from_name: Andre Engels

body:
Here my proposal on what to do with no:

* Create nb: for Norsk Bokm?l
* Move the current contents of no: to nb:
* Create on the main page of no: as a sort of disambiguation page
between nb: and nn:
* Let other pages on no: redirect to nb: so existing links keep working.

Andre Engels

On Sat, 06 Nov 2004 20:34:13 -0500, Olve Utne <utne at nvg.org> wrote:
> At 20:35 06/11/2004 +0000, Lars Alvik wrote:
> >Ok, there are some basic facts, that the request didn't provide.
> >
> >1. Most of the articles on no: is on either bokm?l or riksm?l.
> >2. The debate started on nn:, and is probably an attempt to claim (or deny
> >the other part use of the no; domain)
> >3. A split (practicaly a move) would give bokm?l (the dominant language) a
> >unfamiliar name.
>
> Hello Lars & everyone else,
> As an active Nynorsk / Norsk Bokm?l / Swedish Wikipedia writer,
> I find your list of "basic facts" a bit skewed, Lars.
>
> I can assure you that there is no conspiracy to claim the no: domain
> for another non-exclusive language of Norway (be it Nynorsk,
> Norsk Bokm?l, Norsk Riksm?l, H?gnorsk, S?megiella (Northern Sami),
> other Sami languages, languages of national minorities or whichever).
>
> As for the no: articles being mostly in Norsk Bokm?l/Riksm?l (and
> near 100% of the user interface), that is true -- and you seem to wish
> to use this argumentatively against the Nynorsk Wikipedia people.
> The logical consequence of that would in fact be to also admit that
> the use of no: as a language code for our Norsk (mainly Bokm?l)
> Wikipedia is linguistically inappropriate.
>
> Here is an alternative list of "basic facts", for the case of balancing
> the arguments:
>
> 1. "Either Bokm?l or Riksm?l" makes little sense,
>     since the two are part of one orthographic/morphologic
>     continuum officially (but not amongst the Riksm?l proponents)
>     known as "Bokm?l" -- a continuum with a difference magnitude
>     roughly equivalent to the difference between UK and US English,
>     minus (!) the clarity of norms.
> 2. The Bokm?l name is unfamiliar partially because its proponents
>     prefer, for political reasons, to call it (incorrectly) simply "Norsk"
>     (Norwegian).
> 3. The majority of the Norwegian population write Bokm?l
>     but speak dialects that are closer to Nynorsk than Bokm?l.
> 4. The Nynorsk Wikipedia people are definitely not interested
>     in taking over the no: domain.
>     (Rebuttal of your "basic fact" #2 -- which I find suspicious
>     that you included in a "basic facts" list at all....)
> 5. The discussion most likely takes place on Nynorsk
>     because the debate culture there is easier on its participants
>     than the one on no:.
> 6. The logical name for a nb: Wikipedia would probably be
>     "Norsk Bokm?l" rather than simply "Bokm?l".
>     That is what the code nb: stands for anyway --
>     and it is as familiar as Norsk, but more precise.
>     (Rebuttal of your "basic fact" #2.)
> 7. The domain name no: as such transcedes: nb or nn:,
>     and should, logically speaking, be a common site with
>     contents and/or links reflecting both Nynorsk and Bokm?l.
> 8. In the hypothetical event of a separate Norsk Bokm?l Wikipedia,
>     the no: domain could either
>     a) remain as a mixed entity, as it is to some degree now
>        (which is a basic assumption within the nn: discussion);
>     b) be used as a common portal to nb: and nn:,
>        and possibly also the national minority languages of Norway;
>     c) or be a disambiguation link page.
> 9. The reasons for the wish of a separate Norsk Bokm?l Wikipedia
>     may vary for the various users. My personal view is that a
>     separate Norsk Bokm?l Wikipedia may be a better strategy for
>     the work towards a future common-Scandinavian interface
>     with parallel articles in the four main written forms of Scandinavian
>     (defining Bokm?l and Riksm?l as one, since there is no single
>     definite linguistical trait that defines these as separate codes
>     rather than a socio-linguistic continuum).
> 10.I know that the sometimes fiercely high-profile POV from
>     some central people on no: serves to scare some people away.
>     This has already been referred to in the wikipedia-l debate
>     as part of the reason why some people who wish to keep
>     writing in Norsk Bokm?l may wish a separate Wikipedia
>     as a way to "come clean".
>
> I personally do not have a strong preference either way,
> but I do think that it is important to try to keep the discussion
> on a factual level.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Olve
>
> ___________________
>
> Olve Utne
> http://utne.nvg.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Charles Matthews

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms (was
	Reithyisa problem)

body:
"Bryan Derksen" wrote

> Kicking off 0.1% of Wikipedia's users isn't going to significantly reduce
> the pool of editors, and would reduce the stress for a significant portion
> of the 99.9% who remain. I don't see what these 1-in-1000 antisocials are
> contributing to Wikipedia that is worth it to endure the bad atmosphere
> they generate for everyone else.

Well, I think that's the debate really.  If it was uncontroversial who they
were, and that a surgical removal was possible without splitting the
community, they would be banned quite quickly.

Charles


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Policy proposal: require e-mail confirmation

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
>
> uninvited at nerstrand.net a ?crit:
> > I would like to propose two related policy changes:
> >
> > 1.  That a confirmed e-mail address be required for creation of
> new
> > accounts
> > 2.  That these e-mail addresses be visible to administrators.
>
> Though I understand Steve concerns, I do not support either of
> those
> propositions.
>
>
> Neither the forecoming proposal that provider such as yahoo are
> forbidden.

I'd have to agree, since I exclusively use Yahoo/gmail accounts. I
have my own domain name and email there, and I've had pacbell,
earthlink, sbc, roadrunner, and more in the future I am sure.

I just prefer the ease of the yahoo and gmail accounts.

> We want to keep contributing simple and open.

What about privacy?
Do we know for sure that some of the wikipedia administrators do not
actually work for the FBI, the MSS, or the FSB?

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com


from_name: Nicholas Knight

body:
Jens Ropers wrote:

>
> On 9 Nov 2004, at 01:48, Christopher Mahan wrote:
>
>> do not
>> actually work for the FBI, the MSS, or the FSB
>
>
> MSS?
> What's that, Mossad, perhaps?
> ???

Ministry of State Security -- PRC intelligence. If you're a Chinese
dissident, the last thing you want is to give them information about
yourself.


from_name: Rebecca

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms (was Reithy
	is a problem)

references:
<BAY13-F19s8FSA4AleL00012085@hotmail.com>
	<cmihqt$q27$1@sea.gmane.org> <418DD46C.7020904@hackish.org>

body:
Surely there's got to be some distinction here between users who are
here to fight, and users who, while they may have some problems
relating to other users, are generally good. There's a couple of
people I deal with regularly who are immensely rude - but there's no
way I'd want them banned, because they write excellent articles.

By the same token, however - it's absolutely insane to give unlimited
tolerance to people who aren't just "unpopular", but contribute
absolutely nothing to the site, apart from having articles protected
and driving good contributors up the wall.

-- ambi

> I think the problem with this is that, if the community had its way, a
> lot of the best contributors would be banned if they were unpopular.  A
> site in which all unpopular users are banned is not really a wiki.  I'm
> personally quite glad that Wik was not banned the numerous times his
> case was brought up (until the last time, of course), and wouldn't want
> things to work otherwise.
>
> Perhaps you have a different type of site in mind?
>
> -Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms

body:
On Sat, 06 Nov 2004 22:22:38 -0800, Michael Snow
<wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Our two recently elected arbitrators seem to have taken their
> responsibility to their "constituency" seriously and proven to be quite
> active participants in the arbitration process. I strongly encourage
> those arbitrators whose terms expire at the end of the year to stand for
> re-election. In addition, I think we need to open the election to
> include the positions of the five arbitrators I mentioned.

I just want to second this. I'm sure they were already planning to,
but if not, I strongly encourage both Raul and JW to run again, and
congratulate them on the job they've done so far.

-- ambi


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms  (was
	Reithyisa problem)

body:
At 04:28 PM 11/8/2004 +0000, Charles Matthews wrote:

>"Bryan Derksen" wrote
>
> > Kicking off 0.1% of Wikipedia's users isn't going to significantly reduce
> > the pool of editors, and would reduce the stress for a significant portion
> > of the 99.9% who remain. I don't see what these 1-in-1000 antisocials are
> > contributing to Wikipedia that is worth it to endure the bad atmosphere
> > they generate for everyone else.
>
>Well, I think that's the debate really.  If it was uncontroversial who they
>were, and that a surgical removal was possible without splitting the
>community, they would be banned quite quickly.

But there doesn't seem to actually _be_ a way to get a quick resolution of
even an obvious case. I'm not necessarily talking about bans here, I'd be
quite satisfied with an official "what you're doing here on this article is
unacceptable, quit it." If arbitration worked quickly then I suspect "weak"
rulings wouldn't be a problem because an incorrigible offender would
rapidly accumulate a lot of them and the need for stronger measures would
then become obvious too.

Basically, my personal complaint with the system is not what decisions it
reaches - so far all the ArbCom decisions I've happened to hear about have
seemed like reasonable ones. It's the speed with which the system comes to
them.


body:
Is there any means for doing this with otherwise inactive
administrators? I ask, because there's two arbitrators on Michael's
list who are clearly inactive, having participated very little in
recent months - and furthermore, aren't up for re-election.

-- ambi

On Sat, 06 Nov 2004 22:22:38 -0800, Michael Snow
<wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:
 In addition, I think we need to open the election to
> include the positions of the five arbitrators I mentioned.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] maintenance/archives/importUseModWiki.php

body:
On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 03:48:58 +0000, Minty <mintywalker at gmail.com> wrote:
> before I get my hands dirty, anyone know if there is a recent and
> working import script from UseMod (v1.0) to MediaWiki?

This isn't a definitive answer, but I would doubt it - the existing
one [presumably] dates to when the English Wikipedia was first
converted to a bespoke wiki engine (which later turned into
MediaWiki). Of course, if you *do* manage to write a decent script to
do such importing, I'd have thought it would be worth a place in the
CVS tree (if nice and small; if not, availability from
http://mediawiki.org would be good).

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Christopher Larberg

body:
Yes, we're all government spies. Also, if you're worried about
privacy, perhaps it wouldn't be wise for you to put your cell phone
number in your email signature.

--Slowking Man

On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 16:48:01 -0800 (PST), Christopher Mahan
<chris_mahan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > What about privacy?
> Do we know for sure that some of the wikipedia administrators do not
> actually work for the FBI, the MSS, or the FSB?
>
> =====
> Chris Mahan
> 818.943.1850 cell
> chris_mahan at yahoo.com
> chris.mahan at gmail.com
> http://www.christophermahan.com/


from_name: Kate Turner

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikipedia IPv6 support

body:
On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 06:18:18 +0100, Kate Turner <kate.turner at gmail.com> wrote:
> Preliminary, experimental IPv6 support has been added to Wikipedia.

I've now removed the AAAA DNS record (although the address is still usable).
Problems with the tunnel connectivity over the last few hours and a
dependence on only two of our hosts which are serving the v6 requests
means that it's not yet possible to provide an acceptable level of service
to IPv6 users.

However, I think this has shown that providing IPv6 service for WMF projects
is quite feasible, and is something I'll be looking at in future, if a way can
be found to provide more reliable service.

Kate.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms (was
	Reithyis	a problem)

body:
 "Delirium" wrote

>If people are arguing over points that reasonable people
> can disagree on, fine, but if they're espousing ridiculous views and
> trying to push some overtly nationalist message, just revert 'em and be
> done with it.
>
> Certainly Wik wasn't a model citizen, but his opponents are a far bigger
> problem than he ever was.

My experience with Wik: he would just say 'X isn't going to happen', and you
knew that he would revert.  Even if, as in the case I'm thinking of, I had
published academically on the topic.  So his modus operandi doomed him, I
think.

Charles


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR header

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>>
>> A user of the nl:wikipedia who had the misfortune to be blocked on a
>> proxy server, mentioned that many providers send a
>> HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR header along. This she said could easily be
>> retrieved using PHP with the variable
>> $_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"]. Now when this is true, it makes
>> excellent sense to use this IP-adress for the registration of
>> contributions but also for the use of blocking specific IP numbers.
>>
>> I have no idea if our software uses this or not. I thought this a
>> great idea so I move this remark to you in the hope that we can
>> enhance our software and make our anti vandal solutions more accurate.
>
>
> In my experience, caching proxies from ISPs don't usually give an XFF
> header. It's only a squid extension anyway, not part of the HTTP
> standard. Open proxies give an XFF header maybe 50% of the time.
>
> AOL, for example, gives no information in their HTTP headers which
> identifies a user. This is a deliberate policy aimed at protecting
> privacy.
>
> -- Tim Starling

If we can cut down on 50% of the inaccurate blocks and many of the
blanket blocks when an XFF header IS given, we achieve a much more fine
grained tool of hurting vandalism without having to resort to always
removing the blocks because of good people being hurt by it. When it is
not feasible because the chance of doctored information from malicious
users is too great it is not possible. But 50% more accuracy when
dealing with proxies sounds good to me.

Thanks,
    Gerard


body:
Christopher Larberg wrote:

> Yes, we're all government spies. Also, if you're worried about
> privacy, perhaps it wouldn't be wise for you to put your cell phone
> number in your email signature.

Have we really fallen so far that we cannot conceive of a person being
concerned for the welfare of someone other than themselves?

I don't try to hide my identity. I post under my real name and real
email address (under a domain that I own which is hosted on servers I
control, including one that sits a mere three feet from me right now).
But I'm not living in the PRC, and I don't take my life in my hands
simply by telling the truth. Some people do. Those are the people we
need to protect, and requiring email confirmation just makes it harder
and more risky for them.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Ulf Lunde

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Request for new Wikipedia: bokmål

body:
Andre wrote:

 > * Create nb: for Norsk Bokm?l
 > * Move the current contents of no: to nb:
 > * Create on the main page of no: as a sort of disambiguation page
 >   between nb: and nn:
 > * Let other pages on no: redirect to nb: so existing links keep working.

Mark wrote:

 > * Create nb: for Bokm?l
 > * Allow nb: users to copy-paste articles from no: that are in Bokm?l,
 > since no: is a mixture and to just move everything would create a problem
 > * Place links to nn: and nb: prominently on the mainpage of no:
 > * Place interwiki links to nn: and nb: on all applicable pages on no:

Like both Andre and Mark, I too think that it is best to keep "no:" and create
"nb:" as a "parallel" to "nn:".

But is it necessary to disallow users from keeping on adding to the "no:"
Wikipedia if they want to?

I think that the future of Wikipedias is that there will be only one
(multi-lingual)
Wikipedia article database, and that users can simply select a set of prefered
languages for the user interface.  When that happens, discussions like this
will be meaningless.  But in the meantime we need a simpler solution for
Norwegian's two written forms.

Remember that all Norwegian speakers are able to read *both* written
forms of the language.  I think that most Norwegians, when clicking a
Wikipedia link inside a bokm?l article, would prefer to be taken directly
to a nynorsk article about the word they clicked on, rather than being
shown an empty article (because there was no bokm?l variant yet) with
the option of clicking an interwiki link to english, nynorsk, swahili, or
any number of other language variants.  And vice versa, of course
(redirect to bokm?l if article is missing in nynorsk).

I, for one, would like to see a "nn:" Wikipedia where missing articles would
redirect me to the corresponding "nb:" article if it exists, and where any
article that does not have a counterpart in the "nb:" Wikipedia, is opened
(in "nn:") through a redirect-link if one tries to open the missing
"nb:" variant.

If I am looking for information, I usually don't care whether it is in nynorsk
or in bokm?l.  So if I try to open an article in "no:", and only *one* of the
"no:", "nb:" and "nn:" Wikipedias actually has the article, I would like for
*that one* to open directly.

If there are more than one variant, and I look under "no:", the expected
effect would be to get the "no:" article if it exists (and ideally to be offered
a choice between the other two if they exist and there is no article
on "no:" itself).

So would it be best, perhaps, to first try Mark's solution?  Then, during a
"test period" of, say, a year, we could allow people to add articles to
(and freely move articles around between) any of the three Norwegian
Wikipedias, and just observe what happens.

If the "no:" grows fastest, it may inidcate that users prefer one common
Wikipedia.  In that case, we may want to move all articles from "nb:" and
"nn:" to "no:" and live with the mix (until user interface language selection
functions become so sophisticated that it doesn't feel mixed any more).

If "nb:" and "nn:" grow faster, at some point we can decide to switch to
Andre's solution, and move any articles that might be left in "no:" to their
respective Wikipedias.

Or is my proposal much too na?ve?   :-/

Ulf Lunde


body:
Ah, then I apologize. You sort of lumped the PRC in with other
intelligence agencies, and I misinterpreted your comment as being
afraid of some sort of "sysop conspiracy." I agree with your
sentiments.

--Slowking Man

On Mon, 08 Nov 2004 19:47:34 -0800, Nicholas Knight
<nknight at runawaynet.com> wrote:
> Christopher Larberg wrote:
>
> > Yes, we're all government spies. Also, if you're worried about
> > privacy, perhaps it wouldn't be wise for you to put your cell phone
> > number in your email signature.
>
> Have we really fallen so far that we cannot conceive of a person being
> concerned for the welfare of someone other than themselves?
>
> I don't try to hide my identity. I post under my real name and real
> email address (under a domain that I own which is hosted on servers I
> control, including one that sits a mere three feet from me right now).
> But I'm not living in the PRC, and I don't take my life in my hands
> simply by telling the truth. Some people do. Those are the people we
> need to protect, and requiring email confirmation just makes it harder
> and more risky for them.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


references:
<418F3F9D.70107@myrealbox.com> <cmo1i2$j3e$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<418FBCD7.300@myrealbox.com>

body:
On Mon, 08 Nov 2004 19:37:11 +0100, Gerard Meijssen
<gerardm at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> When it is
> not feasible because the chance of doctored information from malicious
> users is too great it is not possible. But 50% more accuracy when
> dealing with proxies sounds good to me.

The problem is, how do we know if a given proxy is giving out accurate
information? All it takes is somebody faking the header while they
vandalise, and they can choose who to take the blame, potentially
deliberately blocking some valued user, or inflaming some
quasi-political situation...

So, the most that would be sensible would be to have a list of
"trusted proxies" from whom we took the XFF header to be a genuine
record; though, the situations in which anyone would be behind a proxy
and still have a valid IP of their own would seem to me to be rather
limited, once you've discounted those deliberately hiding their
identity...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Michael Snow

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Shrink the Arbitration Committee (was Broken dispute
	resolution mechanisms)

body:
Rebecca wrote:

>I don't think mav's idea is a bad one, if a little negative. It's
>certainly a possibility.
>
>However, we could always just try and convince better candidates...The
>Committee to Conscript Michael Snow, anyone?
>
>-- ambi
>
>
>On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 11:30:16 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer
><maveric149 at yahoo.com <http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>> wrote:
>> --- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net <http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>> wrote:
>> > We need to be careful to not open more postions than there are reasonably
>> > well qualified candidates (of whom I count you as one). Some of the
>> > candidates in the last election seemed much more suited for the role of
>> > defendant than arbitrator.
>>
>> I agree with this completely. Therefore votes against candidates should also be
>> allowed - only the top candidates with a net positive vote will be elected (5
>> options would be given, from strongly approve to strongly disapprove). If that
>> means that some seats remain empty, then so be it.
>
I like mav's idea, but I would take it just a little bit further. Based
on the experience of the past year, I think having twelve positions on
the Arbitration Committee is more than we need, period. I would like to
elaborate on my previous proposal, which I recognize would have put most
of the positions up to be filled in this election (and this before I
even heard the sad news of Martin Harper's impending resignation). I'm
not completely surprised to have heard quite a bit of concern over
whether that many qualified candidates exist, although personally I had
hopes that opening more positions would encourage more candidates to
come forward instead of deferring to those first out of the gate.

To deal with this, I propose that we take advantage of this election to
restructure the Arbitration Committee and shrink its numbers to nine
positions. I don't think a group as large as twelve is necessary, and
there are considerable advantages to be gained from shrinkage, namely:

*Deliberations among arbitrators can reach "quorum" more quickly, which
would generally speed things up a bit and address one of the biggest
complaints about the process. (The number of votes required to accept or
reject cases should be reduced proportionally, to three.)
*As 9, unlike 12, is an odd number, the potential for deadlock is
avoided - though I anticipate that the arbitrators would work to avoid
issuing 5-4 rulings.
*Smaller numbers encourage participants to feel greater personal
responsibility for successful outcomes.
*In addition to the six positions soon to be up for election, this would
allow us to relieve Camembert, Delirium, and Nohat of their
responsibilities without anyone needing to be concerned over who might
replace them. Camembert and Delirium have both already indicated an
inclination to resign, and Nohat has shown relatively little interest in
arbitration matters.

Because 9 is still divisible by 3, we can retain Jimbo's initial concept
of having the arbitrators serve staggered 3-year terms. This would mean
that instead of elections for four arbitrators to serve 3-year terms,
and two more to fill unexpired terms for 2 years, we would elect three
people to 3-year terms and three more to 2-year terms. The three
remaining arbitrators appointed by Jimbo would be up for re-election at
the end of 2005.

Due to the difference in term length, I would suggest that the newly
elected arbitrators be given the choice after the election of which term
they will fill, in order of most votes received. (I suspect that some
might well _prefer_ the shorter term.) In addition, because three years
is a long time in the life of a project that is only barely that old
itself, I think we need a mechanism to readily replace arbitrators, so
they feel more free to resign if life changes or burnout make them
unable to participate effectively. In these situations, I propose that
the Wikimedia Board of Trustees make interim appointments so the
position can be filled until the next annual election cycle.

(The flattery is nice, ambi, but I'd rather first wait and hope lots of
other good candidates come forward too. As I've said before, I encourage
the arbitrators whose terms are expiring to run for re-election. I would
add that I encourage anyone who ran last time to run again - or at least
those who, to quote Fred again, aren't "more suited for the role of
defendant than arbitrator.")

--Michael Snow


from_name: Gerrit

subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy proposal: require e-mail confirmation

body:
uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:
> 1.  That a confirmed e-mail address be required for creation of new
> accounts

-10. It would mean the death of Wikipedia. Wikipedia will become a
second Dmoz, where nobody registers because it takes hours and hours to
register. It's easier to become a member of the secret service than
registering with Dmoz. That's not what we want.

Second, it would solve nothing.

Goodbye.

--
Weather in Twenthe, Netherlands 08/11 21:25:
	1.0?C shallow fog; mist mostly clear wind 1.3 m/s NE (57 m above NAP)
--
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist.
    -Dwight David Eisenhower, January 17, 1961


from_name: Anthere

body:
uninvited at nerstrand.net a ?crit:
> I would like to propose two related policy changes:
>
> 1.  That a confirmed e-mail address be required for creation of new
> accounts
> 2.  That these e-mail addresses be visible to administrators.

Though I understand Steve concerns, I do not support either of those
propositions.

Neither the forecoming proposal that provider such as yahoo are forbidden.

We want to keep contributing simple and open.


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Crazy desires

body:
On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 00:38:18 +0100, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> What does that mean [sic] anyway ?

It's latin for "thus", and is commonly used in English to denote that
a grammatical or spelling error is part of a direct quote, and not an
error made in the reporting of that quote; or, that an error is
intentional, and should not be pointed out or corrected.

e.g. "the letter said 'dear sir/madm [sic], i am..."

See also: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Sic

[Myself, I'd say there's no need for the "pseudo" in that edit
summary; although perhaps "irritating petty troll" would fit better]

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Crazy desires


subject: [Foundation-l] Crazy desires

body:
I wish that this user stop putting some [sic] everywhere;
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Developer_payment_poll/results&curid=10093&diff=0&oldid=76388

I wish that this user stop putting unnice considerations in comment boxes;
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=Lysdexia

I wish that this user stop putting  template for npov or disputed in
meta pages;
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Incivility&diff=76056&oldid=76015

I wish that this user just let our poor spelling and disastrous grammar
in meta page rather than making fun of our english abilities;
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Apology&diff=0&oldid=76033

I wish that this user answers when we suggest her to be a bit more civil
with other editors;
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk%3ALysdexia

--------

What does that mean [sic] anyway ?


subject: [Foundation-l] Crazy desires


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Old usemod-based Wikipedia backup?

body:
Did anybody else keep a backup of the English Wikipedia database from
when it ran on UseMod (Jan 2001 - Jan 2002)?

I seem to recall keeping a copy, but can't find it now. It's primarily
just for historical interest, but there is also one practical issue
which anyone may or may not care about:

When the UseMod database was originally converted to Magnus's new wiki
software, only the latest revision text of each page was copied into
the new database, and it was attributed to "Conversion script". Some
months later I wrote a script that did another pass through the data,
correcting for some renaming that had been done in the meantime, to
copy in the previous page histories with attribution. But the actual
current revision at the time of conversion was not changed, and was
left attributed to 'Conversion script'.

If we ever hope to fix those up, we'll need the pre-conversion database.

It should be in a tarball, something on the order of 50-150 megabytes,
containing 'lib-http' and 'work-http' subdirectories. Somewhere under
'lib-http' is a 'page' subdirectory with lots and lots of files split
up by letter -- that's the guts of it. The tarball was probably but not
necessarily named something like 'wikipedia-usemod.tgz' or
'wiki-fromusemod.tgz' or similar.

We don't need it for other languages (they were converted with a later
script that included histories intact, and I still have a bunch of
those tarballs anyway), just for English.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20041109/92d100b6/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Foundation-l] Crazy desires

body:
On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 00:38:18 +0100, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> What does that mean [sic] anyway ?

I'm just sending this to you personally, because I don't want to be
shown a fool when I misunderstand you and explain something that you
already know, but:

[sic] (from the Latin "sic"="that way") is put with misspellings,
printing errors etcetera in quotations, to make clear that the
misspelling, printing error or such is in the work that is being
quoted, and not in the quoting work.

Andre Engels


subject: [Foundation-l] Crazy desires


from_name: Marco Krohn

subject: [Foundation-l] Crazy desires

body:
On Tuesday 09 November 2004 00:38, Anthere wrote:

> What does that mean [sic] anyway ?

Sic

"Thus", "just so" ? states that the preceding quoted material appears exactly
that way in the source, usually despite errors of spelling, grammar, usage,
or fact.

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic!

best regards,
  Marco


subject: [Foundation-l] Crazy desires


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
>
> A user of the nl:wikipedia who had the misfortune to be blocked on a
> proxy server, mentioned that many providers send a HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR
> header along. This she said could easily be retrieved using PHP with the
> variable $_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"]. Now when this is true, it
> makes excellent sense to use this IP-adress for the registration of
> contributions but also for the use of blocking specific IP numbers.
>
> I have no idea if our software uses this or not. I thought this a great
> idea so I move this remark to you in the hope that we can enhance our
> software and make our anti vandal solutions more accurate.

In my experience, caching proxies from ISPs don't usually give an XFF
header. It's only a squid extension anyway, not part of the HTTP
standard. Open proxies give an XFF header maybe 50% of the time.

AOL, for example, gives no information in their HTTP headers which
identifies a user. This is a deliberate policy aimed at protecting privacy.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Jens Ropers

body:
On 9 Nov 2004, at 01:48, Christopher Mahan wrote:

> do not
> actually work for the FBI, the MSS, or the FSB

MSS?
What's that, Mossad, perhaps?
???


body:
On 9 Nov 2004, at 02:33, Nicholas Knight wrote:

> Jens Ropers wrote:
>
>> On 9 Nov 2004, at 01:48, Christopher Mahan wrote:
>>> do not
>>> actually work for the FBI, the MSS, or the FSB
>> MSS?
>> What's that, Mossad, perhaps?
>> ???
>
> Ministry of State Security -- PRC intelligence. If you're a Chinese
> dissident, the last thing you want is to give them information about
> yourself.

Mkay.
In an ideal world I would sit down and write the apparently missing WP
article now.
;-)


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
I don't use it but can access it.

Fred

> From: Rebecca <misfitgirl at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: Rebecca <misfitgirl at gmail.com>, English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 21:59:38 +1100
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] AC with a small quorum and IRC meetings
>
> I think is an excellent idea: kudos to you both.
>
> The two things that I'd been keen to know first, however, are - would
> this involve a reduction in the number of arbitrators, as in Michael's
> proposal, and also - how many of the current group of arbitrators are
> active on IRC? I know James is (provided he plans to run for
> re-election - I hope so) and also Mav, but I'm a bit concerned that
> some people who've played a fairly crucial role this far - Fred
> Bauder, for one, may not use IRC.
>
> That said, I think this would go a long way towards the bottleneck at
> the heart of all of this.
>
> -- ambi
>
>
> On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 19:30:04 +1100, Tim Starling
> <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>> Mav and I had a chat today on IRC about the arbitration committee, and
>> we came to a somewhat different and more aggressive model to the one
>> Michael Snow is proposing.
>>
>> I can take very little credit for this, since our discussion basically
>> consisted of me putting forward my ideas, Mav saying his were better,
>> and me agreeing.
>>
>> The basic problem, as I think we all understand, is that the Arbitration
>> Committee is slow. It is slow because some of the members don't reply to
>> emails and don't watch the relevant pages on the wiki. What emails they
>> do send are few and far between.
>>
>> The first and most important measure to improve the speed of the AC is
>> to reduce the necessary quorum to three members. Decisions are made by a
>> simple majority. Any member of the arbitration committee may request a
>> review of such decisions by the full committee.
>>
>> The second is that deliberation should be conducted by IRC, not email.
>> Cases will still be accepted on the wiki, and findings will still be
>> announced on the wiki. But deliberations will be performed by any and
>> all AC members present in #arbcom.wikipedia, as long as there is more
>> than three of them.
>>
>> Under this proposal, the size of the arbitration committee can expand to
>> meet the ever-increasing demands placed on them. Preliminary judgements
>> leading to blocking pending a full review should be possible within
>> minutes of a request.
>>
>> I'll put up this proposal on the wiki some time in the next couple of
>> days, unless someone else beats me to it.
>>
>> -- Tim Starling
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Crazy desires

body:
Rowan Collins a ?crit:
> On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 00:38:18 +0100, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>What does that mean [sic] anyway ?
>
>
> It's latin for "thus", and is commonly used in English to denote that
> a grammatical or spelling error is part of a direct quote, and not an
> error made in the reporting of that quote; or, that an error is
> intentional, and should not be pointed out or corrected.
>
> e.g. "the letter said 'dear sir/madm [sic], i am..."
>
> See also: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Sic

Hmmmm, okay

> [Myself, I'd say there's no need for the "pseudo" in that edit
> summary; although perhaps "irritating petty troll" would fit better]

Well, I know that this user is doing the same for other people on en.
But in the past few days, he has been going through several of the pages
I wrote in meta, and I do not appreciate that he put some sic everywhere
in what I write. I would revert him, but he also put some corrections at
the same time. So if I want to let the correction, I have to go to each
sic one by one to remove them.

Now, it may be just trolling, and I should perhaps just shake my head
and do nothing, but I consider Dyslexia behavior NOT okay.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Membership_fees&curid=7451&diff=0&oldid=76492

I wrote many pages on meta, and ALL these pages contain bad grammar and
bad spelling. It is offending me that someone point out to each and
every mistake a foreigner make in international page.

Yesterday evening, this user edited several pages, and in one of those I
wrote, he commented "Why does a Frenchie write the English texts??"

This is not the first time.
This behavior is not acceptable in international pages.
If that person want to lose her time correcting my english, fine, but
without defacing the text, and without adding some sic everywhere.

I would like to ask that the international community is respected on meta.

I would like that someone talk to her, before I block her.

I am just millimiters of doing so.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Crazy desires


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: AC with a small quorum and IRC meetings

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> The first and most important measure to improve the speed of the AC is
> to reduce the necessary quorum to three members. Decisions are made by a
> simple majority. Any member of the arbitration committee may request a
> review of such decisions by the full committee.

How would it be determined which three? Based on the IRC suggestion, it
seems likely that it would be the first three to come along.

Letting the arbitrators divide into three-member panels has been
suggested before, and has some merit to it. In my proposal to reorganize
the Arbitration Committee, I didn't address restructuring the
arbitration process itself because this kind of proposal doesn't need
the election context to happen. This could be implemented now if we want
it, or it could be implemented sometime after the election. Shrinking
the size of the committee, on the other hand, is best accomplished as
part of the election cycle.

> The second is that deliberation should be conducted by IRC, not email.
> Cases will still be accepted on the wiki, and findings will still be
> announced on the wiki. But deliberations will be performed by any and
> all AC members present in #arbcom.wikipedia, as long as there is more
> than three of them.

How much deliberation actually occurs via email to begin with? I know
there are several arbitrators who are not big fans of conducting
deliberations in private. Also, human nature being what it is, I'm not
sure how much we can do to move the deliberation process to any
particular forum if it doesn't happen organically. The Arbitration
Committee was given a message board when first set up, which went
nowhere. Nothing is preventing arbitrators from deliberating on IRC now
if they want to, but some of them are not present in that forum.

--Michael Snow


from_name: KNOTT, T

subject: [WikiEN-l] AC with a small quorum and IRC meetings

body:
>The first and most important measure to improve the speed of the AC is
>to reduce the necessary quorum to three members. Decisions are made by
a
>simple majority. Any member of the arbitration committee may request a
>review of such decisions by the full committee.

<snip>

>Under this proposal, the size of the arbitration committee can expand
to
>meet the ever-increasing demands placed on them. Preliminary judgements

>leading to blocking pending a full review should be possible within
>minutes of a request.

That's very sensible. The slowness of the AC is it's main failing at the
moment. If we can speed it up to the speed with which Jimbo used to take
decisions, pretty much all the current problems will be solved.  ~~~~


from_name: ArnoLagrange

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Crazy desires

body:
Anthere a ?crit :

----- Message d'origine -----
De : "Anthere" <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
? : <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Envoy? : mardi 9 novembre 2004 07:17
Objet : [Foundation-l] Re: Crazy desires

[...]
> But in the past few days, he has been going through several of the pages
> I wrote in meta, and I do not appreciate that he put some sic everywhere
> in what I write.
[...]
> I wrote many pages on meta, and ALL these pages contain bad grammar and
> bad spelling. It is offending me that someone point out to each and
> every mistake a foreigner make in international page.
>
> Yesterday evening, this user edited several pages, and in one of those I
> wrote, he commented "Why does a Frenchie write the English texts??"
>
> This is not the first time.
> This behavior is not acceptable in international pages.
> If that person want to lose her time correcting my english, fine, but
> without defacing the text, and without adding some sic everywhere.
>
> I would like to ask that the international community is respected on meta.
[...]

Voil? jusqu'o? m?ne l'ali?nation linguistique : tu auras beau t'efforcer de
t'exprimer dans la langue des ma?tres, il s'en trouvera toujours parmi les
locuteurs de la langue dominante accept?e comme "langue internationale" par
les locuteurs des autres langues soumis ? cet ordre injuste, pour te faire
sentir ton inf?riorit? et t'humilier. Que ?a soit la r?gle du jeu dans les
milieux de requins des affaires ou les milieux politiques ou
militaro-scientifiques o? les enjeux de pouvoir sont consid?rables, ne
devrait pas s'appliquer ? cette sph?re qu'est l'univers d'une encyclop?die
libre.

L'Union Europ?enne n'en est-elle pas ? reserver la plupart de ses emplois
aux seuls locuteurs natifs de langue du dollar ("Only mother tongue
english") au m?pris de l'?galit? des langues dans l'Union ? Il serait bon
que la plan?te Vikim?dia ait un autre fonctionnement qui ne tienne pas ?
l'?cart toute personne dont l'anglais n'est pas la langue d'expression.

Il est significatif ? cet ?gard que bien que je sois inscrit sur cette liste
depuis des mois, je ne participe pas aux d?bats qui y ont cours, car ?a me
prend trop de temps et d'?nergie de lire les messages en anglais et ? plus
forte raison d'y r?pondre. C'est sciemment que je m'exprime ici dans ma
langue maternellle et je vous prie, mesdames et messieurs les anglophones,
de faire un instant l'effort de comprendre un message dans une langue qui
n'est pas votre langue maternelle, ainsi vous percevrez peut-?tre un peu ce
que c'est d'assiter ? des d?bats qui se d?roulent syst?matiquement dans une
langue qui vous est ?trang?re et dans laquelle vous voyez les autres
discuter sans faire cas de votre difficult? ? y participer. La Fondation
Vikimedia devrait, ? mon sens, ?tre plus ouverte aux non-anglophones
puisqu'elle recouvre un projet multilingue.

A bon entendeur, salut !

Arno Lagrange

Please, translate into english my message anybody who can and who wants. I
don't feel me able to do it myself. AL

> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Crazy desires


body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> If we can cut down on 50% of the inaccurate blocks and many of the
> blanket blocks when an XFF header IS given, we achieve a much more fine
> grained tool of hurting vandalism without having to resort to always
> removing the blocks because of good people being hurt by it. When it is
> not feasible because the chance of doctored information from malicious
> users is too great it is not possible. But 50% more accuracy when
> dealing with proxies sounds good to me.

I said 50% of open proxies, i.e. unsecured proxies. They're only used by
vandals, Chinese people, and the occasional user who accidentally put
one on their own computer. We already have a policy to block all such
proxies on sight, except on zh. I've never seen an ISP proxy give a
meaningful XFF header, although admittedly I haven't been looking too
closely.

XFF headers have been useful to us in the past, for example they allowed
us to prove that it was Wik who was running a vandalbot attacking meta.
This allowed us to put together a solid complaint to his ISP. It wasn't
a useful filter method, because he was using a combination of forwarding
and non-forwarding proxies.

In a few percent of cases, this feature may allow discrimination between
vandals and other users. But it also opens up a security vulnerability.
It allows any blocked user with a basic knowledge of HTTP to block any
IP address they wish, just by pasting things into a telnet window.

I think a much better tool to discriminate between vandals and other
users would be a username whitelist or "trusted user" metric. This
allows discrimination even in the more common cases of dynamic IP
addresses and non-forwarding proxies. I'm not prepared to spent any time
on a feature which will only be useful in a tiny fraction of cases, and
will open up a security flaw.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Enhanced search for local language clusters?

body:
 > if these changes are made, the language names
 > showing up in interwiki-links are changed from
 >
 > Nynorsk ([nn:]) --> Norsk (Nynorsk)
 > Norsk ([no:])   --> Norsk (Bokm?l) ([nb:])

A minor adjustment from me:

I believe it would be more correct to use

  [nn:] norsk (nynorsk)
  [nb:] norsk (bokm?l)

without any capital letters, since the interwiki name of a language
shall be written in
the language itself, and Norwegian does not capitalize any language names.

Ulf Lunde


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> To deal with this, I propose that we take advantage of this election to
> restructure the Arbitration Committee and shrink its numbers to nine
> positions. I don't think a group as large as twelve is necessary, and
> there are considerable advantages to be gained from shrinkage, namely:

As time goes by more, not fewer cases need to go through the process. Thus we
need more qualified people working on this to get things done.

Setting a minimum number of arbitrators needed to hear a case to 3, regardless
of the number of total arbitrators there are, is the way to go, IMO (simple
majority would still rule and more than 3 arbitrators could be part of any
given decision in any case if they so choose). Any decision made by such a
self-organized sub-committee would be subject to review by the entire ArbCom if
at least one ArbCom member calls for a review and is seconded. Deliberations
would be conducted on IRC and the results along with rationale would be posted
on the wiki. A preponderance of evidence would explicitly be the standard of
evidence (this is the standard used in civil court).

Everything else would pretty much work as it does now ; with the caveat that
any  minor wrinkles will be worked out by the ArbCom as time goes by.

-- mav

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


body:
--- "KNOTT, T" <tknott at qcl.org.uk> wrote:
> ...If we can speed it up to the speed with which Jimbo used to take
> decisions, pretty much all the current problems will be solved.

Eh? It took much longer for Jimbo to ban than the ArbCom. Many months of
frustration went by before Lir was banned and well over a year went by for
Helga to be banned.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com


from_name: NSK

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Crazy desires

body:
On Tuesday 09 November 2004 08:17, Anthere wrote:
> I am just millimiters of doing so.

If I was you I would block him/her immediately without much thinking.

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Crazy desires


from_name: Delirium

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> The first and most important measure to improve the speed of the AC is
> to reduce the necessary quorum to three members. Decisions are made by a
> simple majority. Any member of the arbitration committee may request a
> review of such decisions by the full committee.
>
> The second is that deliberation should be conducted by IRC, not email.
> Cases will still be accepted on the wiki, and findings will still be
> announced on the wiki. But deliberations will be performed by any and
> all AC members present in #arbcom.wikipedia, as long as there is more
> than three of them.

I agree that the first is a useful change, since getting the full
committee together in a timely manner with peoples' schedules seems like
it will remain nearly impossible no matter what combination of people
are on it.  I'm not sure the second one is necessary though: The primary
problem right now is that there are few arbitrators with lots of free
time, and few non-arbitrators with lots of free time who have expressed
an interest in becoming arbitrators.  If we had at least a few
arbitrators with a lot of free time, I'm not sure email would be
insufficient, and if we don't have arbitrators with free time, nobody
will use IRC any more than they use email.

-Mark


body:
--- Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> To deal with this, I propose that we take advantage of this election to
> restructure the Arbitration Committee and shrink its numbers to nine
> positions. I don't think a group as large as twelve is necessary, and
> there are considerable advantages to be gained from shrinkage, namely:

As time goes by more, not fewer cases need to go through the process. Thus we
need more qualified people working on this to get things done.

Setting a minimum number of arbitrators needed to hear a case to 3, regardless
of the number of total arbitrators there are, is the way to go, IMO (simple
majority would still rule and more than 3 arbitrators could be part of any
given decision in any case if they so choose). Any decision made by such a
self-organized sub-committee would be subject to review by the entire ArbCom if
at least one ArbCom member calls for a review and is seconded. Deliberations
would be conducted on IRC and the results along with rationale would be posted
on the wiki. A preponderance of evidence would explicitly be the standard of
evidence (this is the standard used in civil court).

Everything else would pretty much work as it does now ; with the caveat that
any  minor wrinkles will be worked out by the ArbCom as time goes by.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Crazy desires

body:
Anthere wrote:
> I would like that someone talk to her, before I block her.
>
> I am just millimiters of doing so.

I saved you the trouble and just did it myself.

Oh, wait, I see you did it too. Good for you. :-)

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Crazy desires


from_name: Bjarte Sorensen

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Enhanced search for local language clusters?
	(Was:: Request ...

body:
Fellow wikipedians,

This mailing-list was presented with a few arguments that have been raised in a
debate on no: since the request for a wikipedia in Norsk Bokm?l on this
mailing-list by Lars Alvik.

Olve Utne has already pointed out a few flaws in these. I will expand on what he
said:

>1. Most of the articles on no: is on either bokm?l or riksm?l.

So in other words most of the content is in the wrong place? Norsk bokm?l (of
which riksm?l both linguistically and politically is considered a conservative
variant) has its own ISO 639-1 code, nb, in the same way as nynorsk has one,
nn. The ISO code "no" for Norwegian can really only apply to the Norwegian
spoken language, as there is no one written language called solely Norwegian,
but rather two official forms and several unrecognised variants (including
riksm?l).

Some of the articles on no: are in nynorsk and the wiki explicitly allows
entries in the variants mentioned above. Still the UI (not to mention its name:
Wikipedia - den frie encyklopedi) is in bokm?l/riksm?l, something which deters
arrival of more Nynorsk-contributors. Also, editing a bokm?l-article is for me
not difficult (although for some it may be, and it may also be difficult
editing nynorsk-articles for many bokm?l-users), but I'd of course rather
translate it to see it in my own language on a wiki that fully integrates the
language. Translating it to nynorsk from bokm?l and then leave it on no: I
would consider disrespectful towards the initial contributors.

>2. The debate started on nn:, and is probably an attempt to claim (or deny
>the other part use of the no; domain)

The debate did as a matter of fact not start on nn:. I started the debate on a
page there after seeing an independent person's (Ulf Lunde, recent arrival at
both no: and nn:) request on this mailing-list. I didn't know him from before,
but despite being new he's rased some important points. I found it very natural
to discuss the matter with fellow wikipedians, and it did not occur to me that
anyone would find it offensive that I started the debate there rather than on
no: I made it clearly visible for everyone who visited nn: with a link on the
front page. A prominent administrator from no: indeed noticed the debate (which
was the intention). However, instead of contributing to our debate (he is also a
user on nn: like I and everyone else on nn: are users of no:), he went back to
no: and commenced a discussion on the Village Pump with the following words
(translated by myself):

"==Campaign against no.wikipedia.org==

I have noticed that there is an indelicate campaign against Norwegian wikipedia
on the Nynorsk wikipedia, and I would just like to remind everyone that the
discussion about bokm?l occurs here on the pages reserved for that."

I am not shy to admit that I personally think that until the MediaWiki
technology allows for a custom UI and parallel texts I believe the Norwegian
wikipedia is best served by two wikis, one on nn: and one on nb:, while no: can
be a redirect to the major wiki or possibly a disambiguition link. Other people
in the debate on nn: (but certainly not all) may have similar opinions, but I
can hardly see how a discussion and brainstorm about this equates with a
campaign against no:! Such rhetoric only serves to make people annoyed.

He goes on to try exclude users of nn: the right to debate this matter on nn:.
Most users of nn: are users of no: and are proficient in bokm?l. It also is a
matter that concern us for as long as there is nynorsk material on no: and the
wikipedia is using our common iso-code, no. I agree that the discussion should
be held on no:, but half expecting outbursts like the one above, I suppose I
subconsciously chose our friendlier nn: for such a discussion.

>3. A split (practicaly a move) would give bokm?l (the dominant language) a
>unfamiliar name.

Somewhere else in the debate on no: it was argued:

"The domain no: and its meaning is wellknown, while the domain nb: is totally
unknown [...]. To swap to nb: as primary domain will therefore be very damaging
for this version's continued growth"

I think it is important to distinguish between the top-level domain ".no" and
the iso-code "no". It is the latter that has traditionally determined
wikipedia-URIs, not the former. Languages know no political borders.

Based on what I've said above, I personally believe the suggestions from Andre
and Mark are both good with a bias towards Andre's suggestion. Leaving two
wikis for editing in the same language I think is counter-productive and will
only serve to confuse new users. I think the situation is served best by moving
the current contents to nb: (while having a server-wide redirect from no: to
keep search-engine links etc active), and to implement a trans-Scandinavian
search feature as suggested by Olve Utne on this mailing-list once this is
technologically possible.

Finally, I also suggest that, if these changes are made, the language names
showing up in interwiki-links are changed from

Nynorsk ([nn:]) --> Norsk (Nynorsk)
Norsk ([no:])   --> Norsk (Bokm?l) ([nb:])

Sincerely,

Bjarte Sorensen

(User BjarteSorensen on en:, no:, nn:, commons:)


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Request for new Wikipedia: bokmål

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> Here my proposal on what to do with no:
> * Create nb: for Norsk Bokm?l
> * Move the current contents of no: to nb:
> * Create on the main page of no: as a sort of disambiguation page
> between nb: and nn:
> * Let other pages on no: redirect to nb: so existing links keep working.

Are there really any no.wikipedia contributors who want this? I mean,
outside of those who prefer the nn.wikipedia? Is this a "we should
change our name" or "they should change their name" kind of issue?
Or, if someone supports this change, how do we know they are among the
"we" people and not covert nn.wikipedia supporters?

I'm Swedish and not contributing to any of no or nn, even though I
have no problem in reading and understanding them.  As much as I
appreciate the efforts made to support dialects and small languages
such as Icelandic and written Nynorsk, I think it would be a pity to
abandon no.wikipedia and "Norwegian" as the name for it.  To most
non-Norwegians, and I think also for many Norwegians, the concept of
the "Norwegian" language (written and spoken) is easy to understand
and unambigious, with Nynorsk being little more than a written
dialect, such as we all have spoken dialects in various parts of our
countries.  We also have no problem with American English being called
"English" or Hochdeutsch being called "German", despite their
separation from England and Plattdeutsch (Low Saxon).  Some 10--15
percent of Norwegians write in Nynorsk, about twice the population of
Iceland.  The no.wikipedia currently has 10 times more articles than
nn.wikipedia.  Even if the gap is closing, it seems likely that
no.wikipedia will continue to be the larger one by a factor of 2 or
more.

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


from_name: JAY JG

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms (was Reithyis
	a problem)

body:
>From: "James D. Forrester" <james at jdforrester.org>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: "'English Wikipedia'" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms (was
>Reithyis a problem)
>Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 12:07:29 -0000
> > > > Thirdly, sentences should be much, much harsher. Ban them for life
> > > > and get it over with. Banning only slows them down anyway, most of
> > > > them will come back under a different name. But at least the
> > > > community will be able to unite behind the AC ruling.
> > >
> > > This was tried at first by one arbitrator but was overruled by the
> > > majority. Unless the bulk of the arbitrators differ markedly from
> > > the users there is little support for lifetime banning.
> >
> > Proof that the process is broken.  We all know what a troll is.
>
>We do? Wow. Then why needs there be any dispute resolution process at all,
>if it is always so very clear-cut for "all" of us?
>
>Blanket statements of black-and-white judgement are almost always wrong,
>and
>certainly normally laughable.

Hmm.  Yes, the statement was too strong, but sometimes it's pretty obvious.
There are always contrarians, of course, and naturally the troll never
considers themself to be a troll.

Jay.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Crazy desires

body:
I will make a short translation of Arno comment because I feel it holds
a lot of truth.

Before doing so, I must say Arno is writing in litterary french, not
what I would refer to international french (so it is unlikely google
translations will be of much help).

Voil? jusqu'o? m?ne l'ali?nation linguistique : tu auras beau t'efforcer de
 > t'exprimer dans la langue des ma?tres, il s'en trouvera toujours
parmi les
 > locuteurs de la langue dominante accept?e comme "langue
internationale" par
 > les locuteurs des autres langues soumis ? cet ordre injuste, pour te
faire
 > sentir ton inf?riorit? et t'humilier. Que ?a soit la r?gle du jeu
dans les
 > milieux de requins des affaires ou les milieux politiques ou
 > militaro-scientifiques o? les enjeux de pouvoir sont consid?rables, ne
 > devrait pas s'appliquer ? cette sph?re qu'est l'univers d'une
encyclop?die
 > libre.

Arno points out to the current linguistic situation.
Arno mentions that whatever my attempts to talk in the language of our
masters, there will always be one person (among those talking the
dominant language accepted as international language by all the speakers
of other languages submitted to this injust situation) to make me feel
lower and to humiliate me.
While this is the rule in affairs, business, politics, military,
scientific world, where power lever is huge, this should not be so in a
free encyclopedia.

 > L'Union Europ?enne n'en est-elle pas ? reserver la plupart de ses emplois
 > aux seuls locuteurs natifs de langue du dollar ("Only mother tongue
 > english") au m?pris de l'?galit? des langues dans l'Union ? Il serait bon
 > que la plan?te Vikim?dia ait un autre fonctionnement qui ne tienne pas ?
 > l'?cart toute personne dont l'anglais n'est pas la langue d'expression.
 >

The European Union is now trying to employ only people with english as
mother language and despise other languages. It would be nice that
Wikipedia planet does not adopt such a behavior and put aside any person
whose english is not good.

 > Il est significatif ? cet ?gard que bien que je sois inscrit sur
cette liste
 > depuis des mois, je ne participe pas aux d?bats qui y ont cours, car
?a me
 > prend trop de temps et d'?nergie de lire les messages en anglais et ?
plus
 > forte raison d'y r?pondre. C'est sciemment que je m'exprime ici dans ma
 > langue maternellle et je vous prie, mesdames et messieurs les
anglophones,
 > de faire un instant l'effort de comprendre un message dans une langue qui
 > n'est pas votre langue maternelle, ainsi vous percevrez peut-?tre un
peu ce
 > que c'est d'assiter ? des d?bats qui se d?roulent syst?matiquement
dans une
 > langue qui vous est ?trang?re et dans laquelle vous voyez les autres
 > discuter sans faire cas de votre difficult? ? y participer. La Fondation
 > Vikimedia devrait, ? mon sens, ?tre plus ouverte aux non-anglophones
 > puisqu'elle recouvre un projet multilingue.

It is significant that I have been registered to this mailing list for
months, and never participate, for it takes me to much time and energy
to read the messages and even worse to answer to them.
I use my mother language on purpose and hope that all english people
here would make an effort to understand a message in a language which is
not their mother language. Perhaps then would you perceive how difficult
it is to assist to debates in a foreign language without mentionning how
difficult it is for you.

The Wikimedia Foundation should be more open to non english people since
it is recovering a multilingual project.

 > A bon entendeur, salut !
 >
 > Arno Lagrange


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Crazy desires


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Crazy desires

body:
ArnoLagrange a ?crit:
> Anthere a ?crit :

> Voil? jusqu'o? m?ne l'ali?nation linguistique : tu auras beau t'efforcer de
> t'exprimer dans la langue des ma?tres, il s'en trouvera toujours parmi les
> locuteurs de la langue dominante accept?e comme "langue internationale" par
> les locuteurs des autres langues soumis ? cet ordre injuste, pour te faire
> sentir ton inf?riorit? et t'humilier. Que ?a soit la r?gle du jeu dans les
> milieux de requins des affaires ou les milieux politiques ou
> militaro-scientifiques o? les enjeux de pouvoir sont consid?rables, ne
> devrait pas s'appliquer ? cette sph?re qu'est l'univers d'une encyclop?die
> libre.
>
> L'Union Europ?enne n'en est-elle pas ? reserver la plupart de ses emplois
> aux seuls locuteurs natifs de langue du dollar ("Only mother tongue
> english") au m?pris de l'?galit? des langues dans l'Union ? Il serait bon
> que la plan?te Vikim?dia ait un autre fonctionnement qui ne tienne pas ?
> l'?cart toute personne dont l'anglais n'est pas la langue d'expression.
>
> Il est significatif ? cet ?gard que bien que je sois inscrit sur cette liste
> depuis des mois, je ne participe pas aux d?bats qui y ont cours, car ?a me
> prend trop de temps et d'?nergie de lire les messages en anglais et ? plus
> forte raison d'y r?pondre. C'est sciemment que je m'exprime ici dans ma
> langue maternellle et je vous prie, mesdames et messieurs les anglophones,
> de faire un instant l'effort de comprendre un message dans une langue qui
> n'est pas votre langue maternelle, ainsi vous percevrez peut-?tre un peu ce
> que c'est d'assiter ? des d?bats qui se d?roulent syst?matiquement dans une
> langue qui vous est ?trang?re et dans laquelle vous voyez les autres
> discuter sans faire cas de votre difficult? ? y participer. La Fondation
> Vikimedia devrait, ? mon sens, ?tre plus ouverte aux non-anglophones
> puisqu'elle recouvre un projet multilingue.
>
> A bon entendeur, salut !
>
> Arno Lagrange

Sur le fond, tu as raison. N?anmoins, je signalerais l'effort de la
plupart des participants anglophones pour lire notre mauvais anglais et
la gentillesse de la plupart a expliquer les "trous" dans notre
comprehension.

I agree with Arno basically. However, I think most english participants
make a lot of effort to read our bad english and that most are really
kind and helpful when words are misunderstood.

J'aimerais que plus de personnes fassent l effort de parler un anglais
simple.

I'd like taht more people make the effort to use a simple english.

All board discussions occur in english since Ang and Jimbo do not speak
other languages. But Ang uses a lot automatic translations to try to
reach out for non english. Still, most board meetings are very tiring to
non english people.

Toutes les discussions du board se font en anglais puisque Jimbo et Ang
ne parlent pas d autres languages. Mais Ang utilise enormement les
systemes de traduction automatiques. La plupart des r?unions du board
sur irc sont tr?s fatiguantes pour les non anglosaxons.

Nous avons fait bcp d effort de traduction ces derniers mois, grace a
Sj, Britty et Danny et des dizaines de traducteurs. Au moins pour les
retours et pour informer les gens. Il est vrai cependant qu il est bcp
plus difficile de garantir les discussions en plusieurs langues.

We made a lot of efforts in the past months for translation, thanks to
Sj, Britty and Danny as well as dozen of translators. At least to inform
people. But it is true it is more difficult to garantee multilingual
discussions.

I think we made many efforts in that direction though, but comments such
as Lysdexia is currently making on meta are just making me very very
very angry.

Je pense que nous avons fait bcp d effort, mais des commentaires tels
que ceux de Lyxdexia sur meta me rendent proprement furieuse.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Crazy desires


subject: [Wikitech-l] Set variables before you use them

body:
Just a reminder: always *set* global variables before attempting to use
them. Many sites still use the unsafe 'register_globals' PHP
configuration, by which any remote visitor can stuff arbitrary string
or array data into global variables -- if you don't override this value
in the code, then the user-supplied data can end up being used when an
empty or privileged host-set value was expected.

Using error_reporting set to E_ALL during development helps catch some
of these mistakes, but not all. In particular it does *not* catch:
* testing with isset() will of course not throw an error on an unset
variable!
* something like "global $wgFoo; if( $wgFoo ) {...}" will not throw an
error, since the "global" statement binds the variable name in the
local scope.

If you deliberately want a global variable to be empty, set it to null
or use unset();
   $wgFoo = null;
or
   unset( $wgFoo );

(The exact semantics of the two are a bit different, but either will
make isset( $wgFoo ) return false.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20041109/601bbc1c/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

body:
Hello,

Bjarte Sorensen wrote:

> Based on what I've said above, I personally believe the suggestions from Andre
> and Mark are both good with a bias towards Andre's suggestion. Leaving two
> wikis for editing in the same language I think is counter-productive and will
> only serve to confuse new users. I think the situation is served best by moving
> the current contents to nb: (while having a server-wide redirect from no: to
> keep search-engine links etc active), and to implement a trans-Scandinavian
> search feature as suggested by Olve Utne on this mailing-list once this is
> technologically possible.
>
> Finally, I also suggest that, if these changes are made, the language names
> showing up in interwiki-links are changed from
>
> Nynorsk ([nn:]) --> Norsk (Nynorsk)
> Norsk ([no:])   --> Norsk (Bokm?l) ([nb:])

I'm not familiar with the language situation but how you described it
this seems the most reasonable solution.

However, such a move shouldn't be done without the approval of the
communities of these wikis. To arrive at a decision it therefore seems
best to me to hold a poll on both existing wikis if the communities
support this split.

greetings,
elian


from_name: sannse

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> The first and most important measure to improve the speed of the AC is
> to reduce the necessary quorum to three members. Decisions are made by a
> simple majority. Any member of the arbitration committee may request a
> review of such decisions by the full committee.
>
> The second is that deliberation should be conducted by IRC, not email.
> Cases will still be accepted on the wiki, and findings will still be
> announced on the wiki. But deliberations will be performed by any and
> all AC members present in #arbcom.wikipedia, as long as there is more
> than three of them.
>
> Under this proposal, the size of the arbitration committee can expand to
> meet the ever-increasing demands placed on them. Preliminary judgements
> leading to blocking pending a full review should be possible within
> minutes of a request.

I think this would really help.  I think I'd like to see it as an option
rather than the only possibility though.  The benefit to the users in
question would be a quick decision; the problem would be that it would
be likely to be a less in depth investigation.  It would perhaps be a
gamble to some extent, but one that I think many users would take to
speed up the process.

I think there might be ways of adding to this, perhaps with a provision
for an "appeal" - which might involve more arbitrators and be more in
the style of arbitration available now.   Although there would also have
to be precautions to ensure this doesn't mean that every decision simply
goes back to the long form.

One thing about this proposal is that a large committee would be helpful
in this case, allowing a pool of arbitrators to be available at various
times.

I'm intending to stand for a position on the arbitration committee this
time round - so would be very interested to read more on this proposal
when it's written.

--sannse


from_name: Rich Holton

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Crazy desires

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote: (in part)

>
> I'd like that more people make the effort to use a
> simple english.
>

This is a very reasonable request. Like many from the
US, I know only one language. It seems that the least
people like me can do is write in a simple style.

However, I'm not really sure what sort of sentences
give the most trouble to speakers of other languages.
How careful do I need to be? Can I offend by being too
simple?

I would really appreciate your comments.

-Rich Holton (Rholton)

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Crazy desires


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in the news (well, sort of)

body:
--- sannse <sannse at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:

> Us in The Onion:
>
>
http://www.theonion.com/opinion/index.php?issue=4045&o=2
>
> -- sannse
> _______________________________________________

This just begs for some sort of reply. We must have
writers who are expert in the use of satire who can
reply appropriately.

I'm not sure what angle to take (I'm not an expert in
the use of satire), but this is just too good of an
opportunity to pass up!

-Rich Holton (Rholton)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com


from_name: James Rosenzweig

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration proposals

body:
Speaking with the benefit of only a few months'
experience in the Fellowship of the Oft-Maligned, I'd
like to share my probably idiosyncratic perspective on
all this.

Arbitration needs fixing, and I like many of the ideas
in the proposals.  I agree with Michael that 12
arbitrators is too many (particularly when many choose
not to participate) -- I like the proposal (from both
mav and Michael, I think) that small committees (of,
say, three) of arbitrators should hear cases.  I think
it would be a much easier task to corral two other
people's attention and focus it on a case, rather than
the huge slate we currently have.  I doubt very much
that the AC's decisions would be substantially
different than they are now.  If we allow small panels
to do this, I would suggest the right of appeal to the
whole AC, however (checks and balances are good, I
think).  If, say, 4 of the 6 arbitrators who didn't
hear the case wish to revisit it, it would be done.  I
think this would be a rarely taken option (I would
have to be quite convinced of trouble to revisit
another arbitration panel's case), but in the case of
a truly unmerited result, I think it offers the
community reasonable recourse.  I hope something like
this proposal is eventually adopted.

On the IRC issue, however, I disagree with the
sentiments I've seen.  I have never used email to
confer with another arbitrator, and would prefer not
ever to do so.  I think that the best strength of
arbitration thus far is its transparency, and I affirm
Woodrow Wilson's principle of "open covenants, openly
arrived at".  I do not use IRC as a matter of course,
and I doubt my current Internet connection would allow
me to participate in an IRC conversation with any
great skill -- the lag time would be significant,
though not entirely insurmountable.  More to the
point, though, I have never seen IRC as a good tool
for reaching important decisions -- it is too quick,
it favors the swift to type, and it speeds people to
rash and unwarranted conclusions.  I believe that
using it for arbitration would lead to speedier
decisions, yes, but also decisions that were less
clear, less well considered, and ultimately much less
fair.  I would not serve on such a committee, so if it
is the community's intention to prusue IRC as the
primary medium of arbitration, I would not stand for
reelection (not that my presence or absence will much
affect the AC, I think).  I'm not using this as a
threat, by the way -- if the community wants it, I
have always been an advocate for consensus and I would
accept it as a part of Wikipedia.  But I would not
want to be a part of such a body -- I envision
frustration, regrets, and ultimately a fundamental
lack of certainty that my decisions had been truly
wise.

I don't think we should be surprised at the scarcity
of candidates.  Given the uncertainty of the AC's
future, I think you'll find it hard to get anyone to
commit to standing for reelection (or consider running
for an initial term).  No one knows what the AC will
look like in January.  I urge that we decide in the
next week to ten days about the future of arbitration,
in order that all potential candidates have time to
consider standing for the position in the full
knowledge of what that position will entail.  I, for
one, will be unable to commit until we know.

Finally, I just want to note to Tim, Mav, Michael, and
all the others discussing the future of arbitration
that I respect their ideas, I appreciate and applaud
their energy, and I don't want my words to keep anyone
from continuing to consider IRC as a possibility.  I
think we should probably consider all possible
avenues, and I'm very pleased that you are.  I just
felt I should say something, and now I've said it.
Best wishes and happy collaboration to all,

James W. Rosenzweig

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration proposals

body:
--- James Rosenzweig <jwrosenzweig at yahoo.com> wrote:
> ... If we allow small panels
> to do this, I would suggest the right of appeal to the
> whole AC, however (checks and balances are good, I
> think).  If, say, 4 of the 6 arbitrators who didn't
> hear the case wish to revisit it, it would be done.  I
> think this would be a rarely taken option (I would
> have to be quite convinced of trouble to revisit
> another arbitration panel's case), but in the case of
> a truly unmerited result, I think it offers the
> community reasonable recourse.  I hope something like
> this proposal is eventually adopted.

A majority of the the whole AC could work. My proposal would be one AC member
and one second.

> On the IRC issue, however, I disagree with the
> sentiments I've seen.  I have never used email to
> confer with another arbitrator, and would prefer not
> ever to do so.  I think that the best strength of
> arbitration thus far is its transparency, and I affirm
> Woodrow Wilson's principle of "open covenants, openly
> arrived at".  I do not use IRC as a matter of course,
> and I doubt my current Internet connection would allow
> me to participate in an IRC conversation with any
> great skill -- the lag time would be significant,
> though not entirely insurmountable.

Communication is the key issue as well as putting your vote and reasoning on
the wiki. If you feel more comfortable with that, then I guess we could provide
for it somehow. Others, like me, want to bounce ideas off others; email and
wiki are both painfully slow in that regard. Also note the IRC has proved
beyond doubt to be a very good tool that the board has been using to reach
decisions.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com


from_name: Rebecca

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms

body:
I don't think mav's idea is a bad one, if a little negative. It's
certainly a possibility.

However, we could always just try and convince better candidates...The
Committee to Conscript Michael Snow, anyone?

-- ambi

On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 11:30:16 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> > We need to be careful to not open more postions than there are reasonably
> > well qualified candidates (of whom I count you as one). Some of the
> > candidates in the last election seemed much more suited for the role of
> > defendant than arbitrator.
>
> I agree with this completely. Therefore votes against candidates should also be
> allowed - only the top candidates with a net positive vote will be elected (5
> options would be given, from strongly approve to strongly disapprove). If that
> means that some seats remain empty, then so be it.
>
> -- mav
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
> www.yahoo.com
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Josiah

subject: [WikiEN-l] Troll?

body:
Forgive my ignorance, but what exactly does it mean to be a Troll?

Josiah (user:yoshiah_ap)

---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.788 / Virus Database: 533 - Release Date: 11/1/2004


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Galleries on Wikipedia vs. galleries on Wikimedia
	Commons

body:
Now that the Wikimedia Commons is being widely used as a central image
archive - if you haven't already, check out http://commons.wikimedia.org/
- we are facing the question again whether we want to store image
galleries in Wikipedia. There currently are a few, e.g.:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallery_of_Fayum_mummy_portraits

My proposal would be that such galleries should reside on the Commons,
unless they include substantial encyclopedic information for individual
images. Substantial information would be at least a paragraph of text
describing the image's content. If there is no such information, the
relevant article should include a link to the Commons gallery and a couple
of striking example images.

An interesting side effect of such a policy would be that fair use images
could only be used in an encyclopedic context, as they are not allowed on
the Commons.

Any other thoughts?

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
At 02:33 PM 11/9/2004 -0800, Rich Holton wrote:
>--- sannse <sannse at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > Us in The Onion:
> >
> >
>http://www.theonion.com/opinion/index.php?issue=4045&o=2
> >
> > -- sannse
> > _______________________________________________
>
>This just begs for some sort of reply. We must have
>writers who are expert in the use of satire who can
>reply appropriately.

The first thing we need to do is ensure that all of the omissions that Mr.
Groznic has kindly pointed out for us here are filled. Alas, I am no expert
on this subject or I'd be working on it right now.

PS, the banning of User:Misterhand43 can only be a symptom of an
Arbitration Committee gone mad with power, a clear sign that the system is
broken and must be reigned in. :)


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] vandalism and trolling

body:
I blocked Lysdexia for 24 hours for vandalism (putting excess sic
everywhere) and trolling (just not caring for comments made on her talk
page).

Angela notes that I should not block her since I am involved.

Perhaps, perhaps not. Lysdexia indeed damaged some of the articles I
wrote and made fun of me, so I may be involved indeed.
On the other hand, I consider the case is not a conflict between her and
I, or an edit war, but just that she is not behaving properly.

If anyone feels like removing the block, fine, but in this case, I hope
that this person will try to talk to her seriously. It is not okay to
add [sic] instead of correcting a spelling mistake. It is not okay to
make fun of our english.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Article_validation&curid=7289&diff=76627&oldid=76626
Look at the bottom of the article.

I do not want to revert this, because there are many typo correction.
There is good and bad in what Dyslexia does. I do not want to revert and
remove her corrections.

If anyone has a suggestion, I am ready to listen to it.

Anthere


subject: [Foundation-l] vandalism and trolling


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Mav and I had a chat today on IRC about the arbitration committee, and
we came to a somewhat different and more aggressive model to the one
Michael Snow is proposing.

I can take very little credit for this, since our discussion basically
consisted of me putting forward my ideas, Mav saying his were better,
and me agreeing.

The basic problem, as I think we all understand, is that the Arbitration
Committee is slow. It is slow because some of the members don't reply to
emails and don't watch the relevant pages on the wiki. What emails they
do send are few and far between.

The first and most important measure to improve the speed of the AC is
to reduce the necessary quorum to three members. Decisions are made by a
simple majority. Any member of the arbitration committee may request a
review of such decisions by the full committee.

The second is that deliberation should be conducted by IRC, not email.
Cases will still be accepted on the wiki, and findings will still be
announced on the wiki. But deliberations will be performed by any and
all AC members present in #arbcom.wikipedia, as long as there is more
than three of them.

Under this proposal, the size of the arbitration committee can expand to
meet the ever-increasing demands placed on them. Preliminary judgements
leading to blocking pending a full review should be possible within
minutes of a request.

I'll put up this proposal on the wiki some time in the next couple of
days, unless someone else beats me to it.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Now that the Wikimedia Commons is being widely used as a central image
>archive - if you haven't already, check out http://commons.wikimedia.org/
>- we are facing the question again whether we want to store image
>galleries in Wikipedia.
>
I think it's worth suggesting that people take a look, but the
commons is not really ready for primetime; while there's been a
lot of energetic image dumping, not so much effort has gone into
organization or cross-reference support. My experience so far has
been to be confronted with piles of random uploads of monster
pictures, sort of like some horrible museum where if you express
interest in something, the docent grabs you and shoves you up
against the painting, and you have to walk back and forth with
your nose to the wall in order to view it. :-)

It also seems that there is not a consensus as to whether the
commons is a bare repository for editors to draw upon, versus
something that you want to send readers to. It would be unfortunate
to move a gallery there and then have somebody delete it because
"that's not what the commons is for."

Stan


body:
I think is an excellent idea: kudos to you both.

The two things that I'd been keen to know first, however, are - would
this involve a reduction in the number of arbitrators, as in Michael's
proposal, and also - how many of the current group of arbitrators are
active on IRC? I know James is (provided he plans to run for
re-election - I hope so) and also Mav, but I'm a bit concerned that
some people who've played a fairly crucial role this far - Fred
Bauder, for one, may not use IRC.

That said, I think this would go a long way towards the bottleneck at
the heart of all of this.

-- ambi

On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 19:30:04 +1100, Tim Starling
<t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Mav and I had a chat today on IRC about the arbitration committee, and
> we came to a somewhat different and more aggressive model to the one
> Michael Snow is proposing.
>
> I can take very little credit for this, since our discussion basically
> consisted of me putting forward my ideas, Mav saying his were better,
> and me agreeing.
>
> The basic problem, as I think we all understand, is that the Arbitration
> Committee is slow. It is slow because some of the members don't reply to
> emails and don't watch the relevant pages on the wiki. What emails they
> do send are few and far between.
>
> The first and most important measure to improve the speed of the AC is
> to reduce the necessary quorum to three members. Decisions are made by a
> simple majority. Any member of the arbitration committee may request a
> review of such decisions by the full committee.
>
> The second is that deliberation should be conducted by IRC, not email.
> Cases will still be accepted on the wiki, and findings will still be
> announced on the wiki. But deliberations will be performed by any and
> all AC members present in #arbcom.wikipedia, as long as there is more
> than three of them.
>
> Under this proposal, the size of the arbitration committee can expand to
> meet the ever-increasing demands placed on them. Preliminary judgements
> leading to blocking pending a full review should be possible within
> minutes of a request.
>
> I'll put up this proposal on the wiki some time in the next couple of
> days, unless someone else beats me to it.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Us in The Onion:

http://www.theonion.com/opinion/index.php?issue=4045&o=2

-- sannse


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> As time goes by more, not fewer cases need to go through the process.
Thus we
> need more qualified people working on this to get things done.
>
> Setting a minimum number of arbitrators needed to hear a case to 3, regardless
> of the number of total arbitrators there are, is the way to go, IMO (simple
> majority would still rule and more than 3 arbitrators could be part of any
> given decision in any case if they so choose). Any decision made by such a
> self-organized sub-committee would be subject to review by the entire ArbCom if
> at least one ArbCom member calls for a review and is seconded. Deliberations
> would be conducted on IRC and the results along with rationale would be posted
> on the wiki. A preponderance of evidence would explicitly be the standard of
> evidence (this is the standard used in civil court).

What I wonder is why in all the proposals so far the idea of a time
limit didn't come up. Essentially, nobody spends four whole months
deliberating on a case.

Set a fix deadline (maybe two weeks?) in which a case should be decided.
If a case is really that complex that it requires more consideration,
the arb committee can decide to extend the deadline for another two weeks.

For reference the rules in the german wikipedia on user bans on
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Benutzersperrung:
* an attempt of mediation or evidence of serious debate is required
* a ban request must be supported by two users, otherwise it is removed
from the list after 12 hours
* the accused user should be notified and has 12 hours to issue a
statement (he can do it later, too, but the vote doesn't start before)
* one week voting period, two-third majority and at least ten pro-votes
required for a ban to be effective.
* 200 edits on articles and 2 month membership required for voting

The german system has some flaws (IMO the time limits are _very_ short),
but has worked quite well so far. The community doesn't take such
decisions lightly and examines quite thoroughly if a ban request is
substantiated.

greetings,
elian


from_name: Gerrit

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Now that the Wikimedia Commons is being widely used as a central image
> archive - if you haven't already, check out http://commons.wikimedia.org/
> - we are facing the question again whether we want to store image
> galleries in Wikipedia. There currently are a few, e.g.:

Even if it does include a significant amount of encyclopedic content, it
should be on Wikicommons. Image galeries reside on commons: period. Fair
use images should be all out in the long term anyway.

regards,
Gerrit.

--
Weather in Twenthe, Netherlands 09/11 22:55:
	4.0?C   wind 3.6 m/s NNW (57 m above NAP)
--
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist.
    -Dwight David Eisenhower, January 17, 1961


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] web traffic stats

body:
On Nov 9, 2004, at 11:49 PM, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Webalizer statistics on http://en.wikipedia.org/stats/
> haven't been updated since October 18th.  This is a tragedy.
> It's been shaky since September 23rd, but July and August were fine.
> What's wrong?  Can anybody fix it?

The web servers generate many gigabytes of logs per day, and dumping
them through webalizer chews up a huge amount of i/o bandwidth. We're
not doing them currently, as it ties up a lot of server time and makes
everything sluggish.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20041109/2401ab9e/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Rowan Collins

body:
On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 22:17:17 +0000, sannse <sannse at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
> Us in The Onion:
>
> http://www.theonion.com/opinion/index.php?issue=4045&o=2

Wow! First the Guardian, and now the Onion! Just goes to show how big
we've made it! :D

[Also, I note, the Onion would seem to me to be more-or-less "on our
side"; which is nice.]

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] going for 1.4

body:
[Originally posted in mediawiki-l but didn't get any answer]

Hello,

Mail is probably mostly intended for brion and tim as well as other
developers.

It looks like our .plan is to get 1.4 by the end of the year. I believe
we should call for a "feature freeze" soon and launch the beta at the
beginning of december.

Given that most dev will probably be out during the last weeks of
december that will let us until ~ december 20th to fix the most
important bugs. Then in January we can work toward the release candidate
/ 1.4.0.

There is two huge patch as far as I know:

  - Enotif : bring email notification in MediaWiki
  _ Database schema change.

Enotif can probably be commited by the end of november and be shipped in
the first 1.4 beta. Database schema changes is probably too much work
yet (note: I didn't have a look at SCHEMA branche).

In conclusion:

November:
  * add Enotif
  * try to update languages files

December:
  * launch beta
  * fix major bugs reported
  * happy xmas

January:
  * Release candidate (1.4.0)

Then we can work on having plugins and schema changes.

[add:

Do you agree on such a plan ?
Is there already a plan I am not aware of ?
Should we call for a feature freeze right now ?
Could an alpha version help track the most important bugs ?

]

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar


body:
Rebecca wrote:
> I think is an excellent idea: kudos to you both.
>
> The two things that I'd been keen to know first, however, are - would
> this involve a reduction in the number of arbitrators, as in Michael's
> proposal,

No. The number of arbitrators could well be increased. Michael wanted to
reduce the number of arbitrators to reduce the number of people required
for a decision, our proposal is to reduce that number more directly,
while retaining a low workload on each arbitrator and keeping a wide
variety of views on the committee.

> and also - how many of the current group of arbitrators are
> active on IRC? I know James is (provided he plans to run for
> re-election - I hope so) and also Mav, but I'm a bit concerned that
> some people who've played a fairly crucial role this far - Fred
> Bauder, for one, may not use IRC.

Not all of them use IRC. We can provide technical support to help
arbitrators install a client on their computer. We could also set up a
CGI:IRC gateway, or make a proxy available, if it proves to be
necessary. The idea of setting up a CGI:IRC gateway for all the
Wikipedia channels has been suggested before, we could probably just do
that, if we have the hardware resources.

-- Tim Starling