body:
[Crossposted from <wikiEN-l> to <wikipedia-l>.
Since this feature, if implemented, would apply to all wikis,
replies should go to <wikipedia-l>.]

Eclecticology wrote:

>Erik Moeller wrote:

>>[[Category:Sex]] [[Category:Sexually explicit]]
>>or
>>[[Category:Religion]]
>>or
>>[[Category:Music]]

>>and meta-categories:
>>[[Category:Stub]]
>>or
>>[[Category:Delete]]
>>or
>>[[Category:NPOV dispute]]

Not "meta-categories", but "meta categories".
A meta-category is a category about categories,
but a meta category is a category about meta issues,
which in our case means a category about Wikipedia.
(Just being silly and pedantic.  Ignore me.)

>>each of these category pages would be editable, but always automatically
>>include a sorted list of the pages that link to the category ("what links
>>here"). It would also be nice if a text could be configured for each
>>category that is displayed on pages that are part of it, e.g.
>>[[Category:Stub]] -> This article is a stub article ...

>I think there is much in common between the two ideas, at least in terms
>of what we want the two visions would accomplish.  I think there is
>probably a lot of room for reconciling the two.  I'd need to give more
>thought to the way it might be done.  I can give a few preliminary
>observations.

I don't like the subject categories, but I like the meta categories.
If we write code that works well for the meta categories,
then we can always test the subject categories at that time.

>   1. Codes or words?  Use both, but have a way of distinguishing which
>is being used, e.g. it is a word if the second character is in lower
>case.  We would still need to find a way of accomodating the "NPOV"
>example above.

Unless "NPOV" is the code and "Neutral point of view" is the word. ^_^
But you could always check for all-caps in "NPOV dispute".
Myself, I'd still say that words are best; we can keep them short.

>   2.  Does "category page" mean a whole separate page?  If it is,
>isn't a category box the same thing, only much tinier, and without the
>need to write the word "category" every time?  Some articles will belong
>to several categories.

I'm pretty sure that "category page" means a page dedicated to that category.
Thus at the URL <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Stub>
one can find a page with an automatic list of all stubs,
below the boilerplate text that's printed on all linked pages (say).
And at <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Category:Stub&action=edit>,
one can edit this boilerplate text (but not the list).

>Anyway, I'm sure there will be more to say on this.

-- Toby


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Just to throw this out there...


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Reclaim the Public Domain Petition

body:
Toby Bartels schrieb:
> Kurt Jansson wrote:
>
>>http://www.PetitionOnline.com/eldred/petition.html
>
>>Everybody who has ever uploaded a public domain image or used the old
>>Britannica should put Wikipedia in the "Something I Created Using Public
>>Domain" field.
>
> "We, the undersigned, while believing in the importance of copyright, [...]"
>
> I'm afraid that I can't sign that petition. ^_^

You're right, but I see it as "geeting one's foot in the door". The
abolition of copyright law in the near future is unlikely.

BTW, I hope Lessig will publish a list of the "works using public
domain", there might be some interresting projects for us.

Kurt


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] Tannin, it seems, has changed lots of articles

body:
Dante Alighieri wrote in part:

>*cough* [[Talk:Occam's Razor]] *cough*

What, not [[Occam's razor]]? ^_^

-- Toby


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Random Page works a little bit strange

body:
Brion wrote:
>On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen wrote:
> > On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, Thomas Luft wrote:
> > The random page on the English one isn't random either. You will
>regularly get
> > the same page again and again if you try a few times.
>
>Grrr.... looks like the random indices are all off again; somehow MySQL's
>rand() function is biasing high the way we've been using it, and there are
>_very_ few articles set with lower indexes (<0.25), so those few get
>pulled up way too often. I've just told it to redo all the random indexes
>on the german wiki in a lump; I'll reset them on the English wiki later
>tonight when traffic is lower.

Unless you've already fixed it, the English cur_random column is still fine.

SELECT cur_random FROM cur WHERE cur_random>0.01 ORDER BY cur_random LIMIT
10

returns...

0.0100032491702617
0.010005122059961
0.010018127048405
0.0100242663268226
0.0100461980421526
0.0100568952132546
0.0100595876668204
0.0100729866047138
0.0100769354124339
0.0100776087586559

Sounds to me like you fixed the English one after I first described the
cause of the problem a month ago, but you didn't fix the other languages. If
in fact the English cur_random was stuffed up again, and you fixed it before
I ran the above query, I want to know about it. I consider this a pet bug of
mine now.

>I've also gone ahead and replaced the random seed generator in the wiki
>and changed Special:Random to use its own random number instead of asking
>for one from MySQL. I don't trust MySQL anymore. :)  And I took out the
>reset-index-on-load, which was probably trouble.

Why not just go the whole hog and use a noisy diode? ;)

I was pretty confident I worked out the problem last time around. I even
wrote a little program simulating the behaviour of the previous version of
Special:Randompage. It's attached. Compile it with "g++ drift_test.cc" and
watch all those "random" numbers gravitate towards 1.0 like it's a hot woman
at a party or something.

Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen <daniel at copyleft.no> wrote:
<snip>
>The random page on the English one isn't random either. You will regularly
>get
>the same page again and again if you try a few times.

This should have been fixed a month ago, when Brion reset the index. Have
you checked since then?

-- Tim Starling.

_________________________________________________________________
Get mobile Hotmail. Go to  http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilecentral/signup.asp
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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Fair use

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>As a reminder, none of us are real lawyers, and nothing in this discussion
>is going to get anyone anywhere. May I suggest we all agree to disagree
>and keep our options open until such time as the project receives
>professional advice?
>
Sometimes I wonder whether or not the lawyers are the biggest part of
the problem. ;-)   You want to make sure that you choose a lawyer who
supports the correct POV. :-)   Do NPOV lawyers even exist?

Ec


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anthere's Gaia obsession.

body:
Folks, we currently have an edit-war between Anthere and
the world over the Gaia theory article.

But not over the content. This has nothing to do with
content, or with POV.  Rather, it has to do with his
bizarre obsession with creating his own names that NO ONE
ELSE in science uses, and urging the creating of multiplw
articles with nearly the same name, and almost the same
content.

I can understand when someone gets into a flame-war or
edit-war when someone rewrites their contributions.  But
this is happening when I am NOT rewriting his
contributions, but am merely moving biological scientific
studies out of a social-science discussion, into the
science-section of an article.  I think he is threatened by
science maybe?  I dunno...

Anthere has created, or supported the creation of:

[[Gaia hypothesis]]
[[Gaia theory]] (lower case t)
[[Gaia Theory]] (upper case T)
[[Gaia theory (biology]]
[[Gaia theory (homeostais)]]
(And a few more!)

And ALL OF THESE are on the same topic.  The content is or
was nearly identical!

Being a scientist, I happen to know that no one uses
Anthere's bizarre terminology.  All of these articles refer
to the same set of Gaia theories.  But Anthere keeps
refusing any consolidation.  That's just odd.

Problem 1: The discussion consensus so far has been clear:
Others are also confused about this bizarre naming system,
and want a better naming system.  Anthere's fractionated
current system only misdirects anyone trying to learn about
the topic.

Problem 2: It is a violation of our naming conventions to
have nearly identical content, with nearly identical
titles, differentiated by only a lower-case versus
upper-case letter!

Problem 3: Anthere has effectively claimed ownership of the
article, and currently won't let me add anything.  Yet
(bizarrely!) he claims that he is being censored. I find
this claim outrageous, as I don't care what he writes. He
can write anything he likes, and I am NOT deleting it.  He
is just being paranoid.

Problem 4: Someone has accused me of "SCIENTISM" (whatever
that is supposed to be) for saying that the articles on
this scientific topic should have more science!  They also
are asking me to stop preventing them from discussing
religious and mythological views of the topic...but I am
not doing this.  I can't stop doing something that I simply
was not doing to begin with!

With concerns,

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com


from_name: Julie Kemp

subject: [WikiEN-l] Filtering, etc.

body:
Erik pointed out that one size doesn't fit all in terms of filtering
content, even when talking about child-appropriate content.  I won't
debate that, nor his (kind of) tongue in cheek remark about putting
advisories on the Christianity (and all other religion?) articles.

But here's where I think that argument falls down.  The wikipedia is
fortunately unlike almost every print encyclopedia in that one can (or
will be able to, one day, we hope) find information on virtually
anything.   I would guess that, when people see "online, open content
encyclopedia", they think in terms of information available in print
encyclopedia - I imagine it this way, laugh if you like: "Hey mom, I
found this really cool site!"  "Really?  What kind of site? (<subtext of
normal parental concern>)"  "It's an encyclopedia - look at this cool
picture of an aardvark!" "Gee, honey, that *is* pretty cool!  Useful,
too!"  And mom, seeing it's an educational tool, goes back to doing
whatever, only to have her kid come up later and ask about the
information in the Felching article (and by the way, that looks a lot
like a dictionary entry to me), which might not be at all intelligible
to a pre-teen, at least.   I think one size does fit all when erring on
the side of caution.  In other contexts that same information might be
seen as abusive towards the child.

Sorry - I don't want to sound like a prude or like I'm some right-wing
fanatic.  I just know that I live in a society that expects that, as a
society, we protect our children from things they aren't equipped to
handle - we try to refrain from swearing around them, we (except in the
US, it seems) have a sex and violence watershed on TV, etc.  If
individual parents want to let their kids see R-rated films, or play
super violent video games, they can (again, I think the US is actually
more liberal about this).  But that doesn't let the wikipedia off the
hook from at least letting people know that there is information on the
site that is not found in "normal" encyclopedias and is certainly not
age-appropriate for young children.

By the way, is anybody referring to articles OTHER than the ones with
explicit sexual (in any variety) details?  I can see an argument for the
nightly news not being appropriate for young kids, too, but at least
parents have a good idea of what will be shown - I thought I did, till
they showed a cop being murdered by somebody at a routine road stop.

Julie
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from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Random Page works a little bit strange

body:
On Wed, 4 Jun 2003, Tim Starling wrote:
> Taking the SQL query used in Special:Randompage from CVS and modifying
> it very slightly...
[snip]
> It doesn't always return the same articles, but they're always very
> low-numbered. I don't know about you, but I would call that a MySQL
> bug.

Hmm... let's simplify this further:

mysql> select cur_random from cur where cur_random > RAND() limit 20;
+---------------------+
| cur_random          |
+---------------------+
| 0.00257335324080042 |
| 0.00301321596187839 |
| 0.00409562141084636 |
| 0.00434284564512115 |
| 0.00447388831942704 |
| 0.00527506415292161 |
| 0.00677824021017015 |
| 0.00724384654987962 |
| 0.00791455340377479 |
| 0.00809311867513984 |
| 0.00832060632139501 |
| 0.00845975429607532 |
| 0.00916914828975606 |
| 0.00930567272874124 |
|   0.010219381200354 |
|   0.010613451721718 |
|   0.011154617193299 |
|  0.0122322952488738 |
|  0.0126715852065679 |
|  0.0127805173516092 |
+---------------------+

This quite consistently gives me results in the 0.001-0.017 range.

The results are presumably already sorted by the use of the index, but
it's definitely odd that they seem to so consistently come out so small.
Because, we *don't* see that if we grab a rand() value as a column:
mysql> select cur_random,rand() from cur where cur_random > RAND() limit
20;+---------------------+-------------------+
| cur_random          | rand()            |
+---------------------+-------------------+
| 0.00180685892869426 | 0.059753977749268 |
| 0.00333090965014967 |  0.27524542461638 |
| 0.00345821027034727 | 0.083287411446951 |
| 0.00541453902182592 |   0.1797017885183 |
| 0.00616005901820963 |  0.10850227168622 |
| 0.00718451943917621 |  0.44687699754432 |
| 0.00725775678386703 |  0.24804242723439 |
|  0.0073513565653482 |  0.66955343696247 |
| 0.00753892400072787 |  0.58810817505057 |
| 0.00818642974662262 |  0.35786299627075 |
| 0.00856924430333939 |  0.92427461121629 |
| 0.00867950265172823 |  0.58906755278731 |
| 0.00916074124086717 |  0.16777823601642 |
| 0.00939816703032532 |  0.19605916291108 |
| 0.00979022216963603 |  0.10278878091163 |
|  0.0102785686126711 |  0.27433319694766 |
|  0.0103007052189677 |  0.76059719990995 |
|  0.0105801159614512 |  0.25284009636644 |
|  0.0111034736140663 |  0.53778274221139 |
|  0.0113199194998666 | 0.046922132416556 |
+---------------------+-------------------+

Note that the rand() we WHERE with and the rand() we SELECT are separate
invocations of the function, and don't return the same result as each
other.

Hmm, let's look at the docs:

  Note that a RAND() in a WHERE clause will be re-evaluated every time the
  WHERE is executed.  RAND() is not meant to be a perfect random
  generator, but instead a fast way to generate ad hoc random numbers
  that will be portable between platforms for the same MySQL version.
  -- http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Mathematical_functions.html

*WHAM WHAM WHAM*

Now, let's think what that means. We're selecting for cur_random. It uses
the index on cur_random, so it's going to sort starting from the
infintesimally small end, but can't use a constant to index by because the
WHERE clause is a function -- we have to scan. For each row it makes up a
random number, and sees if this row if at least as big. If yes, it puts
the row in the return queue. If no, it goes to the next row and makes up
another random number.

Some portion of those small-numbered rows are going to match, and at some
point we fill up our quota and return the matching rows.

AAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!!! :)

It's not a MySQL _bug_, just a very non-intuitive behavior which leads to
over-biasing to the low-end when we misuse it (and the updates to 'stir
the pot' would thus tend to depopulate the low-end and bias the value
distribution high). Generating one random number ourselves and giving it
to mysql as a constant, as my recent update does, should solve this.

> May I make a suggestion, while we're on the topic? How about changing the query to:
[snip]
>   AND cur_random>{$rand} AND cur_user<>3903 AND cur_user<>6120
[snip]
> which will skip anything last edited by Ram-Man or Rambot. Like Daniel Mikkelsen said, the most important function for Special:Randompage is to impress passers-by. We should rig it any way we can to make Wikipedia look better.

That's awfully specific to be hard-coding. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Fair use

body:
On Wed, 4 Jun 2003, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> >As a reminder, none of us are real lawyers, and nothing in this discussion
> >is going to get anyone anywhere. May I suggest we all agree to disagree
> >and keep our options open until such time as the project receives
> >professional advice?
> >
> Sometimes I wonder whether or not the lawyers are the biggest part of
> the problem. ;-)   You want to make sure that you choose a lawyer who
> supports the correct POV. :-)

That's half the battle!

>   Do NPOV lawyers even exist?

They're called judges, in theory. You can get in trouble for trying to
"hire" them, though... :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Pedro M.V.

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kurt Jansson" <jansson at gmx.net>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2003 5:44 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Reclaim the Public Domain Petition

> Toby Bartels schrieb:
> > Kurt Jansson wrote:
> >
> >>http://www.PetitionOnline.com/eldred/petition.html
> >
> >>Everybody who has ever uploaded a public domain image or used the old
> >>Britannica should put Wikipedia in the "Something I Created Using Public
> >>Domain" field.
> >
> > "We, the undersigned, while believing in the importance of copyright, [...]"
> >
> > I'm afraid that I can't sign that petition. ^_^
>
> You're right, but I see it as "geeting one's foot in the door". The
> abolition of copyright law in the near future is unlikely.
>
> BTW, I hope Lessig will publish a list of the "works using public
> domain", there might be some interresting projects for us.
>
>
> Kurt
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

But we need use more the social function of property and specially of intellectual and industrial property.

I.e. why a patient cannot use Injectable Omeprazol in Europe sometimes ??. Because there is only one producer of it. For me, there is rights higher than immaterial property.

Regards.


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] protection of pages

body:
I understood sysops had the ability to protect pages
in case of an edit war. Apparently, it is not enough
to ask for the protection in the comment box. So I
suppose it has to be asked specifically somewhere.

Could I know *where* it is for the next time I am told
I am a vandal, a liar, a fool out of his mind and
unable to read english ?

And treated as if I were a man !!!

I could get to bed earlier that way :-)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On Wed, 2003-06-04 at 17:11, Dante Alighieri wrote:
> Yes, I agree. I think we have a responsibility to use the more correct
> name.... *cough* [[Talk:Occam's Razor]] *cough*
>
> I actually have no opinion on this bird issue, I just wanted a chance to
> dig up and old battle that I lost and try to win it anew. ;)
>
The whole problem is that "correct" is not an objective term. We can
have a wokring definition which we follow within the confines of
Wikipedia, but need to recognize it as such. Our working definition has
been by and large pretty conservative, but flexible. Which seems to me
to be reasonable.


from_name: Tony Wilson

subject: [WikiEN-l] naming convention for birds and others

body:
Eclecticology manages, somehow, to thow in the phrase "is completely
contrary to any spirit of compromise" to a post above.

This is an extraordinary thing to say when he is fresh back from -
let's not put too fine a point on it here - unilaterial vandalisim on a
major scale, even stooping to cut-and-paste page moves.

Mate, there is ALREADY a well-established compromise, has been for
quite some time,  which, although it is not by any means completely
satisfactory to me or to many of the other fauna people, has been
honoured by everybody except YOU.

An anon or a  newbie who behaved as you did the other day would have
had his IP blocked immediately.

So please don't insult people like Jim - who, by the way, has done far
more work on fauna than you ever will, and who has behaved with decency
throughout - by bandying that "compromise" word around as if it was
your own invention, and as if you you were willing to abide by the
terms of the compromise which you knew all about the whole time.

The fauna pages were an area of the 'pedia where there was no longer
any contention, and no ill-feeling. Until your unilaterial "I don't
care about the consensus, I'm going to do it my way" decision the other
day, it was an area where everybody was working together happily and
productively. Now, PLEASE, get out of the road and let those of us who
are doing the work *do* the work.

Tony

(Tannin)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Anthere's Gaia obsession.

body:
--- Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Folks, we currently have an edit-war between Anthere
> and
> the world over the Gaia theory article.

No. Actually, between you and I. That is far enough
not to add the rest of the world :-)

Plus Wapcaplet who had a third opinion, different from
mine, and different from yours. With whom I discussed.
And who now is busy trying to soothe us. 3 persons
make the world.

> But not over the content. This has nothing to do
> with
> content, or with POV.  Rather, it has to do with his
> bizarre obsession with creating his own names that
> NO ONE
> ELSE in science uses, and urging the creating of
> multiplw
> articles with nearly the same name, and almost the
> same
> content.

The name the articles had this morning were all given
long before I even discovered Wikipedia. Since these
articles were written by several authors, I guess that
makes more than me using that terminology :-)

> I can understand when someone gets into a flame-war
> or
> edit-war when someone rewrites their contributions.
> But
> this is happening when I am NOT rewriting his
> contributions

You sure could not edit *my* contributions as I
basically made none on these articles, except tiny
fixes, and move of the DaisyWorld in a separate
article, with active agreement of Lexor then and
passive of at least Mav.

but am merely moving biological
> scientific
> studies out of a social-science discussion, into the
> science-section of an article.  I think he is
> threatened by
> science maybe?  I dunno...

Duh. Sure. Threatened by science. I have been raised
in science, I graduated in several sciences fields. I
work in science. This is so scary

> Anthere has created, or supported the creation of:
>
> [[Gaia hypothesis]]
> [[Gaia theory]] (lower case t)
> [[Gaia Theory]] (upper case T)
> [[Gaia theory (biology]]
> [[Gaia theory (homeostais)]]
> (And a few more!)

Sure.

Gaia hypothesis was created before feb 2002. But I
support the unknown person who created it :-)

[[Gaia theory]] in april 2002. I agree my first edits
were about that time. But I really don't think I
created this article :-)

Gaia theory (biology) was created today, and not by
me. Proposed by another one. But, right, I support it.

The other ones...I certainly have created some of
them. Quite a while ago now. A little issue with a fat
buddha...some might remember.

After the disagreement, the articles were proposed for
deletion. But it was decided to keep them.

Do you have a pb with redirects ?

> And ALL OF THESE are on the same topic.  The content
> is or
> was nearly identical!

YES ! The content is REDIRECT [[Gaia theory]] or
equivalent !
AMAZINGLY IDENTICAL

> Being a scientist, I happen to know that no one uses
> Anthere's bizarre terminology.

Being a biologist myself, as well as an agronomist,
and an enginneer (I never remember how to spell that
word) in food science and biotechnologies, with a
minor in computer science, and focusing my writings on
biodiversity and ecosystems, I happen to know that
others use *my* bizarre terminology.

Maybe we live on a different planet ?

What is your science field ?

No...try saying again I do not know how to read
english properly. Here, you can win a point

 All of these
> articles refer
> to the same set of Gaia theories.

Yes. Same set for those who do not understand them :-)

But Anthere keeps
> refusing any consolidation.  That's just odd.

Very odd.

> Problem 1: The discussion consensus so far has been
> clear:
> Others are also confused about this bizarre naming
> system,
> and want a better naming system.

Others are called RK and  Wapcaplet.
We clearly have a consensus here.

Anthere's
> fractionated
> current system only misdirects anyone trying to
> learn about
> the topic.

Check history again rk. The 3 articles existed before
I came to wikipedia. I did no fractionning (except for
the Daisyworld article about which no one is
complaining)
It is not *mine* fractionnated system.
Btw, it is no more fractionnated now, and I agree with
the new division, so what is exactly the pb here ?

> Problem 2: It is a violation of our naming
> conventions to
> have nearly identical content,

Nearly identical content is an interpretation of
someone who does not appear to understand the content.
Here, you get a point. That is a deep problem :)

with nearly identical
> titles, differentiated by only a lower-case versus
> upper-case letter!

Violation also perhaps for animal names...yes

That discussion over the naming convention already
happened some time ago. And apparently, there was a
consensus over it. However, I discussed other options
this very day with  Wapcaplet... until the moment you
decided unilateraly to unite the articles (while
pretending there was a consensus). There was no
consensus as Wapcaplet stated in the discussion.

> Problem 3: Anthere has effectively claimed ownership
> of the
> article, and currently won't let me add anything.
> Yet
> (bizarrely!) he claims that he is being censored.

There is no such he

I don't remember where I said I was censored ? Did I
say that ?

I> find
> this claim outrageous, as I don't care what he
> writes.He
> can write anything he likes, and I am NOT deleting
> it.

You couldnot really, since I wrote nothing.

>He is just being paranoid.

Toward people calling me liar, vandal, etc...yes,
after a while, I feel a little bit paranoid. I agree

My pb is that when I tried to discuss the naming issue
with you, you just dropped the discussion and boldly
made the changes without agreement from  Wapcaplet and
I. Now, I see not very much why I would spent time
explaining in length, if you don't care about my
comments. I also started to edit the page with your
changes 2 times, and both times, I had to cancel
everything, because of an edit conflict (for you
reverted on sight.

Some of your edits are good, but some are very pov.
You also removed *huge* chunks of text, probably
because of your own scientific pov

> Problem 4: Someone has accused me of "SCIENTISM"
> (whatever
> that is supposed to be) for saying that the articles
> on
> this scientific topic should have more science!

If you promise to be nice and patient, I promise to
add some stuff in the biological article :-)

> They also
> are asking me to stop preventing them from
> discussing
> religious and mythological views of the topic...but
> I am
> not doing this.  I can't stop doing something that I
> simply
> was not doing to begin with!

This is clearly not a problem related to me. Though I
also agree with that "someone" (at the beginning) and
with "they" (after). You appear to have a whole group
of people in disagreement with you

> With concerns,
>
> Robert (RK)

poor thing :-)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

body:
>> AND cur_random>{$rand} AND cur_user<>3903 AND cur_user<>6120

> That's awfully specific to be hard-coding. :)

Add a settings variable that's a partial SQL query. I.e.,
in LocalSettings, put something like:

  $wgRestrictRandom = "cur_user<>3903 AND cur_user<>6120";

then in DefaultSettings, put:

  $wgRestrictRandom = "TRUE";

then the query becomes:

  WHERE ($randonQuery) AND ($wgRestrictRandom)

Any individual wiki-specific hack can be done this way while
keeping all source files identical except for LocalSettings.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [Wikitech-l] GMANE problems (was Re: Random Page works a little bit strange)

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

Je Merkredo 04 Junio 2003 19:29, Tim Starling skribis:
> Indeed I did write that, but that message hasn't made it through to
> my mailing-list email account. I sent that message twice (using
> different methods), and I see both copies reached the archive, and
> one of them has reached the GMANE, but neither seem to have been
> broadcast by email.

I received both copies by mail.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQE+3rG/xVlOmwh1xjgRArAWAJ9gBQJNKUz4ouAanBHVDjOYk8NbnwCdHNI9
5L29txdh6+gsnjA+WJSSgNM=
=zLEQ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Oliver Pereira

body:
On Thu, 5 Jun 2003, Tony Wilson wrote:

> Have I changed lots of articles? Too right I have. That is what I am

> SUPPOSED to do here: change articles for the better. And that is exactly
> what I am doing, have been doing for months. Now, can we PLEASE have
> some peace and quiet so that I can go do more of it?

It is good work, but a wiki is not the place to work if you want peace and
quiet either for you or for your work... ;)

Seriously, on a wiki, everyone is going to be nosing through stuff that
other people have contributed all the time, making edits to it, and some
you'll agree with, and some you won't, and well that's just the way it is
round here. Sometimes you just have to live with things that you don't
like. You should relax, and try to enjoy the wonderful collaborative
experience, and not get angry about it. :)

Some people seem to have the attitude that the area of articles that they
work on in somehow "theirs", and that other people who don't generally
work in that area should keep their hands off them. I don't think that
this is at all in keeping with the Wikipedia spirit. Articles are meant
for the whole community of potential Wikipedia users - which basically
means everyone with Internet access.

Obviously, people who work in specialist areas and have all the specialist
publications are going to be, by and large, the people that know most
about those areas, and contribute most to the articles in those areas. But
they are not writing *for* specialists in those areas, and so if
non-specialists say they would like the information presented differently,
then the specialists should listen to them.

This isn't about asking for the facts to be changed in these articles, but
some people would clearly prefer it if the way those facts are presented
were changed. The capitalisation issue is just a presentation thing, and
should be decided by the Wikipedia community as a whole, and not just by
the people who work on those articles.

If the majority of experts on fauna call an animal the "Aardvark", and the
majority of non-experts call it the "aardvark", then the majority of our
potential *readership* call it the "aardvark". So that's what our usual
naming convention says that *we* should call it, too. We shouldn't make
special cases just for one particular group of people without a better
reason than just because that's how they do it themselves.

The case of the Green Gorbalwarbler may be a special case, because we need
to disambiguate it from just any old green gorbalwarbler (I gather there
are eight species). But I think that for common names of animals that have
unambiguous names which are used by ordinary people, then we should use
those unambiguous names which are used by ordinary people.

Now, where did I put my protective suit? ;)

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


body:
Sorry to pine users...

Taking the SQL query used in Special:Randompage from CVS and modifying it very slightly...

SELECT cur_id,cur_title,cur_random
  FROM cur USE INDEX (cur_random)
  WHERE cur_namespace=0 AND cur_is_redirect=0
  AND cur_random>RAND()
  ORDER BY cur_random
  LIMIT 20

returns...

      cur_id cur_title cur_random
      124125 Pierce,_Nebraska 0.0030205277754185
      205997 Wagh_el_Birket 0.00385735184313483
      120605 Custer_Township,_Minnesota 0.00416424684614339
      131375 Lorane,_Pennsylvania 0.00439120363853053
      150887 Columbiana,_Ohio 0.00589350611520326
      53913 Castle_Rock 0.00614019670164231
      10438 Komyo 0.00616735406794339
      131027 Newberg,_Oregon 0.00645017624502087
      120060 Hartland_Township,_Minnesota 0.00903007575220435
      126590 Osceola,_New_York 0.00905275718220766

It doesn't always return the same articles, but they're always very low-numbered. I don't know about you, but I would call that a MySQL bug.

May I make a suggestion, while we're on the topic? How about changing the query to:

SELECT cur_id,cur_title,cur_random
  FROM cur USE INDEX (cur_random)
  WHERE cur_namespace=0 AND cur_is_redirect=0
  AND cur_random>{$rand} AND cur_user<>3903 AND cur_user<>6120
  ORDER BY cur_random
  LIMIT 20

which will skip anything last edited by Ram-Man or Rambot. Like Daniel Mikkelsen said, the most important function for Special:Randompage is to impress passers-by. We should rig it any way we can to make Wikipedia look better.

-- Tim Starling.

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body:
Sorry to pine users...

Taking the SQL query used in Special:Randompage from CVS and modifying it very slightly...

SELECT cur_id,cur_title,cur_random
  FROM cur USE INDEX (cur_random)
  WHERE cur_namespace=0 AND cur_is_redirect=0
  AND cur_random>RAND()
  ORDER BY cur_random
  LIMIT 20

returns...

      cur_id cur_title cur_random
      124125 Pierce,_Nebraska 0.0030205277754185
      205997 Wagh_el_Birket 0.00385735184313483
      120605 Custer_Township,_Minnesota 0.00416424684614339
      131375 Lorane,_Pennsylvania 0.00439120363853053
      150887 Columbiana,_Ohio 0.00589350611520326
      53913 Castle_Rock 0.00614019670164231
      10438 Komyo 0.00616735406794339
      131027 Newberg,_Oregon 0.00645017624502087
      120060 Hartland_Township,_Minnesota 0.00903007575220435
      126590 Osceola,_New_York 0.00905275718220766

It doesn't always return the same articles, but they're always very low-numbered. I don't know about you, but I would call that a MySQL bug. This is good because it means Brion has already fixed the problem.

May I make a suggestion, while we're on the topic? How about changing the query to:

SELECT cur_id,cur_title,cur_random
  FROM cur USE INDEX (cur_random)
  WHERE cur_namespace=0 AND cur_is_redirect=0
  AND cur_random>{$rand} AND cur_user<>3903 AND cur_user<>6120
  ORDER BY cur_random
  LIMIT 20

which will skip anything last edited by Ram-Man or Rambot. Like Daniel Mikkelsen said, the most important function for Special:Randompage is to impress passers-by. We should rig it any way we can to make Wikipedia look better.

-- Tim Starling

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from_name: Mirko Thiessen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Umlauts in article titles

body:
Hello,

I just came back from a month of absence from Wikipedia and realised,
that lots of article titles about German cities, regions etc. have
been changed from titles WITHOUT umlauts to titles WITH umlauts (e.g.
Moelln is M?lln now). I searched in the naming conventions, but I
didn't find any conventions about this topic. Up to now, I created every
article without umlauts (that means, with ae instead of ?). How should
we handle this in the future? Is there a convention, which I was just
too stupid to find?

And what about the sharp s (?)? Should it be used in article titles as
well, or should it (as I did so far) be replaced with "ss"?

Mirko (Cordyph)

--
Mirko Thiessen
http://www.mirko-thiessen.de


from_name: Michael Becker

body:
Has anyone consider this at all?  I've created [[Wikipedia:Content
advisory]] so others on the wiki can contribute to whatever we put as
out advisory (if at all).

--
Michael Becker

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org]
On Behalf Of Michael Becker
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2003 10.03
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Content Advisory (was The Kils-Viking thing)

How about something like this:
Attention:  As with any web-site, children may require parent
supervision while using Wikipedia.

--
Michael Becker

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org]
On Behalf Of Jimmy Wales
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2003 7.18
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The Kils-Viking thing

Erik Moeller wrote:
> A disclaimer would IMHO send the wrong signal; some people would
> believe that we only say this because we have lost control over the
> content of

> Wikipedia (a totally open site after all) and people are posting
> pornography all over the place. We do not allow pornographic content,
but
> we do allow human knowledge that some people might consider offensive
-- I
> think that goes with the territory.

The wrong sort of disclaimer would certainly send the wrong signal, but
I don't think it's impossible to come up with something soft and
tasteful.

--Jimbo
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
On Wed, 4 Jun 2003, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

> If the majority of non-experts call MS-DOS "DOS", should we? "DOS" means
> *any* disc operating system, even certain versions of Linux.

Well, I did make a qualification:

"animals that have unambiguous names which are used by ordinary people"

Note the word "unambiguous". If there is a term which means different
things to different people, we should mention those different things in
the article for that term. In [[DOS]], we should mention that "DOS" is
often used to refer to MS-DOS, as indeed we do. But this is getting away
from the point...

> In this case, we're lucky. Capitalisation conveys no information
> whatsoever, so it really doesn't matter. We just need to be consistant.
> In my opinion, we should be scientific

Ahem. Being scientific is following the [[scientific method]]. It has
nothing to do with orthography.

> and capitalise when we are talking about a specific species (like Bald
> Eagle), but not when talking about general, non-scientific general
> things (like eagle).

As I pointed out to Tannin, this would require calling dogs "Dogs"
throughout the whole Wikipedia. Even he admitted that that "looks funny".
But that's what you'd have to do for consistency.

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


subject: [WikiEN-l] A clarificaton for Toby

body:
It was birds *and* mammals, Toby. Run your eye back over the lengthy
discussions two months ago. Just about any post titled "A plea for
sanity ..."  and signed by me will do as a starting point, but there
are lots of others. Or simply recall that the entire discussion began
when I'd just spent two full days researching and writing entries on
the hopping mice, only to have them buggerised about by people who,
despite meaning only the best, had made no contribution to them at all.

See http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spinifex_Hopping_Mouse for
details.

By the way, the agreed convention is actually nice and simple. Indeed,
it simply follows the same convention that applies to everything else.
(Everything? Everything I can think of, at any rate.)

If the phrase is normally capitalised, then it is always capitalised.
For example:

King George:
page title = "King George"
in-text = "King George".

(OK, we have some arcane naming convention on kings and queens that I
don't fully understand, so it winds up as "George of the United
Kingdon" or something, but I'll look that up if and when I need to know
it, or just ask someone who works on kings and queens all the time -
but you get what I mean: we simply preserve the normal capitalisation)

Spinifex Hopping Mouse:
Page title = "Spinifex Hopping Mouse"
in-text = Spinifex Hopping Mouse"

Ford Mustang:
page title = "Ford Mustang"
in-text = "Ford Mustang"

equally, if the phrase is normally NOT capitalised, then it is always
lower case (bar at the start of a sentence, of course):

corn grower:
page title = "corn grower" (actually rendered as "Corn grower" by the
software, but that can't be helped)
in-text = "corn grower"

New Zealand wrens (not a particular species, a group of six different
species):
page title = "New Zealand wren"
in-text = New Zealand wrens:

sports cars:
page title = "sports car"
in-text = "sports cars"

The executive summary: simply use the correct capitalisation whenever
you use the phrase and you will rarely go wrong.

Tony

(Tannin)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Anthere's Gaia obsession.

body:
RK wrote at first:

>Folks, we currently have an edit-war between Anthere and
>the world over the Gaia theory article.

I think that I'm going to make it a point of principle
to always side against whoever shouts "VANDALISM" in the edit history.
(Except in case of actual vandalism, of course.)

Still, since such principles shouldn't decide everything:

* Anthere isn't the only person that's been disagreeing with you.
  Unless you think that she's secretly Wapcaplet and EofT?
* She never wrote 5 articles, only 4, one of which was a historical
  disambiguation page (read it's Talk to see how it came about).
  Every other article is a result of moves (unless there's been deletion).
* I have no idea if the various people's theories are the same or not.
  But I can't imagine that you must know simply because you're a scientist.
  If you've actually studied Gaia theories, then let us know.

-- Toby


from_name: Dante Alighieri

subject: [WikiEN-l] protection of pages

body:
At 05:55 PM 6/4/2003, Anthere wrote:
>I understood sysops had the ability to protect pages
>in case of an edit war. Apparently, it is not enough
>to ask for the protection in the comment box. So I
>suppose it has to be asked specifically somewhere.
>
>Could I know *where* it is for the next time I am told
>I am a vandal, a liar, a fool out of his mind and
>unable to read english ?
>
>And treated as if I were a man !!!
>
>I could get to bed earlier that way :-)

Try dropping a note on the Edit Wars in Progress page... that's a good
place to get noticed. Also, writing to the mailing list would probably
accomplish much the same thing.

-----
Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321


body:
Tannin, it seems "has changed lots of articles"

My word I have.

I have taken countless stubs and turned them into carefully researched,
accurate and (dare I ray it) reasonably well-written articles.

Plus made lots of new ones.

In the last fortnight, I've driven well over 1000 kilometres especially
to take pictures of flora and fauna for the 'pedia - and spent a
considerable sum of money on it, I might add.

How about we make that phrase above "and Tannin has WRITTEN lots of
articles", guys?

How many fauna articles have the people who suddenly have so much to
say on this issue written and/or contributed to in a substantial way?
Go on, I challenge you - list them here.

Here is *my* faunal Wikikarma. I suggest that readers go through the
entries listed below looking for errors of fact, or horrible little
stubs (you'll find a couple of stubs, no doubt, but only a couple, and
*they* won't last for long).

ratites

emu

cassowary

kiwi

Little Penguin

Anseriformes

Anatidae

Freckled Duck

storm-petrel

Wedge-tailed Eagle

buzzards

bronzewing pigeons

Brolga

Pelecaniformes

Pelican

Australian Pelican

Ciconiiformes

Threskiornithidae

Megapodidae

Malleefowl

Blue Crane

R?ppell's Vulture

Southern Boobook

Psittaciformes

cockatoos

Lorikeets

Paradise Parrot

pygmy parrot

Southern Boobook

Caprimulgiformes

owlet-nightja

kingfisher

kookaburra

Piciformes

Maluridae

Tui

Pardalotidae

pardalote

Petroicidae

cisticola

Austrakian Magpie

currawong

Mudlark

White-winged Chough

lyrebird

Willie Wagtail

fantai

species

subspecies

Australian birds

Australasian birds

list of extinct Australian animals since 1788

Dasyuromorphia

Thylacine

Planigalinae

Long-tailed Planigale

Common Planigale

Phascogalinae

Numbat

marsupial mole

Tasmanian Devi

Peramelemorphia

bilby

Pig-footed Bandicoot

Diprotodontia

possum

Common Brushtail Possum

Honey Possum

Leadbeater's Possum

Sugar Glider

Feathertail Glider

diprotodon

macropod

kangaroo

Eastern Grey Kangaroo

Western Grey Kangaroo

Red Kangaroo

wallaroo

Parma Wallaby

tree kangaroo

Quokka

wombat

Koala

hopping mice

Fawn Hopping Mouse

Dusky Hopping Mouse

Spinifex Hopping Mouse

Dingo.

Platypus

echidna

Virginia Opossum

Monito del Monte

Aardvark

Carnivora

Procyonidae

shrew

otter

Black-footed Ferret

Hare

Short- finned Eel

whale

rorqual

beaked whale

Bryde's Whale

dolphin

skunk

jerboa

rat kangaroo

Which last is what I'm supposed to be working on at the moment, only
I'm having to fend off attacks with one hand and create good new
material with the other. Hardly condusive to productive working
conditions.

And those above are just the entries I have made *substantial*
contributions to, never mind the many hundreds of smaller
contributions. And I'm not even the most prolific contributor to the
fauna section - Jim Frost outproduces me by a factor of two or three.

Have I changed lots of articles? Too right I have. That is what I am
SUPPOSED to do here: change articles for the better. And that is
exactly what I am doing, have been doing for months. Now, can we PLEASE
have some peace and quiet so that I can go do more of it?

Tony

(Tannin)


from_name: koyaanis qatsi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Filtering, etc.

body:
Julie asks:
> By the way, is anybody referring to articles OTHER
> than the ones with explicit sexual (in any variety)
> details?

Well, sure, I was just leaving most of them out
because the email was long already.  Let's see, what's
a list of things I could imagine people wanting to
keep their kids in the dark about:

The Holocaust
Cannibalism
Dismemberment
Insanity
Genocide
Matricide, patricide, infanticide
Suicide
Slavery

Oddly enough, not the Old Testament, in spite of
including all of the above that it feasibly could.

There are also other piddling things like profanity
and drug use that kids can often school their parents
in.  FWIW, I think parents choose to delude themselves
in large part, imagining children are more naive than
they are or ever have been.  I'll give you a colorful
anecdote if you care--in private--but most of you
probably don't.

kq

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] There WAS an attack, Stan

body:
There WAS an attack, Stan. Did you miss it?.

It was a unilaterial, sustained, and deliberate attempt to flout the
naming conventions that we have already discussed and agreed on long
since. One particular "contributor" (who, needless to add, has no known
track record of adding to the fauna articles) went on a one-man revert
rampage, even stooping to cut & paste page moves. This went on for
several hours and succeeded only in wasting a great deal of the time of
genuine contributors. (Not just me.) It took the combined efforts of
several Wikipedians to restore the sometimes quite ugly hacks.

We have long since decided on naming conventions for birds and mammals.
The question is what are we doing with reptiles, fish, and other taxa?
The sooner that is decided on, the sooner we can stop wasting time on
jaw-jaw and get on with improving the 'pedia without distraction and
without fear of having to re-do masses of stuff.

And without a repetition of Monday's vandalisim, I trust.

Tannin


body:
You would not get jumped on, Stan. You would be made very welcome
indeed: the American birds section is very weak at present and there is
heaps that needs doing there. Come on over and help out.

Tannin


from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
Kurt Jansson wrote:

>BTW, I hope Lessig will publish a list of the "works using public
>domain", there might be some interresting projects for us.

If you go to the petition site and view the signatures,
then you can see all of the works on the various signature pages.
Not a very user-friendly listing, but it's available!

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Fair use

body:
Brion Vibber wrote in part:

>As a reminder, none of us are real lawyers, and nothing in this discussion
>is going to get anyone anywhere. May I suggest we all agree to disagree
>and keep our options open until such time as the project receives
>professional advice?

But there does seem to be an emerging consensus for
separating the free pictures from the fair ones,
with checkboxes on upload and so forth.
So we could well get something out of this.

But you're right, of course, that WANL.

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Our copyright notice at the bottom of the page even refers only to "text";
>>a result of this feature is that the text is easily separated.

>As we've heard before, saying something in a copyright statement doesn't
>make it true.

Er ... yes, but my point here is that it's *not* saying something.
It's not saying that the image is avaialble under the GFDL,
hence it's not lying about the images (not that bit, at least).

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Umlauts in article titles

body:
Mirko Thiessen wrote:

>I agree with Dan and with you, that redirects are important. But some
>people have been very busy with moving articles, so one half is now placed
>under ? and the other half under AE, which is rather unsatisfying. I am not
>in favour of one option or the other, I just would like to have clarity. In
>the present condition one could think, that the correct spelling of one
>place is AE and of the other place is ?.

If nobody else speaks up here, and nobody's actively moving things now,
then just move them all to whichever you think is best
(but keeping in mind that it should look right in English).

>>(Here I'm assuming that the city's name is really "Sa?nitz" in German.
>>I'm not sure if it is!  I wasn't able to find a clear example.)

>It is.

Hooray!  It took me forever to find a likely one in my atlas --
most of the "ss"s in it were intervocalic, hence unlikely to be "?".
(BTW, the atlas -- in English -- uses "?" etc, but not "?".)

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Response to Anthere; the many Gaia articles

body:
Anthere writes:
> Plus Wapcaplet who had a third opinion, different from
> mine, and different from yours. With whom I discussed.
> And who now is busy trying to soothe us. 3 persons
> make the world.

That is disingenuous.  You were using mass-reversions to
unilaterally delete all content I tried to add, even though
you couldn't state a reason.  Normally, people back up
their deletions with reasons.  But yesterday you were
unable to come up with a single content-based reason.

> The name the articles had this morning were all given
> long before I even discovered Wikipedia. Since these
> articles were written by several authors, I guess that
> makes more than me using that terminology :-)

Oh come on, that is disingenuous. A few of us are trying to
clean up this horrible mess, and Anthere alone repeatedly
prevented any fixes.

> You sure could not edit *my* contributions as I
> basically made none on these articles, except tiny
> fixes, and move of the DaisyWorld in a separate
> article, with active agreement of Lexor then and
> passive of at least Mav.

So why then are you being so posessive, and refusing any of
my contributions about science?  I don't care if you have
"adopted" someone else's text, or wrote it yourself.  You
are wrong either way. You may not claim ownership of all
these articles. That is not the way Wikipedia works.

> Duh. Sure. Threatened by science. I have been raised
> in science, I graduated in several sciences fields. I
> work in science. This is so scary

Then why are you so bothered when I added more scientific
discussion of the topic?  Why prevent any more discussion
and contribution?  Since yesteday you gave no reasons, you
left no choice but to speculate on your motives.  Please
use the TALK pages, and not just use mass-reversions. That
is against Wikipedia etiquette.

>> Anthere has created, or supported the creation of:
>> [[Gaia hypothesis]]
>> [[Gaia theory]] (lower case t)
>> [[Gaia Theory]] (upper case T)
>> [[Gaia theory (biology]]
>> [[Gaia theory (homeostais)]]
>> (And a few more!)

> Sure.  Gaia hypothesis was created before feb 2002. But I
> support the unknown person who created it :-)...

Anthere's discussion that followed was misleading. The fact
is that no one in science uses the bizarre terminology that
Anthere insists on keeping.  Also, the fact remains that
Anthere keeps refusing any consolidation, making the
current set of five articles confusing to scientists, let
alone laypeople.

>> And ALL OF THESE are on the same topic.  The content
>> is or was nearly identical!

> YES ! The content is REDIRECT [[Gaia theory]] or
> equivalent ! AMAZINGLY IDENTICAL

Oh, Anthere, that is very misleading; most of these Gaia
articles were NOT redirects at the time this started.  Most
of the ones that now are redirects, were created yesterday
by *ME*, and this was against Anthere's wishes.  He is now
taking credit for work I did, as if he suddenly hadn't been
fighting against it.

Now, I am happy to see that he apparently agrees with me on
those particular redirects..but perplexed to see him take
my position as his own.

> Being a biologist myself, as well as an agronomist,
> and an enginneer (I never remember how to spell that
> word) in food science and biotechnologies, with a
> minor in computer science, and focusing my writings on
> biodiversity and ecosystems, I happen to know that
> others use *my* bizarre terminology.

You are confused. Your terminology does not appear in any
textbook or science article.  No one in science has
separate discussion on the Gaia Hypothesis (capital H),
Gaia Theory (capital-case T), Gaia theory (lowercase t),
Gaia theory (homeostasis), etc.  Your are fooling yourself,
or are not widely read.  Please stop making these incorrect
claims.

Of course (as I have said all along), scientists *do*
distinguish between the various forms of Gaia hypotheses; I
have never claimed otherwise, and I have repeatedly
*agreed* with you on this point.  (I cannot understand why
you refuse to take "Yes" for an answer.)

Of course scientists distinguish between weak claims of
world-wide homeostatis, stronger claims of world-wide
homeostatis, stronger claims that the planet itself is a
living cell, etc.  And of course it may be appropriate to
have more than one (sensibly titled) article on this
subject (and I never said otherwise.)

You are still fighting against things I have not said, and
agaist positions that I do not have.  That is why the edit
war existed.

BTW, I take offense at the insults that others on this list
sent me in response to my message.  Stop insulting my
knowledge of this subject; that's just childish.  Further,
I am surprised to see someone admit that they will refuse
to agree with me, even thought they admit I might have a
good point, just because they disagree with how I
characterized the situation.  Making decisions based on
semantics is not proper, and does not reflect the level of
mature professionalism this encyclopaedia requires.

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com


body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
>
> If creating an article myself, I'd place it at a title with the umlaut.
> But I doubt that I'd move an article that was placed somewhere else
> (especially for old place names, which often have English "translations"
> that are more than mere *transliterations* into English orthography).
> The really important thing is what Dan said: Create redirects!
> Unless the naming conventions address a situation explicitly
> (and often even when they do), then one should create redirects
> from any title that might reasonably be linked to.
>

I agree with Dan and with you, that redirects are important. But some
people have been very busy with moving articles, so one half is now placed
under ? and the other half under AE, which is rather unsatisfying. I am not
in favour of one option or the other, I just would like to have clarity. In
the present condition one could think, that the correct spelling of one
place is AE and of the other place is ?.

> (Here I'm assuming that the city's name is really "Sa?nitz" in German.
> I'm not sure if it is!  I wasn't able to find a clear example.)
>

It is.

Mirko

--
Mirko Thiessen
http://www.mirko-thiessen.de


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Anthere's Gaia obsession.

body:
Robert wrote:
>
> Folks, we currently have an edit-war between Anthere and
> the world over the Gaia theory article.
>

I am not able to say who is right in this debate, but nevertheless I want
to say this: Whenever you are engaged in an edit war with someone, you
start to call him a vandal. I remember, that you've been told more than
once, what vandalism is and what it is not. Your way of insulting other
contributors has already led to the situation, that almost nobody takes
your claims seriously. So please find another way of discussing your
problems, and probably you will find more sympathy for your points of view
then.

Mirko (Cordyph)


body:
>On Wed, 4 Jun 2003, Tim Starling wrote:
> > Taking the SQL query used in Special:Randompage from CVS and modifying
> > it very slightly...
>[snip]
> > It doesn't always return the same articles, but they're always very
> > low-numbered. I don't know about you, but I would call that a MySQL
> > bug.

Indeed I did write that, but that message hasn't made it through to my
mailing-list email account. I sent that message twice (using different
methods), and I see both copies reached the archive, and one of them has
reached the GMANE, but neither seem to have been broadcast by email.

Although this I'm mainly intended this as a warning to posters to be
careful, and an apology for confusing people, I'll offer some completely
uninformed and naive ideas of what is going wrong. One of the messages was
not sent by GMANE at all, it was sent via my ISP's SMTP server. Is it
possible mailman discarded both the GMANE post and the SMTP post because the
sender address (----- at hotmail.com) did not match the sending server?

-- Tim Starling.

_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail is now available on Australian mobile phones. Go to
http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilecentral/signup.asp


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Filtering, etc.

body:
In response to Julie,

There are encyclopedias geared especially for children.

An inclusive encyclopedia should not sugar-coat, but should lay facts
bare.

And if they are unsavory, then so be it.

This is especially important for children: a LOT of well-meaning
people lie to their children under the guise of protecting them. I
would the W be a resource for said children to discover the truth,
even if it is less than savory.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] We need a way to deal with AOL vandals THIS year

body:
--- Tony Wilson <list at redhill.net.au> wrote:
> Right at this moment, Michael is logged in as
> User:Fuck. He has
> cottoned on to two key weaknesses in our security
> setup.
>
> Either one on its own is a problem, but both
> together is a gaping hole:
>
> (a) There is no way to block a logged-in user if you
> can't guess his IP
> address.
>
> Tony (Tannin)

I thought developers could block logged in users, just
not ordinary sysops. I'd like to change that, though.
I think there shouldn't be a distinction between sysop
and developer. Or maybe people become developers after
one month of sysophood.
--LittleDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Please post in plaintext

body:
--- cprompt <cprompt at tmbg.org> wrote:
> Unless your post specifically requires the use of HTML, could folks
> from
> now on just use plaintext?
>
> Thanks.
>
> --
>
> --cprompt
>

I second that.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com


body:
On Thu, 5 Jun 2003, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> I thought developers could block logged in users, just
> not ordinary sysops. I'd like to change that, though.
> I think there shouldn't be a distinction between sysop
> and developer. Or maybe people become developers after
> one month of sysophood.

"Developer" in this sense means you have *complete read/write access to
the database*. This is very dangerous if you're not intimately familiar
with the software and damned careful what you do. Developer commands *are
not reversible* and can *irreversibly corrupt or delete the entire
database in one action*.

This level of access exists for technical maintenance of the site,
*and for no other purpose*. Frankly I'd rather see it removed altogether
and restrict these actions to secure shell logins straight to the server.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On Thu, 5 Jun 2003, Michael Becker wrote:
> In addition, I would like a new feature (I'm not asking for much am I?
> :).  I would like a special shared watchlist.

Oh, you can do this already easily enough:

Make a page that links to the pages in question, and use the "related
changes" link.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Zoe

body:
--- Tony Wilson <list at redhill.net.au> wrote:
> Right at this moment, Michael is logged in as
> User:Fuck.

So what's the problem?  Camembert, MyRedDice and their
ilk have given him free rein.

Zoe

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Response to Anthere; the many Gaia articles

body:
Robert wrote:
>
> You are still fighting against things I have not said, and
> agaist positions that I do not have.  That is why the edit
> war existed.
> BTW, I take offense at the insults that others on this list
> sent me in response to my message.  Stop insulting my
> knowledge of this subject; that's just childish.  Further,
> I am surprised to see someone admit that they will refuse
> to agree with me, even thought they admit I might have a
> good point, just because they disagree with how I
> characterized the situation.  Making decisions based on
> semantics is not proper, and does not reflect the level of
> mature professionalism this encyclopaedia requires.

Obviously you are accusing Toby Bartels and me of having insulted you.
Above you claim, Anthere is "fighting against things I have not said".
Ironically this is exactly your problem:

- Nobody on this mailing list has insulted you
- Nobody said, that he would agree with you, if you just would
characterise the situation in another way

Why can't you just think about what other people try to tell you? A
good start would be to stop calling your opponents vandals. Instead of
responding to the criticism you keep thinking, that everyone with another
opinion is hating or insulting you. It is really very, very difficult
to have a fruitful discussion in this way.

I hope, you will be able to read the messages again and take them as
advice and not as insult.

Regards,

Mirko.


body:
I got the impression that Developer's were called such b/c they worked
on software development?  Maybe we should have a 3 category for
Super-users?

--
Michael Becker

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org]
On Behalf Of Daniel Ehrenberg
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 6.18
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] We need a way to deal with AOL vandals THIS year

--- Tony Wilson <list at redhill.net.au> wrote:
> Right at this moment, Michael is logged in as
> User:Fuck. He has
> cottoned on to two key weaknesses in our security
> setup.
>
> Either one on its own is a problem, but both
> together is a gaping hole:
>
> (a) There is no way to block a logged-in user if you
> can't guess his IP
> address.
>
> Tony (Tannin)

I thought developers could block logged in users, just
not ordinary sysops. I'd like to change that, though.
I think there shouldn't be a distinction between sysop
and developer. Or maybe people become developers after
one month of sysophood.
--LittleDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
I have to agree with this.  Something needs to be done.
In addition, I would like a new feature (I'm not asking for much am I?
:).  I would like a special shared watchlist.  This watchlist would be
used for watching articles that have been vandalized by vandals like
Michael.  I have found that he always goes back to the same [type of]
article.  Basically, there would be an option (for sys op's only) to add
a page to vandal hotlist (or something).  In addition, there would be an
option to view vandal hotlist.  This would make it much easier for me
personally, (and other's I'm sure) b/c I don't like having my watchlist
full of the hundreds of article's Michael (and other such vandals)
frequent.  However, I think a hot list of such type would be a great
resource.  What do you guys think?  Any opinions of developers?

--
Michael Becker

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org]
On Behalf Of Tony Wilson
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 11.58
To: WikiEN
Subject: [WikiEN-l] We need a way to deal with AOL vandals THIS year

Right at this moment, Michael is logged in as User:Fuck. He has cottoned
on to two key weaknesses in our security setup.

Either one on its own is a problem, but both together is a gaping hole:

(a) There is no way to block a logged-in user if you can't guess his IP
address.

(b) You can revert and rollback, but page moves are *much* more
difficult to restore. You can't jus rollback a page move, you have to
fiddle about making sure you are restoring the right page and not losing
the history, and so on.

So far as I can see, there are only three possible solutions  - no, make
that four, but I don't like the last one much.

(i) Establish a time + number of edits before any new user is
unblockable

(ii) Figure out a way to make the Rollback feature work on page moves as
well as ordinary edits

(iii) Disallow page moves to ordinary users and make that a sysop-only
task

(iv) Pick another half-dozen people, trusted and experienced sysops, and
give them the ability to stand in when Brion and Eloquence are not
around to block the Michaels of this world. Those guys are great, but
they can't be here all the time.

This current vulnerability is a *major* problem, and in my view it needs
action RIGHT AWAY.

In the meantime, Michael is running rampage through the database.

Tony

(Tannin)

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Filtering, etc.

body:
I agree with Chris - somewhat. Without going into asserting that 'people who
dont like this stuff - might not raise their children right'  I think the
disclaimer on the front page is silly - perhaps it should be in the bottom
with the other disclaimer - etc. or as part of the intro - but generally, it
looks like people are making too big a stink over something so... inane. It
doesnt no make no sense none. People had the whole blaze attitude over AKFD,
and noone here gave a shit - whats the big deal about this? Hypocrisy in
policy - or does the assertion "you must not care about children" make
people automatically bend over the nearest three-foot fence?

A vote would be in order - wouldnt it?
And I agree wiht Koyannis -  "They" dont censor the Bible just cause its got
some incest in it -  (Lots daughters, etc....) -
http://www.apologeticspress.org/abdiscr/abdiscr27.html
Or the lots of casual sex - (Use of prostitutes, yadda..)...
http://www.postfun.com/pfp/fornication.html

:} -SM.

Genesis 38:8-10 "And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife,
and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother. And Onan knew that the seed
should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's
wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his
brother. And the thing which he did displeased the Lord: wherefore he slew
him also."


body:
RK wrote in part:

>Anthere wrote:

>>The name the articles had this morning were all given
>>long before I even discovered Wikipedia. Since these
>>articles were written by several authors, I guess that
>>makes more than me using that terminology :-)

>Oh come on, that is disingenuous. A few of us are trying to
>clean up this horrible mess, and Anthere alone repeatedly
>prevented any fixes.

That's not the least bit disingenuous.
It hadn't been left in an acknowledged state of mess before.
I don't know if the terminology is correct or not,
but it's rather -- dare I say it? -- disingenuous
to suggest that only Anthere ever supported it.
Or do you argue that the previous article title system
developed by pure chance?

>>RK wrote:

>>>Anthere has created, or supported the creation of:
>>>[[Gaia hypothesis]]
>>>[[Gaia theory]] (lower case t)
>>>[[Gaia Theory]] (upper case T)
>>>[[Gaia theory (biology]]
>>>[[Gaia theory (homeostais)]]
>>>(And a few more!)

>>Sure.  Gaia hypothesis was created before feb 2002. But I
>>support the unknown person who created it :-)...

>Anthere's discussion that followed was misleading. The fact
>is that no one in science uses the bizarre terminology that
>Anthere insists on keeping.  Also, the fact remains that
>Anthere keeps refusing any consolidation, making the
>current set of five articles confusing to scientists, let
>alone laypeople.

Count again, please.  Or else tell us what the other articles are called.
Because there are currently 3 articles whose names begin with [[Gaia ...]]
(not counting [[Gaia]] itself, which is completely different).
There used to be 4, one of them being a disambiguation page.
(Also the move from [[Gaia Theory]] to [[Gaia Theory (biology)]]
took 2 hours!)

>>>And ALL OF THESE are on the same topic.  The content
>>>is or was nearly identical!

>>YES ! The content is REDIRECT [[Gaia theory]] or
>>equivalent ! AMAZINGLY IDENTICAL

>Oh, Anthere, that is very misleading; most of these Gaia
>articles were NOT redirects at the time this started.  Most
>of the ones that now are redirects, were created yesterday
>by *ME*, and this was against Anthere's wishes.  He is now
>taking credit for work I did, as if he suddenly hadn't been
>fighting against it.

True, most of them didn't exist.
And you created a grand total of 1 redirect
(not counting the results of moving pages).
This redirect was a change from a historic disambig page,
whose existence you somehow blamed on Anthere
(when in fact the history and talk show that
she'd been against it from the start).

>Now, I am happy to see that he apparently agrees with me on
>those particular redirects..but perplexed to see him take
>my position as his own.

Perhaps there's discussion that's not on the talk pages.
If so, you ought to tell us where to find it.
There's no indication there that Anthere ever wanted
more pages with content (that is, other than disambig and redirects)
than there are now: three.

>>Being a biologist myself, as well as an agronomist,
>>and an enginneer (I never remember how to spell that
>>word) in food science and biotechnologies, with a
>>minor in computer science, and focusing my writings on
>>biodiversity and ecosystems, I happen to know that
>>others use *my* bizarre terminology.

>You are confused. Your terminology does not appear in any
>textbook or science article.  No one in science has
>separate discussion on the Gaia Hypothesis (capital H),
>Gaia Theory (capital-case T), Gaia theory (lowercase t),
>Gaia theory (homeostasis), etc.  Your are fooling yourself,
>or are not widely read.  Please stop making these incorrect
>claims.

True, nobody does.  Not even Anthere!
In fact, one of the pages that you mentioned above
has never existed, although you're somewhat close;
and the capital "H" has never been used to distinguish pages.
(At least not according to the record now available.
If this is incomplete, then you'd better tell us about it!)

>And of course it may be appropriate to
>have more than one (sensibly titled) article on this
>subject (and I never said otherwise.)

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Gaia_Theory&diff=994892&oldid=994786

>BTW, I take offense at the insults that others on this list
>sent me in response to my message.  Stop insulting my
>knowledge of this subject; that's just childish.  Further,
>I am surprised to see someone admit that they will refuse
>to agree with me, even thought they admit I might have a
>good point, just because they disagree with how I
>characterized the situation.  Making decisions based on
>semantics is not proper, and does not reflect the level of
>mature professionalism this encyclopaedia requires.

Actually, I think that siding as a matter of principle
against those that consistently misuse the charge of vandalism
to be much along the same lines as reverting [[User:Michael]],
which is also done regardless of the content under discussion.
But as I said, one shouldn't depend on such things alone.
(And I also never said that I'd said *with* Anthere!)
But as for insults ... they've come from you, not me.

-- Toby


body:
Tannin wrote in part:

>(i) Establish a time + number of edits before any new user is
>unblockable

>(ii) Figure out a way to make the Rollback feature work on page moves
>as well as ordinary edits

>(iii) Disallow page moves to ordinary users and make that a sysop-only
>task

>(iv) Pick another half-dozen people, trusted and experienced sysops,
>and give them the ability to stand in when Brion and Eloquence are not
>around to block the Michaels of this world. Those guys are great, but
>they can't be here all the time.

This is probably the best *temporary* solution,
since we can do it right away.

But ultimately, the solution that we need is:

(v) Allow sysops to block users by username.

Not that this will solve *everything*,
but at least it gives back a tool for dealing with vandalism
that the savvy vandals know how to get around easily.

>In the meantime, Michael is running rampage through the database.

Is there a page where people are keeping track of Michael's usernames?
I could make it a point to look at that page whenever I go on.
As it is, I don't know how to find him, so I do (almost) nothing.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Filtering, etc.

body:
This is not exactly the best analogy, b/c (correct me if I am wrong)
people don't generally teach children these things.  If they do read it
to children, I doubt they know what it means.

--
Michael Becker

"They" dont censor the Bible just cause its got some incest in it -
(Lots daughters, etc....) -
http://www.apologeticspress.org/abdiscr/abdiscr27.html
Or the lots of casual sex - (Use of prostitutes, yadda..)...
http://www.postfun.com/pfp/fornication.html

:} -SM.

Genesis 38:8-10 "And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's
wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother. And Onan knew
that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in
unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he
should give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did displeased
the Lord: wherefore he slew him also."

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Filtering, etc.

body:
In addition, we aren't censoring by including a disclaimer.  A vote has
already ensued at
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Content_advisory
Someone suggested 3 choices, and we voted.  That is how this ended up on
the main page.  Feel free to join the discussion.

--
Michael Becker

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org]
On Behalf Of Stevertigo
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 10.59
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Filtering, etc.

I agree with Chris - somewhat. Without going into asserting that 'people
who dont like this stuff - might not raise their children right'  I
think the disclaimer on the front page is silly - perhaps it should be
in the bottom with the other disclaimer - etc. or as part of the intro -
but generally, it looks like people are making too big a stink over
something so... inane. It doesnt no make no sense none. People had the
whole blaze attitude over AKFD, and noone here gave a shit - whats the
big deal about this? Hypocrisy in policy - or does the assertion "you
must not care about children" make people automatically bend over the
nearest three-foot fence?

A vote would be in order - wouldnt it?
And I agree wiht Koyannis -  "They" dont censor the Bible just cause its
got some incest in it -  (Lots daughters, etc....) -
http://www.apologeticspress.org/abdiscr/abdiscr27.html
Or the lots of casual sex - (Use of prostitutes, yadda..)...
http://www.postfun.com/pfp/fornication.html

:} -SM.

Genesis 38:8-10 "And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's
wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother. And Onan knew
that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in
unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he
should give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did displeased
the Lord: wherefore he slew him also."

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
Right at this moment, Michael is logged in as User:Fuck. He has
cottoned on to two key weaknesses in our security setup.

Either one on its own is a problem, but both together is a gaping hole:

(a) There is no way to block a logged-in user if you can't guess his IP
address.

(b) You can revert and rollback, but page moves are *much* more
difficult to restore. You can't jus rollback a page move, you have to
fiddle about making sure you are restoring the right page and not
losing the history, and so on.

So far as I can see, there are only three possible solutions  - no,
make that four, but I don't like the last one much.

(i) Establish a time + number of edits before any new user is
unblockable

(ii) Figure out a way to make the Rollback feature work on page moves
as well as ordinary edits

(iii) Disallow page moves to ordinary users and make that a sysop-only
task

(iv) Pick another half-dozen people, trusted and experienced sysops,
and give them the ability to stand in when Brion and Eloquence are not
around to block the Michaels of this world. Those guys are great, but
they can't be here all the time.

This current vulnerability is a *major* problem, and in my view it
needs action RIGHT AWAY.

In the meantime, Michael is running rampage through the database.

Tony

(Tannin)


body:
Woops! Correction to my previous post. It was #3 idea that I didn't
like - the not allowing "Move Page" to ordinary users. My post didn't
make that clear. Sorry, team.

Tony


body:
Zoe <zoecomnena at yahoo.com> wrote:
--- Tony Wilson
wrote:
> Right at this moment, Michael is logged in as
> User:Fuck.

So what's the problem? Camembert, MyRedDice and their
ilk have given him free rein.

Zoe

__________________________________

what does that mean "ilk" ?

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body:
Tim Starling <ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:

>(i) Establish a time + number of edits before any new user is
>unblockable

This has been discussed before:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-May/002996.html

Jimbo said he wanted all sysops to be able to ban logged in users, and that
there's no need for another class. The usual checks and balances for abuse
of sysop power apply.

-- Tim Starling.

_________________________________________________________________
check and balances by the ilks, yes

whatever what "ilk" means

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body:
Michael Becker <wikipedia at jumpingjackweb.com> wrote:
I have to agree with this. Something needs to be done.
In addition, I would like a new feature (I'm not asking for much am I?
:). I would like a special shared watchlist. This watchlist would be
used for watching articles that have been vandalized by vandals like
Michael. I have found that he always goes back to the same [type of]
article. Basically, there would be an option (for sys op's only) to add
a page to vandal hotlist (or something).

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

And why would that be for sysops only ? Why would not regular users feeling that a page has been vandalized by a known vandal be trusted ? What of the "trust by default" wikipedia concept ?

I guess that *that* page would be under enough scrutiny not for it to be protected.

I fear you consider only sysops are doing cleaning work. This is not true, and is a dangerous idea. Everyone is welcome to do clean up. Sysops just have additional tools to clean better and quicker.

Keep up with the good work anyway

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body:
Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> wrote:
Anthere writes:
> Plus Wapcaplet who had a third opinion, different from
> mine, and different from yours. With whom I discussed.
> And who now is busy trying to soothe us. 3 persons
> make the world.

That is disingenuous. You were using mass-reversions to
unilaterally delete all content I tried to add, even though
you couldn't state a reason. Normally, people back up
their deletions with reasons. But yesterday you were
unable to come up with a single content-based reason.

> The name the articles had this morning were all given
> long before I even discovered Wikipedia. Since these
> articles were written by several authors, I guess that
> makes more than me using that terminology :-)

Oh come on, that is disingenuous. A few of us are trying to
clean up this horrible mess, and Anthere alone repeatedly
prevented any fixes.

> You sure could not edit *my* contributions as I
> basically made none on these articles, except tiny
> fixes, and move of the DaisyWorld in a separate
> article, with active agreement of Lexor then and
> passive of at least Mav.

So why then are you being so posessive, and refusing any of
my contributions about science? I don't care if you have
"adopted" someone else's text, or wrote it yourself. You
are wrong either way. You may not claim ownership of all
these articles. That is not the way Wikipedia works.

> Duh. Sure. Threatened by science. I have been raised
> in science, I graduated in several sciences fields. I
> work in science. This is so scary

Then why are you so bothered when I added more scientific
discussion of the topic? Why prevent any more discussion
and contribution? Since yesteday you gave no reasons, you
left no choice but to speculate on your motives. Please
use the TALK pages, and not just use mass-reversions. That
is against Wikipedia etiquette.

>> Anthere has created, or supported the creation of:
>> [[Gaia hypothesis]]
>> [[Gaia theory]] (lower case t)
>> [[Gaia Theory]] (upper case T)
>> [[Gaia theory (biology]]
>> [[Gaia theory (homeostais)]]
>> (And a few more!)

> Sure. Gaia hypothesis was created before feb 2002. But I
> support the unknown person who created it :-)...

Anthere's discussion that followed was misleading. The fact
is that no one in science uses the bizarre terminology that
Anthere insists on keeping. Also, the fact remains that
Anthere keeps refusing any consolidation, making the
current set of five articles confusing to scientists, let
alone laypeople.

>> And ALL OF THESE are on the same topic. The content
>> is or was nearly identical!

> YES ! The content is REDIRECT [[Gaia theory]] or
> equivalent ! AMAZINGLY IDENTICAL

Oh, Anthere, that is very misleading; most of these Gaia
articles were NOT redirects at the time this started. Most
of the ones that now are redirects, were created yesterday
by *ME*, and this was against Anthere's wishes. He is now
taking credit for work I did, as if he suddenly hadn't been
fighting against it.

Now, I am happy to see that he apparently agrees with me on
those particular redirects..but perplexed to see him take
my position as his own.

> Being a biologist myself, as well as an agronomist,
> and an enginneer (I never remember how to spell that
> word) in food science and biotechnologies, with a
> minor in computer science, and focusing my writings on
> biodiversity and ecosystems, I happen to know that
> others use *my* bizarre terminology.

You are confused. Your terminology does not appear in any
textbook or science article. No one in science has
separate discussion on the Gaia Hypothesis (capital H),
Gaia Theory (capital-case T), Gaia theory (lowercase t),
Gaia theory (homeostasis), etc. Your are fooling yourself,
or are not widely read. Please stop making these incorrect
claims.

Of course (as I have said all along), scientists *do*
distinguish between the various forms of Gaia hypotheses; I
have never claimed otherwise, and I have repeatedly
*agreed* with you on this point. (I cannot understand why
you refuse to take "Yes" for an answer.)

Of course scientists distinguish between weak claims of
world-wide homeostatis, stronger claims of world-wide
homeostatis, stronger claims that the planet itself is a
living cell, etc. And of course it may be appropriate to
have more than one (sensibly titled) article on this
subject (and I never said otherwise.)

You are still fighting against things I have not said, and
agaist positions that I do not have. That is why the edit
war existed.

BTW, I take offense at the insults that others on this list
sent me in response to my message. Stop insulting my
knowledge of this subject; that's just childish. Further,
I am surprised to see someone admit that they will refuse
to agree with me, even thought they admit I might have a
good point, just because they disagree with how I
characterized the situation. Making decisions based on
semantics is not proper, and does not reflect the level of
mature professionalism this encyclopaedia requires.

Robert (RK)

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

I would like to thank those who took the time to indicate their opinion about your poor handling of the situation, and/or those who took the time to point out to some of the numerous inaccuracies in your statements and reasoning about the current situation of Ga?a?s articles.

I also would perhaps emit some doubts on your ability to read things and interpret situations that others appear to understand, even though they were not part of either this debate, nor the previous debate with Little Fat Boudha.

You appear unable to decipher who created pages, why they did so, who agreed on their creation or who asked for their deletion, who proposed new naming and who refused them, who set disambigation pages to try to solve the issue.

Ultimately, this is fine by me, for it is precisely what some propose that Gaia is, a system resulting from the action and the co-evolution of the numerous organisms part of it. To the point, the state of evolution in which the planetary system is, cannot be said to be entirely due to one organism or another. Similarly, the quality of the articles cannot be said to be from one author or another, but the holistic results of multiple interactions.

I also think we are typically in a homeorhetic system, where a system can assume several stable positions over time, with periods of great destabilization each time a crisis occurs, followed by oscillations around a new stable position. Three days ago, the more than year old gaia articles system was quite stable, the last small oscillations due to Little Fat Budda tentative putsch. It was stable, and imho quite well informed.

This crisis, resulting in 3 (not 5) articles - with at least one of them requiring work for the triad to be really informative ? will maybe (probably, or I would complain about it, which I do not do) prove to be beneficial.

But when next destabilization occur, who will be able to put an author/name responsible for the previous stable state ? who will be able to put an author/name responsible for the last crisis ? no one I hope. And would that matter ???

Just as you should understand that I, Anthere, am only an element/author among others, and that I hold no specific responsibility of what the previous stable state was. Other than stabilizing it for a while perhaps. So, now, the effort should be put on reclaiming the current articles, not on feeble attempts to dirty the past and other contributors.

This said, I ???apologize??? for my too-bold reversions. These were non-constructive. As most reversions are perhaps.

Last little point though, my opinion that you don?t really make the effort to read what other people are trying tell you is also supported by the following fact : in spite of other people addressing their comment to ???you??? (hopefully, you read them), and using feminine grammatical form when talking about me, you persist in referring to me as a male. This is not exactly a sign of attention toward these people discourse, ???or??? not exactly a sign of respect toward other people specificities. I know not which of the two.

I am glad finally, that you seem to have understood the changes I made a couple of hours ago. I thank you.

Regards

Anthere

(stripped of her accent unfortunately, but with an "e" at the end of the name)

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body:
Vicki Rosenzweig <vr at redbird.org> wrote:
At 04:51 AM 6/6/03 -0700, Anthere wrote:

>>what does that mean "ilk" ?

Basically, it means "those like him/her/them" and is generally used when
the writer dislikes the person or group in question. (It comes from an
old Scottish kinship term.)
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org

Oh ! That is very good day then ! I learned a new interesting term. I could just see the relationship with elk, since she was talking of reins. I did not know Zoe played with words. I will read her more carefully then :-)

Would the expression "I feel akin with Martin and Camembert" be proper ?

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from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

body:
At 04:51 AM 6/6/03 -0700, Anthere wrote:

>>what does that mean "ilk" ?

Basically, it means "those like him/her/them" and is generally used when
the writer dislikes the person or group in question. (It comes from an
old Scottish kinship term.)
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: We need a way to deal with AOL vandals THIS year

body:
Tony Wilson wrote:
>
> This current vulnerability is a *major* problem, and in my view it
> needs action RIGHT AWAY.
>
> In the meantime, Michael is running rampage through the database.
>

I remember, that someone on this list made the proposal to contact AOL in
order to ask them, if they could help in this problem. In my opinion we
should think about this option. It would be the easiest way to get rid of
this problem. There is only one Michael occupying our resources. Changing
our policies would be an adequate option, if there would be dozens of users
behaving like him. But in the moment it is only he.

I beg pardon, if this should have been already discussed. I wasn't around
the last month, so it may be that I missed such a discussion.

Mirko (Cordyph)


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
>(i) Establish a time + number of edits before any new user is
>unblockable

This has been discussed before:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-May/002996.html

Jimbo said he wanted all sysops to be able to ban logged in users, and that
there's no need for another class. The usual checks and balances for abuse
of sysop power apply.

-- Tim Starling.

_________________________________________________________________
Get mobile Hotmail. Go to  http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilecentral/signup.asp


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Fri, 6 Jun 2003, Youandme wrote:
(on Polish wiki)
>     SELECT cur_id,cur_title FROM cur USE INDEX (cur_random) WHERE
> cur_namespace=0 AND cur_is_redirect=0 AND cur_random>0,172539821906

Ah, I do so love PHP's transparent support for localization. :P

I'll see if I can work around that...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On Fri, 6 Jun 2003, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Fri, 6 Jun 2003, Youandme wrote:
> (on Polish wiki)
> >     SELECT cur_id,cur_title FROM cur USE INDEX (cur_random) WHERE
> > cur_namespace=0 AND cur_is_redirect=0 AND cur_random>0,172539821906
>
> Ah, I do so love PHP's transparent support for localization. :P
>
> I'll see if I can work around that...

I've switched from variable interpolation with an implicit float->string
conversion to using the number_format()  function, where I can explicitly
set the decimal separator to "." to keep MySQL from choking when set in a
locale with "," as the decimal separator.

Seems happy so far...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Language note (Was: We need a way to deal with AOL vandals THIS year)

body:
Anthere wrote:

>what does that mean "ilk" ?

Short answer:  It means "type".

Long answer:  That's a good question.

The OED says that every usage of "ilk" is either
obsolete, Scottish, or erroneous (exactly 1).
The usage that I know, and that Zoe was using,
is the one labelled "erroneous" by the OED:
"that ilk: That family, class, set, or 'lot'.
Also, by further extension, = kind, sort."
Apparently, Zoe's usage of "their" instead of "that"
is too erroneous even to merit inclusion.
(Which is not a criticism of Zoe, but of the OED.)

Many American dictionaries don't mention this meaning at all,
while others give it as the only meaning;
"Type or kind" says one; "a kind of person", says another.
Among American dictionaries, only Merriam-Webster
seems to know about all 3 kinds of usage
(still only the OED calls the 3rd "erroneous").

None of these dictionaries mention what I think is most important
for understanding Zoe's comment -- it's *derogatory*.
Being of a certain ilk is to be a *bad* kind of thing.

I can't find any online English -> French translation dictionary
that's ever heard of the word.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Filtering, etc.

body:
Michael Becker wrote:

>A vote has already ensued at
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Content_advisory
>Someone suggested 3 choices, and we voted.  That is how this ended up on
>the main page.  Feel free to join the discussion.

I had that discussion watched, but I never saw the vote.
After all, it had only been discussed for 2 days! (Jun 5, Jun 6).
In fact, I can't even find a vote on the talk page.
I'm sure that even Erik would agree that such a vote is no good.

-- Toby