subject: [Wikipedia-l] Terms for adminship

body:
You would probably annoy the stewards if you desysop a lot of people,
but I really don't think you'll have to desysop as many as you think.
This is a good idea, and I tried to get something similar passed on en
wiki, and it didn't work....obviously. We have 500 *active* admins, we
would have to run several re-elections all the time, constantly. So,
remember, this won't scale well.

On 9/30/05, Habj <sweetadelaide at gmail.com> wrote:
> At one of the wikipedias, the one in Swedish, a discussion has arisen if it
> would be possible to elect admins on a term of, say, one year. Admins whose
> actions often are questioned would then have little chance of getting
> re-elected, and choosing not so perfect admins would not be such a big
> problem as it currently is.
>
> At a previous stage, soneome at svwiki said that this would simply not be
> possible, since it is so difficult to get someone de-admined. Today there is
> a functioning structure of stewarts, and I wonder - if svwiki started this
> system, where admins aren't elected forever but for a term of a
> predetermined time, would "the international" object? Would stewarts get
> tired of demand after demand from svwiki to take the admin rights from
> admins whose one year term run out, or would it be seen as OK?
>
> It is difficult to puch the question, as long as we don't know if the
> argument "it would not be allowed" is correct or not.
>
> Best,
> Hanna
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] The AfD saga

body:
Actually I don't think it can be fixed. I am convinced that it could be
safely wound down provided a procedure for dealing with hoax/unverifiable
articles was instituted along the same lines as
Wikipedia:Copyright_Problems.

Or we could leave it as it is. It's only processing an average of 112
articles a day (based on a recent 3-month survey) and only around 70-80% of
those are deleted. This is piddling compared to our site growth figures and
utterly dwarfed by the immensity of the existing database. So it's no more
effective at whatever it is people think it's for than if we had a script to
randomly delete 100 smallish articles with low edit counts every day


from_name: SPUI

subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:
> Just a thought, SPUI: can you think of a traffic circle that you could
> write an article worthy of Featured Article status? I ask this in a
> constructive way, because a very irrefutable argument to anyone who
> writes on AfD to the effect "This is only an X, & all X is non-notable.
> Delete" is "Well, Y is an X, & it is a *FEATURED ARTICLE*!!!"[*]

If I had better access to historical records, I might be able to do that
for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonnelle_Circle . It's a very busy
intersection, located on the Route 1 Extension, considered by many to be
the first "super highway" in the United States.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Phroziac

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Terms for adminship

body:
On 9/30/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Considering that de, nl, and meta all currently elect admins for
> terms, I should imagine that it would be permitted.

I don't see any reason it wouldn't be permitted, since the stewards
are here to make actions the community itself wants. I can see the
stewards getting annoyed if there are a lot of desysoppings though.


from_name: Michael Turley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
On 9/30/05, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
> Geoff Burling wrote:
> > Just a thought, SPUI: can you think of a traffic circle that you could
> > write an article worthy of Featured Article status? I ask this in a
> > constructive way, because a very irrefutable argument to anyone who
> > writes on AfD to the effect "This is only an X, & all X is non-notable.
> > Delete" is "Well, Y is an X, & it is a *FEATURED ARTICLE*!!!"[*]
>
> If I had better access to historical records, I might be able to do that
> for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonnelle_Circle . It's a very busy
> intersection, located on the Route 1 Extension, considered by many to be
> the first "super highway" in the United States.

Honestly, my memory sucks right now.  I'm not trying to be flippant:
Isn't there a famous traffic circle or two worthy of featured article
status in London, England?  Perhaps one in Paris, France or Rome,
Italy as well?

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] The AfD saga

body:
On 9/30/05, Nicholas Turnbull <nicholas.turnbull at gmail.com> wrote:
> There definitely seems to be this ongoing argument over the way AfD is
> handled, or whether or not it is being correct or accurate in its
> judgements for articles to be deleted. This seems to get dredged up
> once every, say, three months (along with arguments over RfA
> standards) and as yet we haven't really done anything very firm about
> it, except change the name of what seems to me to be a universally
> hated procedure.
>

Deletion is a big issue. There is the big devide between deletionists
and inclusionsts. Whatever arena you chose to have the fights in there
are going to be problems. At least AFD keeps it fairly contained. You
don't ever have to go near the place.

> To those taking issue with AfD deletions - forgive me for being an
> arsehole, but {{sofixit}}. I think that rather than arguing over the
> way that AfD operates, we should work towards fixing or replacing it,
> using these cases where users have taken exception to AfDs as feedback
> for the current process. Otherwise, we'll just be having this same
> argument in three months time or so, in a sort of "Groundhog Day"
> scenario. :-) And we all know how unproductive arguments can be on
> Wikipedia.
>
> Best regards,
>
> -- Nick, [[User:NicholasTurnbull]]

Arguments about AFD that will go nowhere I can live with since it
doesn't require any new policy and doesn't have any impact on those
who wish to avoid the debate.

--
geni


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] The AfD saga

body:
geni wrote:

> Arguments about AFD that will go nowhere I can live with since it
> doesn't require any new policy and doesn't have any impact on those
> who wish to avoid the debate.

Until their hard work gets trashed, of course.

"I'm not interested in politics."
"Politics is interested in you."

- d.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] Captcha in progress

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> I've been tinkering with an extension to provide for a captcha to reduce
> automated linkspamming while still staying out of the way for common use.
>
> My preliminary code is running now on test.leuksman.com; the actual
> "captcha" part is a really primitive plain text hack which would take
> all of a few minutes for a dedicated attacker to crack, but don't worry
> about that -- I'm not testing the protection yet, just the framework it
> plugs into.
>
...

>
> As for a 'real' captcha generator to put into this system; I'm not too
> sure what code is already out there that's not awful. There's a Drupal
> plugin which would be easy to rip GPL'd PHP code from, but it doesn't
> seem very robust.
>
> There's a set of samples of various captcha output and their weaknesses
> here: http://sam.zoy.org/pwntcha/
>
> Obviously it would be good to either find something on the 'hard
> captchas' list rather than 'defeated captchas', or roll our own that
> doesn't suck too bad.
>
>
> There's also the question of whether we can feasibly provide an audio
> alternative or whathaveyou.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

I've just written some Python code which can do _this_ to text: is this
the sort of thing you are looking for?

-- Neil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Crap vfd nominations

body:
I have no problem with cruft. That information would be fine if it was
actually in an article, and not by itself.

But....there are thousands of these things Most have little or no
information added to them since rambot!

On 9/30/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/30/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I hate those rambot stubs. So incredibly useless! I'm sure a lot of
> > these towns couldn't even be expanded much.
>
> I love those Rambot stubs. I have found them personally useful, I love
> those Rambot stubs. I have found them personally useful, when
> researching cities I am likely to end up living in. The ability to
> compare income and population and racial demographics, getting a real
> "feel" for an area... Thats exactly the kind of thing a '''reader'''
> finds useful, but an '''editor''' (who will prob never go there)
> wouldn't. The entire concept of "cruft" is idiosyncratic encyclopedia
> editor shoptalk, and has nothing to do w the people who read articles,
> and why.
>
> People read encyclopedias because they present diverse, accurate
> information. People read the wikipedia because it is even '''more'''
> diverse. When readers find accurate informationr, thats good. When
> they don't, its bad. What you personally find "notable" has nothing to
> do w that. Deletionism fights against that which makes the Wikipedia
> valuable, even "notable" ;)
>
> I wonder if their is an article on wikipedia in britannica...
>
> Jack (Sam Spade)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] The AfD saga

body:
On 9/30/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually I don't think it can be fixed. I am convinced that it could be
> safely wound down provided a procedure for dealing with hoax/unverifiable
> articles was instituted along the same lines as
> Wikipedia:Copyright_Problems.

Sorry I thought people wanted a system which worked. WP:CP is
improveing but it still has a long way to go.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] The AfD saga

body:
On 9/30/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Until their hard work gets trashed, of course.
>
> "I'm not interested in politics."
> "Politics is interested in you."
>
>
> - d.

This is a wiki. I belive our edit boxes have a warning on them. If
this happens to you more than once perhaps it is time for a rethink.
--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
On 9/30/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Sounds very like an obsessive deletionist who's more concerned with
> process than product. AFD seems to encourage that sort of thing.
>

Have you tried visiting Votes for undeletion lately? I did so recently and
argued for undeletion of an article. I was asked if I was addressing the
content or the process. Why the content, of course, I said. I was then told
that this wasn't what VFU was for. Sure enough, the phrase in the undeletion
policy that refers to Wikipedia being a better place with an article than
without was nowhere to be seen on the page. I updated the instructions
*directly* from the undeletion policy. This was reverted several times. Some
people claimed that policy had been changed. I pointed out, by reference to
the actual policy, that it hadn't. Whereupon a proposal to change policy was
made--to exclude any reference undeletion based ona judgement that the
content was good for wikipedia.

At that point I decided it was time to leave people who wanted to play silly
buggers to get on with it.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
On 9/30/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/30/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Sounds very like an obsessive deletionist who's more concerned with
> > process than product. AFD seems to encourage that sort of thing.

>  Have you tried visiting Votes for undeletion lately?  I did so recently and
> argued for undeletion of an article.  I was asked if I was addressing the
> content or the process.  Why the content, of course, I said.  I was then
> told that this wasn't what VFU was for.  Sure enough, the phrase in the
> undeletion policy that refers to Wikipedia being a better place with an
> article than without was nowhere to be seen on the page.  I updated the
> instructions *directly* from the undeletion policy.  This was reverted
> several times.  Some people claimed that policy had been changed.  I pointed
> out, by reference to the actual policy, that it hadn't.  Whereupon a
> proposal to change policy was made--to exclude any reference undeletion
> based ona judgement that the content was good for wikipedia.
>  At that point I decided it was time to leave people who wanted to play
> silly buggers to get on with it.

That's really breathtakingly stupid behaviour. I suppose I'm going to
have to look and find who these morons are.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The AfD saga

body:
On 9/30/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/30/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Until their hard work gets trashed, of course.
> > "I'm not interested in politics."
> > "Politics is interested in you."

> This is a wiki. I belive our edit boxes have a warning on them. If
> this happens to you more than once perhaps it is time for a rethink.

This doesn't, of course, answer anything of what I'm talking about.
"Mercilessly" is one thing; "stupidly" is another.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The AfD saga

body:
On 9/30/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> This doesn't, of course, answer anything of what I'm talking about.
> "Mercilessly" is one thing; "stupidly" is another.
>
>
> - d.

While some people have claimed that being merciful is stupid I don't
think the two are multialy exclusive.

--
geni


from_name: Gutza

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bureaucrat rights messed up on RO-Wiki

body:
Hello all,

It seems like at least some, if not all bureaucrats on the Romanian
Wikipedia are unable to use their rights. I'm one (RO:User:Gutza), and
RO:User:Ronline is another -- and neither of us can make a guy sysop (we
had some local elections recently). The link is simply missing in the
Special Pages list. We still have our sysop rights however (I see the
Block IP and Import pages links).

Is there something amiss on our Wikipedia or in the db, or is there a
shift in policy we're not aware of?

Thank you!
Gutza


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Terms for adminship

body:
On 30/09/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> You would probably annoy the stewards if you desysop a lot of people,
> but I really don't think you'll have to desysop as many as you think.
> This is a good idea, and I tried to get something similar passed on en
> wiki, and it didn't work....obviously. We have 500 *active* admins, we
> would have to run several re-elections all the time, constantly. So,
> remember, this won't scale well.

500 admins... hmm, at a one-week "election" period, you'd need ten on
the go at any given time. We have twelve just now, and it seems to be
about that, give or take half a dozen, in the recent past.

Yeah, doubling would clog the page up a bit. Especially *starting* to
implement it...

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


from_name: Stefan Vesterlund

subject: [Wikitech-l] {{msg}} URL

body:
Hi

Sorry if this is not the right place for this.

I'm a sort of a black sheep here running an html static clone of Wikipedia. Right now I'm tying to improve the program to include {{msg}}. Half a year ago this was the URL to get the content, http://no.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Template:Akershus&action=raw&ctype=text/css.

Is there a new way or url to get the content?

Regards

Stefan Vesterlund


from_name: Ryan Delaney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Crap vfd nominations

body:
Michael Turley wrote:

>
>Pure admin deletion turns the admin group from a service organization
>to a cabal that you must belong to in order to perform certain
>actions.
>
You don't think that's the case now? You have to be an admin to delete
articles, block people, or use rollback. Yet admins are not viewed as a
"cabal" because of this.

- Ryan


from_name: Jack Lynch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Crap vfd nominations

body:
On 9/30/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> I hate those rambot stubs. So incredibly useless! I'm sure a lot of
> these towns couldn't even be expanded much.

I love those Rambot stubs. I have found them personally useful, I love
those Rambot stubs. I have found them personally useful, when
researching cities I am likely to end up living in. The ability to
compare income and population and racial demographics, getting a real
"feel" for an area... Thats exactly the kind of thing a '''reader'''
finds useful, but an '''editor''' (who will prob never go there)
wouldn't. The entire concept of "cruft" is idiosyncratic encyclopedia
editor shoptalk, and has nothing to do w the people who read articles,
and why.

People read encyclopedias because they present diverse, accurate
information. People read the wikipedia because it is even '''more'''
diverse. When readers find accurate informationr, thats good. When
they don't, its bad. What you personally find "notable" has nothing to
do w that. Deletionism fights against that which makes the Wikipedia
valuable, even "notable" ;)

I wonder if their is an article on wikipedia in britannica...

Jack (Sam Spade)


from_name: Habj

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Terms for adminship

body:
At one of the wikipedias, the one in Swedish, a discussion has arisen if it
would be possible to elect admins on a term of, say, one year. Admins whose
actions often are questioned would then have little chance of getting
re-elected, and choosing not so perfect admins would not be such a big
problem as it currently is.

At a previous stage, soneome at svwiki said that this would simply not be
possible, since it is so difficult to get someone de-admined. Today there is
a functioning structure of stewarts, and I wonder - if svwiki started this
system, where admins aren't elected forever but for a term of a
predetermined time, would "the international" object? Would stewarts get
tired of demand after demand from svwiki to take the admin rights from
admins whose one year term run out, or would it be seen as OK?

It is difficult to puch the question, as long as we don't know if the
argument "it would not be allowed" is correct or not.

Best,
Hanna


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Terms for adminship

body:
Habj wrote:

> At one of the wikipedias, the one in Swedish, a discussion has arisen if it
> would be possible to elect admins on a term of, say, one year. Admins whose
> actions often are questioned would then have little chance of getting
> re-elected, and choosing not so perfect admins would not be such a big
> problem as it currently is.
>
> At a previous stage, soneome at svwiki said that this would simply not be
> possible, since it is so difficult to get someone de-admined. Today there is
> a functioning structure of stewarts, and I wonder - if svwiki started this
> system, where admins aren't elected forever but for a term of a
> predetermined time, would "the international" object? Would stewarts get
> tired of demand after demand from svwiki to take the admin rights from
> admins whose one year term run out, or would it be seen as OK?
>
> It is difficult to puch the question, as long as we don't know if the
> argument "it would not be allowed" is correct or not.
>
> Best,
> Hanna

I think you should just do what you guys think is best in your current
situation. Right now, german and dutch wikipedia are working this way,
with a renewal per year.
On meta, inactive sysops are removed and we suggest "inappropriate"
admins to be removed after a year as well.

So, in all three cases, some admins are regularly removed. Usually, it
is not a problem because
* there is no urgency (as there might be in case of an abusing sysop)
* there is no dispute (as the request can point out to a voting page
where a steward can check if the removal is legitimate).

So, it is not a tiring job for stewards.

As for "being allowed", my best answer is "this is your community to
decide what you feel is best".

Best

Ant


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
> > > > I'd honestly have no problem with merging into the town, as it is a
> > > > local landmark. It shouldn't break the GFDL even if the article is
> > > > deleted, as the revision history is now available to all for deleted
> > > > articles.
>
> > > Probably the best way, then, to work around the poisonous dysfunction
> > > of xFD is to make the deletion moot by merging it into the town
> > > article and making the name a redirect.
>
> >  Alas this isn't deletion-proof.  I performed a merge not so long ago only
> > to have it reversed out as the article was *still* deleted (and on a second
> > go, too, because somebody decided the keep result wasn't to his personal
> > taste!)
>
>
> Sounds very like an obsessive deletionist who's more concerned with
> process than product. AFD seems to encourage that sort of thing.
>
>
That has nothing to do with AFD itself. More with whoever decided
merging wasn't appropriate. If a traffic circle has been established
as a local landmark I'm all for merging it and if I'd known about it
before I would've supported it on the talk page in question.

--Mgm


from_name: Raphael Wiegand

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Terms for adminship

body:
Hi,

On de:, we had this discussion some months ago. Finally, we came to the
conclusion that there would be nearly 3 re-elections starting every week
which would be to much; nobody can or wans to vote three times a week in
re-elections and additionally in new adminship requests. I don't know
the situation in sv:; I think you have less admins than de: so it might
be possible for you to act like you proposed.
I don't think anyone would object if any Wikipedia started to change
adminship elections, this is no "international" subject...
On de: this problem is now handled like this:
If any sysop does "critical" things, everybody can start a desysop
request. If a defined number of users agree to this, the admin is
desysoped and has to re-request for adminship. If he fails, he won't be
admitted to request adminship fro several months; on the other side, if
the desysop-request fails, nobody might start another request within 4
months (Yeah, this is german bureaucracy ;-) ).

rdb

Habj schrieb:

>At one of the wikipedias, the one in Swedish, a discussion has arisen if it
>would be possible to elect admins on a term of, say, one year. Admins whose
>actions often are questioned would then have little chance of getting
>re-elected, and choosing not so perfect admins would not be such a big
>problem as it currently is.
>
>At a previous stage, soneome at svwiki said that this would simply not be
>possible, since it is so difficult to get someone de-admined. Today there is
>a functioning structure of stewarts, and I wonder - if svwiki started this
>system, where admins aren't elected forever but for a term of a
>predetermined time, would "the international" object? Would stewarts get
>tired of demand after demand from svwiki to take the admin rights from
>admins whose one year term run out, or would it be seen as OK?
>
>It is difficult to puch the question, as long as we don't know if the
>argument "it would not be allowed" is correct or not.
>
>Best,
>Hanna
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Terms for adminship

body:
On 9/30/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't see any reason it wouldn't be permitted, since the stewards
> are here to make actions the community itself wants. I can see the
> stewards getting annoyed if there are a lot of desysoppings though.

If they get annoyed, they ignore the requests. There's no requirement
for any particular steward to deal with requests they don't want to
do. It would easy enough to find some more people to be stewards if
the workload really became too much.

Angela


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Taking your eyes off the ball

body:
Justin Cormack wrote:

> What percentage of articles do you expect to be FAs?

All of them.

--Michael Snow


subject: [WikiEN-l] The AfD saga

body:
On 9/30/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/30/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Actually I don't think it can be fixed. I am convinced that it could be
> > safely wound down provided a procedure for dealing with hoax/unverifiable
> > articles was instituted along the same lines as
> > Wikipedia:Copyright_Problems.
>
> Sorry I thought people wanted a system which worked. WP:CP is
> improveing but it still has a long way to go.
>
>
> --
> geni
Perhaps I'm completely oblivious, but WP:CP seems to work fine from
where I'm standing. The only problem it has is the immense backlogs it
gets every once in a while, but that can be resolved by encouraging
people to maintain it. The process itself doesn't appear to "have a
long way to go" or am I missing something.

About deletion: There's a simple way to avoid repeated run-ins with
AFD. Write better articles that even hard-core deletionists wouldn't
think of deleting. One or 2 lines more in a stub can make the
difference between viable context or possible deletion candidate.

--Mgm


from_name: Marco Chiesa

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Terms for adminship

body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:

>
>>>
>>> possible, since it is so difficult to get someone de-admined. Today
>>> there is
>>> a functioning structure of stewarts, and I wonder - if svwiki
>>> started this
>>> system, where admins aren't elected forever but for a term of a
>>> predetermined time, would "the international" object? Would stewarts
>>> get
>>> tired of demand after demand from svwiki to take the admin rights from
>>> admins whose one year term run out, or would it be seen as OK?
>>>
>>> It is difficult to puch the question, as long as we don't know if the
>>> argument "it would not be allowed" is correct or not.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Hanna
>>
>>
>>
>> I think you should just do what you guys think is best in your
>> current situation. Right now, german and dutch wikipedia are working
>> this way, with a renewal per year.
>> On meta, inactive sysops are removed and we suggest "inappropriate"
>> admins to be removed after a year as well.
>>
>> So, in all three cases, some admins are regularly removed. Usually,
>> it is not a problem because
>> * there is no urgency (as there might be in case of an abusing sysop)
>> * there is no dispute (as the request can point out to a voting page
>> where a steward can check if the removal is legitimate).
>>
>> So, it is not a tiring job for stewards.
>
>
> I agree with Anthere .... sofar no-one on nl: who had to go for
> re-election has not made it, so there was no problem sofar.
>
> Waerth/Walter
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
We had recently a debate on this topic on it.wiki and we rejected the
idea of confirm votation for sysops on the basis that there would be
always one reconfirm elecion going on (current election duration is 2
weeks on itwiki). Anyway, I suppose reasons why sysop wouldn't be
recofirmed could be inactivity (not a critical problem in the short term
IMHO) or abuse of sysop powers (which should be dealt ASAP).

Cruccone/Marco


subject: [WikiEN-l] Crap vfd nominations

body:
Maybe they are 1.0 grade material ;)

Check this out:

http://www.britannica.com/search?query=wikipedia+&go_button.x=9&go_button.y=12&ct=

Wikipedia's not notable either ;)

Jack (Sam Spade)

> On 9/30/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I have no problem with cruft. That information would be fine if it was
> > actually in an article, and not by itself.
> >
> > But....there are thousands of these things Most have little or no
> > information added to them since rambot!
>


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

subject: [WikiEN-l] Crap vfd nominations

body:
> I love those Rambot stubs. I have found them personally useful, I love
> those Rambot stubs. I have found them personally useful, when
> researching cities I am likely to end up living in. The ability to
> compare income and population and racial demographics, getting a real
> "feel" for an area... Thats exactly the kind of thing a '''reader'''
> finds useful, but an '''editor''' (who will prob never go there)
> wouldn't. The entire concept of "cruft" is idiosyncratic encyclopedia
> editor shoptalk, and has nothing to do w the people who read articles,
> and why.

Amen. The "cruft" argument just makes Wikipedia's coverage more biased
than it already is. A traffic circle that thousands of people travel
through everyday is cruft, while some strange insect that only < 100
persons know about is notable. It's elitism and it is building an
encyclopedia that noone wants to read. I find traffic circles
interesting. I always thought that traffic circles were superior to
traffic lights because they allow a larger throughput of traffic than
an ordinary crossing can. But it seems like those traffic circles in
the articles were eliminated. Why were they eliminated? Because of
commercial development forced it because the area had a too high land
value? Crossings are generally more space efficient than circles. Many
traffic circles have some kind of artwork or other decoration on the
island in the middle? Did any of these traffic circles have it?

Oh, and there is also a crossing whos name contain the word "circle"
where I live. I would very much like to know if it is because there
used to be a traffic circle there. But you won't let me find that info
in Wikipedia becase you think it is cruft.

--
mvh Bj?rn


subject: [WikiEN-l] Crap vfd nominations

body:
If we were making paper encyclopedias, this inclusionism deletionism
thing would make sense. Both sides would have a case. But unless the
information is false, unusable, or otherwise profoundly
unencyclopedic, it should stay, we have enough "room". Possibly some
articles will never be used, but thats better than people failing to
find what their looking for.

The goal is for everyone to have access to the sum total of human knowlege.

Jack (Sam Spade)

Amen. The "cruft" argument just makes Wikipedia's coverage more biased
> than it already is. A traffic circle that thousands of people travel
> through everyday is cruft, while some strange insect that only < 100
> persons know about is notable. It's elitism and it is building an
> encyclopedia that noone wants to read. I find traffic circles
> interesting. I always thought that traffic circles were superior to
> traffic lights because they allow a larger throughput of traffic than
> an ordinary crossing can. But it seems like those traffic circles in
> the articles were eliminated. Why were they eliminated? Because of
> commercial development forced it because the area had a too high land
> value? Crossings are generally more space efficient than circles. Many
> traffic circles have some kind of artwork or other decoration on the
> island in the middle? Did any of these traffic circles have it?
>
> Oh, and there is also a crossing whos name contain the word "circle"
> where I live. I would very much like to know if it is because there
> used to be a traffic circle there. But you won't let me find that info
> in Wikipedia becase you think it is cruft.
>
> --


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Proper response to "crap" AfD nominations

body:
Phroziac wrote:

>Ok, I dug farther and that happened when someone put it up for
>deletion. *SHRUG*.
>
>
Whatever went before, we've now got a revert war going on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_Township%2C_Mercer_County%2C_New_Jersey
with a bunch of people who are deleting content about the traffic circle
from the article solely because of the result of the VfD on the traffic
circle's own article.

This is _dumb._ If I were to split
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmonton%2C_Alberta#Sister_cities off into
its own article, which was then VfDed because it's silly to have that as
a stand-alone article, would it thenceforth and forevermore be not
allowed to put the information back into the main article on Edmonton?
This is a clear example of process being held up as more important than
content. We're trying to write an encyclopedia here, the only issue
should be whether the article on Hamilton Township is improved by
including this material. Without it the article's just another bland
Rambot extrusion. How else is it ever going to grow beyond that except
by having material added?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Taking your eyes off the ball

body:
Justin Cormack wrote:

>
> I dont find the featured article process very interesting. There are
> lots of articles that are of that quality
> but I dont feel any real incentive to nominate. And quite a few of
> the FAs are not very good. Articles that I
> care about are getting better, much better and thats more important
> to me. What are FAs for? What percentage
> of articles do you expect to be FAs?
>
Yeah, this is an important point. The process by which articles are
nominated to featured status has its own problems with subjectivity.
Whether an article is featured is not a sure-fire way to judge whether
it is good or not, and so the number of featured articles being created
is not directly corrolated with the rate at which the encyclopedia is
improving.

- Ryan


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Crap vfd nominations

body:
On 9/30/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is starting to make me fear that AFD is becoming a tyranny of the
> majority.
>
> - Ryan

Tyranny of the minority. Even if you have a striaght majority to
delete that isn't enough.

--
geni


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Crap vfd nominations

body:
SPUI wrote:
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>
>> No, just say nothing or critisize their actions rather than the people
>> personally.
>> Calling someone an asshole (regardless of whether it's true) is likely
>> to cause anger and needless disputes.
>
>
> So is this bullshit voting.

Yes.

Please see [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/AfD]].

Given support (and evidence), I will expand this RFC to include anyone
who screams blue murder over AfD.

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
> Someone did that for White Horse Circle. It didn't help:
>
> # 00:21, 29 September 2005 . . Gpietsch (tweak)
> # 00:18, 29 September 2005 . . Gpietsch (added enough to prevent this
> article from getting deleted ;-))
> # 01:25, 22 September 2005 . . Aranda56 (Placed VFD)
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/White_Horse_Circle
>
> The only argument that makes sense against "Oh cmon its a traffic circle
> nn Delete" is "fuck you, asshole".

OK, now I'm interested. What was the article like when it was deleted? Can't
we copy these things somewhere before deleting them? I'd like to include the
article in Jnanabase.

Anthony


from_name: Mark Pellegrini

body:
I'm going to grouse a bit.

I think far, far too much attention gets paid to the worst articles on
Wikipedia - the studs, the vanity articles, the stuff of debatable
notability (schools!!) while not nearly enough effort goes into making
crappy articles into good ones.

People on AFD love to argue about the crappiest articles. (It also tends
to spill over to this mailing list) On the other side of the spectrum,
the percentage of featured articles (number of featured articles / total
number of articles) has been rapidly declining since March.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_statistics).
And yet no one seems care. Sometime this month, percentage of featured
articles will drop below 0.1% -- less than 1 article in 1000 being a
featured article.

So while our article count is exploding [due to a massive influx of
less-than-steller new articles.... think - traffic circles] and while
the number of contributors has been steadily increasing, the number of
new featured articles being produced has been a fairly steady 30-40 per
month.

Am I the only one who thinks we have our priorities out of order? We are
we spending so much energy arguing about the horrible stuff that (for
all intents) will never be seen or noticed when our important articles
(think - Michael Brown, Tom DeLay, John  Roberts) are, well, not very good?

-Mark


from_name: Ryan W. (Merovingian)

body:
I couldn't have said it better myself.  I think by now that some series of articles should be updated together so that they are all featured.  For example: nations of the world, US presidents, British monarchs, etc.

There's plenty of information that we have, and plenty that we've overlooked.  Coordinated efforts to bring articles up to featured status need emphasis.  The Collaborations of the Week are a good start, but the track record of past CotW's is poor.

--Ryan

> From: Mark Pellegrini <mapellegrini at comcast.net>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Taking your eyes off the ball
>
> I'm going to grouse a bit.
>
> I think far, far too much attention gets paid to the worst articles on
> Wikipedia - the studs, the vanity articles, the stuff of debatable
> notability (schools!!) while not nearly enough effort goes into making
> crappy articles into good ones.
>
> People on AFD love to argue about the crappiest articles. (It also tends
> to spill over to this mailing list) On the other side of the spectrum,
> the percentage of featured articles (number of featured articles / total
> number of articles) has been rapidly declining since March.
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_statistics).
> And yet no one seems care. Sometime this month, percentage of featured
> articles will drop below 0.1% -- less than 1 article in 1000 being a
> featured article.
>
> So while our article count is exploding [due to a massive influx of
> less-than-steller new articles.... think - traffic circles] and while
> the number of contributors has been steadily increasing, the number of
> new featured articles being produced has been a fairly steady 30-40 per
> month.
>
> Am I the only one who thinks we have our priorities out of order? We are
> we spending so much energy arguing about the horrible stuff that (for
> all intents) will never be seen or noticed when our important articles
> (think - Michael Brown, Tom DeLay, John  Roberts) are, well, not very good?
>
> -Mark

"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." -Jimmy Wales, July 2004

--
___________________________________________________________
Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Crap vfd nominations

body:
On 9/30/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> Which is something I'm not entirely averse to, as a system. It might be
> better than this, where a few people who sit in AFD all day have power
> over what lives and dies, and their decisions are regarded as final. At
> least if an admin speedies an article, another admin can restore it. But
> here, if 20 people vote to delete because of "roadcruft", that decision
> is legitimated in the eyes of the community. This is why I'm in favor of
> something like pure wiki deletion, or admin-only pure wiki deletion.
> Deletion should never have this air of finality that AFD gives to it.

Admin-only unilateral deletion is something I am in favour of.  All it
needs is a time delay (say, twelve hours) where anyone can see the
information.  VFU needs to be about content, not just process.  This
removes AfD and removes the unfair amount of power AfD regulars have.
I doubt it'll happen, because it would smell of cabalism.  But that
shouldn't be our main concern.

Sam


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Vfd nominations

body:
On 9/30/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> AFD had a near unanimous concensus that the article should be deleted.
>

No, AfD had a no consensus, and it was closed as a merge. Then somebody
decided he didn't like that result and deleted it anyhow. So the article was
put on AfD again so at least some semblance of consensus would be obtained
for this unilateral action. It's a facet of AfD that a dissenting
administrator can provoke a rerun if he really wants an article deleted.
Makes us all look like idiots, but there you go.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Crap vfd nominations

body:
On 9/30/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Admin-only unilateral deletion is something I am in favour of.  All it
> needs is a time delay (say, twelve hours) where anyone can see the
> information.

We already have enough problems with admin burnout. Handing more
responcibilty to admins is not a good idea.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] The AfD saga

body:
On 9/30/05, Puddl Duk <puddlduk at gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree with geni that WP:CP is improving a little, and I agree with Mgm
> that it works fine. We should always be looking for ways to improve every
> part of the project.

lastest expansion of speedy critia should help a bit or at least
change the problem.

--
geni


list: textbook-l

subject: [Textbook-l] New domain name for Wikijunior

body:
At zanimum's request, a new domain name for Wikijunior was discussed
at a Wikimedia meeting
(<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_meeting_agendas>) on
September 18 (which was attended by the board, people with official
positions, and local chapter reps).

I asked at that whether Wikijunior should move to its own domain name.
Anthere said that she does not consider it the board's decision alone
and suggested the Wikibooks community should decide this, thinking a
new domain meant a new project. I felt the project was already
approved (since it's running on Wikibooks and we have a grant for it),
and said that I didn't see the move to a new domain as a huge issue.

Jimmy clarified that the proposal is for Wikijunior be a place to put
'finished' work, with Wikibooks still being the development community,
so it would be a 'view' on the work, not a new project per se. I asked
whether there had been any objection to it moving, but this wasn't
clear. Jimmy proposed that we notify the Wikibooks community that
we're saying yes to this, but giving a week or two for people to voice
objections, and if there are none then we can approve it and let the
Wikibooks community work out how to proceed.

So, if there are any objections to moving the finished Wikijunior
texts to Wikijunior.org and keeping the editing processes on
Wikibooks.org, please raise those, either here, or at the Wikibooks
Staff lounge (<http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Staff_lounge>).

Angela.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Tony Sidaway wrote:
> While it may be annoying when a favorite type of article is listed for
> deletion, it's best viewed as a chance to argue your case to not delete it.
>
> Remember that the case for deletion needs a consensus, which is actually
> pretty hard to raise if an article has any merit.
>
> In particular, the notability argument is extremely weak, and in most cases
> directly contradicts deletion policy.
>
> Deletion policy states explicitly that if the only problem with an article
> is that it's on a branch of a subject so trivial that it doesn't merit an
> article, it is *not* a candidate for deletion, but should be merged to a
> more comprehensive article.
>
> This isn't only policy, it's also a pretty sensible argument for merging.

Agree on all points.

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iQEVAwUBQz0qMLMAAH8MeUlWAQgBHQf+NrfqWrgMQHKgvCk9bdcaDrAFEaaHXvFY
lCA8rSYNGbY65zBZI8SSvk6T+ZrS07CW/KpqVgKVrNRSag8QvSJ6/M+4ksEXYX5z
OOSf/zaMyJp2Kv1mN5vqrwkzlWmfEBBAXYcbdBdhlQlEZ6wct0wUxUhEBgSud2Ew
nb3hThRTVDNDNBPCCDQ2yP3+N5hoYPjrIv1Krq4vMPpR6hUlfJ8O1HkibcH6jH2H
+8YAmfke2YJiMYukBLA49bg6WDMa3vAILc+HbRBLfxJgunMTR34hGUlqa1ueZaa+
7k4xfY/Y8IceKbT42+MUsKbWR7qnVeFczmcYyadmuHGBJyx0aowjEA==
=Um6p
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [WikiEN-l] Crap vfd nominations

body:
On 9/30/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
> Pure admin deletion turns the admin group from a service organization
> to a cabal that you must belong to in order to perform certain
> actions.  It also give people who are otherwise happy with simply
> editing a tainted motivation to stand for adminship.
>
> Aristocracies are *always* easier for the aristocrats.

"Aristocrat" is not always pejorative.

Some things work best as an aristocracy.  If it's not difficult to
enter the aristocracy (did someone say, "no big deal"?) then it
shouldn't be a real problem.

That's why I proposed the system above.

Remember this is discussion as to an alternative to AfD's poison.

Sam


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Why am I being blocked?

body:
On 9/30/05, Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> I try to. Unfortunately, I fear that I am not the only Admin who tries
> to spend more time contributing material to Wikipedia than keeping up
> on new policy decisions, & so I worry about some act of WikiLawyering
> making a major change below my radar.

If you missed it it doesn't matter. I'm yet to run into a bit of
WikiLawyering that couldn't be got out of with another bit of
WikiLawyering

> In other words: I'd like to be sure everyone else is taking
> responsibility for her/his decisions, too.
>
> Geoff

we generaly find out when we hear the complaints.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
On 9/30/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
> Honestly, my memory sucks right now.  I'm not trying to be flippant:
> Isn't there a famous traffic circle or two worthy of featured article
> status in London, England?  Perhaps one in Paris, France or Rome,
> Italy as well?

[[Piccadilly Circus]] seems to fit the bill.

I for one wouldn't delete roundabouts, but I would merge them together
where there isn't enough to write.

Sam


subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
On 9/30/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
> Honestly, my memory sucks right now.  I'm not trying to be flippant:
> Isn't there a famous traffic circle or two worthy of featured article
> status in London, England?  Perhaps one in Paris, France or Rome,
> Italy as well?

Not that I know of. Swindon england is anouther matter.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Crap vfd nominations

body:
On 9/30/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> geni wrote:
>
> >Even if you have a striaght majority to delete that isn't enough.
> >
> >
> Thank god for that.
>
> - Ryan
If a majority would be enough to delete, common sense wouldn't prevail and
block voting would be done on both sides of the argument just to get in the
deciding vote. It's not merely about the vote. The reasoning someone has for
their vote is much more important.
 Saying "non-notable roadcruft" only shows the nominator doesn't find roads
worthy of an article but doesn't explain why *the nominated article* should
go based on policy. Saying "this road is not important as it's not heavily
travelled and doesn't contain any enyclopedic information." may still be
controversial and spark loads of discussion, but at least it explains the
nominator's reasoning in more detail.

Take for example whoever has been nominating webcomics the last few days. No
doubt that's controversial to the authors and webcomic enthusiasts, but the
nominator takes the time to track down Alexa and Google ratings and see how
many users their forums have as well as their status within the webcomic
community. It may take time, but I'm much easier swayed by well-researched
nominations instead of endless debates where both sides scream the other
side is pushing POV.
 --Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
On 9/30/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Isn't there a famous traffic circle or two worthy of featured article
> status in London, England? Perhaps one in Paris, France or Rome,
> Italy as well?
>

If I remember correctly, la Place de l'Etoile is a gigantic traffic circle
with the Arc de Triomphe in the middle.

There are lots of famous roundabouts all over England. Scotch Corner, Blue
House Roundabout, the place is crawling with them.


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Terms for adminship

body:
On 9/30/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> If they get annoyed, they ignore the requests. There's no requirement
> for any particular steward to deal with requests they don't want to
> do. It would easy enough to find some more people to be stewards if
> the workload really became too much.

True, and I'm sure there are plenty of people willing to be stewards
(mmm power). But if several get annoyed it might take a while to
respond to the requests.... :)


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
On 30/09/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:

> > If I had better access to historical records, I might be able to do that
> > for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonnelle_Circle . It's a very busy
> > intersection, located on the Route 1 Extension, considered by many to be
> > the first "super highway" in the United States.
>
> Honestly, my memory sucks right now.  I'm not trying to be flippant:
> Isn't there a famous traffic circle or two worthy of featured article
> status in London, England?  Perhaps one in Paris, France or Rome,
> Italy as well?

[[Magic Roundabout (Swindon)]], which I drove through a week or so
back (and got very confused seeing the signs for), perhaps? Or [[Magic
Roundabout (Hemel Hempstead)]] looks pretty interesting. Either of
these two could have quite a detailed article written about it, though
it would potentially go into too much weirdly technical stuff to be
FA-able.

[[Spaghetti Junction]] is a bit beyond "traffic circle", but has an
undeniable place in UKian pop culture. Or perhaps the (infamous)
[[Hanger Lane Gyratory System]], currently a stub...

I wouldn't want to write these - though it'd serve as an opportunity
to actually read those traffic engineering books I found in a library
sale, they look interesting - but I don't see that it can't be done.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Vfd nominations

body:
AFD had a near unanimous concensus that the article should be deleted.
I don't have anything against merging content during the discussion, but if
the consensus is to delete such a merge must be undone.
 --Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
On 30/09/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> I wouldn't want to write these - though it'd serve as an opportunity
> to actually read those traffic engineering books I found in a library
> sale, they look interesting - but I don't see that it can't be done.

I knew which one I forgot - [[Broxden Junction]]. Central point (and
most dangerous point) of the national road network in Scotland, which
is about as significant as you get for a single roundabout unless it
has major pop-culture baggage. Room for an article there to cover a
few decades of infrastructure history, basically.

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Terms for adminship

body:
On 9/30/05, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com> wrote:
> We had recently a debate on this topic on it.wiki and we rejected the
> idea of confirm votation for sysops on the basis that there would be
> always one reconfirm elecion going on (current election duration is 2
> weeks on itwiki). Anyway, I suppose reasons why sysop wouldn't be
> recofirmed could be inactivity (not a critical problem in the short term
> IMHO) or abuse of sysop powers (which should be dealt ASAP).

The only real reason to desysop someone permanently is if they're
abusing the power, go crazy (This happened on EN wiktionary a few
weeks ago), or being fools. Inactive admins will not harm the project,
unless they suddenly come back and assume the rules have not changed
in the six months they were gone. I've heard people saying it's a
security problem, but I think the more visible admins are more likely
to be security reasons.

Additionally, we are using a *plain text* password authentication
system. Passwords are encrypted in the database, but if someone
intercepts the login packets when an admin is logging in, they have
the password. Hacking our system is pretty trivial at the moment.
Additionally, there are always viruses and trojans that include
keyloggers, which someone could use to gain the password. But, once
you get an admin with a keylogger, all security for his account is
completely gone, even with an encrypted login form.

And, in the cases of a rogue or hacked admin, it really doesn't take
that much effort to get a steward, or in the absence of one, a
developer, to desysop them. If their account was hacked, when they
return they can explain the situation, fix any keyloggers, etc, change
their password, and get the adminship back. If they had a password
stealing trojan, they should be taught a crash course on avoiding
viruses. I can help with the latter if it's ever needed and they speak
english, I'm a virus helper on an IRC network. If they cannot keep
their account from being compromised more then once or twice, then
de-adminship should be considered, as they are a security risk.

I really think that on the EN wiki, de-adminship should be *much*
easier. If there was a process to easily get rid of admins that are
harming the system, then people wouldn't make adminship such a big
deal. We really need more admins, and nobody is helping by making
rediculous oppose votes, like "Has less then 999999999999 edits". Of
course, even with such a process in place, we would still have very
few admins removed....unless there was a sudden influx of bad admins.


from_name: Michael Turley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Crap vfd nominations

body:
On 9/30/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> Michael Turley wrote:
>
> >
> >Pure admin deletion turns the admin group from a service organization
> >to a cabal that you must belong to in order to perform certain
> >actions.
> >
> You don't think that's the case now? You have to be an admin to delete
> articles, block people, or use rollback. Yet admins are not viewed as a
> "cabal" because of this.

The difference is that now, admins are supposed to serve the consensus
of the editing public at large and not their own interest.  Pure admin
deletion changes them into a group of superusers at large.  The only
problem with the current adminship model is that some admins don't
realize or accept that their responsibilities are a service
responsibility and not a blind power grant.  Pure admin deletion
promotes this latter model of thought when in fact, it is the only
real problem in the system.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


from_name: Sanford Forte

subject: [Textbook-l] Story for Daily Texan

body:
Ryan,

I'm the Founder and Director of the California Open Source Textbook
Project www.opensourcetext.org , probably the oldest open source
project of its kind, and the only project that has had real impact on
policy at the state level.

My contact info follows

Very best,
Sanford

****************************************
Sanford Forte, Director
California Open Source Texbook Project
280 College Ave.
Palo Alto, CA 94306
sforte at opensourcetext.org
650-888-0077 (Mobile)
650-321-9152 (Business Office)

On Sep 30, 2005, at 6:42 AM, rpenner at mail.utexas.edu wrote:

> I am a reporter at the Daily Texan in Austin, and I am looking for
> somebody
> involved with the site to interview for a story on wikibooks. Is
> there anybody
> out there? Please reply to my email address with phone contact
> information.
>
> Thanks,
> Ryan Penner
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
On 9/30/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/30/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Honestly, my memory sucks right now. I'm not trying to be flippant:
> > Isn't there a famous traffic circle or two worthy of featured article
> > status in London, England? Perhaps one in Paris, France or Rome,
> > Italy as well?
>
> [[Piccadilly Circus]] seems to fit the bill.
>

Yes, although hasn't been any kind of traffic circle for yonks. They
pedestrianized one side of it so that people who want to be near Eros don't
have to brave the traffic. Probably around the same time they pedestrianized
Leicester Square. Seventies?


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
On Fri, 30 Sep 2005, Michael Turley wrote:

> On 9/30/05, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Geoff Burling wrote:
> > > Just a thought, SPUI: can you think of a traffic circle that you could
> > > write an article worthy of Featured Article status? I ask this in a
> > > constructive way, because a very irrefutable argument to anyone who
> > > writes on AfD to the effect "This is only an X, & all X is non-notable.
> > > Delete" is "Well, Y is an X, & it is a *FEATURED ARTICLE*!!!"[*]
> >
> > If I had better access to historical records, I might be able to do that
> > for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonnelle_Circle . It's a very busy
> > intersection, located on the Route 1 Extension, considered by many to be
> > the first "super highway" in the United States.
>
> Honestly, my memory sucks right now.  I'm not trying to be flippant:
> Isn't there a famous traffic circle or two worthy of featured article
> status in London, England?  Perhaps one in Paris, France or Rome,
> Italy as well?
>
One would assume that traffic circles did not just appear one morning,
but were conscious changes to intersections, created with intent &
hopefully some theory. If this assumption is true, then a search through
the records of traffic engineering (or whatever this discipline is
called) ought to uncover countless examples of their evolution as new
concepts were thought out, implemented, & improved upon.

That being said, I'm curious to know just how strong *is* Wikipedia in
the area of traffic engineering. Or is this one of countless many areas
that we lack comprehensive coverage on -- yet this doesn't quite fit
as part of the Wikiproject to remedy systemic bias?

Geoff


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Vfd nominations

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>AFD had a near unanimous concensus that the article should be deleted.
>I don't have anything against merging content during the discussion, but if
>the consensus is to delete such a merge must be undone.
>
What vandal would do that?

Obviously, unless a merger prohibition was specifically mentioned in the
deletion request it should not apply.

Ec


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Terms for adminship

body:
>>
>> possible, since it is so difficult to get someone de-admined. Today
>> there is
>> a functioning structure of stewarts, and I wonder - if svwiki started
>> this
>> system, where admins aren't elected forever but for a term of a
>> predetermined time, would "the international" object? Would stewarts get
>> tired of demand after demand from svwiki to take the admin rights from
>> admins whose one year term run out, or would it be seen as OK?
>>
>> It is difficult to puch the question, as long as we don't know if the
>> argument "it would not be allowed" is correct or not.
>>
>> Best,
>> Hanna
>
>
> I think you should just do what you guys think is best in your current
> situation. Right now, german and dutch wikipedia are working this way,
> with a renewal per year.
> On meta, inactive sysops are removed and we suggest "inappropriate"
> admins to be removed after a year as well.
>
> So, in all three cases, some admins are regularly removed. Usually, it
> is not a problem because
> * there is no urgency (as there might be in case of an abusing sysop)
> * there is no dispute (as the request can point out to a voting page
> where a steward can check if the removal is legitimate).
>
> So, it is not a tiring job for stewards.

I agree with Anthere .... sofar no-one on nl: who had to go for
re-election has not made it, so there was no problem sofar.

Waerth/Walter


body:
I looked, and it says "nn cruft". wtf?

On 10/1/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Someone did that for White Horse Circle. It didn't help:
> >
> > # 00:21, 29 September 2005 . . Gpietsch (tweak)
> > # 00:18, 29 September 2005 . . Gpietsch (added enough to prevent this
> > article from getting deleted ;-))
> > # 01:25, 22 September 2005 . . Aranda56 (Placed VFD)
> >
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/White_Horse_Circle
> >
> > The only argument that makes sense against "Oh cmon its a traffic circle
> > nn Delete" is "fuck you, asshole".
>
>
> OK, now I'm interested. What was the article like when it was deleted? Can't
> we copy these things somewhere before deleting them? I'd like to include the
> article in Jnanabase.
>
> Anthony
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Ok, I dug farther and that happened when someone put it up for
deletion. *SHRUG*.
(For admins: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=White_Horse_Circle&timestamp=20050930022548)

White Horse Circle is a traffic circle in Hamilton Township, New
Jersey. It is no longer a true traffic circle, but is bisected by U.S.
Highway 206 (commonly called Route 206). It is named after the nearby
neighborhood of White Horse. This intersection connects South Broad
Street, White Horse-Mercerville Road, and Bordentown Road. Bordentown
Road and the western side of South Broad St. make up sections of Route
206.

Due to its bisection by a major highway and cut-up appearance, it has
a highly complex traffic pattern. Only White Horse-Mercerville Road
has a stop sign at the circle, while the eastern part of South Broad
St. and the southern part of Route 206 have traffic signals some
distance from the circle. To allow cars to move in a safe fashion,
there are six yield-signed road segments allowing cars to get to Route
206 and from the highway to White Horse-Mercerville Road. Route 206,
when the light allows, has no yield sign restrictions.

Since the completion of Interstate 195 which runs near the circle,
much of the traffic that would have gone through the circle would now
take the wider, faster interstate. Circle traffic bound for the
interstate would either take the exit on U.S. 206 south for westbound
traffic and the intersection at South Broad Street and Arena Drive for
eastbound traffic.

History and Trivia

At one point, the White Horse Circle was the northern end of U.S.
Highway 130 before the freeway through Hamilton was built. In the
1920s, it was also the northern end of N.J. 2. Some highway bridges
from the period along U.S. 206 have "New Jersey Highway 2" carved into
the concrete barriers.

The western end of New Jersey State Highway 37 was going to be at the
White Horse Circle at one time. That highway was going to run down
South Broad Street towards Yardville along what is now CR 524. At one
time, the bridge in Yardville on South Broad Street over Groff Lake
had "New Jersey State Highway 37" carved into the concrete barriers.
Now, the traffic that would have taken NJ 37 takes I-195.

See Also

    * Traffic circle
    * List of traffic circles in New Jersey
    * Hamilton Township, New Jersey
    * White Horse, New Jersey

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Undelete"

Categories: Pages for deletion | Traffic circles in New Jersey

On 10/1/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> I looked, and it says "nn cruft". wtf?
> > OK, now I'm interested. What was the article like when it was deleted? Can't
> > we copy these things somewhere before deleting them? I'd like to include the
> > article in Jnanabase.


body:
You are right.

On 10/1/05, Mark Pellegrini <mapellegrini at comcast.net> wrote:
> I'm going to grouse a bit.
>
> I think far, far too much attention gets paid to the worst articles on
> Wikipedia - the studs, the vanity articles, the stuff of debatable
> notability (schools!!) while not nearly enough effort goes into making
> crappy articles into good ones.
>
> People on AFD love to argue about the crappiest articles. (It also tends
> to spill over to this mailing list) On the other side of the spectrum,
> the percentage of featured articles (number of featured articles / total
> number of articles) has been rapidly declining since March.
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_statistics).
> And yet no one seems care. Sometime this month, percentage of featured
> articles will drop below 0.1% -- less than 1 article in 1000 being a
> featured article.
>
> So while our article count is exploding [due to a massive influx of
> less-than-steller new articles.... think - traffic circles] and while
> the number of contributors has been steadily increasing, the number of
> new featured articles being produced has been a fairly steady 30-40 per
> month.
>
> Am I the only one who thinks we have our priorities out of order? We are
> we spending so much energy arguing about the horrible stuff that (for
> all intents) will never be seen or noticed when our important articles
> (think - Michael Brown, Tom DeLay, John  Roberts) are, well, not very good?
>
> -Mark
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Information in advance about mowiki happenings

body:
Hi all,

Currently there is a sysop election on mowiki, where 3 candidates are
pitted against each other rather than being voted on separately: Me,
Dmitriid, and Jeorjika.

I have 131 contributions in the main namespace, Dmitriid has 10, and
Jeorjika has 0.

Now, there are a number of issues here which I wish to consult with
the wider community over.

First of all, who is allowed to vote.

As it stands now, everybody who has already "expressed an opinion"
about the Wikipedia may vote. The majority of people who have
"expressed an opinion" are ro.wikipedians, with a minority of
Moldovans and others (including people such as Oleg Alexandrov,
Landroni, Dmitriid, Jeorjika, Gabix who are Moldovans, OldakQuill,
Monedula, who are from elsewhere).

This has always seemed unfair to me, since most of these people have
less than 10 contributions total, and only a few of them have any
contributions in the main namespace.

When suggesting that only people with a certain number of
contributions prior to a certain date (say, 10) be allowed to vote, I
was labelled as antidemocratic. When an "outsider", Christopher
Sundita, attempted to vote, his vote was deleted on the grounds that
he had not previously "expressed his opinion".

To be perfectly clear, the main issues in this election are
unreasonable and have nothing really to do with sysops. Currently, it
has been painted by one user, Goie (whose total contributions to ALL
Wikipedias are small), as more of an election for president.

It seems that those who are against the existance of mo.wikipedia are
voting for Jeorjika, while those who understand that these elections
are for "janitors" rather than "presidents" seem to be planning to
vote for me (notably, Oleg Alexandrov and OldakQuill).

Currently, there are over 200 articles on the Moldovan Wikipedia.
Jeorjika said, in his campaign, that "under node", the Moldovan
Wikipedia hasn't progressed fast enough (!). Apparently, it is the
responsibility of the sysop to make sure that a Wikipedia grows at a
certain rate, or else... sort of like Speed 3: Wikipedia.

The main issue seems to me that the criteria of who can vote, and who
cannot, are difficult to determine. Of course, it's best to always let
the community handle such things, but in this case it's not clear who
is and isn't part of the community -- most of the people who are
eligible to vote have not made even a tiny peep on this Wikipedia for
months, while I, Gabix, and a few dedicated anons have written
articles.

Mark


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Crap vfd nominations

body:
On 9/30/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com>
> >
> >  Saying "non-notable roadcruft" only shows the nominator doesn't find
> >roads
> >worthy of an article but doesn't explain why *the nominated article* should
> >go based on policy.
>
> Yes, but don't forget that "all roads are notable" or "Wikipedia consensus
> is that they be kept" or "Jimbo approved keeping all roads" Keep votes are
> equally useless.
>
> Jay.
I thought I mentioned something to that effect in that post. My
apologies if I didn't.
I totally agree with that point.


from_name: Justin Cormack

body:
On 1 Oct 2005, at 01:33, Mark Pellegrini wrote:

> I'm going to grouse a bit.
>
> I think far, far too much attention gets paid to the worst articles
> on Wikipedia - the studs, the vanity articles, the stuff of
> debatable notability (schools!!) while not nearly enough effort
> goes into making crappy articles into good ones.
>
> People on AFD love to argue about the crappiest articles. (It also
> tends to spill over to this mailing list) On the other side of the
> spectrum, the percentage of featured articles (number of featured
> articles / total number of articles) has been rapidly declining
> since March. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> Wikipedia:Featured_article_statistics). And yet no one seems care.
> Sometime this month, percentage of featured articles will drop
> below 0.1% -- less than 1 article in 1000 being a featured article.
>
> So while our article count is exploding [due to a massive influx of
> less-than-steller new articles.... think - traffic circles] and
> while the number of contributors has been steadily increasing, the
> number of new featured articles being produced has been a fairly
> steady 30-40 per month.
>
> Am I the only one who thinks we have our priorities out of order?
> We are we spending so much energy arguing about the horrible stuff
> that (for all intents) will never be seen or noticed when our
> important articles (think - Michael Brown, Tom DeLay, John
> Roberts) are, well, not very good?

I dont find the featured article process very interesting. There are
lots of articles that are of that quality
but I dont feel any real incentive to nominate. And quite a few of
the FAs are not very good. Articles that I
care about are getting better, much better and thats more important
to me. What are FAs for? What percentage
of articles do you expect to be FAs?


body:
On 10/1/05, Mark Pellegrini <mapellegrini at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> the percentage of featured articles (number of featured articles / total
> number of articles) has been rapidly declining since March.
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_statistics).
> And yet no one seems care. Sometime this month, percentage of featured
> articles will drop below 0.1% -- less than 1 article in 1000 being a
> featured article.
>
>
This is inevitable. There is nothing we can do about it and I'd argue that
there is nothing that we *should* do about it.

Even if we accept without question the argument that the "best" articles on
Wikipedia are those that have been voted on, edited, voted on again, and
granted Featured Article status, it's simply impossible for the Featured
Article process to keep up with the current pace of addition of new
articles.

Does this mean that featured articles are doomed? Of course not. There is no
shortage of featured articles, it's just that there is a growing number of
articles that aren't.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Overzealous Willy on Wheels patrollers

body:
Hey, the willy patrollers really should lighten it up a little. I've
been seeing people with Willy or wheels in there name get blocked for
being WoW. I think that's insane.

Anyway, point is, a user with the name "kswheels" got blocked
mistakenly, and I unblocked him/her, after they requested on IRC. If
you guys could remember this is a real user and don't block them for
this, then that would be great. I presume they are at a risk of being
blocked again until they make a few good edits.

I did suggest they might want to change their username, and since they
only have 0 edits, that won't be a problem with the bureaucratness
disabled... :)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Terms for adminship

body:
Ok, but they would still have to be reconfirmed all the time under a
proposal like that...

On 10/1/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
>
> Phroziac wrote:
> > You would probably annoy the stewards if you desysop a lot of people,
> > but I really don't think you'll have to desysop as many as you think.
> > This is a good idea, and I tried to get something similar passed on en
> > wiki, and it didn't work....obviously. We have 500 *active* admins, we
> > would have to run several re-elections all the time, constantly. So,
> > remember, this won't scale well.
> >
>
> Playing Devil's Advocate, I dispute that number.
>
> I don't think that all 500 are *active*.
>
> We could try it out for Bureaucrats first...
>
> - --
> Alphax                      |   /"\
> Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
> OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
> http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iQEVAwUBQz33crMAAH8MeUlWAQgREQf7BavwN/HhYj2tgKUu9ZFLZ2fg+Qxz7wDf
> oO5SLBC1+GjrZWfkZWVkcZCs8SzWbY1JI/9jPnCjEAVBaxHcxx8zyIPz+ZqLhj/7
> W1rsuTU1Vf+tNijPScl9wugBaaRYQJExDoM1yehsFYHToZ46rAjdEvSIQ9XmKa4F
> HDSmxViJyKAkLrO4/uNSXl0lMlwAiYOE+e+lnUT3j/QYgHgNEvHhEKOvsm6U1LOZ
> qBAKHYjG8c7sc3XydHRxo0kbnR3uXpSvFCIMHBy9ruj8E3oomdZ2MjLYkyFjjEj8
> GTkznrh7fKE3QCulOGTNlKtGGm0MAewvrzCdWjlpB4/Zg0+Rp+0LOQ==
> =Lzrp
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Crap vfd nominations

body:
On 10/1/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> There is no cabal.
>
> There are TWO cabals.
>
> They are called:
>
> The Association of Inclusionist Wikipedians
> The Association of Deletionist Wikipedians
>
> Anyone who claims to be a member (or routinely follows their policies)
> is subject to a User Conduct Request for Comment.
>
> BRING IT ON, BIATCH.
You forgot about...

The Mediation Cabal
The Arbitration Committee
A few thousand minicabals


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

body:
> On 10/1/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
>>
>> OK, now I'm interested. What was the article like when it was
>> deleted? Can't
>> we copy these things somewhere before deleting them? I'd like to
>> include the
>> article in Jnanabase.

I thought you were already running an automated 'bot that pumps all
the articles deleted from Wikipedia into McFly?

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


from_name: charles matthews

body:
Mark Pellegrini wrote

> We are we spending so much energy arguing about the horrible stuff that
> (for all intents) will never be seen or noticed when our important
> articles (think - Michael Brown, Tom DeLay, John  Roberts) are, well, not
> very good?

Interesting choices.  So, our important articles all hang off current US
politics.  Not Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, then.  Not Hitler, Stalin,
Mandela.  Not quantum mechanics, relativity, DNA.

I beg to differ.  Those articles will undoubtedly get enough attention to
upgrade them.  What is more, researching content is essentially trivial.

Charles


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Terms for adminship

body:
2005/9/30, Raphael Wiegand <rdb_wikipedia at gmx.de>:
> Hi,
>
> On de:, we had this discussion some months ago. Finally, we came to the
> conclusion that there would be nearly 3 re-elections starting every week
> which would be to much; nobody can or wans to vote three times a week in
> re-elections and additionally in new adminship requests

On nl: re-elections are done en masse 4 times a year; this might be
too much for de: (50 re-elections at once), but a system where all
re-elections are being combined once a month could work out.

Andre Engels


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Crap vfd nominations

body:
On 10/1/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
> If we were making paper encyclopedias, this inclusionism deletionism
> thing would make sense. Both sides would have a case. But unless the
> information is false, unusable, or otherwise profoundly
> unencyclopedic, it should stay, we have enough "room". Possibly some
> articles will never be used, but thats better than people failing to
> find what their looking for.
>

Putting aside the philosophical issues here, wouldn't it be easier,
just from a practical standpoint, to merge the information in these
traffic circle articles into the articles on the towns that they are
in? Info about traffic circles can go into [[traffic circle]], the
logical place to put it.

I don't think the information has to go, I just think that in many
cases it would be easier (for both editors and readers) to have more
information on single pages, than on many smaller ones.

And now the philosophical rant:

> The goal is for everyone to have access to the sum total of human knowlege.

Actually no, WP is an encyclopaedia, not a general knowledge base.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Textbook-l] Re: New domain name for Wikijunior

body:
Anthere wrote:

>> In short, this is not a proposal that has had anywhere near general
>> community input and some major details need to be filled in before
>> this proposal is accepted.
>
>
> Hi
>
> If so, may I asked why this request was written some time ago on the
> board agenda ?
>
> Anthere

I don't know.  I thought this was something that the board itself wanted
for some reason, or something being pushed by just one user.  Certainly
it has not had "community" input or is something that many people who
are actually adding content are pushing for right now.  The big push
right now is to bring the Wikijunior Solar System up to publishable
standards and get it ready to send to the schools affected by Hurricane
Katrina and Rita on the U.S. Gulf Coast region when they reopen.  If the
Beck Foundation falls through, there are a couple of other companies and
foundations that may come through instead for funding, so I think this
is a good push.  As for the website, I don't know what the big push is,
although as a long-term goal it may be something worth while.

--
Robert Scott Horning


body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>On 10/1/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 1 Oct 2005, at 02:56, Michael Snow wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Justin Cormack wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>What percentage of articles do you expect to be FAs?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>All of them.
>>>
>>>
>>Well thats a reasonable goal, but a lot of my areas of interest have
>>so few articles at all
>>that a bit of work getting stubs and some structure where people can
>>start seems necessary
>>first. People find time to write about individual roads, but we dont
>>even have 2 coherent
>>sentences on [[Italian cuisine]].
>>
>>Justin
>>
>>
>If only people spent more time reducing the backlog on requested
>articles. Those wouldn't be half as controversial as roads and schools
>and help to improve the coverage of Wikipedia. It's not as if they're
>writing what they know about anyway, or those road articles would be
>near FA instead of stubs.
>
Ahh!  But you ignore the fact that reducing the backlog of requested
articles, or other kinds of cleanup, requires _hard work_.   It's so
much more energy efficient to routinely type in "Delete nn", and cast an
occasional vote here and there.

For some people dealing with what they don't know about is the total
extent of what they know.

Ec


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Becoming more encyclopedia-like: 1: Encephalon's
	comments

body:
> From: Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
> Inclusionists and Deletionists are playing what they think is a
> zero-sum
> game. It's WORSE than that: the mere presence of their mindless
> ranting
> is actually HURTING Wikipedia. By arguing over what should be
> kept/deleted, we lose information. We lose readers. We lose editors.
>
> The solution:
>
> Become more encylopedia-like.
>
> For just about every value of X, where the number of total X is
> sufficiently large, we can make more logical and more comprehensive
> articles by MERGING the bits of information we have (which on their
> own,
> are perma-stubs) into more comprehensive articles on the topic.
>
> In doing so, we play a BETTER than zero-sum game. We build articles
> that
> a "traditional" encyclopedia would be jealous of. We HELP Wikipedia by
> having articles that both retain information and look professional.

I'd like to call attention to some remarks by Encephalon. I hesitate
to do this because of the context that they're in, and I hope he/she
will work them up into a standalone essay, but nevertheless. Take a
look in

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/
Lingnan_Primary_School

near the bottom, the portion that begins:

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. That is the very first thing you read
under Key Policies (WP:RULES), the main page of the essential rules
that govern this encyclopedia. It is the very first thing that you
read in the fundamental five pillars (WP:5P). The fundamental
requirements of encyclopedia writing are enshrined in the basic,
fundamental tenets of its policies. WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:NPOV are each
and all fundamental rules that we may not ignore as we please...

...and the subsequent discussion, and this _very interesting_ comment:

"I am using the criteria all of us should use: the principles central
to writing encyclopedic articles on WP. Pages which violate those
policies should be removed, whether they've been on WP for 3 weeks or
3 years, whether they pertain to the United States or to sub-Saharan
Africa. Likewise, pages that are written in accordance with such
principles should be kept, no matter how obscure or unknown to WPns
at large."

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
On 10/1/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Our article on traffic circles
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_circle) is painfully short for
> something that's being argued over on almost a daily basis.,,
>

See the internal link to Roundabout.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Requested articles

body:
> If only people spent more time reducing the backlog on requested
> articles. Those wouldn't be half as controversial as roads and schools
> and help to improve the coverage of Wikipedia. It's not as if they're
> writing what they know about anyway, or those road articles would be
> near FA instead of stubs.

Instead of fussing about improving the AfD process, I'd like to give
some thought to improving the article _request_ process. Right now
it's actually quite difficult, as you're expected to thread your way
through a deeply nested Roget's-Thesaurus-like logical organization
of the sum of human knowledge to find the place to insert a request.

I'd like _requesting_ an article to be truly as easy as _creating_
one. That is, I'd a link or button which automatically adds your
request to some list somewhere... and lets other people sort 'em out
into categories.

I honestly feel that many problem substubs--the ones which give
virtually no information that is not in their titles--should be
treated either in one of two ways. Many substubs look to me like good-
faith efforts to point out a topic that someone would like covered--
but does not have the time or the skills to make a usable start on.
If a stub is not a usable launching pad for an article, then it does
not serve any function other than pointing out the absence of an
article on a worthy topic. It is, then, not an article, not a stub,
not the start of an article--it is an article request made in an
inappropriate way.

I think the appropriate disposition of such main-namespace-pages is
to delete them from the main namespace and re-enter them as article
requests.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
Our article on traffic circles
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_circle) is painfully short for
something that's being argued over on almost a daily basis.,,
--Mgm


body:
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:

>> From: Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
>> Inclusionists and Deletionists are playing what they think is a
>> zero-sum
>> game. It's WORSE than that: the mere presence of their mindless  ranting
>> is actually HURTING Wikipedia. By arguing over what should be
>> kept/deleted, we lose information. We lose readers. We lose editors.
>>
>> The solution:
>>
>> Become more encylopedia-like.
>
> I'd like to call attention to some remarks by Encephalon. I hesitate
> to do this because of the context that they're in, and I hope he/she
> will work them up into a standalone essay, but nevertheless. Take a
> look in
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Lingnan_Primary_School
>
>
> near the bottom, the portion that begins:
>
> Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. That is the very first thing you read
> under Key Policies (WP:RULES), the main page of the essential rules
> that govern this encyclopedia. It is the very first thing that you
> read in the fundamental five pillars (WP:5P). The fundamental
> requirements of encyclopedia writing are enshrined in the basic,
> fundamental tenets of its policies. WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:NPOV are each
> and all fundamental rules that we may not ignore as we please...
>
> ...and the subsequent discussion, and this _very interesting_ comment:
>
> "I am using the criteria all of us should use: the principles central
> to writing encyclopedic articles on WP. Pages which violate those
> policies should be removed, whether they've been on WP for 3 weeks or
> 3 years, whether they pertain to the United States or to sub-Saharan
> Africa. Likewise, pages that are written in accordance with such
> principles should be kept, no matter how obscure or unknown to WPns
> at large."

The article in question is clearly a stub.  The deletion debate about it
is clearly not.  One can only wonder what a great article we would have
about the Lingam School if the energy spent trying to delete it had
actually been wasted on trying to improve it. :-)

My first impression of the last quoted paragraph is that it's
tautological.  Then by being referenced there it confuses standards with
the application of standards.  The time and place references in the
paragraph are redundant since the princilples would be equally
applicable without them.  The paragraph could be summarized in, "If it's
a good page keep it; if it's a bad page delete it."  Who would argue
against that?

The underlying assumption is that the article proposed for deletion is a
bad one, and since everybody knows that it's guilty why bother with a
trial?"  Let's proceed directly to the execution.  I'm sorry but the
rest of us are not so brilliant as to understand this swift logic, we
still need to be shown why it's a bad unencyclopedic article.

Ec


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Crap vfd nominations

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> On 9/30/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>geni wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Even if you have a striaght majority to delete that isn't enough.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>Thank god for that.
>>
>>- Ryan
>
> If a majority would be enough to delete, common sense wouldn't prevail and
> block voting would be done on both sides of the argument just to get in the
> deciding vote.
>

Hence I started [[WP:RFC/AfD]], because I'm sick of the "block voting"
where no sane or logical decisions are ever made, just people screaming
"OMG school/road/Pokemon/cruft/whatever keep/delete".

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iQEVAwUBQz3uzLMAAH8MeUlWAQgOdgf9FFiENZG6yDK2tLk4zblKDcHy5BJAsCcZ
ElSJ0bS70aHLaeRtIzOhyjWSDfP313RQZzcQMjDtAbfxEwZTLsiCC6XJrjzmXgc9
0gY19orWmTCZbG8ShqHq5CxSFVn4V03gW5+6RmRk5IjpI6v39W5v/sA4QE4M3kwQ
t2BhgkunBLwGbw+RsvbJ8vXWN0yJjqEIYidR2ndqByzPHNVKhwFqP65/VHBF3/5i
j/KDIqjc4lv61PFhIM1UNnkcmhSC9p7qztjeuxSBf0EL4WR645UTS+OsqRbPrvP5
JlWNWF8/c2JQSqD/fiQdSacBXuy8i3dRgouIxzQUyAQtTImMnaO6Jg==
=omp+
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [WikiEN-l] Crap vfd nominations

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Ryan Delaney wrote:
> Michael Turley wrote:
>
>>
>> Pure admin deletion turns the admin group from a service organization
>> to a cabal that you must belong to in order to perform certain
>> actions.
>
> You don't think that's the case now? You have to be an admin to delete
> articles, block people, or use rollback. Yet admins are not viewed as a
> "cabal" because of this.
>

There is no cabal.

There are TWO cabals.

They are called:

The Association of Inclusionist Wikipedians
The Association of Deletionist Wikipedians

Anyone who claims to be a member (or routinely follows their policies)
is subject to a User Conduct Request for Comment.

BRING IT ON, BIATCH.

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iQEVAwUBQz3vfLMAAH8MeUlWAQiehAf9Eh3iv7arrZ5sm0RsSfvV6H6RrFlpefJV
MfNQFzUS9nvyz1pXY1VZx/CJuNDuRSXYHeCeyWzVfFBDWgASv+ODCI8fNYiCyQrq
rq7IQvhSG8wH1sKorXYKS7zcrguIw1UlADkiLgbQzUMuaHL0OiTF8iQBmP6JgGKK
gThxu3FH0fymb6YvjiHOlfOJBqaqGqOiUdhWJZMKlYNKRbLwfzo+zApqRPD3XUDb
OyuPDD0ElA0GfO1Hi/bAVsc+Wu/6V8800LuMQo9/gxlHTYnOe08BsGZ4dHyFO6EA
ErOTOyy2NKj7GBk8Vcws8O6VWC+vdECz+zx/kqmujfqQcYtR8cuiLQ==
=HGoH
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Kat Walsh

subject:
Article rescue contest (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Taking your eyes off the
	ball)

body:
On 9/30/05, Mark Pellegrini <mapellegrini at comcast.net> wrote:

> I think far, far too much attention gets paid to the worst articles on
> Wikipedia - the studs, the vanity articles, the stuff of debatable
> notability (schools!!) while not nearly enough effort goes into making
> crappy articles into good ones.

> -Mark

I agree with this. And so does MacGyverMagic. So in the interests of
1) improving Wikipedia, 2) good clean fun, and 3) cutthroat
competition....

Wikipedia:Article rescue contest -- put your money where your mouth
is, and improve something that survived AfD on the idea that it could
be a good encyclopedic article if only it were cleaned up.

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

...because too many articles are put on AfD, kept, and then never
touched again after their survival.

(If this sounds familiar, maybe it should; it was proposed once before
but never followed up on, but now we put an actual date in the rules,
so it's official. And yes, of course it was inspired by Danny's
contest.)

-Kat
[[User:Mindspillage]]

--
http://www.mindspillage.net *** IM: LucidWaking
"There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily
escaped the chronicler's mind."  --Douglas Adams


from_name: Nyenyec N

subject: [Wikitech-l] Dump status

body:
Hi,

What's the status of the database dumps?
Editor's in HuWiki are eagerly awaiting the next stats update. :)

Thanks,
nyenyec


body:
On 1 Oct 2005, at 02:56, Michael Snow wrote:

> Justin Cormack wrote:
>
>
>> What percentage of articles do you expect to be FAs?
>>
>
> All of them.

Well thats a reasonable goal, but a lot of my areas of interest have
so few articles at all
that a bit of work getting stubs and some structure where people can
start seems necessary
first. People find time to write about individual roads, but we dont
even have 2 coherent
sentences on [[Italian cuisine]].

Justin


subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Michael Turley wrote:
> On 9/30/05, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Geoff Burling wrote:
>>
>>>Just a thought, SPUI: can you think of a traffic circle that you could
>>>write an article worthy of Featured Article status? I ask this in a
>>>constructive way, because a very irrefutable argument to anyone who
>>>writes on AfD to the effect "This is only an X, & all X is non-notable.
>>>Delete" is "Well, Y is an X, & it is a *FEATURED ARTICLE*!!!"[*]
>>
>>If I had better access to historical records, I might be able to do that
>>for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonnelle_Circle . It's a very busy
>>intersection, located on the Route 1 Extension, considered by many to be
>>the first "super highway" in the United States.
>
>
> Honestly, my memory sucks right now.  I'm not trying to be flippant:
> Isn't there a famous traffic circle or two worthy of featured article
> status in London, England?  Perhaps one in Paris, France or Rome,
> Italy as well?
>

There's a famous (or rather, infamous) one in Adelaide: Britannia
Roundabout.

Worst traffic nightmare in the city. Many plans have been made (but
never carried through) about what to do with it, from turning it into
traffic lights to building over & underpasses.

Does it exist? Yes.
Is it verifiable? Yes.
Have books been written about it? Probably not.
Has it appeared in the media? Yes.
Should I write an article about it? Maybe.
Would said article be speedy deletable? No.
Would said article be deleted via AfD? Probably.
Is there enough information to make it to Featured status? Maybe.

What should I do?

Put it in [[Major roads in Adelaide, South Australia]] or similar.

Here's my take on the whole inclusion/deletion thing:

Including things for the sake of inclusion is BAD. You end up with junk.
Wikipedia is not a place to braindump.

Deleting things for the sake of deleting is BAD. If it's true,
verifiable, NPOV, etc. it's the sort of information Wikipedia is able to
accept. Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia. It is SUPPOSED to have INFORMATION.

Inclusionists and Deletionists are playing what they think is a zero-sum
game. It's WORSE than that: the mere presence of their mindless ranting
is actually HURTING Wikipedia. By arguing over what should be
kept/deleted, we lose information. We lose readers. We lose editors.

The solution:

Become more encylopedia-like.

For just about every value of X, where the number of total X is
sufficiently large, we can make more logical and more comprehensive
articles by MERGING the bits of information we have (which on their own,
are perma-stubs) into more comprehensive articles on the topic.

In doing so, we play a BETTER than zero-sum game. We build articles that
a "traditional" encyclopedia would be jealous of. We HELP Wikipedia by
having articles that both retain information and look proffessional.

Just remember:

Every time you arbitrarily delete an article, you lose a potential
editor, who says to themselves, "What a stupid bunch of morons! They
deleted the article on X!"

Every time you arbitrarily keep an article, you lose a potential editor,
who says to themselves, "What a stupid bunch of morons! They have an
article on X!"

If you are careful to only delete things which are copyvios, original
research, neologisms, dicdefs, and speedy deletable (and they are the
ONLY criteria under which things should be deleted), you will only keep
INFORMATION.

If you are careful only to keep things which are verifiable,
informational, and non-trivial (which is what an ENCYCLOPEDIA should
have), you will only delete JUNK.

If you use common sense, remember what NPOV is, and merge into DECENT
ARTICLES, you will save a lot of bother.

Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia.
Wikipedia is not an experiment in democracy.
Dont' stuff beans up your nose.

For great encyclopedia!

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iQEVAwUBQz32GrMAAH8MeUlWAQgw4Qf8D1NAOXdJxmw9PthLyIaztke4V0RABcfv
/vohjo8NehZcdjh6qAqTIgF94b4OxLHTuMHem0dUbiROJIZKU8Cc59FTBogXV5Gr
vAzOoKw38bsaQFlz5/XT4BwNZoPgN0THIWE7JQ0FG774WlY7TL/T0+ZwcmVkqGID
AHP/K+2HmJvENM3osyGKLC+j1jWhSHdJof5eS6jL3P83MMk6gtSR40NItxmvGa7L
D00+17y30sRwwY0UXbCGE0Z9zDzE3DJ5J6EDQ2iaDTgK1JQs6MklMdC0Ypc8U2Dr
57V0eMIMXbk4k2f5yh18tVxzIOq1Mw50/h9ewV0XVDR43v4TvOYUew==
=I9bZ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----