from_name: Freerk Ohling

subject:
[Wikitech-l] can I install wikimedia on a normal webspace account?
	how?

body:
Hello wikitech-l,

      I am trying to install the mediawiki-20030829.tar.gz on my
      webspace as a readonly mirror of the german cur database.
      I already got it managed to insert the 92MB mysqldump
      of the german cur_table into my mysql database.

      But I can't install the mediawiki. I do have a webspace packet
      with 200mb space, PHP 4.2.1, Apache 1.3.23 and MySQL
      3.23.51-log on Linux 2.4.9-31 RedHat7.2. I also have phpMyAdmin
      2.5.1 (but the mediawiki INSTALL file says: Recommended versions
      are: Apache 1.3.27 or later; MySQL 4.0.13 or later; PHP 4.3.2 or later.)

      I do not have the mysql root password, access to the php.ini
      nor access to a shell. The name and the user of the database as
      well as the directory on the webspace
      ("DOCUMENT_ROOT = /www/htdocs/lexion/") are "lexion".

      This is what I did:
      uploaded the phase3 directory from the gzip package to my
      webspace. Renamed those 2 files to LocalSettings.php and
      AdminSettings.php. In the localsettings I entered:

$IP = "/www/htdocs/lexion/wiki";
...
$wgServer           = "http://www.mydomain.org";
$wgArticlePath      = "{$wgScript}?title=$1";
$wgEmergencyContact = "wikiadmin at mydomain.org";
...
$wgDBserver         = "localhost";
$wgDBuser           = "lexion";
$wgDBname           = "lexion";
$wgDBpassword       = "well,mypass...";
$wgDBsqlpassword        = "well,mypass...";
...
$wgReadOnly = true;

      In the adminsettings I also entered my mysql user/pass.
      Than I added a .htaccess file with:
      "AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .phtml .php3 .php4"
      So that the phtml files are also parsed with php.

      Than I opened http://www.mydomain.org/phase3/install.php and
      got:
Directory "/www/htdocs/lexion/wiki" created. Directory
"/www/htdocs/lexion/wiki/upload" created. Directory
"/www/htdocs/lexion/wiki/style" created. Directory
"/www/htdocs/lexion/wiki/upload/tmp" created. Copying files... * * *
Warning! This script will completely erase the existing database
"lexion" and all its contents. Are you sure you want to do this? (yes/no)

       I can't answer the questions, since I didn't run it with a
       shell. And it would be great if I could keep the lexion
       database with the cur table, it was hard enough to upload and
       import that 92megs...

       If I know access the www.mydomain.org/wiki/wiki.phtml I get a
       error 503. (Yeahh I know, install isn't finished...)

       Please let me know if you know anything that could help me. Is
       it possible with the conditions mentioned above to install that
       script? What could I do?

       Thank you very much in advance!

--
Best regards,
 Freerk                          mailto:freerk at gmx.net


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] www.wikipedia.de points to domain seller

body:
Elisabeth Bauer schrieb:
 > Hello,
 >
 > Some people on the German wikipedia noticed that http://www.wikipedia.de
 > points no longer to de.wikipedia.org but to a completely different site
 > which has a frappant similarity to a link farm.
 >
 > What did happen here? Most people, reading about wikipedia in the
 > newspapers, first try the .de-adress. This could seriously damage our
 > reputation.

Indeed, this is really strange. Jimbo, how could this happen?

Arne Klempert from the German Wp works as provider and will try to get
the domain back in an unbureaucratic way. If this doesn't work we'll
need to get a lawyer who writes a dissuasion for us. It was explained to
me that we need a "dispute entry" at the German DENIC, so nobody can
grab the domain when it is set free again (besides us, of course). More
information in German:
http://www.denic.de/doc/recht/faq/ansprueche.html#a0005

The form that must be filled out and sent to Denic:
http://www.denic.de/doc/recht/formulare/einrichtungdispute.pdf

Jimbo, I can do this if you want me to, and I can also go to a lawyer
and authorise him to send a dissuasion if necessary, but I need a
procuration/power of authority/whatever it's called to do this.

One also has to enclose a document which shows that we have a right to
own wikipedia.de. I hope a foundation certificate and some German
newspaper articles will be sufficient.

My address:
Kurt Jansson
Wiener Str. 7
10999 Berlin
Germany

(You can additionally send me a scan by e-mail, so I don't have to wait
for the letter.)

Kurt


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Brion wrote:
>
>>Various people are under the impression that Jimbo owned it,
>>which is  supported by a perusal of the list archives:
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2002-June/000465.html
>>
>Well that changes everything (I missed that email). I don't agree with his
>decision but what is done is done. Precedent has been set and now we will
>have to pony up the money to reactivate wikipedia.de and also start to buy up
>other country code wikipedia domains as well (prioritizing based on use/size
>of the particular language versions).
>
>Sigh. IMO that would be money better spent on hardware.
>
This sounds very much like dumping money into a bottomless pit.

Ec


list: wikien-l

from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] RK

body:
RK not only fails to 'Assume good faith', he takes it a step further and
assumes bad faith at seemingly any opportunity.

-Matt


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Craig Hubley

body:
Lir wrote:
>It is easy enough, if you so desire, to search the internet
>and obtain his phone, fax, email, associates, friends, resume,
>education, personal correspondence, home address, and
>place of employment.

So in other words he is now in the same boat as you, me, Jimbo and anybody
else here whose real name is known. What is your point Adam? I certainly do
not want to harass him or get into his personal life. I just want him to
leave us to leave us alone or at least stop the behavior which repeatedly
gets him hard banned.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Move page bug w/ memcached

body:
Found and fixed in dev and stable. The linkcache entries weren't being
cleared from memcached, so subsequent visits would pick up the wrong
stored page id number and get very very confused, leading to the
appearence that the move failed or that both the old and new titles
apply to the page.

I've added LinkCache::clearLink() and called it from the move page
functions to keep things clean.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Craig Hubley

body:
Lir wrote:
>My point wasn't so much to do with his personal beliefs;
>but rather, to point out that by stating his name on the
>wiki-en; mav has allowed me to know a great deal of
>information about Hubley, some of which Im sure he
>would rather not be so available.

And your use of his full name in the subject field along with your research on
him wasn't the same thing but at a greater level? His name has already been
used on meta and as 24 on an article's talk page in Wikipedia. It was also
discussed on my talk page way back. Besides there is no right to privacy on
the Internet.

I stated in my post that it should be deleted if it was deemed inappropriate.
Which now I think it should be because it provoked the creation of an article
on the subject which is distracting nonsense:

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

By Louis Kyu Won Ryu (is that you Lir?)

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] What is META for? (was: Big picture issues)

body:
On Nov 4, 2003, at 00:58, Fantasy at joachim.net wrote:
> We have meta.wikipedia.org to discuss general issues like this "Big
> Picture issues".
> On Meta it is discussed on
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiImages.org
>
> If we discuss this things on this mailinglist, what is then meta for?

Meta is a wiki and thus much more powerful than the mailing list for
building more permanent, document-mode pages. You can collaboratively
build a specification, write documentation, draw up plans, even draft
up rants and thoughtful essays in a an accessible, editable fashion.

Things said in the mailing list are harder to build on directly, but
are valuable for their immediacy. If mailing lists are conversations,
the meta wiki is our cocktail napkin, whiteboard, and notebook.

> Do I have to write every thing two times?

No, just link to meta in your posts. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] RK

body:
I'm at wits end with RK.

Just check out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Gaia_philosophy&action=history

Note RK's edit summaries (first is reverting me, second is reverting Cimon
avaro, and third is reverting Anthere):

RK (Reverting violation of standard Wikipedia protocol. Please stop the
personal attacks, and stop attacking statements I NEVER MADE. Take the time
to READ the actual comments.)

 RK (Cimon, please stop your mass reversions, your lies about my own
statements, and stop attacking things I have never said. You need to get some
sort of control over your anger.)

and

 RK (Reverting Anthere;'s POV violations, again. This is the English
Wikipedia, and not Anthere's personal wish list of she wishes English
speakers would use this term. Please ban that vandal. Seriously.)

So according to RK, my restoration of a great deal of text was a violation of
Wikipedia protocol and I attacked him. I did no such thing (I did mention
that /he/ was the one doing the attacking though). Also according to RK Cimo
avaro is a liar and has an anger management problem. Sorry, but I just don't
see that. What I /do/ see is RK going ballistic on a daily basis on a number
of articles. Finally according to RK Anthere writes POV text and is a vandal.
That is an outrageous assertion.

I hate to say it, but I think RK is more of a hindrance to our effort than his
edits are worth.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Constans, Camille (C.C.)

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Time estimate for new server and 350 000 press r
	elease

body:
>-----Message d'origine-----
>De : Jimmy Wales [mailto:jwales at bomis.com]
>Envoy? : lundi 20 octobre 2003 23:31
>? : wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
>Objet : [Wikitech-l] Time estimate for new server
>
>
>Penguincomputing just told me that the production lead time on the new
>server will be 7-10 days from now.  So I would anticipate that the new
>server will be shipped, oh, I guess next Wednesday or so.  Possibly
>Jason will install it next Friday.
>

Hello Jimmy,

Have you got some news about the new db server ? When we'll got it, we'll be able to do the press release :-)
But will it be 350 000 articles press release or something else ?

Bye


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Craig Hubley

body:
Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
>Seeing as how Mr. Hubley on his web site takes
>credit for one of  142.177.etc's trademark articles,
>I believe there is every reason to believe that
>Hubley and 142.177.etc are one and the same,
>unless there  is some evidence to the contrary.

I agree with you. And the truth is an absolute defense in any libel case (even
if not true, then any reasonable person would also strongly suspect a
Hubley/142 connection given all the available evidence). My mentioning that
142.177 was Craig Hubley is not, as he likes to state, actionable libel and
slander.

>However, I must take issue with the implied suggestion
>some have made that we undertake to bombard Hubley
>with e-mail, phone calls, legal threats, and personal visits.

Who implied this? Lir came close, but I just don't see a clear connection
between Lir's research and any advocacy to deluge Mr. Hubley or otherwise
bother him. It was my impression that Lir was trying to make a point that now
that 142 has been "outed" then we could (in a technical sense) do that. He
did not say that we should do that and in fact indicated that the outing was
bad because we could disrupt Mr. Hubley's life.

>Such a response would be ineffective and  inconsistent
>with our core values.

I agree. But we can and should use that information to contact the authorities
if Mr. Hubley's actions justify that.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l RK

body:
Mav said

Anthere wrote:
>>Unless I seriously missed something, the
>>comment RK made just above is a rather old one.

>RK has been saying acting in a similar manor since the day that I first
>arrived at Wikipedia nearly two years ago. So a comment he made in July isn't
>that old in my book. The point is that he has not improved and continues to
>act badly.

Of course Mav. You are right. I did not say his current behavior was ok.

However, the fact is
RK has been there since (say) 2 years
During these two years, he has been behaving in a way many people here find not acceptable
Recently, he has received a serious warning; somehow, he is currently on probation (on a watch list ?)
It is important to consider whether the warning had an effect or not, hence to *compare* his behavior since the warning, to what it was *before* the warning.

If the warning did not change anything, then this kind of warning is useless with RK.

I personnaly think it made a difference. He is (I think) not calling for banning anymore, he is not calling people vandals, he is not insulting them so rudely. Or (in case I miss something), he is doing it less than before. As Cimon pointed out, he is careful not to use some trigger words.

Before, he said to some people they were nazi (or equivalent comments). This is direct insult, with little backup provided usually. So, a pure attack.

Now, he says "your comments might be seen as anti-semit by some people". Well, it is more polite; it does not say "I *am* bad", it says "some people consider I am, as regards their personal frame of reference". I suppose he could even cite people to support his claim.
Of course, I disagree, but I am left the opportunity not to comment this (people are free to have an opinion), while being accused of being nazi somehow force someone to justify herself, to *prove* she is not.

Eh :-) Ultimately... writing "Anthere is a nazi" is taking position. Forcing opinion. Closing the discussion. Bad.
Writing, "according to most american rabbins, Anthere is holding antisemit comments" is ...is... is...
Is that not what we are *precisely* doing on Wikipedia ?

Okay, my position is that he has been making efforts, and that should be recognised. That is why, regardless of other comments he made, I think I had to mention that the summary you copied was anterior to the warning. I would have felt dishonnest with wikipedians if I had not mentionned this fact.

This said, the fact he made efforts is good.

Whether the efforts are sufficient is another matter.

-----------------

I would like to know whether some of you have noticed shifts in the way other wikipedians (you perhaps) were talking after a while. The other day, in an icq discussion, someone wrote to me (on a subject irrelevant to Wikipedia), "I think this is a bad idea, but others appear to think differently". I am ***sure*** that two months ago, that person would have just said "this is a bad idea."

---------------------------------
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body:
Kurt wrote:
>Indeed, this is really strange. Jimbo, how could this happen?

Because whoever registered wikipedia.de didn't renew the registration. AFAIK
wikipedia.de was never owned by nor ever an official Wikimedia domain name.
So its fate was in the hands of whoever registered it.

Wikimedia already has a whole bunch of domain names that have to be paid for
(and renewed). If we purchase wikipedia.de then to be fair then we would have
to do for every other wikipedia.xx where xx corresponds to country code that
is also a language code we use. That is a lot of domain names for Wikimedia
to pay for.

But there is nothing stopping individual Wikipedians from buying these domain
names and redirecting them to us. Just don't depend on that domain name
redirect working indefinitely.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Constans, Camille (C.C.) wrote:
> Have you got some news about the new db server?

It is still in production.  There was a delay due to an error at the
bank.  (I.E. the wikimedia foundation Visa CheckCard was not working,
so I ultimately had to FedEx a paper check, how barbaric!).

I expect it to be in Jason's hands by the end of this week, but of
course I can't be sure.  It hasn't shipped yet, I know that much.

I'm checking every day (well, twice or more a day to be honest) and I
will announce here (on wikitech-l) when it ships.

--Jimbo


body:
Brion wrote:
>Various people are under the impression that Jimbo owned it,
>which is  supported by a perusal of the list archives:
>
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2002-June/000465.html

Well that changes everything (I missed that email). I don't agree with his
decision but what is done is done. Precedent has been set and now we will
have to pony up the money to reactivate wikipedia.de and also start to buy up
other country code wikipedia domains as well (prioritizing based on use/size
of the particular language versions).

Sigh. IMO that would be money better spent on hardware.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Craig Hubley

body:
Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
> Seeing as how Mr. Hubley on his web site takes credit for one of
> 142.177.etc's trademark articles, I believe there is every reason to
> believe that Hubley and 142.177.etc are one and the same, unless there
> is some evidence to the contrary.

O.k., that's reasonably conclusive then.  What is his website?  (I
have a feeling I missed something.)

> However, I must take issue with the implied suggestion some have made
> that we undertake to bombard Hubley with e-mail, phone calls, legal
> threats, and personal visits.  Such a response would be ineffective and
> inconsistent with our core values.

I agree absolutely 100%.  Just leave him alone, please.  If he'll
leave us alone, we should leave him alone.  If he *won't* leave us
alone, then we can proceed in a professional manner to try to address
the problem.

--Jimbo


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> >Indeed, this is really strange. Jimbo, how could this happen?

> Because whoever registered wikipedia.de didn't renew the
> registration. AFAIK wikipedia.de was never owned by nor ever an
> official Wikimedia domain name.  So its fate was in the hands of
> whoever registered it.

That's right.  The person who registered it offered it to me, at a
high price ($500 as I recall, but I could be mistaken about that).

> Wikimedia already has a whole bunch of domain names that have to be
> paid for (and renewed). If we purchase wikipedia.de then to be fair
> then we would have to do for every other wikipedia.xx where xx
> corresponds to country code that is also a language code we
> use. That is a lot of domain names for Wikimedia to pay for.

I think it's actually a good idea to do that.

> But there is nothing stopping individual Wikipedians from buying
> these domain names and redirecting them to us. Just don't depend on
> that domain name redirect working indefinitely.

Wait!  Since we have a functioning system for donations, it is a *lot*
better now to just donate money and let me know that you want it to be
used for thus-and-such a registration.  That way, the domain belongs
to the Wikimedia Foundation from the outset, and we don't have to worry
about random lapses.

I hope some German-speakers will research who now has wikimedia.de, so
we can approach them and hope that they are charitably inclined to
give it to us.  We could reimburse them for the expenses they have
already in terms of registration, or they could just make a gift out
of support for our universal ideals.

--Jimbo


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Various people are under the impression that Jimbo owned it, which is
> supported by a perusal of the list archives:
>
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2002-June/000465.html

Uh-oh, that's very interesting.  I wonder if I screwed this up
somehow.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Articles about ourselves

body:
There are verifiable facts about me, news reports and what-not, but I
would prefer if there were no article about me, as a matter of modesty
and good taste.  I don't see any reason for us to have a hard-and-fast
rule about this, but would like to encourage a social meme of similar
modesty from other contributors.

At a very minimum, it seems most tasteful for anyone about whom we do
have an entry to recuse themselves from working on it.


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Craig Hubley

body:
Vicki Rosenzweig  wrote:

Does this mean you need to write an article on me? I've probably done far
more than
a thousand Usenet posts, even if you don't count reposting a FAQ every 30 days.

I would say anyone who generates Results 1 - 100 of about 3,870 hits on
Google probably has enough of an internet career that an article might be
appropriate.

Probably true of a lot of us.

Fred


from_name: Louis Kyu Won Ryu

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Craig Hubley

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
>
>>Seeing as how Mr. Hubley on his web site takes credit for one of
>>142.177.etc's trademark articles, I believe there is every reason to
>>believe that Hubley and 142.177.etc are one and the same, unless there
>>is some evidence to the contrary.
>
>
> O.k., that's reasonably conclusive then.  What is his website?  (I
> have a feeling I missed something.)

You missed an article I placed at [[Craig Hubley]] chronicling his
various other achievements, including a link to his personal website and
a brief, factual summary of his involvement here and at MeatBall.  For
nearly a thousand UseNet posts, many of them meaty, I thought it
appropriate.

The article was unilaterially deleted without being first listed on VfD.
  I have since listed it on votes for undeletion, but nobody cares.

But, Jimbo, you're a sysop, right?  So you can check out the deleted
article and its link to his personal website.

Louis


subject: [WikiEN-l] RK

body:
Anthere wrote:
>Unless I seriously missed something, the
>comment RK made just above is a rather old one.

RK has been saying acting in a similar manor since the day that I first
arrived at Wikipedia nearly two years ago. So a comment he made in July isn't
that old in my book. The point is that he has not improved and continues to
act badly.

-- mav


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Craig Hubley

body:
At 08:33 AM 11/4/03 -0600, Louis wrote:
>Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
>>
>>>Seeing as how Mr. Hubley on his web site takes credit for one of
>>>142.177.etc's trademark articles, I believe there is every reason to
>>>believe that Hubley and 142.177.etc are one and the same, unless there
>>>is some evidence to the contrary.
>>
>>O.k., that's reasonably conclusive then.  What is his website?  (I
>>have a feeling I missed something.)
>
>You missed an article I placed at [[Craig Hubley]] chronicling his various
>other achievements, including a link to his personal website and a brief,
>factual summary of his involvement here and at MeatBall.  For nearly a
>thousand UseNet posts, many of them meaty, I thought it appropriate.

Does this mean you need to write an article on me? I've probably done far
more than
a thousand Usenet posts, even if you don't count reposting a FAQ every 30 days.

I suspect that articles on banned users will cause more trouble than
they're worth,
unless/until we hit the point that someone we'd be writing about anyway
contributes
and is then banned.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Time estimate for new server and 350 000 press release

body:
Constans, Camille wrote:
>Have you got some news about the new db server ?
>When we'll got it, we'll be able to do the press release :-)

Last I heard it was going to hopefully be installed sometime late this week.

>But will it be 350 000 articles press release or something else ?

If things get really fast with the new server then why not wait for half a
million articles? By the time we reach that (early next year) we should be
starting to tax our new server setup and at least need some minor upgrades
all around (lots and lots of RAM) and an additional $2,000-$3,000 webserver
(or a server to perform full text searches on - whatever is needed most).

We've waited this long and the major point of the press release in the first
place was to get enough money through donations to get a big bad database
server. Thanks to that $5,000 donation we achieved that goal well before we
were ready to distribute the press release.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Fantasy at joachim.net

body:
Hi all,

We have meta.wikipedia.org to discuss general issues like this "Big
Picture issues".
On Meta it is discussed on http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiImages.org

If we discuss this things on this mailinglist, what is then meta for?
Do I have to write every thing two times?

Thanks for helping me to understanding this,
Fantasy :-)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] European domains

body:
An anonymous contributor has donated 200 EUR for European domains.

Normally I register via register.com, because I have been happy with
their 'automatic renewal' service, but with this wikipedia.de fiasco,
obviously that isn't a good enough reason.

So, I'm looking for advice on:

1.  Cheap places to register the domains

2.  Which domains we ought to register.  Presumably we should
prioritize in order of popularity somehow?

Possibly some other eager patron would like to subsidize the purchase
of domains for another region of the world?  (Pacific rim?)

--Jimbo


from_name: Dufrenoy, Alexis

subject:
AW: [Wikitech-l] Time estimate for new server and 350 000 press r
	elease

body:
If we go this way, why don't wait to have 500,000 articles, so we have a
really great announcement ? ;-)

Traroth

-----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Constans, Camille (C.C.) [mailto:cconsta4 at ford.com]
Gesendet: Dienstag, 4. November 2003 08:25
An: 'Wikimedia developers'
Betreff: RE: [Wikitech-l] Time estimate for new server and 350 000 press
r elease

Hello Jimmy,

Have you got some news about the new db server ? When we'll got it, we'll be
able to do the press release :-)
But will it be 350 000 articles press release or something else ?

Bye


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: bot parsing for interwiki links

body:
On Mon, 3 Nov 2003 11:25:56 +0100 (CET), Andre Engels wrote:

> On Sun, 2 Nov 2003, Rob Hooft wrote:
>
>> What you describe is one of the robots implemented in the
>> pywikipediabot, available via sourceforge.net:
>> http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywikipediabot
>>
>> That software does handle redirects and a lot of other
>> wikipedia-intricacies. If you have any other wishes, we can have a look
>> at them. You're welcome to join the team and bring in your experience.
>
> Having some experience with Rob's bot (and done some minor coding on it
> too), I can say that I can recommend it. It is currently being used on nl:
> (by Rob and me) and on da: (by Christian List), while I have also made a
> run of it on fy:. For other languages, I would like to hear which languages
> would allow the usage of such a bot. If wanted, I can do a trial run on a
> smaller number of pages, so people can see whether it is running correctly.
>
> The best thing would be to have an operator (or more) for each language,
> but if nobody is willing & able, I would not mind doing several other
> languages as well.
>
> There are also some more bots there, among them a bot that is used to help
> in doing disambiguation (this one I have been running on en: under username
> Robbot). It also contains a library (wikipedia.py) so it can be used for
> programming other automatic or machine-aided edits on Wikipedia as well.
>
> Andre Engels

Hello andre,

I am going to check with the fr: sysops to discuss about that bot.
Currently the robot.txt doesnt allow Rob's bot. I think we will conduct
some test :)

Maybe we can set a page on meta to organize and talk about that ?

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz
http://fr.wikipedia.org/Utilisateur:Hashar


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:

> I am going to check with the fr: sysops to discuss about that bot.
> Currently the robot.txt doesnt allow Rob's bot. I think we will conduct
> some test :)

Unless it has been changed since Saturday, the bot actually is allowed -
it has loaded many French pages to check the Dutch ones.

> Maybe we can set a page on meta to organize and talk about that ?

That's not a bad idea, although I would have to change my habits to use
it - currently I hardly visit meta at all (only when I have to put something
on Brion's todo list).

Andre Engels


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Articles about ourselves

body:
> From: Jimmy Wales
> Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2003 10:27 AM
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Articles about ourselves
>
> There are verifiable facts about me, news reports and what-not, but I
> would prefer if there were no article about me, as a matter of modesty
> and good taste.  I don't see any reason for us to have a hard-and-fast
> rule about this, but would like to encourage a social meme of similar
> modesty from other contributors.
>
> At a very minimum, it seems most tasteful for anyone about whom we do
> have an entry to recuse themselves from working on it.
>
I think it's reasonable to discourage entries about contributors, but I
think it's unreasonable to expect people to recuse themselves from
working on their own entries. We don't generally expect people to recuse
themselves from areas in which they are experts. We should, however,
expect people to be rational and impersonal when working on their
entries...that is, be held to the same standards of verifiability and
respect for others' edits.

One question: why is this on the wikien list and not general wikipedia
list? Are we trying to establish different mores and guidelines on all
the wikipedia language versions?


from_name: jheiskan at welho.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] RK

body:
Lainaus Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>:

> I'm at wits end with RK.

I think that sums up my view as well. I cannot see how anyone could construct a
productive avenue of pursuing a disagreement with him.

> Just check out:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Gaia_philosophy&action=history
>
> Note RK's edit summaries (first is reverting me, second is reverting Cimon
> avaro, and third is reverting Anthere):

Just to re-emphasize; as Anthere has pointed out, the summaries are in reverse
chronological order, the one referring to Anthere is previous to the original
temporary banning.

> RK (Reverting violation of standard Wikipedia protocol. Please stop the
> personal attacks, and stop attacking statements I NEVER MADE. Take the time
> to READ the actual comments.)

I think the positive side of this is that this summary is not in itself a
personal attack, but refers to Wikipedia protocol and standards of decency. I do
note however that his suggestion to "Take the time to READ the actual comments."
Is not useful, in my opinion, since to me it appeared that it was RK who refused
to confront explanations proffered as to why his excising text en masse was
unacceptable.

>  RK (Cimon, please stop your mass reversions, your lies about my own
> statements, and stop attacking things I have never said. You need to get some
> sort of control over your anger.)

Well, this is directed towards me, and in truth the advice to keep control of my
anger was well taken at that point.

> and
>
>  RK (Reverting Anthere;'s POV violations, again. This is the English
> Wikipedia, and not Anthere's personal wish list of she wishes English
> speakers would use this term. Please ban that vandal. Seriously.)
>
> So according to RK, my restoration of a great deal of text was a violation of
>
> Wikipedia protocol and I attacked him. I did no such thing (I did mention
> that /he/ was the one doing the attacking though). Also according to RK Cimo
> avaro is a liar and has an anger management problem. Sorry, but I just don't
> see that.

Well I do have an anger management problem in that I have to keep doing it when
discussing edits with RK.

> What I /do/ see is RK going ballistic on a daily basis on a number
>
> of articles. Finally according to RK Anthere writes POV text and is a vandal.
>
> That is an outrageous assertion.
>
> I hate to say it, but I think RK is more of a hindrance to our effort than
> his
> edits are worth.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

I very much fear that the extent to which RK is able to mend his ways is very
limited. Having been temporarily banned once, a greater attempt to not raise the
hackles of other contributors would no doubt have rehabilitated him in short
order. I think he either genuinely cannot control himself, or is cynically
trying to keep one skate below the off-side line, beleiving that only certain
specific epithets which he was previously fond of, are over to the off-side
zone. That said, it is colourable that I and mav may have in frustration engaged
(with ample provocation) in rhetorical devices which could be (with ill will)
construed as taunts  in an effort to make him see how unreasonable his posture was.

I think that at a minimum, a final warning should be issued to him from a person
who has the authority. To the degree that RK may not be able learn how to work
constructively and collegially, I agree with mavs last comment above, and have
said so before. Frankly I am not optimistic about his ability to mend his ways,
but would not oppose giving him a final last chance.

Respectfully:

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro)


from_name: Peter Gervai

body:
On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 12:37:23AM -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
> >Brion wrote:
> >
> >>Various people are under the impression that Jimbo owned it,
> >>which is  supported by a perusal of the list archives:
> >>http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2002-June/000465.html
> >>
> >Well that changes everything (I missed that email). I don't agree with his
> >decision but what is done is done. Precedent has been set and now we will
> >have to pony up the money to reactivate wikipedia.de and also start to buy
> >up other country code wikipedia domains as well (prioritizing based on
> >use/size of the particular language versions).
> >
> >Sigh. IMO that would be money better spent on hardware.
> >
> This sounds very much like dumping money into a bottomless pit.

Not necessarily. I registered wikipedia.hu, other wikipedioholics can do
their own country. I think most of the countries can help in this. One reg
per country isn't that scary, if the country have at least 3-4 editors, or
even if has only one, dedicated. ;->

grin


subject: [WikiEN-l] Phoenicia

body:
Is there someone here with good and current knowledge about ancient history
in general and/or Phoenicia in particular? If so, please take a look at the
recent edits to [[Phoenicia]]. I get the impression that someone is trying
to pass off the opinion of a respected but by no means general accepted
theory/professor as being 'the' truth about Phoenicia. I do know something
about this subject, but not enough to either go into an edit war or resolve
it.

Andre Engels


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Craig Hubley

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>I would say anyone who generates Results 1 - 100 of about 3,870 hits on
>Google probably has enough of an internet career that an article might be
>appropriate.
>
>Probably true of a lot of us.
>
>
I'd tend to disagree.  In a very computer-centric view (if say, this
were the Slashdot Encyclopedia of the Internet) that would make sense,
but in a wider view, simply posting a lot to UseNet is about equivalent
to saying "I'm a member of a lot of knitting clubs".

-Mark


from_name: Kurt Jansson

body:
Daniel Mayer schrieb:
> Brion wrote:
>
>>Various people are under the impression that Jimbo owned it,
>>which is  supported by a perusal of the list archives:
>>
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2002-June/000465.html
>
> Well that changes everything (I missed that email).

Wow, Mav, you've got a great memory if you can remember that you missed
it! I often forget what was discussed a few months ago, even if it was
my own mail.
So the question persists why the registration wasn't renewed. If it was
the providers fault it might be easier to get it back.

> I don't agree with his
> decision but what is done is done. Precedent has been set and now we will
> have to pony up the money to reactivate wikipedia.de and also start to buy up
> other country code wikipedia domains as well (prioritizing based on use/size
> of the particular language versions).
>
> Sigh. IMO that would be money better spent on hardware.

I don't think so. Most people are irritated by domain names like
de.wikipedia.org because there's no www. (btw could we let
www.de.wikipedia.org redirect to de.wikipedia.org, please?) The casual
German surfer enters www. company name .de and would be very irritated
to see porn advertisements or something like that instead of what he or
she expected.

The idea to let Wikipedians own those domains sounds interesting, but I
predict a lot of trouble sooner or later if one of them leaves the
project in anger and uses it for something else.

Kurt


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Big picture issues (was: cluster and images)

body:
This same discussion is going on at meta, so I'll probably have to
repeat everything I say here over there. The page is:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiImages.org

Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
>>Images should be a resource that are easily usable by
>>all Wikimedia projects and language versions. All one
>>should have to do is upload an image once and then
>>link to it from any Wikimedia project or language
>>version. That is why images.wikimedia.org makes sense.
>
>
> Yes, perhaps.  I agree with the spirit of what you're saying here, but
> I think that there's a bit of complexity, too.
>
> Let's say we have a picture on wikipedia, let's say it's a photo of an
> elephant at the San Diego zoo.  It's used on wikipedia as an
> illustration for the San Diego zoo article.
>
> I am writing my 3rd grade science textbook, and I link to that same
> picture.  In the text, I write about that picture.  "As you can see
> from the photo, elephants love to throw dirt on their backs with their
> trunks."
>
> But later someone comes along and changes the photo in the San Diego
> zoo article.  It's still an elephant at the San Diego zoo, but a
> different one.  And no dirt is being thrown.
>
> So, I think that when different articles or different books use the
> same images, they *each* need to make a local copy.

I disagree. I think the elephant throwing dirt on its back should be
called [[Image:Elephant throwing dirt on its back.jpg]], and that the
elephant doing nothing should be called [[Image:Elephant doing
nothing.jpg]]. Of course that means it takes longer to type the names,
but I think there's other advantages to this proposal that outweigh this
disadvantage.

If the image namespaces are merged (the terminology I favoured on meta
since it ignores storage details), then the following policy should be
put in place. In improving an image, only scaling, compression, contrast
adjustment, etc. should be allowed. One name equals one click of the
shutter button. If a new, better photo comes along, it should be given a
different name, and the articles which refer to it should be updated
appropriately. Diagrams are a bit more murky, but the policy should be
that diagrams should not be changed significantly.

> So, for images, I think it makes a lot of sense to have
> images.wikipedia.org
> images.wikibooks.org
>
> and so on.
>
> The same problem exists for various languages, of course.
>
> I'm just saying that "available for use by any Wikimedia project"
> doesn't necessarily imply that the images need to be all put onto one
> big server.
>
> Actually, a very sensible thing to do, I should think, would be
> to eventually have images.wikipedia.org, for live images used
> on the encyclopedia, images.wikibooks.org, etc. but ALSO to have
> images.wikimedia.org.
>
> And images.wikimedia.org would be a project unto itself, so to speak,
> where images are collected (perhaps automatically) and copied from the
> other projects, and given neutral captions, and entered into a big
> image library.  The rules for inclusion in *this* would be very
> strict, not relying on fair use.  All images would have to be public
> domain or GNU FDL or something compatible.
>
> And then if people needed an image for something, they could just copy
> it from there.

The main problem is the difficulty (with the current software) of
handling large numbers of images, multiplied by large numbers of
languages. If a better UI can be designed, allowing images to be copied
in bulk to a large number of languages, then perhaps this would be ideal.

I have also suggested that perhaps images shouldn't be copied from
language to language, they should be "symlinked", to use the unix term.
But that scheme isn't ideal either, for the reasons listed on meta. So I
don't know what the best way is.

-- Tim Starling.


from_name: Matthew J. Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Craig Hubley

body:
On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, Delirium wrote:

> I'd tend to disagree.  In a very computer-centric view (if say, this
> were the Slashdot Encyclopedia of the Internet) that would make sense,
> but in a wider view, simply posting a lot to UseNet is about equivalent
> to saying "I'm a member of a lot of knitting clubs".

I agree.

Besides, being easily searched for online is as much to do with having a
rare name as anything else.  There are a thousand people with my name
(Matthew Brown) online -- that doesn't mean I haven't posted as much
nonsense as Craig Hubley.

Mr Hubley is also one of those 'legend in his own mind' people -- he wants
fame, he wants to be a mover and shaker, a trendsetter, a predictor.
Let's not give it to him.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Articles about ourselves

body:
> From: Jimmy Wales
>> > There are verifiable facts about me, news reports
>and what-not, but I
>> would prefer if there were no article about me, as
a >matter of modesty
>> and good taste.  I don't see any reason for us to
>have a hard-and-fast
>> rule about this, but would like to encourage a
>social meme of similar
>> modesty from other contributors.
>> > At a very minimum, it seems most tasteful for
>anyone about whom we do
>> have an entry to recuse themselves from working on
>it.

>I think it's reasonable to discourage entries about
>contributors, but I
>think it's unreasonable to expect people to recuse
>themselves from
>working on their own entries. We don't generally
>expect people to recuse
>themselves from areas in which they are experts. We
>should, however,
>expect people to be rational and impersonal when
>working on their
>entries...that is, be held to the same standards of
>verifiability and
>respect for others' edits.

>One question: why is this on the wikien list and not
>general wikipedia
>list? Are we trying to establish different mores and
>guidelines on all
>the wikipedia language versions?

This is a good question.

Made me think of something.

There are already some different guidelines between
the different versions. Even when, as it rarely
happen, the topic is common.

Recently, after a good couple of months,
french-speaking people reached a hundred percent
agreement to delete all Daniel C. Boyer pages.

-----

other times, I see not any consensus, though I am sure
there would be one on en. That means our rules will be
different from yours.

How could a consensus be drawn from this ?

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%E9dia%3APrise_de_d%E9cision%2C_d%E9bloquer_papotages

6 pro, 6 against, 5 neutral.

Consensus in action :-)

And when guidelines are already established on en,
because of your experience, it is probably important
that the other versions learn from you, but perhaps
make their own rules, according to local situation.

Only guidelines or software changes that do not exist
on *any* wikipedia can be honestly discussed together.

__________________________________
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from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [Wikipedia-l] European domains

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> An anonymous contributor has donated 200 EUR for
> European domains.
>
> Normally I register via register.com, because I have
> been happy with
> their 'automatic renewal' service, but with this
> wikipedia.de fiasco,
> obviously that isn't a good enough reason.
>
> So, I'm looking for advice on:
>
> 1.  Cheap places to register the domains
>
> 2.  Which domains we ought to register.  Presumably
> we should
> prioritize in order of popularity somehow?
>
> Possibly some other eager patron would like to
> subsidize the purchase
> of domains for another region of the world?
> (Pacific rim?)
>
> --Jimbo

A Google search found a few good sites for cheap
domain name registration:

*web.com, 6.95/yr, but no foreign domain extentions
*http://www.itic.de/Registrar-Domain/ has .de domains
for 8 Euro and other domains for more money.
*idotz.net has a lot of different tld's available but
isn't as cheap as the above two.

HTH

LDan

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from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Phoenicia

body:
On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, Andre Engels wrote:

> Is there someone here with good and current knowledge about ancient history
> in general and/or Phoenicia in particular? If so, please take a look at the
> recent edits to [[Phoenicia]]. I get the impression that someone is trying
> to pass off the opinion of a respected but by no means general accepted
> theory/professor as being 'the' truth about Phoenicia. I do know something
> about this subject, but not enough to either go into an edit war or resolve
> it.
>
I am not an expert about Phoenicia, but I think I know a thing or two
about ancient history -- at least enough to know when something doesn't
"feel" right.

This article starts off oddly, assuming that the reader knows the definitions
for "Phoenicians" & ''Canaanites". And it doesn't help that this article
lacks a link to [[Canaan]]. (An article in desperate need of work, but
one task at a time.) I'm also not sure why Phoenician is said to be an
"Afroasiatic" language when many informed people would classify it as a
Semitic language, just like Arabic, Babylonian, Hebrew & Egyptian. It also
doesn't help that the link to [[Afroasiatic]] doesn't lead anywhere.

(And yes, I know "Afroasiatic" & "Semitic" are synonymous; but would the
average reader who is consulting this article for the first time?)

I'm puzzled at the section "Mysterious origins"; I've refreshed my knowledge
of the Ancient Near East from time to time, & I've never encountered any
theory that the Phoenicians are anything but the descendants of the native
peoples of either that region, or perhaps immigrants from an adjacent
region.

And I recognize the names of two names in the history of this article:
one is sincere, but advocates "alternative" interpretations of history;
the other has contributed at least one article that is, to be polite,
highly fanciful.

Like you, Andre, I'm highly suspicious about the content of this article,
but I don't have the research or time to fight to clean it up. At least
right now.

Geoff


from_name: Stevertigo

body:
There are better things to spend money on. Like TV commercials. :)

~S~

Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> >Indeed, this is really strange. Jimbo, how could this happen?

> Because whoever registered wikipedia.de didn't renew the
> registration. AFAIK wikipedia.de was never owned by nor ever an
> official Wikimedia domain name. So its fate was in the hands of
> whoever registered it.

That's right. The person who registered it offered it to me, at a
high price ($500 as I recall, but I could be mistaken about that).

> Wikimedia already has a whole bunch of domain names that have to be
> paid for (and renewed). If we purchase wikipedia.de then to be fair
> then we would have to do for every other wikipedia.xx where xx
> corresponds to country code that is also a language code we
> use. That is a lot of domain names for Wikimedia to pay for.

I think it's actually a good idea to do that.

> But there is nothing stopping individual Wikipedians from buying
> these domain names and redirecting them to us. Just don't depend on
> that domain name redirect working indefinitely.

Wait! Since we have a functioning system for donations, it is a *lot*
better now to just donate money and let me know that you want it to be
used for thus-and-such a registration. That way, the domain belongs
to the Wikimedia Foundation from the outset, and we don't have to worry
about random lapses.

I hope some German-speakers will research who now has wikimedia.de, so
we can approach them and hope that they are charitably inclined to
give it to us. We could reimburse them for the expenses they have
already in terms of registration, or they could just make a gift out
of support for our universal ideals.

--Jimbo
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: bot parsing for interwiki links

body:
On Tue, 4 Nov 2003 10:53:38 +0100 (CET), Andre Engels wrote:

> On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
>
>> I am going to check with the fr: sysops to discuss about that bot.
>> Currently the robot.txt doesnt allow Rob's bot. I think we will conduct
>> some test :)
>
> Unless it has been changed since Saturday, the bot actually is allowed -
> it has loaded many French pages to check the Dutch ones.

Hello,

Well here is my last try:

In wikipedia.py I setup the user agent like that:
conn.putheader("User-Agent", "HasharBot (pywikipedia.py)")

I then execut login.php:

------------
Logging in to  fr.wikipedia.org
username: HasharBot
password: xxxxxx
403 Forbidden
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">

<TITLE>403 Forbidden</TITLE>

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /w/wiki.phtml
on this server.

<ADDRESS>Apache/1.3.28 Server at fr.wikipedia.org Port 80</ADDRESS>

Hm. Did something go wrong? Wrong password?
----

Url and parameters seems ok, I tried with a mozilla user-agent but got the
same 403 thing :p

--
Ashar Voultoiz
http://fr.wikipedia.org/Utilisateur:Hashar


body:
On Tue, 4 Nov 2003 10:53:38 +0100 (CET), Andre Engels wrote:
> On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
<snip>
>> Maybe we can set a page on meta to organize and talk about that ?
>
> That's not a bad idea, although I would have to change my habits to use
> it - currently I hardly visit meta at all (only when I have to put something
> on Brion's todo list).
>
> Andre Engels

Follow-up to:
	http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_bot

:0)

--
Ashar Voultoiz
http://fr.wikipedia.org/Utilisateur:Hashar


references:
<10vr5vjykv60x.17pe5zdqk0pxa.dlg@40tude.net>
	<Pine.LNX.4.44.0311041051250.16537-100000@ponnuki.uni-koblenz.de>
	<82k4js03g9y0.on4gftaxyw5k.dlg@40tude.net>

body:
On Wed, 5 Nov 2003 01:44:16 +0100, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:

> On Tue, 4 Nov 2003 10:53:38 +0100 (CET), Andre Engels wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
>>
>>> I am going to check with the fr: sysops to discuss about that bot.
>>> Currently the robot.txt doesnt allow Rob's bot. I think we will conduct
>>> some test :)
>>
>> Unless it has been changed since Saturday, the bot actually is allowed -
>> it has loaded many French pages to check the Dutch ones.
>
> Hello,
>
> Well here is my last try:
>
> In wikipedia.py I setup the user agent like that:
> conn.putheader("User-Agent", "HasharBot (pywikipedia.py)")
>
> I then execut login.php:
>
> ------------
> Logging in to  fr.wikipedia.org
> username: HasharBot
> password: xxxxxx
> 403 Forbidden
> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
>
> <TITLE>403 Forbidden</TITLE>
>
>
Forbidden

> You don't have permission to access /w/wiki.phtml
> on this server.

>

> <ADDRESS>Apache/1.3.28 Server at fr.wikipedia.org Port 80</ADDRESS>
>
> Hm. Did something go wrong? Wrong password?
> ----
>
> Url and parameters seems ok, I tried with a mozilla user-agent but got the
> same 403 thing :p

Hello again

Got it working correctly. I will post specific FR: usage on sourceforge.net
tracker / features / bugs :0)

The bot is registered as HasharBot on fr.wikipedia and is currently under
testing and then will need approval by the fr: community.

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz
http://fr.wikipedia.org/Utilisateur:Hashar


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Articles about ourselves

body:
Anthere wrote:
> That means our rules will be different from yours.

Particularly on minor points, I want to emphasize that I have no
problem with this.  There should be significant leeway for different
languages to have conventions and norms that differ in some ways from
global conventions and norms, based on the desires of the contributors
and the prevailing culture.

A few things are absolute and non-negotiable, though.  NPOV for
example.

> And when guidelines are already established on en,
> because of your experience, it is probably important
> that the other versions learn from you, but perhaps
> make their own rules, according to local situation.

I agree completely.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Articles about ourselves

body:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> >At a very minimum, it seems most tasteful for anyone about whom we do
> >have an entry to recuse themselves from working on it.
>
> Um...I've done some edits to the Wikipedia article about me (which
> was originally created by Ed Poor).

Yes, and I think this is a good case-in-point about the problems that
can easily arise from the practice.

1. POTENTIAL FOR PERSONAL CONFLICT

You added:
>PR Watch monitors deceptive and manipulative public relations firms,
>such as the creation of "front groups" -- organizations that purport
>to represent a popular public agenda, when in fact their message is
>tailored to serve the specific interests of a client whose sponsorship
>of the organization is hidden.

Ed Poor removed that line with the comment "(moved self-serving ...
text to talk)".  And of course since then, famously, you two have been
at each others throats.  I'm not suggesting a direct causal
connection, but just showing how articles about ourselves are fraught
with the possibility of conflict.

(You wisely chose to let that one go, it seems.)

You're well-liked around here.  I like you.  But in my local
newspaper, I read an editorial you wrote (an excerpt from _Weapons of
Mass Deception_, I believe) that almost made my head explode.  :-) I
thought it wasn't just mistaken, but deeply misleading.  And I think
that your posture in that piece as some kind of neutral arbiter
exposing PR spin was absurd -- the piece itself was a masterpiece of
spin.

And yet the article reads like pure hagiography.  It's a perfectly
appropriate self-biography for PR purposes, but it completely fails as
encyclopedia material.  And I think that most people will naturally,
and rightly, refrain from adding criticism of your work there, _as a
matter of personal courtesy_, because you edit it yourself, and you
are known and liked here.

2.  UNVERIFIABLE INFORMATION

You are an expert on yourself, to be sure.  So, who could possibly
challenge you on such statements as "At the age of three, his family
moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, where his father worked as a musician"?

3.  GOOD TASTE

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, a reference work, not a tool for our own
self-promotion.  I can easily envision a mocking criticism of us as a
non-serious work if we all start writing entries about ourselves.  "Of
the 1,234 page-length biographies in wikipedia, fully 10% of them are
of Wikipedia contributors writing about themselves."  Ick.

> I don't see how this is inappropriate. I arguably have a "conflict of
> interest" in what I write about myself, but on the other hand, I know
> quite a bit about the topic. Anyway, there's nothing in the Wikipedia
> rules to prohibit people with conflicts of interest from
> contributing. We don't ask people who work for drug companies to
> recuse themselves from posting information about health-related
> topics.

Nor do we prohibit left-wing anti-corporate book authors to recuse
themselves from those articles, either.  You're right of course that
although conflict-of-interest is a critical problem in
autobiographical material, it isn't in and of itself persuasive as a
reason to refrain from the practice.

What I think is that the things I've outlined above -- potential for
personal conflict, unverifiable information, and good taste -- all
build on the conflict-of-interest problem in such a way as to argue
persuasively against the practice.

Let me say it another way -- it isn't so much the conflict-of-interest
that's a problem, it's that personal courtesy prevents people from
editing an article about you that you've edited yourself, with the
result being an entry that is not encyclopedic.

> I'm mentioning this now partly as a heads-up so that if anyone DOES
> object to the way I've contributed to my own article, they should
> feel invited to fix it the usual wiki way -- by making whatever
> revisions they feel are appropriate. Here's the URL:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Rampton

And I should emphasize that although I think the practice is
questionable and tacky, I don't think we should ban it outright.

--Jimbo


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] cluster and images

body:
On Mon, Nov 03, 2003 at 04:48:20PM -0600, Nick Reinking wrote:
> > Using images.wikipedia.org I see one open issue: Login cookies are
> > currently set to the full qualified hostname, e.g. en.wikipedia.org.
> > The browser would not send the cookie to images.wiki[pm]edia.org.
> >
> > Should we create a unified user database for all wikimedia projects
> > and set the cookie to *.wikipedia.org?
>
> Why does this matter, though?  We don't do anything with images based on
> somebody's user info, do we?

We don't allow users to upload an image unless they are logged in.
And it's nice to know whom to ask regarding the copyright of an
image.

Regards,

JeLuF


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Articles about ourselves

body:
Jimbo wrote:

>At a very minimum, it seems most tasteful for anyone about whom we do
>have an entry to recuse themselves from working on it.

Um...I've done some edits to the Wikipedia article about me (which
was originally created by Ed Poor).

I don't see how this is inappropriate. I arguably have a "conflict of
interest" in what I write about myself, but on the other hand, I know
quite a bit about the topic. Anyway, there's nothing in the Wikipedia
rules to prohibit people with conflicts of interest from
contributing. We don't ask people who work for drug companies to
recuse themselves from posting information about health-related
topics. The ethos here is that people are allowed to have their own
POV but are expected to work constructively with others in arriving
at articles that are NPOV (insofar as that is attainable).

In the case of the article about myself, both Ed Poor and I have
strong (and differing) opinions on the topic, but I don't have any
problem with the role he has played in editing my bio, and I haven't
seen him express any objections to the role I've played myself.

I'm mentioning this now partly as a heads-up so that if anyone DOES
object to the way I've contributed to my own article, they should
feel invited to fix it the usual wiki way -- by making whatever
revisions they feel are appropriate. Here's the URL:

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

--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
--------------------------------


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Articles about ourselves

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> So add the criticisms you have, I don't see a problem with that. As
> a matter of fact, I find it less courteous to bring these criticisms
> up on the list, from your position as benevolent dictator, than to
> simply edit the article. [And please let's not get off-topic on this
> issue, I know you have to rant sometimes, but if you want to discuss
> this, it should be done privately.]

Sure, well, my point was not to bring onto the list a discussion of
Sheldon Rampton's politics, nor mine, but rather to point out that his
editing the article about himself is likely to give rise to people
refraining from editing it, as a courtesy to him because we all want
to get along here.

> > You are an expert on yourself, to be sure.  So, who could possibly
> > challenge you on such statements as "At the age of three, his family
> > moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, where his father worked as a musician"?

> Sheldon has a reputation to lose. As such, we should extend some
> trust to him when it comes to non-controversial statements of fact
> about himself.  After all, that's what any biographer would do as
> well.

Yes, of course, and I don't mean to say that I doubt him on such
facts.  But saying that also reveals the particular danger here, which
is that out of respect for each other, out of courtesy to each other,
out of our very reasonable trust for each other, we aren't likely to
challenge autobiographical entries.

> The best rule, in my opinion, is to only allow contributors to make
> additions/modifications, not to start articles about themselves.

That's an interesting twist, to be sure.  But I'm not proposing any
rule here, because I think it's far too individualized for a general
rule to be of sufficient value.

> It would be dangerous if someone who is directly opposed to Sheldon's
> work, such as Ed, could write all the negative things he wants, while
> Sheldon had no way to directly defend himself.

I agree that this is a potential problem.  The way I would recommend
handling it would be to comment on the talk page, or to ask a few
independent parties to assist.

But let me say again and again, I'm here expressing a personal
preference, not promoting a rule.  I do recognize that there are
reasonable arguments on all sides of this matter, there are a lot of
pro's and con's to be balanced.

--Jimbo


body:
On Wed, 5 Nov 2003, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:

> On Tue, 4 Nov 2003 10:53:38 +0100 (CET), Andre Engels wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> >
> >> I am going to check with the fr: sysops to discuss about that bot.
> >> Currently the robot.txt doesnt allow Rob's bot. I think we will conduct
> >> some test :)
> >
> > Unless it has been changed since Saturday, the bot actually is allowed -
> > it has loaded many French pages to check the Dutch ones.
>
> Hello,
>
> Well here is my last try:
>
> In wikipedia.py I setup the user agent like that:
> conn.putheader("User-Agent", "HasharBot (pywikipedia.py)")
>
> I then execut login.php:

(snip)

The problem is that login.py does not use the connection facilities of
wikipedia.py. Christian List has now changed login.py so that it does
provide a User agent; please upload login.py anew and try again.

Andre Engels


from_name: Alex Rosen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Eternal Ephemeral

body:
(Sorry I'm late to this discussion, I was out of town.)

So this sounds like a new position, the idea of a middle ground. Some
things should not be encouraged, but should not be deleted either.
Right?

Where does What Wikipedia Is Not fit in to this? I always assumed that
WWIN listed the criteria for whether something should be deleted or not.
Or more specifically, it lists the criteria for whether something should
be fixed - but if it's unfixable, then delete it (e.g. if it can never
become more than a dictionary definition).

The problem I've had all along is that WWIN doesn't say anything about
trivia or ephemera. So there's no agreement on whether to delete them or
not. So I take it that Jimbo's position is that these things would fall
into a new category in WWIN - those things that should be discouraged
but not deleted. If someone is motivated enough to create a list of
songs whose title does not appear anywhere in their lyrics, then we
shouldn't delete it, but we shouldn't encourage it either. So "Wikipedia
is not for trivia" isn't really either true or false. Does that sound
like what you were saying?

Alex (axlrosen)

=======================

tarquin wrote:
> So can I write about the cat that was stuck up a tree in the next
> street from me? The local press gave in plenty of coverage!

Are there links?  Would it be possible for others to confirm the
story?

I hope people don't waste much time writing such pages, but it strikes
me as much more of a waste to fight against someone who wanted to
include them.  I have no problem with a social stigma against writing
such pages (just as there is and should be a social stigma against
writing articles about ourselves), but a policy of deletion that goes
beyond confirmability seems to me to invite more conflict than it
would be worth.

Such pages...

1.  Do not belong in Wikipedia 1.0 (paper edition), because such will
be selected with an eye towards the cost of production

2.  Ought not to be linked from the front page (which is
space-constrained to deal with only big events and major conceptual
topics)

But other than that, what's the harm?

One possible objection I can imagine is cluttering the search results.
But the best solution to that, I think, would be to have a refined
search engine that limits the impact of minor pages.  There are a
number of ways to do that, but in any event, it seems unlikely to
be a huge problem anyway just because people aren't going to be so
interested in writing that many pages of this type.

And that's especially true if we more or less just ignore the
practice.

--Jimbo


list: textbook-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Textbook-l] Can't delete image

body:
On Nov 5, 2003, at 04:29, KNOTT, T wrote:
> I can't seem to delete the image Image:Paris.PNG (which I have
> replaced with
> a jpg version) when I click on the (del) link on the description page
> I get
> this:

Image deletion is partially buggy and also disabled at the moment,
sorry.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Eternal Ephemeral

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>I think one viewpoint is that trivia and ephemera are fun and add interest
>to the encyclopedia.
>
>I think we are somewhat protected by the obvious fact that before someone
>puts trivia or ephemera up it has to be interesting enough to get their
>attention; thus is likely to get the attention of others. The cat up the
>tree article just doesn't get written, but Mike the headless chicken does
>(and could in his time tour the country).
>
As evidence of the tremendous attractive power of trivia, there has
always been the persistent popularity of "The Guinness Book of Records".

Ec


from_name: KNOTT, T

subject: [Textbook-l] Can't delete image

body:
I can't seem to delete the image Image:Paris.PNG (which I have replaced with
a jpg version) when I click on the (del) link on the description page I get
this:

 "Bad title
>From Wikibooks, the free textbook project.

The requested page title was invalid, empty, or an incorrectly linked
inter-language or inter-wiki title.

Return to Main Page."

Any ideas as to what's wrong ?
Theresa


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Eternal Ephemeral

body:
>(Sorry I'm late to this discussion, I was out of town.)
>
>So this sounds like a new position, the idea of a middle ground. Some
>things should not be encouraged, but should not be deleted either.
>Right?
>
>Where does What Wikipedia Is Not fit in to this? I always assumed that
>WWIN listed the criteria for whether something should be deleted or not.
>Or more specifically, it lists the criteria for whether something should
>be fixed - but if it's unfixable, then delete it (e.g. if it can never
>become more than a dictionary definition).
>
>The problem I've had all along is that WWIN doesn't say anything about
>trivia or ephemera. So there's no agreement on whether to delete them or
>not. So I take it that Jimbo's position is that these things would fall
>into a new category in WWIN - those things that should be discouraged
>but not deleted. If someone is motivated enough to create a list of
>songs whose title does not appear anywhere in their lyrics, then we
>shouldn't delete it, but we shouldn't encourage it either. So "Wikipedia
>is not for trivia" isn't really either true or false. Does that sound
>like what you were saying?
>
>Alex (axlrosen)

I think one viewpoint is that trivia and ephemera are fun and add interest
to the encyclopedia.

I think we are somewhat protected by the obvious fact that before someone
puts trivia or ephemera up it has to be interesting enough to get their
attention; thus is likely to get the attention of others. The cat up the
tree article just doesn't get written, but Mike the headless chicken does
(and could in his time tour the country).

Fred


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Articles about ourselves

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> We don't need to try to close loopholes--nor should we consider the
> criteria for inclusion anything more than suggestions to guide the
> informed decision-making of our intelligent, reasonable members.

I agree completely.  I certainly don't mean for my comments here to be
taken as rule-making, nor even as proposing a rule of any kind.  I'm
just saying that I encourage people to be modest in such matters, and
I encourage people to recuse themselves whenever there might be an
appearance of impropriety.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Articles about ourselves

body:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but without knowing what
> you think was specifically misleading in my article, I'm not prepared
> to respond to these charges.

Right, well, we could talk about that offlist if you really want, but
that wasn't really the point.  The point was just that the entry about
you that exists right now is biased, and I think that one of the
reasons that it's biased is that people are reluctant to edit it.

> I have no objection to people adding criticism of my work there.

That's good to know, but again doesn't really address the point that I
was making, which is that in general people are going to be reluctant
to edit a biography of someone here, and moreso if it's
_autobiography_.

> >2.  UNVERIFIABLE INFORMATION
> >
> >You are an expert on yourself, to be sure.  So, who could possibly
> >challenge you on such statements as "At the age of three, his family
> >moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, where his father worked as a musician"?
>
> And you see that as a problem?

Yes, as a potential problem in autobiographies of this sort.  As Erik
said, we can certainly trust you on that.  But we ought to set an
example for the more general case, I think.

> Evidently he thought that I was important enough to merit an article,

Yes, and of course I don't think anyone disagrees.  I'm a strong
inclusionist as is well known, so obviously I think it's fine for
there to be an article about you.

> long before we had ever communicated personally and before I had even
> heard of Wikipedia. I would not have created it myself, but since it
> already existed, I think I'm entitled to edit it.

That's your prerogative, of course.  I just think it's tacky.

> My personal take on the question of "good taste" in this context is
> that it obliges me to be more careful to respect others' edits than
> if I were not the topic of the article. I've tried to do that, but I
> don't think that I (or anyone else) should feel obliged to refrain
> completely from editing articles that mention them.

That's not an unreasonable position.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Eternal Ephemeral

body:
> As evidence of the tremendous attractive power of trivia, there has
> always been the persistent popularity of "The Guinness Book of
Records".

The counter-argument is, the Guiness Book of Records and the Funk &
Wagnalls Encyclopedia are two different things. Perhaps this is for a
reason, other than the fact that they are printed on paper.

Nobody is discounting the fact that trivia is popular. The question is,
does it detract from the perception of an encyclopedia as a serious
source of information? Does it threaten to move Wikipedia part of the
way down the path to being Everything2?

(Not to mention that 99% of all trivial subjects are not at all
interesting to the vast majority of people, like information about one
particular elementary school.)

Alex


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Articles about ourselves

body:
> From: Nikola Smolenski
>
> On Wednesday 05 November 2003 16:45, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > 3.  GOOD TASTE
> >
> > Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, a reference work, not a tool for our
own
> > self-promotion.  I can easily envision a mocking criticism of us as
a
> > non-serious work if we all start writing entries about ourselves.
"Of
> > the 1,234 page-length biographies in wikipedia, fully 10% of them
are
> > of Wikipedia contributors writing about themselves."  Ick.
>
> I think that I've found a loophole: criteria for inclusion of
biographies
> state that anyone who writes for a publication with circulation higher
> then
> 5,000, could be included. And when Wikipedia 1.0 gets published... So,
> perhaps the rule should be changed to "a publication except Wikipedia"
;)

We should assume common sense and respect among our membership, rather
than legalistic numbskullery.

We don't need to try to close loopholes--nor should we consider the
criteria for inclusion anything more than suggestions to guide the
informed decision-making of our intelligent, reasonable members.


from_name: Rob W.W. Hooft

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Nov 2003, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
>
>
>>On Tue, 4 Nov 2003 10:53:38 +0100 (CET), Andre Engels wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>I am going to check with the fr: sysops to discuss about that bot.
>>>>Currently the robot.txt doesnt allow Rob's bot. I think we will conduct
>>>>some test :)
>>>
>>>Unless it has been changed since Saturday, the bot actually is allowed -
>>>it has loaded many French pages to check the Dutch ones.
>>
>>Hello,
>>
>>Well here is my last try:
>>
>>In wikipedia.py I setup the user agent like that:
>>conn.putheader("User-Agent", "HasharBot (pywikipedia.py)")
>>
>>I then execut login.php:
>
>
> (snip)
>
> The problem is that login.py does not use the connection facilities of
> wikipedia.py. Christian List has now changed login.py so that it does
> provide a User agent; please upload login.py anew and try again.
>
> Andre Engels

I advise anyone using the bot to subscribe to the pywikipediabot mailing
list on sourceforge:

     http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=93107

Keeping discussions about the bot on that forum keeps everyone updated
without "bot"hering the true wikimedia developers.

Regards,

Rob Hooft

--
Rob W.W. Hooft  ||  rob at hooft.net  ||  http://www.hooft.net/people/rob/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Articles about ourselves

body:
Jimbo wrote:

>Ed Poor removed that line with the comment "(moved self-serving ...
>text to talk)".  And of course since then, famously, you two have been
>at each others throats.  I'm not suggesting a direct causal
>connection, but just showing how articles about ourselves are fraught
>with the possibility of conflict.

This causal connection doesn't exist at all. Ed Poor started the
article about me about a year before I ever heard of Wikipedia. I
didn't object to his original article or to his subsequent edits to
my edits of it. Our conflicts have revolved around other things, such
as his attacks on me here on wikien-l related to the global warming
article.

>You're well-liked around here.  I like you.  But in my local
>newspaper, I read an editorial you wrote (an excerpt from _Weapons of
>Mass Deception_, I believe) that almost made my head explode.  :-) I
>thought it wasn't just mistaken, but deeply misleading.  And I think
>that your posture in that piece as some kind of neutral arbiter
>exposing PR spin was absurd -- the piece itself was a masterpiece of
>spin.

You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but without knowing what
you think was specifically misleading in my article, I'm not prepared
to respond to these charges.

And for the record, I've never claimed to be a "neutral" arbiter of
spin. I don't even know what you mean by "neutral" in that context.
John Stauber and I, and the Center for Media and Democracy, are
watchdogs. It's impossible to be a "neutral" watchdog. If you had a
"neutral" watchdog in your house, it wouldn't bark at burglars
because it wouldn't presume to take a position on whether they had
the right to enter your home.

You may recall that part of my reason for establishing the
Disinfopedia as a separate project from the Wikipedia is that I
wanted to pursue an editorial policy of "fairness and accuracy"
rather than "neutral point of view." I strive to make my writings
fair and accurate, and if there was something in my article that you
thought was inaccurate (as opposed to merely "making your head
explode"), I would appreciate having you point it out to me.

>And yet the article reads like pure hagiography.  It's a perfectly
>appropriate self-biography for PR purposes, but it completely fails as
>encyclopedia material.  And I think that most people will naturally,
>and rightly, refrain from adding criticism of your work there, _as a
>matter of personal courtesy_, because you edit it yourself, and you
>are known and liked here.

I have no objection to people adding criticism of my work there. (Of
course, they have a responsibility to make factually-based
criticisms.) In fact, the reason I mentioned the article here is
precisely because I want to go out of my way to make sure people feel
INVITED to revise it (as several have done). If you still think it
"reads like pure hagiography," go ahead and revise. My feelings can
take it.

Moreover, I think that some of the things I added to the article
myself are details that do NOT "read like pure hagiography." I'm not
personally thrilled about my history with the Mormon church, for
example, and the fact that I have been influenced by feminism and
peace activism is something that Ed Poor's camp might cite as
evidence of my political bias.

>2.  UNVERIFIABLE INFORMATION
>
>You are an expert on yourself, to be sure.  So, who could possibly
>challenge you on such statements as "At the age of three, his family
>moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, where his father worked as a musician"?

And you see that as a problem?

Of course, there ARE ways to verify that information. Someone could
look up my birth certificate or interview my father's co-workers if
they cared to take the trouble. In short, the information is as
verifiable as any other information on this earth. Moreover, I don't
see the question of when my family moved to Las Vegas as something
that terribly controversial or likely to create a big point of view
problem.

All information has some sort of provenance, beyond which nothing can
be done to further verify it. I don't think any of the information
I've added to my own article is any less verifiable than anything
else in Wikipedia. Frankly, I think it's rather silly to worry about
whether I might have added something inaccurate about the age at
which my family moved to Las Vegas. And if you think that information
is inappropriate for inclusion, feel free to remove it entirely.

Just for comparison's sake, in the biography of Sun Myung Moon, Ed
Poor has added a phrase which says that "word play on Rev. Moon's
name provides a source of merriment to Unificationist disciples."
This, of course, can only be verified by Unificationist disciples
such as Ed. Do you think that's a problem too? And should
Unificationist disciples then be expected to recuse themselves from
contributing to the biography of Rev. Moon?

>3.  GOOD TASTE
>
>Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, a reference work, not a tool for our own
>self-promotion.  I can easily envision a mocking criticism of us as a
>non-serious work if we all start writing entries about ourselves.  "Of
>the 1,234 page-length biographies in wikipedia, fully 10% of them are
>of Wikipedia contributors writing about themselves."

OK, but I didn't start the article about myself. Ed Poor did.
Evidently he thought that I was important enough to merit an article,
long before we had ever communicated personally and before I had even
heard of Wikipedia. I would not have created it myself, but since it
already existed, I think I'm entitled to edit it. And if someone else
wants to edit my edits, that's their right too.

>Let me say it another way -- it isn't so much the conflict-of-interest
>that's a problem, it's that personal courtesy prevents people from
>editing an article about you that you've edited yourself, with the
>result being an entry that is not encyclopedic.

Oh, please. "Courtesy" didn't stop Ed Poor from deleting the
paragraph that he described as "self-serving" -- and as you've
noticed, I didn't challenge his change. I accepted his revision
without quarrel, and I don't bear him any ill will for having made it
(even though I've disagreed with him strongly about other things). If
you still think the article reads like "hagiography," don't wuss out
-- change it! I don't see how "courtesy" prevents you from doing that
any more than it has prevented people from editing the Rev. Moon
article or the article on global warming just because their edits
might be perceived as "discourteous" to Ed's beliefs.

My personal take on the question of "good taste" in this context is
that it obliges me to be more careful to respect others' edits than
if I were not the topic of the article. I've tried to do that, but I
don't think that I (or anyone else) should feel obliged to refrain
completely from editing articles that mention them.
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
--------------------------------


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] We are SLASHDOTTED.

body:
jheiskan at welho.com wrote:

>Subject line pretty much say it all. Calling all volunteer firedepartment personnel.
>
>See you at Recent changes.
>
>
Given that Wikipedia's been so slow as to make editing nearly impossible
for a day or two now (about 50% of page-loads timeout for me, and the
rest take 30-120 seconds to load), they probably can't do too much
damage.  Of course, the newcomers may not be too impressed either.

-Mark


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Articles about ourselves

body:
Jimmy-
>> PR Watch monitors deceptive and manipulative public relations firms,
>> such as the creation of "front groups" -- organizations that purport
>> to represent a popular public agenda, when in fact their message is
>> tailored to serve the specific interests of a client whose sponsorship
>> of the organization is hidden.

With some changes in wording, that paragraph would be reasonably neutral.

> Ed Poor removed that line with the comment "(moved self-serving ...
> text to talk)".  And of course since then, famously, you two have been
> at each others throats.

Ed and Sheldon come from completely different political persuasions, and
both are strongly convinced that they are correct. That is more than
enough to explain their difficulties (see also the similar difficulties
with William Connelly), just as your own near-head-explosion is enough to
explain the following paragraph:

> You're well-liked around here.  I like you.  But in my local
> newspaper, I read an editorial you wrote (an excerpt from _Weapons of
> Mass Deception_, I believe) that almost made my head explode.  :-) I
> thought it wasn't just mistaken, but deeply misleading.  And I think
> that your posture in that piece as some kind of neutral arbiter
> exposing PR spin was absurd -- the piece itself was a masterpiece of
> spin.

> And yet the article reads like pure hagiography.

So add the criticisms you have, I don't see a problem with that. As a
matter of fact, I find it less courteous to bring these criticisms up on
the list, from your position as benevolent dictator, than to simply edit
the article. [And please let's not get off-topic on this issue, I know you
have to rant sometimes, but if you want to discuss this, it should be done
privately.]

> And I think that most people will naturally,
> and rightly, refrain from adding criticism of your work there, _as a
> matter of personal courtesy_, because you edit it yourself, and you
> are known and liked here.

Actually, the main problem would be the lack of published material that
directly criticizes Sheldon's work, as attributions of the type "some
critics feel .." are rightly frowned upon. This has little to do with
whether he edits the article or someone else uses an author biography as a
source.

> You are an expert on yourself, to be sure.  So, who could possibly
> challenge you on such statements as "At the age of three, his family
> moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, where his father worked as a musician"?

Sheldon has a reputation to lose. As such, we should extend some trust to
him when it comes to non-controversial statements of fact about himself.
After all, that's what any biographer would do as well.

> Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, a reference work, not a tool for our own
> self-promotion.  I can easily envision a mocking criticism of us as a
> non-serious work if we all start writing entries about ourselves.  "Of
> the 1,234 page-length biographies in wikipedia, fully 10% of them are
> of Wikipedia contributors writing about themselves."  Ick.

The best rule, in my opinion, is to only allow contributors to make
additions/modifications, not to start articles about themselves.

It would be dangerous if someone who is directly opposed to Sheldon's
work, such as Ed, could write all the negative things he wants, while
Sheldon had no way to directly defend himself. To be sure, it is difficult
to write in a balanced fashion about oneself, but is it more difficult
than to write balanced about issues like abortion, global warming or
pedophilia? As a matter of fact, the conflict of interest is so obvious
here that it would be difficult for someone writing about themselves to
defend anything which is remotely considered POV, as the disputed
paragraph from Sheldon's bio demonstrates. In other words, it would be
much easier for someone else to write a hagiography about Sheldon than for
himself.

Starting articles about oneself is another matter, because of the whole
importance/relevance issue. Obviously, many people would like to have an
encyclopedia article about themselves. I seem to recall a rather long
debate about a certain surrealist artist on that matter. But Sheldon
clearly deserves an article, and I see no reason why he shouldn't
contribute to it.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Eternal Ephemeral

body:
> From: Alex Rosen

> Nobody is discounting the fact that trivia is popular. The question
is,
> does it detract from the perception of an encyclopedia as a serious
> source of information? Does it threaten to move Wikipedia part of the
> way down the path to being Everything2?

Nope. Wikipedia's strength is its comprehensiveness, and its tendency to
flesh out, over time, topics that begin with a few facts or ephemera.

Its strength is not its careful editorial judgment, nor will it ever be.

Everything2 and Wikipedia are products of their very different
underlying technology (and mission). Wikipedia simply cannot tend very
far toward E2 because of the technological differences between the two.

> (Not to mention that 99% of all trivial subjects are not at all
> interesting to the vast majority of people, like information about one
> particular elementary school.)

Frankly, 99% of all subjects are not at all interesting to the vast
majority of people. That isn't a reasonable guideline for Wikipedia.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Articles about ourselves

body:
> From: Jimmy Wales
>
> Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> > You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but without knowing what
> > you think was specifically misleading in my article, I'm not
prepared
> > to respond to these charges.
>
> Right, well, we could talk about that offlist if you really want, but
> that wasn't really the point.  The point was just that the entry about
> you that exists right now is biased, and I think that one of the
> reasons that it's biased is that people are reluctant to edit it.
>
> > I have no objection to people adding criticism of my work there.
>
> That's good to know, but again doesn't really address the point that I
> was making, which is that in general people are going to be reluctant
> to edit a biography of someone here, and moreso if it's
> _autobiography_.

I think noone's editing it because it isn't particularly biased, and
noone cares enough about Sheldon or whatever you think is biased to
change it. It's certainly no more biased than, say, the George W. Bush
entry.

Again, I strongly doubt, upon reviewing the article, that whatever
problems you, Jimbo, have with it have *anything* to do with reluctance
to edit the biography of a fellow contributor.

--tc


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Articles about ourselves

body:
Jimbo wrote:
>Ed Poor removed that line with the comment
>"(moved self-serving ...  text to talk)".  And of
>course since then, famously, you two have
>been  at each others throats.

I'm almost certain that would have happended even if Mr. Rampton did not have
an article. Ed and Sheldon's politics are very much opposed to one another
(in an already almost hostile way) and they have clashed on several different
articles.

>Let me say it another way -- it isn't so much the
>conflict-of-interest that's a problem, it's that personal
>courtesy prevents people from editing an article about
>you that you've edited yourself, with the result being an
>entry that is not encyclopedic.

Personal courtesy be dammed! If it is in the article space then it is fair
game for NPOVing and fact-checking (in no way should the same courtesy
extended to user pages be transferable to the article space just because the
user happens to be famous enough for an article). Also, the very fact that a
person who is very closely involved with the subject in a POV way has edited
the article sends POV-warning signals to me. So if I saw somebody editing
their own article, then I would be extra suspicious of their edits.

But that is just me.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Paul Studier

subject: [Wikitech-l] Trouble installing

body:
I have installed mediawiki-20030829 at
http://libertarianwiki.org/wiki/wiki.phtml

When I edit a page I get the following messages:
______________________

Warning: open_basedir restriction in effect. File is in wrong directory in
/home/.paccowasher/pstudier/wiki.paulstudier.com/wiki/GlobalFunctions.php
on line 172

Warning: open_basedir restriction in effect. File is in wrong directory
in
/home/.paccowasher/pstudier/wiki.paulstudier.com/wiki/GlobalFunctions.php
on line 172

Warning: Cannot add header information - headers already sent by (output
started at
/home/.paccowasher/pstudier/wiki.paulstudier.com/wiki/GlobalFunctions.php:172)
in
/home/.paccowasher/pstudier/wiki.paulstudier.com/wiki/OutputPage.php on
line 318

Warning: Cannot add header information - headers already sent by (output
started at
/home/.paccowasher/pstudier/wiki.paulstudier.com/wiki/GlobalFunctions.php:172)
in
/home/.paccowasher/pstudier/wiki.paulstudier.com/wiki/OutputPage.php on
line 319

Warning: Cannot add header information - headers already sent by (output
started at
/home/.paccowasher/pstudier/wiki.paulstudier.com/wiki/GlobalFunctions.php:172)
in
/home/.paccowasher/pstudier/wiki.paulstudier.com/wiki/OutputPage.php on
line 320

Warning: Cannot add header information - headers already sent by (output
started at
/home/.paccowasher/pstudier/wiki.paulstudier.com/wiki/GlobalFunctions.php:172)
in
/home/.paccowasher/pstudier/wiki.paulstudier.com/wiki/OutputPage.php on
line 322

Warning: Cannot add header information - headers already sent by (output
started at
/home/.paccowasher/pstudier/wiki.paulstudier.com/wiki/GlobalFunctions.php:172)
in
/home/.paccowasher/pstudier/wiki.paulstudier.com/wiki/OutputPage.php on
line 338

Warning: Cannot add header information - headers already sent by (output
started at
/home/.paccowasher/pstudier/wiki.paulstudier.com/wiki/GlobalFunctions.php:172)
in
/home/.paccowasher/pstudier/wiki.paulstudier.com/wiki/OutputPage.php on
line 339
_________________________

If I ignore these, I can still do some editing.  Any ideas?

Paul Studier <Studier at PaulStudier.com>
When you work, you create.  When you win, you just take from the loser.
For an explanation, see http://paulstudier.com/win


subject: [Wikitech-l] Cookies and sessions and caches, oh my!

body:
I hacked up a session data handler to optionally keep login session
data in memcached rather than the local filesystem. Combined with a
change to the cookie settings, the English Wikipedia login sessions can
now be shared between en.wikipedia.org on larousse and
en2.wikipedia.org on pliny, without having to separately log in on each
server.

This makes it not too painful to use a rewrite rule for simple load
balancing, bouncing some portion of the page space to en and some
portion to en2. Yay!

There may still be some issues dealing with uploaded files, but
disabling uploads on en2, ensuring that Special:Upload is redirected to
en, and that all /upload/* files get loaded off en, should keep things
pretty consistent for the meantime.

Potential problems:
* Memcached is designed to be 'lossy'; if it fills up it throws away
the least recently used data to make room for new data. This shouldn't
be a problem for session handling, hopefully; they're set to expire
after an hour of non-usage anyway.

* Expiration times haven't been thoroughly tested yet.

* There's currently no failsafe; if memcached dies, the session data
falls into a black hole and no one can log in. (Except perhaps if they
click 'remember my password'.) It should be possible to check that it
couldn't contact the server and fall back to local storage, or the
database, or something.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Articles about ourselves

body:
You wrote:

>Right, well, we could talk about that offlist if you really want,

OK, whatever, but if you don't want to talk about it here, maybe you
shouldn't have brought it up here.

>but
>that wasn't really the point.  The point was just that the entry about
>you that exists right now is biased, and I think that one of the
>reasons that it's biased is that people are reluctant to edit it.

If you think the article that exists right now is biased, CHANGE IT!
I've said that several times now. If you don't, I have to assume that
whatever bias you claim to perceive isn't really that much of a
problem for you.

And what's your basis for claiming that people are "reluctant to edit
it"? Ed Poor hasn't been reluctant, nor have several other people.

The only person here who seems to think the article is biased is you,
for reasons that you don't want to discuss on this list. Based on
what you've stated so far, it is impossible for anyone to judge
whether the real problem is MY bias, the ARTICLE's bias, or YOUR
bias. Personally, I vote for the conclusion that the problem is YOUR
bias. But maybe that's just me. ;-)

>In general people are going to be reluctant
>to edit a biography of someone here, and more so if it's
>_autobiography_.

Of course, my bio isn't really an "autobiography." It's not written
in the first person, and it actually has multiple authors. It's no
more an "autobiography" than the Rev. Moon article is a "biography of
Moon written by a member of the Unification Church." There's also
nothing in the text of the article itself that would inhibit anyone
from editing it. I suppose you might fantasize that someone would
review its history, see my name there and get all inhibited, but
that's a fairly fanciful speculation. (Wikipedians don't usually
begin their editing by reviewing an article's history; at least, I
know I don't.) And actually, it's equally plausible that seeing my
name in the history would motivate people to edit it MORE
aggressively, rather than less so. Try this thought experiment: If I
had edited the article under an anonymous pseudonym instead of my own
name, would Ed Poor have used the term "self-serving" to describe the
paragraph he removed? I think his edit demonstrates that editing
under my own name actually INCREASED the amount of critical scrutiny
the article has received.

Your argument reminds me of something I used to hear from one of my
feminist friends back in the 1980s. I knew a woman who complained
that at meetings of a political group to which she belonged, men
tended to dominate because they didn't hesitate to speak up, whereas
women were shy about expressing themselves in front of a group. She
thought that this phenomenon constituted some kind of male
oppression. I pointed out to her that men were under no obligation to
stifle themselves just because some women lacked the gumption to
speak up. If women really are more shy in public than men (which may
have been true at the time, but is probably less true now), the
solution isn't for men to stifle themselves but for women to find
their own voices.

Similarly, the solution to the problem you're posing isn't for me to
stifle myself but for others to overcome their reluctance to edit
boldly -- assuming that such reluctance even exists, which you
haven't  demonstrated.
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
--------------------------------