
> 3-star restaurants, including the historic [[Lying Lion]]" :-), while
> the Wikitravel version lists all 30, their addresses, specialties, etc,
> just like a travel book does.

Yeah, nicely put. Actually I think it only has one or two 3-stars. And
I do seem to recall a restaurant with a pun on the word lion/Lyon, but
its name escapes me now.

Steve


from_name: George Herbert

body:
On 2/20/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Thomas Dalton wrote:
>
> >>Ah, but the emails in question contained diffs which they claimed
> >>shewed that the administrators in question were "abusive". Should
> >>those have been let through?
> >>
> >>
> >It's a judgement call. I trust your judgement of the situation. This
> >mailing list isn't the place for complaining about abusive admins,
> >anyway.
> >
> My understanding was that when they are blocked they are told to come to
> this list if they want to take their complaint further.  Is this wrong?
>
> This would seem to account for the fact that most of these complaints
> are from people who had not previously participated in the mailing
> list.  How else would we end up with them?

If they're blocked the block messages tell them that they can appeal
on their talk page or to the unblock-en-l mailing list, not wikien-l.

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


list: commons-l

from_name: samuli at samulilintula.net

subject: [Commons-l] King of the FlickrLickrs

body:
> On 2/19/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> On 2/20/07, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Is there a reason on why flckrlickr doesn't fill in the fields at
>> > {{flickreview}} template?
>>
>> The template was invented only recently, and has been applied to
>> FlickrLickr images even more recently. FlickrLickr images are reviewed
>> & correctly licensed (they were all under CC-BY when my bot spidered
>> them); CC licenses are not revocable. The justification here is that
>> "Another look can't hurt"; I'm worried that it will cause Fear,
>> Uncertainty and Doubt.
>
> *Sigh*
>
> Erik, if a Flickr user misclicked on the dropdown and selected the
> wrong license unknowingly and unintentionally they did not make a
> valid release under that license.  Not only would such an accidental
> and uncompensated release have zero legal standing, it is terrible
> from a position of ethics.

IIRC, and it has been a short while since I uploaded images with
FlickrLickr, a FlickrLickr user *does not* select any license from a
dropdown box.

> Furthermore, there are *many* copyright violations on Flickr.  Flickr
> refuses to take complaints from third parties so it is no wonder the
> accumulate.  A second human review is a good sanity check against
> situations where the flickr user is not really the copyright holder.

Yes, but this chance has already once been reviewed by a FlickrLickr user.
A second checks is just as silly an idea as double checking all images
uploaded directly to Commons.

> I hope that you can see the advantages of review and will withdraw
> your objections.  No one is asking you to do any work on it... and the
> end result should be a healther collection of content and a larger
> community. I think it's a good tradeoff for verses a tiny number of
> potentially ambiguously copyrighted images that we'll lose.

Well, I'm not going to touch any of those images I uploaded with
FlickrLickr. Re-checking them is a waste of time, tagging them was a
stupid move, and I'll let someone else choke on work no one has time to
do.


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

body:
> I am concerned that there has not been a single response beyond this to the
> aggrieved user's post yet.

Perhaps that has something to do with wikien-l not being part of the
dispute resolution procedure?


subject: [WikiEN-l] An idea for deletions

body:
> Proposals come from people.

Judging the proposal by the person that made it is a very poor argument.


body:
Steve Summit wrote:

>Stephen Bain wrote:
>
>
>>Calling someone "abusive" is still an ad hominem statement.
>>Rather than saying "Admin X is abusive!1!" the person should say...
>>
>>
>Indeed he should.  But this is also at the heart of one of the
>rather disturbing asymmetries in the admin/non-admin relationship.
>
Absolutely.  It's in the nature of holding superior power not to see
that one is so much more powerful.

>When a non-admin engaged in a petty dispute complains about some
>of the things being said about him in that dispute, he's often
>told, in so many words, not to take it so personally, to get a
>thicker skin, that Wikipedia can be a harsh place, that if he
>can't stand the heat this kitchen might not be the place for him.
>
>But when a non-admin engaged in a petty dispute with an admin
>calls the admin "abusive", or in a moment of anger refers to the
>admin's revertions of the non-admin's petty edits as "vandalism",
>he's apt to be blocked for this abuse.
>
Even more important is the unwillingness of an admin to enter into a
dialogue.  Perhaps the point was discussed two years ago, but the
present editor was not part of that discussion which may now be buried
deep in the archives.  The arguments may seem repetitious to the admin,
but they are entirely new to the editor.  The question then becomes how
do we respect the views of a new person about an issue which was
previously considered to be long closed.

"Abuse of power", which may be what is often meant by "admin abuse",
means taking advantage of your superior power, status or experience as
the basis for winning a difference of opinion.  Admins have friends in
the Project; without them they would not be admins.  They can easily
call on an available friend to add the extra power needed to win an
argument; some would even see that as abusive. The non-admin may not
have had the time to develop a circle of friends, and is easily
frustrated by the tactics of the admins; he easily falls afoul of
established rules that he does not understand.  He comes here looking
for an advocate who could perhaps mediate the problem.  We do have a
mediation system (I think), but he may not be fully aware of how it
operates.

Steve is talking about systemic issues, and systemic issues are only
rarely imposed systematically.  Inequalities of power are systemic
because mos people who abuse such powers do not realize that they are
doing so, and will honestly deny that it is happening.

Ec


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bot edit rates

body:
Hoi,
When a bot has the bot flag, it is not the recent changes that are
flooded. The default setting for recent changes is NOT to show changes
by bots. It is the changes to the watch list that are affected here the
bot changes ARE shown by default. You can hide the changes to bots..

So the argument is fairly weak.

Thanks,
    GerardM

Andrew Garrett schreef:
> Jeremy Cushman wrote:
>
>> Right now on the English Wikipedia bots are limited to 6 edits per minute.
>> Is it time to raise the permitted edit rate?  Do we have the server capacity
>> now to handle rapid editing?
>> --Mets501
>>
>
> This edit-rate limitation is because nobody wants to flood Recent Changes,
>  not for any particular technical reason. As far as I am aware, given the
>  traffic that the servers already handle, bot traffic is fairly trivial
>  ( current traffic is in excess of 40, 000 SQL queries per second. Please
>  do NOT take this as gospel. Brion, Tim, Domas, Mark and the rest of the
>  sysadmin team know much more about our capacity than I do, so I would
>  recommend checking with them first.
>
> Andrew Garrett
> (werdna)


from_name: Travis Derouin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Tor and proxy_check

body:
FWIW, I did some data gathering. From this list of Tor IPs:

http://proxy.org/tor.shtml

I found that there were only 84 edits on our wiki coming from these
IPs. Most of these edits were vandal edits:

Ex:

http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=149.9.0.56
http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=149.9.0.59

I can appreciate both sides of the argument in this situation, but it
does remain an issue that Tor users are able to change IP addresses
easily and remain anonymous. For smaller wikis, like ourselves, this
can be really problematic if we encounter a motivated vandal.

>From my understanding, if a registered user uses an IP that has been
blocked, they will also be blocked, correct? If a solution that works
as a compromise is to ban just the anonymous edits from this these
IPs, while allowing registered users to edit from these IPs, some sort
of changes to Mediawiki will have to be put in place to accomodate
this, as far as I know. Additionally, this doesn't prevent a vandal
from creating multiple accounts, unless there's a way to increase the
blocking on the IP to the normal, usual level so that registered users
from that IP are also blocked.

Another possibility is that registered users from these IPs will have
to confirm their registration via e-mail, if the wiki isn't configured
to do so already. It'd be nice to have this option just for this
special case.

Travis


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Inheritance problem for CategoryPage.php

body:
On 2/20/07, Jim Hu <jimhu at tamu.edu> wrote:
> I'm trying to write an extension that makes an alternative category
> page where the subcategories are split off from the articles.  I'm
> hooking at CategoryPageView, and I thought that the simplest approach
> would be to extend the CategoryViewer class from CategoryPage.php.
> But when I try that, I get:
>
> [Tue Feb 20 07:26:33 2007] [error] PHP Fatal error:  Class 'Article'
> not found in /Library/WebServer/Documents/wiki/includes/
> CategoryPage.php on line 15

What version is this?  I had some idea this shouldn't happen in 1.7+
due to autoloading.  Not totally sure, though, just a guess.


from_name: Rob

body:
On 2/20/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> However, this list is the
> forum of last resort for people who have been banned from post to Wikipedia.

Shouldn't unblock-en-l serve that function now?

On 2/20/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> Fine literary editing requires a great deal of talent, and even the finest
> writer needs an equally fine editor. But, do all of the persons editing
> (moderating) this list have that degree of talent?

This isn't Granta, this is an Internet mailing list.  I'm sure the
mods are up to the task.


from_name: Parker Peters

body:
On 2/20/07, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/20/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > However, this list is the
> > forum of last resort for people who have been banned from post to
> Wikipedia.
>
> Shouldn't unblock-en-l serve that function now?

If it were actually properly monitored and served a real enforcement
function? Perhaps. Instead, it's just something ignored, yet another rubber
stamp with no real meaning.

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


from_name: Artur Fijałkowski

subject:
[Commons-l] [Foundation-l] Commons request for input: policy
	onautomatic image replacement

body:
2007/2/20, peter green <plugwash w p10link.net>:
>
> personally i think such svg gnomes should be blocked on sight but thats a
> descision for individual projects to make.

So come and ban me for changing bitmap COAs to SVG versions, and I will
delete them without changing to SVG on your project:P

You have axe so nobody can forbid you to cut  off your head!

AJF/WarX
-------------- nast?pna cz??? ---------
Za??????cznik HTML zosta??? usuni???ty...
URL:  http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/attachments/20070220/cc77f595/attachment.htm


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject:
[Commons-l] [Foundation-l] Commons request for input: policy on
	automatic image replacement

body:
On 20/02/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/19/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> [snip]
> > Here are some main ones I know of:
> > * Art. IMO no art "near-duplicates" should be deleted unless they are
> > TRUE duplicates (eg by hash). Colour differences are too subjective to
> > rule which one is the most accurate, so best idea is to keep them all
> > and let local projects decide which to use.
>
> I don't think we should make it a policy to always keep extra images,
> we should do so only when there is an honest and reasonable
> disagreement over which image is better. Many times there is no
> disagreement, and we shouldn't keep around many useless near
> duplicates just because.
>
> So, for example, if a version is unused on other projects there should
> be no problem.

Well in those cases we can virtually do what we like, because no one
will notice. ;)
However I suspect we still have quite an army of hardworking "SVG
gnomes" who spend some time re-linking PNGs as SVGs. Then, when an
admin comes to *look* at the image, it appears that is not used
(virtually, was never used). I don't know what to do about these
gnomes...

> > * Small size PNGs used as icons - may be hand-optimised for rendering
> > in IE, which SVGs will still suffer from (as they thumbnail to PNG but
> > without special treatment).
>
> If the small PNG is not index colors then it hasn't been hacked to
> work around IE's bugs. Like above we shouldn't keep an image unless it
> is actually serving a purpose. Working around IE bugs is a purpose,
> but only if they are actually being used for that.
>
> I'm almost tempted to say that IE bug workarounds should be removed
> from commons. Perhaps some projects would choose not to work around IE
> bugs, and yet we are shoving these workaround images on them?

How is us having images, which any project can choose to use or not,
"shoving" images on anyone? This is a somewhat odd assertion.
Anyway I don't know much about this, I just know it's a reason some
people have. And I personally don't want to push deletion of
non-copyvios when it's going to cause friction between Commons and
another project.

cheers
Brianna


subject: [Wikitech-l] Tor and proxy_check

body:
On 2/20/07, Travis Derouin <travis at wikihow.com> wrote:
> From my understanding, if a registered user uses an IP that has been
> blocked, they will also be blocked, correct? If a solution that works
> as a compromise is to ban just the anonymous edits from this these
> IPs, while allowing registered users to edit from these IPs, some sort
> of changes to Mediawiki will have to be put in place to accomodate
> this, as far as I know.

Such changes were committed some time ago.  They're definitely in 1.9,
possibly in 1.8 (can't remember offhand).  There's now an option to
block only anonymous edits from an IP.

> Additionally, this doesn't prevent a vandal
> from creating multiple accounts, unless there's a way to increase the
> blocking on the IP to the normal, usual level so that registered users
> from that IP are also blocked.

It's also possible to block only account creation from an IP, thanks
to the same set of changes to blocking.  I don't think anyone minds if
Tor accounts are allowed to edit from registered accounts, the
question is whether they should a) be allowed to edit anonymously
(answer: no), and/or b) be allowed to create accounts (answer: maybe).

> Another possibility is that registered users from these IPs will have
> to confirm their registration via e-mail, if the wiki isn't configured
> to do so already. It'd be nice to have this option just for this
> special case.

Interesting point, but you could use the same address for all the
accounts, surely, and the only ones who could tell (and, e.g., block
the address somehow) would be people with database access.  So you
could just create adjgi39qaikc at hotmail.com and use it for all your
accounts, and no one would be the wiser.  (I assume we don't enforce
unique e-mail addresses, but even if we do, you could have
adjgi39qaikc+1 at gmail.com, adjgi39qaikc+2 at gmail.com, etc., which will
all be delivered to you.)


from_name: Platonides

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
>> If i had such free service, i'd set a server doing it for me :P
>> If it's a 'private' service, things gets easier:
>> -Authentication: Use a variable account name as password.
>
> A "variable account name"?

I didn't explain well. If today you need to post by sending an email to
wikipost5de133e7d at example.com, tomorrow to
wikipostc9ece41a19 at example.com and so on, it's higly difficult to
impersonate you (without being a man-in-the-middle, which could catch
your password on http, too).


from_name: Anthere

body:
No, I said that if a technical change was required and would impact the
entire community, then the entire community should agree.

ant

PS: from a personal point of view, I think one month and a half is a
hell of a long time :-)

effe iets anders wrote:
> I think anthere tried to explain that those changes have to be made on every
> wiki. Not technically, but regarding policy. If I read correct, the
> foundtaion wants that the technical side of every language project is about
> the same, to make it easy to switch from one project to another.
>
> In that case, I would like to add that the move page functionality should be
> given to both users with a certain time of existance, but also to sysops.
> That is because of the stewards, reverting vandalism on small wiki's then.
> But that might be logical anyway. I think in that case two weeks makes more
> sense then one and a half month. That is imho just far too long. In one
> month a person is usually able to vote in votes, and is already sometimes
> part of the hardcore community. Two weeks might even be too long.
>
> Lodewijk
>
> 2007/2/20, Titoxd at Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at gmail.com>:
>
>>Well, this is a technical change to one site's configuration of a
>>magnitude
>>similar to adding an extra namespace to a wiki. More technically, it means
>>modifying one wiki's LocalSettings.php file. I'm not entirely sure how
>>changing $wgAutoConfirmAge on pt.wikipedia.org will affect
>>en.wikipedia.org,
>>for example. Technically, those settings are completely independent of one
>>another, as they reside on separate files. The only way one wiki's
>>technical
>>requests affect everyone is when there is something *added* to MediaWiki,
>>and those effects are due to a new setting added to MediaWiki's
>>DefaultSettings.php file. As this isn't the case, since the functionality
>>is
>>already there (that's the reason there's a four-day page-move restriction
>>in
>>*all* Wikimedia wikis), changing it on one should not affect the other
>>ones.
>>I'm not sure if Anthere's worry is that a setting of 45 days in pt: will
>>mean changing the setting to 45 days everywhere else, but if that is it,
>>then there is no reason to worry. Looking at the code, there is absolutely
>>no reason why the change would impact other wikis outside the Portuguese
>>Wikipedia.
>>
>>Titoxd.
>>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
>>[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Anthere
>>Sent: Monday, February 19, 2007 3:17 PM
>>To: foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>>Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Restriction on page
>>movesinpt.wikipedia.orgThankyou
>>
>>Thomas Dalton wrote:
>>
>>>>First, having a software displaying different behavior depending on the
>>>>language/project is a bad idea. It makes things very complex and users
>>>>travelling from one language to another are likely to find this
>>
>>disturbing.
>>
>>>
>>>That same logic could be used to say all languages should have the
>>>same system for RFA, AFD, etc. It was decided a long time ago that
>>>different languages would be allowed to decide their own policies.
>>>Policies which are enforced by the software are no different from any
>>>other policies.
>>
>>No, it is not the same. Policies with social implications (such as RFA,
>>AFD) may be developped independently by each community, without having
>>any consequences on the choice made by other communities.
>>
>>Policies with technical implications may imply that a decision made by
>>one community, will be forced over the other communities. This is what
>>happened for many many months, as all software evolutions were driven by
>>the english community and forced over the other communities along the
>>way. We are no more in these times. If a change of software is
>>suggested, which could impact all communities, then there must be a
>>general agreement that this is a good idea.
>>
>>Note that I do not say the suggestion is good or bad. I simply say "do
>>not expect a top down decision".
>>
>>ant
>>
>>
>>>Personally, I think 45 days is rather long, and I'm a little
>>>uncomfortable with it apparently being handled as a vote (although the
>>>results of the vote don't leave much room for interpretation, so it
>>>probably makes no difference), but if that's how pt want to do things,
>>>it's entirely up to them.
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Bureaucrats' noticeboard: Redesigning adminship

body:
Note Durin's *great* work at WP:BN -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:BN#Redesigning_adminship

RFA is suffering the "a group is its own worst enemy" problem.

(Note that I don't think Wikipedia as a whole is. Almost all articles
are uncontroversial. It's amazing it scales as well as it has.)

- d.


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Foundation-l] Database dumps

body:
Annabel wrote:

>Bot users are able download database dumps of the wikimedia projects at
>http://download.wikimedia.org/backup-index.html.
>These bzipped dumps can be fairly large (especially for the English
>language). Would not it be handy to have a bitorrent link to lower the
>load on the download server?
>
>

This was recently discussed briefly on wikitech-l, and the tentative
consensus seemed to be that, while that might be useful, it's not a high
priority because downloads of the database dumps don't currently account
for a large percentage of Wikimedia's total bandwidth consumption, and
so aren't the first place to look for bandwidth savings.

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Database dumps


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 16:46:58 -0500 (EST), "Jeff Raymond"
<jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:

>I don't know if I know 100 of those admins, but I could probably rattle
>off 10 abusive ones as of that date.

Name and shame.  I'll start the RfC myself.  Unless I'm on the list,
of course...

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Tor and proxy_check

body:
On 20/02/07, Mark E <mark at edwards.org> wrote:

> I see. Block Tor exit nodes. Translated: "Punish 10's of thousands of
> college students, business users, and ISP customers, because of the
> actions of one or two people."  Uh, ya.
> Blocking open proxies is one thing. No wonder one of the settings in the
> Tor client was called "Fascist Firewall" -- if you catch my drift.

The reason they're blocked is the practical problem: despite
theoretically being sources of valuable content, in practice they're a
firehose of sewage.

Even Freenode blocked all Tor users for quite a while.

>From http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bash :

<Tony_Sidaway> "WHY DO YOU HATE FREEDOM?" nearly always translates to "WHY DO
               YOU HATE PEOPLE COMING AND SPRAYING PISS ALL OVER YOUR LIVING
               ROOM?"

- d.


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
Of course there's gonna be overlap.

"The first problem with this simplistic view is that there is a huge
amount of overlap. For example: "Lyon is a city in France with 1
million inhabitants" - WikiTravel, Wikipedia, or both?"
That is geographical information perfectly acceptable for both an
encyclopedic article and a travel guide.

"Its main visitor attractions are its churches, renowned gastronomic
restaurants
and art galleries - Wiki travel, Wikipedia or both?"
Neither. Those are the visitor attractions of any city that has them. It
provides no helpfulm information. If they're all named with address and
details: WikiTravel. Famous landmarks and buildings can also be mentioned in
Wikipedia.

"It is served by two airports and is a major stop on the Paris-Marseille TGV
line -
same question."
Both

On 2/20/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 2/20/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > setup. My ideal for the Lyon article would be to say only "Lyon has 30
> > 3-star restaurants, including the historic [[Lying Lion]]" :-), while
> > the Wikitravel version lists all 30, their addresses, specialties, etc,
> > just like a travel book does.
>
> Yeah, nicely put. Actually I think it only has one or two 3-stars. And
> I do seem to recall a restaurant with a pun on the word lion/Lyon, but
> its name escapes me now.
>
> Steve
>
Precisely my point. There's some things that simply don't belong on
Wikipedia under any circumstances. I just believe that channeling such
energy to other projects is more productive than simply removing it without
any comment on alternative placement.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

references:
<BAY103-F169B87AEEC05F6DDEAD5C5E88A0@phx.gbl>
	<45D99F9C.9070609@gmail.com>
	<fbad4e140702190505o6aff4cfay40d2d6bb1d3d69cf@mail.gmail.com>
	<45D9A1B3.7040402@gmail.com>
	<17sjt21ho25q4tcnvohjb4umln7f4v8nue@4ax.com>
	<45DAC91D.8000400@shaw.ca>

body:
On Tue, 20 Feb 2007 03:10:37 -0700, Bryan Derksen
<bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

>Would making it more explicit, say by restricting the list to only the
>top five hundred tall men rather than some specific height, be an
>improvement?

Not really.  500 is an arbitrary number.  We can fix it by including
only those identified by reliable secondary sources as being tall in
context.  So a 6'1" Sumo would be in, but a 7' BB player probably not.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 12:58:29 -0800 (PST), Cheney Shill
<halliburton_shill at yahoo.com> wrote:

>> THIS IS THE POLICE!
>> DROP THE STICK AND STEP AWAY FROM THE HORSE CARCASS!

>That's a good first try.  You should use "interrogation
>officer".  Suggesting you're a public servent may result in
>long term incarceration instead of just getting fired and
>rehired by one of our affiliated corporations.  Also,
>terrorist detainees will neve have sticks.  Just get them
>naked and drop them on the horse and let nature take it's
>course.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:STICK

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


body:
On Tue, 20 Feb 2007 17:24:01 +0900, "Mark Ryan" <ultrablue at gmail.com>
wrote:

>This is in response to my rejection of two emails, both of which I
>considered to contain personal attacks because they called various
>administrators 'abusive' etc. What are the thoughts of subscribers to
>the list on this? What would the appropriate course of action have
>been?

The mods of this list are conservative in their interpretation,
allowing people the benefit of the doubt long after some of us have
written them off as a bad job.  I join the small chorus backing your
sound judgment on this.

For my money, a properly stated case against an admin from an editor
with a history and a decent reputation is never a problem.  The vast
majority of complaints about admin behaviour are generic "rouge admin
abuse" crap and can safely be ignored, especially if they can't bring
themselves to state it in a civil manner.  Sounds like this lot fails
on both levels.

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


body:
On 20/02/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm also curious about the content of these messages. I have been pushed
> on this list to provide evidence for abusive admins.
> If calling an admin "abusive" is itself a personal attack, then am I in
> danger of being moderated when I provide such evidence? Is it the mere
> fact that the user in question called certain admins "abusive" the
> grounds for not posting the message?

If you're decently substantiating a serious accusation then that's not
a serious concern. I mean, really.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admins worthy of review

body:
On 2/20/07, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> There has been a request to "count" the admins that we have encountered at
> Wikipedia, who may at one time or another have chaffed non-admin editors.
> Some of the most difficult actions that I've seen from admins are those
> who
> get into a conflict with a non-admin editor, then block the non-admin
> editor, then erase or censor the history of the discussion, then chastise
> the non-admin editor in private or off-Wikipedia correspondence.
>
> Some of the admins I have seen fulfill all or most of these distasteful
> actions are:
>
> User:Pschemp
> (
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Travb&diff=next&oldid=104576572
> )
> -- this admin has been very active in the past with blocking IP addresses
> and such.  But, I feel a line was crossed when discussion between two
> OTHER
> users was censored because it posed a situation whose implications Pschemp
> didn't like.
>
> User:JzG
> (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:JzG&diff=prev&oldid=107526553
> ) -- my interpretation is that this admin was dishonest in his edit
> summary
> when he deleted an article from Wikipedia, by saying "article created by a
> banned user while banned".  The date of article creation was June 2005,
> about 15 months before any banning related to this company took
> place.  So,
> there is an untruth in the public record (
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=ICR/International_Communications_Research
> ),
> but when attention is called to it, that comment gets deleted by a "Troll
> B
> Gon" device with unlimited comedic value and an equally boundless disdain
> for civility.
>
> User:Lucky 6.9
> (
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=User_talk:Lucky_6.9
> )
> -- this guy was quite famous for making edits and dishing out User blocks,
> then when properly-formatted complaints would be leveled to the
> administrative heirarchy, he would try to censor out the complaints before
> anyone was able to take action.  It looks like he self-destructed before
> the
> ArbCom or anyone higher could desysop him.
>
> Now, those are merely three off the top of my head, just from my
> experience.  I will venture a guess that the WikiEN-l list will now work
> to
> discredit me personally, because I brought these examples to the group's
> attention.  What will THAT process then say about the cultural health of
> the
> admin community?
>
> --
> Gregory Kohs
> Cell: 302.463.1354
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Pschemp's action looks perfectly valid; the user in question was a
sockpuppet/meatpuppet that was editing user pages to reflect an opinion that
the user did not hold.

While JzG's action may or may not have been within policy, it's certainly
within judgment, and he has the right to remove posts by a banned user
harassing him.

Lucky 6.9's actions are valid; the right to vanish allows a user in good
standing to have their talk page deleted.

--
Sincerely,
Ral315
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ral315


from_name: Thomas Dalton

body:
> I know that the list admins have been criticized of late for letting
> through messages that people have questioned. However, this list is the
> forum of last resort for people who have been banned from post to Wikipedia.

It rarely does any good, though. It would be better if they emailed
the admin in question, or ArbCom.

> I'm one of those who see very little harm in letting through a hostile
> message. No one is forced to read the message.

There is no way to know if you want to read a message before you've
read it, so you are forcing people to either read the message or not
read the list at all. (You could read all the messages that don't
mention admin abuse in the subject line, I suppose, but that would
still result in you not reading perfectly good messages about admin
abuse.)


from_name: Jim Hu

body:
I'm developing the extension for 1.8.3.  I have now gotten the basic
version working with the minor hack to CategoryPage.php.

So far, it improves on CategoryPage.php in two ways:
Shows the subcategories no matter how many articles are shown
Shows the real counts for articles when the number is >200.

I'm hoping to make it more like Special:Allpages next...I'm using it
on a wiki where there are categories with >100K articles in the
biggest categories:

http://gowiki.tamu.edu/GO/wiki/index.php/Category:Eukaryota

Paging through 200 at a time gets old fast!!
=====================================
Jim Hu
Associate Professor
Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
2128 TAMU
Texas A&M Univ.
College Station, TX 77843-2128
979-862-4054

On Feb 20, 2007, at 11:56 AM, Simetrical wrote:

> On 2/20/07, Jim Hu <jimhu at tamu.edu> wrote:
>> I'm trying to write an extension that makes an alternative category
>> page where the subcategories are split off from the articles.  I'm
>> hooking at CategoryPageView, and I thought that the simplest approach
>> would be to extend the CategoryViewer class from CategoryPage.php.
>> But when I try that, I get:
>>
>> [Tue Feb 20 07:26:33 2007] [error] PHP Fatal error:  Class 'Article'
>> not found in /Library/WebServer/Documents/wiki/includes/
>> CategoryPage.php on line 15
>
> What version is this?  I had some idea this shouldn't happen in 1.7+
> due to autoloading.  Not totally sure, though, just a guess.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Samuel L Bronkowitz

body:
On 2/20/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
>
> Mark Ryan wrote:
> > For transparency, the moderated user "countpointercount" has the
> > following message for subscribers to the mailing list:
> >
> > 'Your "moderators" are now claiming that any reporting of abusive
> > administrators is a "personal attack." This is obvious coverup
> > behavior.'
> >
> >
> > This is in response to my rejection of two emails, both of which I
> > considered to contain personal attacks because they called various
> > administrators 'abusive' etc. What are the thoughts of subscribers to
> > the list on this? What would the appropriate course of action have
> > been?
> >
>
> Having  been cc'd on one of those rejected messages, I think you made
> the right decision.
>
> I looked into the user in question, and he was being contentious and
> difficult on AIV within 30 minutes of creating his account. I'd give
> 10:1 odds that he's a sockpuppet doing the standard
> I'm-really-not-a-sockpuppet dance. His refusal to calm down and the
> stridency of his accusations aren't helping, either.
>
> On the off chance that his he's really a well-meaning user, it seems to
> me that he doesn't have a lot invested in that account, and he's already
> gotten himself a bad reputation. If he's still following this list, I'd
> suggest that he just let this incident go and take a month's break from
> Wikipedia. Then when he has cooled down, he can start fresh with a new
> account. As long as he becomes a good contributor and  behaves
> appropriately, nobody will know or care that he once got off on the
> wrong foot.
>
>
> I know some people are concerned that this is censorship, and is
> blocking an avenue of appeal. If people are really worried about that,
> we could create another list where we try to sort the wheat from the
> chaff and talk down from the ledge people who are upset, legitimately or
> not. Something between an ombudsman, a help desk, and a therapist. I'd
> rather not see that traffic on this list, but I'm glad to serve on that
> other list.
>
> William

Lie much?

"he was being contentious and
difficult on AIV within 30 minutes of creating his account."

You mean, I spoke up on Adminstrator's Noticeboard (AIV?) about something I
saw that I considered to be improper behavior: the deliberate provocation of
a user, by an admin, conduct which would never have been countenanced were
they not an admin, a Checkuser filed obviously as a fishing expedition, and
obviously falsified results that could have no bearing on the case.

Coverup.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Admins blocking each other

body:
I have a couple of questions.

First of all, in what circumstances should an admin block another admin?

Second of all, is it somehow "dishonest" for an admin to unblock
themselves when they honestly believe they have done nothing wrong?
Does it make them untrustworthy if they do not observe a block imposed
upon them by another admin?

Third of all, isn't it considered wheel-warring if one admin
constantly tries to block another, who constantly unblocks themselves?
If this occurs, who is in the wrong? The blocking admin, I would
assume?

I ask this because I am being repeatedly blocked on the Navajo
Wikipedia by a new admin who seems to have popped up out of nowhere
(despite an interesting history on the English Wikipedia and
elsewhere), Jeff Merkey.

The reasons he gave for blocking me were legal threats (later
clarified as "legal baiting", referring to me saying "hopefully you're
not going to ... sue me for libel", referring to what I perceive to be
a history of legal threats on the English Wikipedia, while this phrase
may not be exactly "nice", I hardly think it violates NLT),
sockpuppetry (to be more specific, he has accused me of cross-Wiki
sockpuppetry, rather than having two different usernames or accounts
at the same Wiki), and personal attacks (after having called me a
spammer, a vandal, and a troll, he's certainly one to talk).

He also said "stay off this wiki for the next couple of weeks ... and
think about ... why I or any other editor could place our trust in an
Admin who unblocks themselves", leading me to wonder what the expected
response is when one admin blocks another.

A few days ago, he also requested this: "Please stop wheel warring
with me. It is not allowed." which begs the question: doesn't it take
two admins to wheel war?

He has accused me of "breaking the rules" many times, but when I ask
him for a citation of which rules have been broken, he simply tells me
again that I am "breaking the rules" and that he will not tolerate it.

Back again to the main topic, I have not actually blocked him. If he
were not an admin, I likely would've at least already given him
several warnings for his extensive personal attacks, but I for one
recognize that admins need to be afforded a greater deal of leeway and
of course that it would be pointless anyhow as he can simply unblock
himself.

Considering the fact that his only contributions at all to that Wiki
so far have been harassing me and reverting the work of the communist
vandal (which I could have done just as easily), I am wondering why he
was made an admin in the first place, since he is obviously not very
good at the language (I admit it is not my native language either, but
he does not seem to know more than a couple words).

But I digress, the main issue of this post is intended to be the issue
of admins blocking one another; I got off on a tangent, but I feel I'm
perfectly capable of handling the rest of this situation myself
through diplomacy since he claims to have some valuable resources for
the development of nv.wp.

Mark

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


body:
On 2/20/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
>
> Mark Ryan wrote:
> > For transparency, the moderated user "countpointercount" has the
> > following message for subscribers to the mailing list:
> >
> > 'Your "moderators" are now claiming that any reporting of abusive
> > administrators is a "personal attack." This is obvious coverup
> > behavior.'
> >
> >
> > This is in response to my rejection of two emails, both of which I
> > considered to contain personal attacks because they called various
> > administrators 'abusive' etc. What are the thoughts of subscribers to
> > the list on this? What would the appropriate course of action have
> > been?
> >
>
> Having  been cc'd on one of those rejected messages, I think you made
> the right decision.

I've now seen one of them, and I'm convinced the decision was completely
wrong: the diffs were both valid and exposed serious abusive behavior going
on.

I looked into the user in question, and he was being contentious and
> difficult on AIV within 30 minutes of creating his account.

{{fact}}

[[Diff Needed]]

I didn't see anything of the sort: what I did see is a user making a very
legitimate question, and being attacked and railroaded through an abusive
and quite possibly false CheckUser for his troubles.

I'd give
> 10:1 odds that he's a sockpuppet doing the standard
> I'm-really-not-a-sockpuppet dance. His refusal to calm down and the
> stridency of his accusations aren't helping, either.

The abject refusal of anyone to make any serious enquiry into his complaint,
the ongoing abuse of his talk page when he tried to file for unblock, and
the continual abusive tactics displayed by many administrators in trying to
shut off further enquiry on the WP:ANI board aren't helping him to calm
down, either. They're more proving his accusations had some truth behind
them.

On the off chance that his he's really a well-meaning user, it seems to
> me that he doesn't have a lot invested in that account, and he's already
> gotten himself a bad reputation.

You mean, he's already been attacked and his "reputation" meaninglessly
blackened by people who will defend administrator behavior no matter how
wrong they are.

If he's still following this list, I'd
> suggest that he just let this incident go and take a month's break from
> Wikipedia. Then when he has cooled down, he can start fresh with a new
> account. As long as he becomes a good contributor and  behaves
>
appropriately, nobody will know or care that he once got off on the
> wrong foot.

Which means that he is blocked from participating in anything on WP:ANI or
reporting bad behavior by administrators: a clever ruse to stop anyone from
reporting administrators, given that administrators are given free reign of
terror whilst anyone reporting them has to get past the wringer of
accusations to even file a report.

I know some people are concerned that this is censorship, and is
> blocking an avenue of appeal.

Yes, it is. There's no real controversy there: the behavior I'm seeing, from
start to finish, has been administrators consistently doing their best to
shut off legitimate complaints about the behavior of an administrator.

Why? Because if one administrator's actions can be questioned, they all can,
and we have too many administrators here who are way too attached to their
own power.

If people are really worried about that,
> we could create another list where we try to sort the wheat from the
> chaff and talk down from the ledge people who are upset, legitimately or
> not. Something between an ombudsman, a help desk, and a therapist. I'd
> rather not see that traffic on this list, but I'm glad to serve on that
> other list.
>
> William

The "other list" is called unblock-en-l, but it's a joke and serves not as a
legitimate place of complaint, but a mere rubber stamp to certify the
"godliness" of admins, no matter how abusive an action they take.

Parker

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admins worthy of review

body:
On 2/20/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 20/02/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 2/20/07, Ral315 <en.ral315 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Lucky 6.9's actions are valid; the right to vanish allows a user in
> good
> > > standing to have their talk page deleted.
>
> > No it does not since the talk page doesn't really belong to that user
> > and is part of the communities' records.
>
>
> In practice we seem to take a "possibly" approach.
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

In general I'd prefer that talk pages be kept, but Jimbo has made courtesy
deletes of both user and user talk pages under right to vanish on a couple
occasions, and I've seen other admins do it without much of a fuss.

--
Sincerely,
Ral315
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ral315


body:
On 20/02/07, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/20/07, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Ah, but the emails in question contained diffs which they claimed
> > shewed that the administrators in question were "abusive". Should
> > those have been let through?

> Calling someone "abusive" is still an ad hominem statement. Rather
> than saying "Admin X is abusive!1!" the person should say "Admin X
> engaged in behaviour on Y page that seemed abusive to me, here's some
> diffs..."

wikien-l is to some extent an official channel for complaint. Starting
unduly stroppy is generally forgivable.

But if the accusations are serious, list readers will reasonably
expect details and diffs.

- d.


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 20/02/07, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think anthere tried to explain that those changes have to be made on every
> wiki. Not technically, but regarding policy. If I read correct, the
> foundtaion wants that the technical side of every language project is about
> the same, to make it easy to switch from one project to another.


body:
On 20/02/07, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think anthere tried to explain that those changes have to be made on every
> wiki. Not technically, but regarding policy. If I read correct, the
> foundtaion wants that the technical side of every language project is about
> the same, to make it easy to switch from one project to another.

>From anthere's original post:

:::So, any change in that respect must be reflected in all languages (I
:::presume the cutoff at 15 or 45 could be negociable depending on
:::communities, but the concept of having a cutoff should be global).

I read that and came away with:

a) the basic way in which we give out permissions, 'a user of type X
can do Y things', should be consistent across all projects; but

b) *but* the details of quite where any project draws the boundaries can vary

So "a normal user should be able to edit all pages", say, should be
the same everywhere. "A normal user should be able to edit
semi-protected pages and move pages, after some threshold, but not
edit protected ones" should be the same everywhere.

But little details like what constitutes a "threshold", or the like,
can vary - age of the account? age since first edit? number of edits?
a combination? what's a viable number for either - five days/twenty
edits? Likewise, the exact requirements for becoming an admin or
deleting an article inevitably vary across projects, but the idea of
"there will be a vague set of standards and consensus among those
discussing it" is constant.

(As an aside, if we're talking uniform behaviour across wikis, now
would be a good time to rediscuss the IP-page-creation policy on
enwp...)

> In that case, I would like to add that the move page functionality should be
> given to both users with a certain time of existance, but also to sysops.
> That is because of the stewards, reverting vandalism on small wiki's then.

Valid point. Any technical issues with this?

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


body:
On 2/20/07, Jim Hu <jimhu at tamu.edu> wrote:
> I'm developing the extension for 1.8.3.  I have now gotten the basic
> version working with the minor hack to CategoryPage.php.
>
> So far, it improves on CategoryPage.php in two ways:
> Shows the subcategories no matter how many articles are shown
> Shows the real counts for articles when the number is >200.
>
> I'm hoping to make it more like Special:Allpages next...I'm using it
> on a wiki where there are categories with >100K articles in the
> biggest categories:
>
> http://gowiki.tamu.edu/GO/wiki/index.php/Category:Eukaryota
>
> Paging through 200 at a time gets old fast!!

Are you using COUNT(*)?  That's O(N) on InnoDB, which is why we don't
use it: too slow for large categories.  If you have an extra field in
the database somewhere rather than COUNT(*), maybe it would be good
for trunk (although that's for Tim, Domas, etc. to decide).


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 2/20/07, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikilist at gmail.com> wrote:
> Are you using COUNT(*)?  That's O(N) on InnoDB, which is why we don't
> use it: too slow for large categories.  If you have an extra field in
> the database somewhere rather than COUNT(*), maybe it would be good
> for trunk (although that's for Tim, Domas, etc. to decide).

O(N).. er.
Ah, you mean O(N) on results...


body:
On 20/02/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:

> I also have a problem with someone censoring what I read based on their own
> personal sensitivity.

I really don't think that's an accurate description of what actually happens.

- d.


from_name: min Sui

subject: [Foundation-l] Support WMF via GoodSearch

body:
Hi.

I made a quick javaScript hack for Special:Search
from french wikipedia -> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Monobook.js

this shows like this -> http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search
it's shows this way.
1. input word(s) to search box
2. click search
and select search engine you like, will make
result search from paticuler project.
( my script points to ja.wikipedia.org you can change it ;)
and the source is here -> http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.js
anyone can use it freely.

thanks.

suisui
suisui at gmail.com

2007/2/15, the wub <thewub.wiki at googlemail.com>:
> You can also use a link like
> http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=812661<http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=xxx>that
> links to the search page with WMF pre-selected, which will be good to
> promote this.
> ** <http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=xxx>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Caching changes and troubles

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> A few hours ago Tim changed how the wiki handles output buffering and
> compression so that a Content-Length HTTP header can be sent.
>
> The primary benefit of this is that the Squid proxies in Amsterdam and
> Seoul will be better able to maintain persistent connections to Tampa,
> which should improve performance for logged-in visitors in Europe and Asia.

Here's a graph showing the effect on the service time histogram:

https://wikitech.leuksman.com/view/Image:Service_time_histogram_keepalive.png

Maybe not as large as I had hoped, but it's certainly a step in the right
direction.

-- Tim Starling


body:
On 20/02/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:

> If you get to the point where you need to ask the list if you should have
> moderated the message, you should send it to the list. Sending a message
> saying that you considered moderation because of its tone may be
> appropriate.
> I.e., when in doubt, err on the side of transparency.
> We're not children here; we can take the random annoying message.

This is pretty much how it works. The moderation is basically to keep
the level of utter crap down to manageable levels.

(We're back to having new members start moderated. It was nice while it lasted.)

- d.


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 2/20/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/20/07, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikilist at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Are you using COUNT(*)?  That's O(N) on InnoDB, which is why we don't
> > use it: too slow for large categories.  If you have an extra field in
> > the database somewhere rather than COUNT(*), maybe it would be good
> > for trunk (although that's for Tim, Domas, etc. to decide).
>
> O(N).. er.
> Ah, you mean O(N) on results...

I believe it's O(N) on number of rows in the table, actually, not just
on number of results (which any query is going to be, I guess,
although I don't know much of anything about computational
complexity).  I was really just repeating what Tim said:

> It's a common pitfall
> for new developers to submit code containing SQL queries which examine
> huge numbers of rows. Remember that COUNT(*) is O(N), counting rows in a
> table is like counting beans in a bucket.
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/docs/database.txt?view=markup

Apparently this is because of the transactional nature of the tables
<http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/group-by-functions.html>.  I'm
not sure why it couldn't maintain a slightly-inaccurate count (so that
behavior doesn't differ between storage engines, I guess), but it
doesn't, apparently, so it has to recount them every time.

Then again, probably I misunderstood you and am not telling you
anything you didn't already know.


body:
On 20/02/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> on 2/20/07 8:36 AM, David Gerard at dgerard at gmail.com wrote:
> > On 20/02/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:

> >> I also have a problem with someone censoring what I read based on their own
> >> personal sensitivity.

> > I really don't think that's an accurate description of what actually happens.

> When someone else decides that what I have written isn't suitable for
> someone else's eyes - what else do you call it but censorship.

In that case it's an argument in favour of "censorship." This is
supposed to be a list with a working purpose and appropriately
relevant content for a project with a working purpose and
appropriately relevant content, not a random soapbox.

- d.


body:
On Tue, 20 Feb 2007 08:47:14 -0500, Marc Riddell
<michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:

>When someone else decides that what I have written isn't suitable for
>someone else's eyes - what else do you call it but censorship.

Helping you not to make a fool of yourself?  It's one possibility,
anyway.,

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


body:
Yeah, I'm using COUNT(*)...and it is slow.  But for some uses on low
traffic sites like mine, it's a tradeoff some sysadmins will be
willing to take.  I don't see this getting used on wikipedia for
performance reasons, as you note.

I was thinking about how one might cache the count, but then it seems
to me that you need all kinds of triggers for whenever the category
links change... I'm much too much of a newbie to dive that far into
the code...at least so far, and I don't know if this can even be done
as an extension without a lot of new hooks.

I'm sure the rest of you have given this much more thought than I have.
=====================================
Jim Hu
Associate Professor
Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
2128 TAMU
Texas A&M Univ.
College Station, TX 77843-2128
979-862-4054

On Feb 20, 2007, at 1:14 PM, Simetrical wrote:

> On 2/20/07, Jim Hu <jimhu at tamu.edu> wrote:
>> I'm developing the extension for 1.8.3.  I have now gotten the basic
>> version working with the minor hack to CategoryPage.php.
>>
>> So far, it improves on CategoryPage.php in two ways:
>> Shows the subcategories no matter how many articles are shown
>> Shows the real counts for articles when the number is >200.
>>
>> I'm hoping to make it more like Special:Allpages next...I'm using it
>> on a wiki where there are categories with >100K articles in the
>> biggest categories:
>>
>> http://gowiki.tamu.edu/GO/wiki/index.php/Category:Eukaryota
>>
>> Paging through 200 at a time gets old fast!!
>
> Are you using COUNT(*)?  That's O(N) on InnoDB, which is why we don't
> use it: too slow for large categories.  If you have an extra field in
> the database somewhere rather than COUNT(*), maybe it would be good
> for trunk (although that's for Tim, Domas, etc. to decide).
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Gwern Branwen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admins worthy of review

body:
geni <geniice at gmail.com> writes:

> On 2/20/07, Ral315 <en.ral315 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Lucky 6.9's actions are valid; the right to vanish allows a user in good
>> standing to have their talk page deleted.
>
> No it does not since the talk page doesn't really belong to that user
> and is part of the communities' records.
>
> --
> geni

As I recall, didn't practice use to be that as a courtesy and a part of
right to vanish, userspace articles could be deleted at a user's request
- as long as they weren't needed for other purposes like for Arbcom or
misc. vandal whacking? When did that change?

--
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Marc Riddell [mailto:michaeldavid86 at comcast.net]
>Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2007 07:22 AM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Moderation on this mailing list
>
>on 2/20/07 9:10 AM, Jimmy Wales at jwales at wikia.com wrote:
>
>> Marc Riddell wrote:
>>> When someone else decides that what I have written isn't suitable for
>>> someone else's eyes - what else do you call it but censorship.
>>
>> Editorial judgment.
>>
>> It's what we do.
>>
>> --Jimbo
>
>Fine literary editing requires a great deal of talent, and even the finest
>writer needs an equally fine editor. But, do all of the persons editing
>(moderating) this list have that degree of talent?
>
>Marc

No, but that is the school they are attending, as are all Wikipedia editors.

Fred


body:
On 20/02/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:

> Fine literary editing requires a great deal of talent, and even the finest
> writer needs an equally fine editor. But, do all of the persons editing
> (moderating) this list have that degree of talent?

No, which is why we try to keep a light hand and err on the side of
letting stuff through. It takes a remarkable level of stupid for us to
bother doing anything.

- d.


body:
Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> writes:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>> Marc Riddell wrote:
>>
>>> When someone else decides that what I have written isn't suitable for
>>> someone else's eyes - what else do you call it but censorship.
>>>
>>
>> Editorial judgment.
>>
>> It's what we do.
>>
>> --Jimbo
>>
> Uh-oh, I can see the headlines now -
>
> "Wikipedia founder favors censorship, calls it "editorial judgment"'
>
> "Your company censored from Wikipedia? Wales is OK with that"
>
> "The British government has learned that Jimmy Wales has sought
> significant quantities of censorship - from Africa"
>
> :-)
>
> Stan

"There ought to be limits to freedom."

"One of the great things about Wikipedia articles is, sometimes there
are some fantastic pictures."

"I know that the editors and the readers can coexist peacefully."

"This is an impressive crowd ? the edits and the edit-mores. Some people
call you the elites; I call you my admins."

"They want editors controlling articles editorially - like it's some
kind of encyclopedia.

"Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof --
the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a vandalized main
page."

And finally:

"Vandals never stop thinking about how to hurt Wikipedia, and neither do we."

--
Gwern
Guess the unadulterated quote!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

references:
<C1FF8B1E.1A24%michaeldavid86@comcast.net>
	<45DA3D47.6080805@earthlink.net> <45DAA370.4080703@telus.net>

body:
Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> writes:

> Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>>Marc Riddell wrote:
>>
>>
>>>on 2/19/07 4:50 PM, Jossi Fresco at jossifresco at mac.com wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>I speak of a culture that has
>>>>produced the most amazing results in the history of on-line
>>>>collaboration.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Is the same culture that began WP the same one in place today?
>>>
>>>
>>I just crossed my four-year anniversary, and while I can't speak to the
>>beginning, the culture hasn't really changed much in my time here.
>>
> I thought you were here longer than that.  I think the culture has
> changed.  The Seigenthaler incident was a big turning point in that.
> After that the rule bound control freaks seem to have become more
> dominant.  We had to respond to Seigenthaler, but in the process we
> ended up with a lot of unnecesarily restrictive procedures.
....

Definitely agreed. We can't even sensibly discuss restoring anon page
creation, despite the utter lack of evidence either way that it worked.

--
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.


from_name: jkelly at fas.harvard.edu

subject: [Foundation-l] RfC: Draft licensing policy resolution

body:
  Hi,

Quoting Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
> # Such EDPs must be minimal. Whenever possible, content used under an
> EDP should be replaced with a freely licensed work if it carries
> equivalent information content. Media used under EDPs are subject to
> deletion if there is rough consensus that they lack an applicable
> rationale. They must be used only in the context of other freely
> licensed content, and may not be arranged in galleries.

  I suggest that this needs some additional discussion.  If en:'s experience is
typical, saying that replaceable unfree media is acceptable until it is
actually replaced, instead of being possible in theory to replace, reduces the
incentive to create or find free content considerably.  Further, I'd suggest
that the "burden of consensus" really needs to be that the unfree media is a
justifiable exception to our goal of producing free content.

  Additionally, the "gallery" phrasing strikes me as strangely specific.  en:'s
articles that are substantially galleries of unfree images tend to be formatted
using templates to recreate <.table> functionality, as opposed to using the
gallery tag.  Perhaps you didn't mean the gallery tag specifically, but it was
easy to read it that way.

                               Jkelly


body:
On 20/02/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> on 2/20/07 9:26 AM, David Gerard at dgerard at gmail.com wrote:

> > No, which is why we try to keep a light hand and err on the side of
> > letting stuff through. It takes a remarkable level of stupid for us to
> > bother doing anything.

> But David, this takes me back to the original question: Is it really
> offensive to call someone abusive? I, personally, would not use the word to
> define someone, I would, instead, describe their behavior as abusive; but
> isn't that, in the context of this List, somewhat nickpicky?

I'd generally allow it to pass myself in the first instance, FWIW.
Though I'd expect substantiation to follow. It's supposed to be a
productive working list for a project.

- d.


from_name: Florian Straub

subject:
[Commons-l] Fwd: Commons request for input: policy on
	automaticimage replacement

body:
"Brianna Laugher" <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote on Monday, February 19,
2007 3:52 PM:

> On 20/02/07, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
>> so.. suppose I delete a png sicne there's a superior svg (manually
>> checked) the bot currently delinsk the png from local projects
>> is there a way to tell the bot to relink with the svg?
>> otherwise projects will lose the png unaware that there's a svg replacing
>> it
>
> At the moment that's what will happen. But we can work with
> Orgullomoore, the bot owner, to fix this up. For example, if you put
> 'no-orgullobot' in the deletion reason, it won't delink. So when we
> delete such PNGs, we could just put 'no-orgullobot', and then manually
> give it a replacement instruction. Or we could invent something new
> like 'orgullobot-replace:newimage.jpg' . I don't think that will be a
> big problem.

Wasn't Hard_Disk working on a bot that does replace images?

Regards,

Flo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

references:
<C1FF8B1E.1A24%michaeldavid86@comcast.net>
	<45DA3D47.6080805@earthlink.net> <45DAA370.4080703@telus.net>
	<867iucaak2.fsf@elan.rh.rit.edu>

body:
On 2/20/07, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> writes:
>
> > Stan Shebs wrote:
> >
> >>Marc Riddell wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>on 2/19/07 4:50 PM, Jossi Fresco at jossifresco at mac.com wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>I speak of a culture that has
> >>>>produced the most amazing results in the history of on-line
> >>>>collaboration.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>Is the same culture that began WP the same one in place today?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>I just crossed my four-year anniversary, and while I can't speak to the
> >>beginning, the culture hasn't really changed much in my time here.
> >>
> > I thought you were here longer than that.  I think the culture has
> > changed.  The Seigenthaler incident was a big turning point in that.
> > After that the rule bound control freaks seem to have become more
> > dominant.  We had to respond to Seigenthaler, but in the process we
> > ended up with a lot of unnecesarily restrictive procedures.
> ....
>
> Definitely agreed. We can't even sensibly discuss restoring anon page
> creation, despite the utter lack of evidence either way that it worked.
>
> --
> Gwern
> Inquiring minds want to know.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

I think that with a working patrolling/article review/stable versioning
system, it might be okay.  The talk was that when patrolling/article
review/stable versioning was added to the software, that anon page creation
might be enabled.

--
Sincerely,
Ral315
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ral315


from_name: John Vandenberg

body:
On 2/20/07, Jim Wilson <wilson.jim.r at gmail.com> wrote:
> ...
> I don't know, but there used to be Email-a-Webpage services whereby you
> could Email a URL as the subject line to some entity and get a response
> which was the requested page.  I'm having trouble locating one now though
> ... Googling for "webpage by email" doesn't produce anything useful :(

Google for "web-to-email", or take a look at this list:

http://www.oscar.org.uk/about/webtoemail.htm

A lot of those are no longer in operation, but I know that
web at pagegetter.com works well.

--
John


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] WelcomeCommitteeBot?

body:
On 2/19/07, Parker Peters <parkerpeters1002 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/18/07, xaosflux <xaosflux at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > These usually get rejected over at [[WP:RFBOT]].  The last one rejected I
> > can find is [[Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Welcomebot]], with the
> > reasonable basis that it was being proposed by an operator that was indef
> > blocked.
>
> I don't care who offers a suggestion, a suggestion should stand on its
> merits, not be torpedoed based on who proposed it.

When the suggestion is for the person making the suggestion to operate
a bot, it does matter who the person is.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


subject: [Commons-l] Fwd: search manipulation

body:
Hi.

I added MayFlower part to .js.
http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.js
last part of it

?var mayflowero = new Object();
? mayflowero["t"] = "n";
? engine = SearchForm("MayFlower",
?"http://tools.wikimedia.de/~tangotango/mayflower/index.php",
?"http://tools.wikimedia.de/~tangotango/mayflower/mayflower-logo.png",
?
"http://tools.wikimedia.de/~tangotango/mayflower/search.php",
?                    "q", "", mayflowero);
? div.appendChild(engine);

is for MayFlower,
you can select / add / delete what engine you want to use.

if you have a good-sized logo of Mayflower, it will be more nicer, tangotango ;)

Suisui
suisui at gmail.com

2007/2/20, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com>:
> Could we do this to add a 'Mayflower' button?
>
> cheers
> Brianna
> user:pfctdayelise
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: min Sui <wm.suisui at gmail.com>
> Date: 20-Feb-2007 15:39
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Support WMF via GoodSearch
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>
>
> Hi.
>
> I made a quick javaScript hack for Special:Search
> from french wikipedia -> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Monobook.js
>
> this shows like this -> http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search
> it's shows this way.
> 1. input word(s) to search box
> 2. click search
> and select search engine you like, will make
> result search from paticuler project.
> ( my script points to ja.wikipedia.org you can change it ;)
> and the source is here -> http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.js
> anyone can use it freely.
>
> thanks.
>
> suisui
> suisui at gmail.com
>
> 2007/2/15, the wub <thewub.wiki at googlemail.com>:
> > You can also use a link like
> > http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=812661<http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=xxx>that
> > links to the search page with WMF pre-selected, which will be good to
> > promote this.
> > ** <http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=xxx>
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] Fixing interwiki links with language section

body:
Currently, an interwiki link like this:

	[[wiktionary:de:Kopf]]

is expanded in the HTML output as:

	http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/de:Kopf

The server at en.wiktionary.org has special code that redirects a
request for this URL to:

	http://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Kopf

This is a clever hack, and we've been using it for a long time. I
wonder, however, if we can make interwiki links render correctly in the
output in the first place. This would save an unnecessary hit on the
server.

Our default interwiki table maps "wiktionary" to
"http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/$1". I think we could have the URL
pattern include a second argument, the language code, at $2, like so:
"http://$2.wiktionary.org/wiki/$1".

Note that this will only work if every language version of a project has
URLs matching this pattern. I think this is the case for all Wikimedia
projects, but someone correct me if I'm wrong.

The code in Title::getFullURL that creates an interwiki URL could work
as follows:

	if (the interwiki url pattern doesn't have a '$2' in it) {
		substitute the title text for $1
			in the interwiki URL pattern;
	} else if (the title text has a colon AND
		   the part before the first colon is a language code) {
		substitute the part after the first colon for $1,
			and the part before the first colon for $2,
			in the interwiki URL pattern;
	} else {
		substitute the title text for $1,
			and the current content language code for $2,
			in the interwiki URL pattern;
	}

If there's no objection, I'm going to go ahead and make this change.

~Evan

________________________________________________________________________
Evan Prodromou <evan at prodromou.name>
http://evan.prodromou.name/
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subject: [Commons-l] Fwd: search manipulation

body:
Hi.
I forgot one thing.
you can see it here -> http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search

thanks.

suisui
wm.suisui at gmail.com

07/02/20 ? min Sui<wm.suisui at gmail.com> ????????:
> Hi.
>
> I added MayFlower part to .js.
> http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.js
> last part of it
>
> ?var mayflowero = new Object();
> ? mayflowero["t"] = "n";
> ? engine = SearchForm("MayFlower",
> ?"http://tools.wikimedia.de/~tangotango/mayflower/index.php",
> ?"http://tools.wikimedia.de/~tangotango/mayflower/mayflower-logo.png",
> ?
> "http://tools.wikimedia.de/~tangotango/mayflower/search.php",
> ?                    "q", "", mayflowero);
> ? div.appendChild(engine);
>
> is for MayFlower,
> you can select / add / delete what engine you want to use.
>
> if you have a good-sized logo of Mayflower, it will be more nicer, tangotango ;)
>
> Suisui
> suisui at gmail.com
>
> 2007/2/20, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com>:
> > Could we do this to add a 'Mayflower' button?
> >
> > cheers
> > Brianna
> > user:pfctdayelise
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: min Sui <wm.suisui at gmail.com>
> > Date: 20-Feb-2007 15:39
> > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Support WMF via GoodSearch
> > To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> >
> >
> > Hi.
> >
> > I made a quick javaScript hack for Special:Search
> > from french wikipedia -> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Monobook.js
> >
> > this shows like this -> http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search
> > it's shows this way.
> > 1. input word(s) to search box
> > 2. click search
> > and select search engine you like, will make
> > result search from paticuler project.
> > ( my script points to ja.wikipedia.org you can change it ;)
> > and the source is here -> http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.js
> > anyone can use it freely.
> >
> > thanks.
> >
> > suisui
> > suisui at gmail.com
> >
> > 2007/2/15, the wub <thewub.wiki at googlemail.com>:
> > > You can also use a link like
> > > http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=812661<http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=xxx>that
> > > links to the search page with WMF pre-selected, which will be good to
> > > promote this.
> > > ** <http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=xxx>
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Commons-l mailing list
> > Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
> >
>


from_name: Bryan Tong Minh

subject: [Foundation-l] Database dumps

body:
Toolserver?

On 2/20/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 2/20/07, Annabel <annabel at wikipedia.be> wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Bot users are able download database dumps of the wikimedia projects at
> > http://download.wikimedia.org/backup-index.html.
> > These bzipped dumps can be fairly large (especially for the English
> > language). Would not it be handy to have a bitorrent link to lower the
> > load on the download server?
> >
> It would definitely be handy.  Does anyone know of a stable site which
> will host the tracker server for us (for free)?  Surely there is one
> out there, since they'd only have to host the tracker server, not the
> file itself.
>
> Anthony
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Database dumps


body:
On 2/20/07, Evan Prodromou <evan at prodromou.name> wrote:
> Currently, an interwiki link like this:
>
>         [[wiktionary:de:Kopf]]
>
> is expanded in the HTML output as:
>
>         http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/de:Kopf
>
> The server at en.wiktionary.org has special code that redirects a
> request for this URL to:
>
>         http://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Kopf

Note that this is necessary for projects not under our control, like
Wikia (interwikis work for all Wikia projects in the form
[[Wikia:Projectname:Pagename]] right now).  But for WMF projects, it
seems sensible to do this.  Someone else might be able to think of
breakage it would cause somewhere, though.


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Commons-l] Fwd: search manipulation

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
> Thanks Suisui, it's awesome!
>
> One last note - is it possible to have different button labels
> depending on the user's language setting?
>
> cheers
> Brianna

Apply this to the js:
-submit.value = "??";
+submit.value = document.getElementsByName("fulltext")[0].value;

This should work, although i don't understand why ?? is being shown as
"Recherche".

On IE the search engines are one after other, so some line breaks should
be added.
Please use the international (*.com) version of the search engines, not
the japanese.


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
On 2/20/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> But David, this takes me back to the original question: Is it really
> offensive to call someone abusive? I, personally, would not use the word to
> define someone, I would, instead, describe their behavior as abusive; but
> isn't that, in the context of this List, somewhat nickpicky?
>
> Marc

It totally depends on the context. If you have a serious complaint
that you present properly with solid evidence to back it up, then
calling an admin abusive isn't all that big of a deal. If you can't do
that well and you are just throwing the word around, then hell yeah
it's offensive.

Historically speaking, something like 95% of all incidents of people
calling admins "rouge" or "abusive" have been wholly without merit.
It's been people that have been reverted, people who want a specific
agenda but isn't allowed, annoying vandals, etc. After a while, when
you hear about an email such as was sent to the list and rejected, you
kinda get the picture of what is in it, and you're glad when it is
moderated out.

--Oskar


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki XSS exploit

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

Edward Z. Yang wrote:
> See http://ha.ckers.org/blog/20070220/mediawiki-192-utf-7-xss/ for
> details. I'm sure we get these all the time, but since RSnake picked it
> up it probably will get a bit more publicity than normal. Has it been
> fixed on the trunk yet?

Haven't heard of it before now, so I'll take a look.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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from_name: Marc Riddell

body:
on 2/20/07 1:05 PM, Andrew Gray at shimgray at gmail.com wrote:

> It's pretty much the definition of a moderated list; that some
> messages, at some point, are not let through. This is, historically,
> necessary so that reasonable discussion is not drowned out by a
> cesspool of people frantically wanking over adding photos of shit to
> articles.
>
> (Literally - early-mid 2005, I think. The least erudite trolling I've
> seen on the list...)
>
> Call it "censorship" if you want, but I don't see any reason we should
> just let people write screeds of virulent hatemail to a
> wide-distribution, specific-purpose discussion list. This does exist
> for a purpose; that purpose requires we play nice.
>
> In the specific case in question, it doesn't help that "abusive admin"
> or "admin abuse" is a shibboleth - people who cry that tend, on
> examination, to almost invariably be talking nonsense. I don't know
> why, nor do I know why the people most prone to seeing VAST
> CONSPIRACIES against them seem to all come up with the exact phrase,
> but it's got a pretty good hitrate.
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray

Andrew,

I agree with you. Even the largest protest rally, community meeting or other
gathering where, at times, highly emotional and controversial issues are
being discussed needs to be moderated. Otherwise nothing constructive could
get done: the gathering becomes a harangue.

What pushed my button was the act of censoring the words spoken at that
gathering. Attacking someone personally has no place anywhere ? much less in
a public forum. It is the refuge of cowards, and those who have no substance
to their argument.  It?s blowing smoke ? and smoke irritates the eyes and
makes it difficult to breathe. And, like all such irritants, it should be
dispelled.

I simply feel the moderators (editors) need to exercise particular caution
when deciding what words render a List post unacceptable.

Marc


from_name: Jeremy Cushman

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bot edit rates

body:
On 2/20/07, Andrew Garrett <andrew at epstone.net> wrote:
>
> Jeremy Cushman wrote:
> > Right now on the English Wikipedia bots are limited to 6 edits per
> minute.
> > Is it time to raise the permitted edit rate?  Do we have the server
> capacity
> > now to handle rapid editing?
> > --Mets501
>
> This edit-rate limitation is because nobody wants to flood Recent Changes,
> not for any particular technical reason. As far as I am aware, given the
> traffic that the servers already handle, bot traffic is fairly trivial
> ( current traffic is in excess of 40, 000 SQL queries per second. Please
> do NOT take this as gospel. Brion, Tim, Domas, Mark and the rest of the
> sysadmin team know much more about our capacity than I do, so I would
> recommend checking with them first.
>
> Andrew Garrett
> (werdna)

Bot edits don't show up recent changes by default, only in watchlists, where
they can be disabled.  I'll wait for a response from one of the sysadmins
before raising the limit in the bot policy.

--Mets501