body:
I agree with this idea. Senshin?? and kan? writings can always be used
as templates and in reality if we could get close to the tou
? writings, that is already good enough.

--- Felix Wan <felixwiki at earthsphere.org> ?????????
> On Wed, March 2, 2005 7:22 pm, shi zhao said:
> >
> > Problem is use when of does the classical Chinese write? Ming and
> Qing?
> > Is Tang Sung period? Or does QIN2 HAN4 is period? Or to is more
> early?
> > Each period classical Chinese differ very greatly.The Manchu
> Dynasty and
> > Han dynasty rise of test twice according to the custom of the
> ancient
> > works, be for can let the then person comprehend the people of the
> past's
> > work of classical Chinese.The ancients is still not
> apprehensibility more
> > early the classical Chinese of the ancients, so which period
> classical
> > Chinese we use to write worthwhile discussion.If use the MIng and
> Qing
> > period classical  Chinese writing, that is much more simple, plus
> some
> > ??????? delete ?????.( this and Chinese  version
> difference not
> > big)If use first Qin's classical Chinese write, having no several
> > individuals perhaps can write.
> >
> > [[zh:user:shizhao]]
> >
> That is a real concern.  True, even "Classical Chinese" is a blanket
> term covering milleniums of evolving written Chinese style.
>
> Since the original proposer is a Japanese, I guess the style that is
> most compatible with kanbun or other traditions known to East Asians
> should be that of the Tang-Song period.  That is also the period with
> the richest literature for reference, and most educated Chinese
> should
> be familiar with the style.  So if we are really going to open such
> an
> encyclopedia, let's fix the reference time frame to the Tang-Song
> period.
>
> However, my perception is that the grammar of Classical Chinese is
> more
> or less stablized since the Tang dynasty.  New ways of saying things
> were introduced, but the real substantial change happens with the
> introduction of Baihuawen.
>
> Does the Latin Wikipedia face similar problems in selecting the
> style?
>
> Felix Wan
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________
Let's Celebrate Together!
Yahoo! JAPAN
http://pr.mail.yahoo.co.jp/so2005/


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Karl A. Krueger

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR applied to both parties?

body:
On Fri, Mar 04, 2005 at 05:06:05AM +0000, geni wrote:
> So in this case the correct thing for Adam to would be to contact you.
> A problem I'm seeing a lot right now is that edit wars are taking too
> long to come to the attention of the wider community. If the first the
> widder comunity know is when the 3RR report comes in we have a
> problem.

This is part of why it would be valuable for the software to detect
reverts and to maintain automatically a list of recently-reverted
articles, or articles that have a high "revert density".  It would help
the wider community detect revert conflicts -before- they get to the
point of either (a) drawn-out edit wars or (b) 3RR bureaucracy.

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of blocking powers (The Recycling Troll)

body:
> I am aware that many
> wikipedians have predjudice about users who have
> different beliefs about how wikis should work to them,
> but I have not done anything to disrupt this wiki, and
> beleive passionately that we should be building the
> best neutral and accurate encyclopedia possible.
> Thank you,
> The Recycling Troll

You have certain entitlements in this matter.  Your edits don't particularly
engage my sympathy, your name not at all.

Charles


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Word of the Day

body:
Hoi,
One word a day, is easy, just add what you know in your language. Add a
pronunciation, it takes a minute. Even though a year has only 365 days.
It does add up.

Thanks,
    GerardM

Click to join laparoladelgiorno

Sabine Cretella wrote:

> Hi!
>
> Talking with Gerard on how to promote wiktionary we thought about a
> "the word of the day" list where people can subscribe and where we
> just take a word from the wiktionary each day and send it to the group
> together with the link on wiktionary.
>
> I started a page on this on meta as well:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_word_of_the_day
>
> I thought about using yahoogroups for this as if the group listed in
> the directory it is immediately also included in many search engines -
> and people don't necessarily need to know about it through the
> wiktionary website, but just subscribe to the group on yahoo and are
> then lead to wiktionary. This means there are going to be links from
> other websites to the group and from there to wiktionary. Sooner or
> later this will lead to further contributors.
>
> I am going to insert a link to the subscription of the group when I
> write to my discussion lists on other themes. So there will be an
> automatic return after a while.
>
> As an internal exchange we can subscribe to this list and use these
> words as "words to be completed" - this means that I e.g. receive the
> word from the English wiktionary and if my language is missing I
> simply go there and add it.
>
> So if you'd like to start subscribing to see what I send out every
> day, just send a clean message to:
> laparoladelgiorno-subscribe at yahoogroups.com
>
> I also need a second person that can substitute me when I cannot send
> out the word (it is going to be seldom, but it could happen).
>
> And of course, if you would like to create your "word of the day"
> -list in your language: I'll insert this in my word of the day
> newsletter - so more people will see the other languages that of
> course use other words ....
>
> Yann: I just had an idea - but we need people who help us - I'll write
> this in a separate mail.
>
> OK, let me know what you think about this.
>
> Ciao, Sabine
> *****
> Vuoi la parola del giorno nella tua cassella di posta?
> Invia un'e-mail vuota a:
> laparoladelgiorno-subscribe at yahoogroups.com


from_name: Stephen Forrest

subject: [WikiEN-l] Queen Elizabeth II

body:
On Fri, 4 Mar 2005 20:33:51 +1100, Skyring <skyring at gmail.com> wrote:

> The two terms are not exclusive. Australia has a republican form of
> government where sovereignty resides in the people and executive power
> is given to and exercised by elected and appointed officers, Howver,
> the Queen has a highly visible symbolic role and has some remnant
> functions, chief of which is the formal appointment of the
> Governor-General.

I think that describing Australia in its present state as a 'republic'
would be highly confusing.

Australia and Canada (with which I'm more familiar) are constitutional
monarchies.  They are not republics, at least not under any definition
of the term which would be commonly accepted here in Canada.  The
movement in Canada to remove the queen and install a citizen as head
of state is called 'republicanism' (see e.g. [[Canadian
republicanism]]).  I don't imagine things are too much different in
Australia.

 All that said, I think this sort of technical discussion should
probably not be happening on the list.  Leave such arguments over
semantics for talk pages.

Steve


from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research (was 3RR applied to both parties?)

body:
>From: <slimvirgin at gmail.com>
>
>Peter, you may be right about there being an argument in favor of
>saying that Australia is, in effect, a republic. But if you want to
>introduce an issue like that into an article, you have to be very
>careful not to violate the no-original-research rule, which says that
>editors shouldn't come up any new analysis or synthesis of facts. In
>other words, if you want to say Australia is a republic, you have to
>find reputable sources who have actually said that precise thing, and
>not just sources who have said things which, put together in a certain
>way in a certain light, could be interpreted as implying that.The
>former is okay; the latter is original research.
>

I find this to be this single most difficult concept to get across to
editors, some of them long time Wikipedia contributors.  The inevitable
response is "this isn't original research, these are simple facts."  Even if
they are indeed "simple facts" (and that is often not the case), putting
"simple facts" together to build a case, in order to refute a quoted
argument or position you see in some article which you don't agree with, is
"original research."  Repeating the mantra "find some reputable cited source
which makes this argument, don't present it on your own" rarely helps.

Jay.


from_name: Arno M

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR applied to both parties?

body:
And , of course, and speaking more generally, if Party A was in the wrong,
the 3RR rule in effect can be use to silence dissent to a wrong version.

----- Original Message -----
From: slimvirgin at gmail.com
To: geni <geniice at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] 3RR applied to both parties?
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2005 22:19:14 -0700

>
> If Geni's interpretation of 3RR is correct, then we have an unwinnable
> game of tic tac toe going on against editors trying to keep nonsense
> out of articles. Within four hours:
>
> Skyring inserted a falsehood
> Adam reverted: Adam's #1 revert
> Skyring re-inserted it: Skyring's #1 revert
> Adam reverted: Adam's #2 revert
> Skyring re-inserted it:" Skyring's #2 revert
> Adam reverted: Adam's #3 revert
> Skyring re-inserted it: Skyring's #3 revert
> Adam reverted: Adam's #4 revert.
> Skyring calls the cops.
>
> Given this intepretation of 3RR, there's no way Adam could have kept
> the material out, except by calling other editors to help him, which
> he should have done, but it's a bit silly to have to do that over a
> content dispute that is straighforwardly factual, as it is in this
> case.
>
> But if we're going to concentrate on process and ignore quality, then
> shouldn't neither or both editors be blocked in this case?
>
> Sarah
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

--
_______________________________________________
NEW! Lycos Dating Search. The only place to search multiple dating sites at once.
http://datingsearch.lycos.com


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR and gaming the system

body:
In this case, I'm amazed saying "Australia is a republic" isn't
being counted as simple vandalism. Repeatedly putting in misleading
and plainly factually incorrect information certainly counted as
vandalism when User:Michael was going hogwild at it.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR: Pluses vs Minuses

body:
On the minus, well, in addition to what I've already written
if there are several persons in the wrong about an article and one
person in the right, then the one in the minority is severely disadvantaged
by the 3RR ruling.

----- Original Message -----
From: Delirium <delirium at hackish.org>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Strange fetishes
Date: Fri, 04 Mar 2005 01:47:40 -0500

>
> Abe Sokolov wrote:
>
> > Think of the warning signs that would alert one to the
> > possibility of groupthink? I still believe that most active users
> > sign up to Wikipedia with the goal of writing an encyclopedia.
> > But over time, their behavior is shaped according to a whole web
> > of relations based on the fetishization and ritualization of the
> > 3RR and other policies, making them lose sight of the goal of
> > writing an encyclopedia.
>
> The 3RR is purposely designed as a trade-off. On the plus side,
> edit-warriors inserting nonsense cannot do so more than three times
> per day. On the minus side, users reverting nonsensical edits
> cannot revert them more than three times in a day. If we assume
> that there are more "good editors" than "bad editors", then it's a
> good tradeoff, because there will always be other people around to
> revert the nonsense editors. Policies like banning repeated
> edit-warriors through an Arbitration Committee case are intended to
> keep the number of "bad editors" down so this remains the case.
>
> (A useful analogy might be to the moral theory of rule-based utilitarianism.)
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

--
_______________________________________________
NEW! Lycos Dating Search. The only place to search multiple dating sites at once.
http://datingsearch.lycos.com


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR and gaming the system

body:
On Fri, 04 Mar 2005 15:56:39 -0500, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> True.  However, I've seen instances where editors have reverted pages 14
> times in half a day, against the will of a half dozen editors, with no
> sanction then or now.  Enforcement of the 3RR has put an end to that kind of
> nonsense.  POV pushing has always been a problem, but I've seen no
> indication that 3RR enforcement has made the POV pushing problem any worse
> than it was before, and it has demonstrably helped ameliorate egregious
> edit-warring problems.

The 3RR is an recognition of the belief among (I suspect) a good
majority of Wikipedians that revert-warring is wrong and
counterproductive.  There are those whose position seems to be "Yes, I
revert war, but I'm a revert warrior for GOOD causes, so doesn't that
make it right?"  I'd disagree; revert wars don't solve anything, and
they're simply conflict by attrition, and they make it harder for
anyone else to contribute to the article in question.  I'd say the
above position is the "Wik disease" - stemming from a belief that one
is indispensable to Wikipedia, that it will all fall apart without
constant war.

-Matt


list: foundation-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] 2005 International Symposium on Wikis

body:
FYI:

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

2005 International Symposium on Wikis
Oct 17-18, 2005, San Diego, California, U.S.A.
Co-located with ACM OOPSLA 2005
http://www.wikisym.org <http://www.wikisym.org/>

OVERVIEW

The 2005 International Symposium on Wikis brings together wiki
researchers, implementers, and users for the first time. The goal of the
symposium is to find a voice for the community. The symposium has a
rigorously reviewed research paper track as well as plenty of space for
practitioner reports, demonstrations, and discussions. We are honored to
announce that Ward Cunningham, the inventor and host of the original
WikiWikiWeb, will present the opening keynote talk at WikiSym 2005.
Anyone who is involved in using, researching, or developing wikis is
invited to WikiSym 2005!

We are seeking submissions for

* research papers
* practitioner reports
* demonstrations
* workshops
* panels

Research paper and practitioner report submissions are due

April 29, 2005

Workshop, and panel submissions are due

April 8, 2005

Demonstration submissions are due

July 1, 2005

Topics of interest to the symposium include, but are not limited to:

* wikis as social software
* wiki user behavior, user dynamics
* wiki user experiences, usability
* wiki implementation experiences and technology
* wiki administration, processes, dealing with abuse
* wiki scalability, social and technical
* domain-specific/special-purpose wikis

SUBMISSION DETAILS

Research papers will be reviewed by the committee to meet rigorous
academic standards of publication. Research papers are expected to
advance the state of the art by describing substantiated new research or
novel technical results or by reporting on significant experience or
experimentation. They are reviewed both with respect to conceptual
quality and clarity of presentation.

Accepted research papers will be provided as part of the conference
proceedings. They will be put into the ACM Digital Library and can be
referenced as papers that appeared in the /Proceedings of the 2005
International Symposium on Wikis./ At the symposium, the presenter will
be given a 25min + 5min Q&A presentation slot. Research papers should
not be longer than 10000 words and should meet the ACM SIG Proceedings
Format, see http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html.

Practitioner reports will be reviewed for suitability of presentation to
the community. The primary evaluation criterion is the interest to the
community. Practitioner reports will be provided as part of the
companion to the conference proceedings handed out at the symposium and
can be referenced as papers that appeared in the /Companion to the
Proceedings of the 2005 International Symposium on Wikis./ Practitioner
reports should not be longer than 6000 words and should meet the ACM SIG
Proceedings Format.

Demonstration, workshop, and panel submissions will be reviewed for
their interest to the community. Submit two pages of description of what
you intend to do and how you meet this criterion. Please include a
100-word abstract and one-paragraph bios of all people relevant to the
submission. Demonstrations will get 45min slots in a booth of their own,
workshops will get a half-day and a room of their own, and panels will
get a 90min slot at the symposium.

Please submit your papers or proposals in PDF format (or postscript, if
you must) by the respective deadline to submissions at wikisym.org.

SYMPOSIUM LOGISTICS

The 2005 International Symposium on Wikis will be held at the Town and
Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California, on Oct 17 and
18, 2005. WikiSym 2005 will be co-located with the ACM OOPSLA 2005
conference, and participants may register for the symposium alone, or
may jointly register for OOPSLA 2005.

If you have any questions, please contact Dirk Riehle through
chair at wikisym.org.

SYMPOSIUM COMMITTEE

Dirk Riehle, Independent (chair)

Ward Cunningham, Microsoft
Mark Guzdial, Georgia Institute of Technology
Matthias Jugel, Fraunhofer FIRST
Helmut Leitner, HLS Software
James Noble, Victoria University of Wellington
David Ornstein, Microsoft
Sebastien Paquet, National Research Council of Canada
Stephan Schmidt, Fraunhofer FIRST
Sunir Shah, University of  Toronto


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] 2005 International Symposium on Wikis


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] de.wikipedia.org db dump

body:
Roman Maurer wrote:
> Is the mentioned problem with the dump process also the cause that there
> is no statistics on http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/Sitemap.htm
> since last year?

No, that's because Erik hasn't finished updating his script to
understand the changed database format.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Queen Elizabeth II

body:
Peter, the Queen IS the Head of state here in Australia , though the matter is
complicated by the G-G representing her.

On another note, are you Peter Ellis? Just wondering...

Arno

----- Original Message -----
From: Skyring <skyring at gmail.com>
To: slimvirgin at gmail.com, "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] 3RR applied to both parties?
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2005 16:51:25 +1100

>
> On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 22:37:35 -0700, slimvirgin at gmail.com
> <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Peter, this probably isn't the place to discuss the factual details,
> > but in brief you are doing original research. Here is the Governor
> > General's page http://www.gg.gov.au/html/fset_role.html There's
> > nothing republican about this description.
> >
> > We had a similar situation a few weeks ago when an editor kept
> > deleting that Israel is a parliamentary democracy, because that editor
> > believes that Israel is not democratic enough, and was able to quote
> > other sources making the same point. But that's beside the point:
> > Israel is recognized by reputable sources as a parliamentary
> > democracy, so that's the term Wikipedia uses; similarly, the Queen is
> > recognized as the Australian head of state by most reputable sources,
>
> But that's the point, Sarah. She isn't. You might as well say that
> she's the Queen of England. Lots of people would put money on this,
> but they would be wrong.
>
> I don't mind if incorrect popular opinion is mentioned so long as it
> is clearly labelled as such.
>
> --
> Peter in Canberra
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

--
_______________________________________________
NEW! Lycos Dating Search. The only place to search multiple dating sites at once.
http://datingsearch.lycos.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR applied to both parties?

body:
>From: <slimvirgin at gmail.com>
>
>If Geni's interpretation of 3RR is correct, then we have an unwinnable
>game of tic tac toe going on against editors trying to keep nonsense
>out of articles.
>

I've argued against this interpretation for precisely this reason; it is
biased toward the inserter of the information, who can always win.  Thus I
can go to a little watched article (say [[Rashba  (rabbi)]]) and insert the
statment

"He had 4 sons and 1 daughter, and was noted for his handsome appearance.
He choked on a soup bone and died while visiting Rome in 1310."

Now this is complete nonsense, I've just made it up.  But if the one person
who happens to know this is nonsense reverts it, and an edit war develops,
in the end the second person will get banned for 24 hours for removing the
information, because it is not obvious vandalism.

Jay.


from_name: Pablo Saratxaga

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: multilingualism (was Q1 drive)

body:
Kaixo!

On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 09:02:37PM +0300, V. Ivanov wrote:

> While the larger language Wikipedias compete with commercial
> encyclopedias (and the larger language speakers have the choice), the
> smaller language Wikipedias are _unique_, the speakers of such
> language don't have much choice -- and Wikipedia appears to be the
> only _try_ to create an encyclopedia. It also can become the main
> source for a future "official" encyclopedia, which might be too
> expensive for a not so large people, if all the authors are paid.

That's so true.

Here I share my experience with Walloon wikipedia.
Walloon language doesn't have any official support at all
(while Wallonia has quite very great autonomy in several areas
(including the ability to sovereingly sign internationa treaties),
the areas of culture, edutcation and medias are outside the scope
of the Walloon government, and the body in charge of them seems to
do anything to hide differences that may exist between Wallonia
and Brussels (and the native language is indeed such a difference);
as a result you won't find anything with official backing in Walloon
language.
But even about the language, you can't find much (most of the existing
texts (in French or German) have been written in the 19th and beginning
of 20th centuries).

When I discovered Wikipedia, I wanted to have a Walloon version, mainly
for the prestige increase that would give to the language; I didn't knew
however if that could success or not; the number of users is still
low (only three very frequent contributors, and a small handfull of
occasional ones; less than 10 in total, but I hope there are more
readers).
However, once it started to run it had some effects I didn't expected
at first.
The first one, is a living example of coperative work where a common
spelling is need; because as long as you write novels, poetry or even
journalistic articles, which have a single author, the normalization
of the spelling can be avoided; but when a single text may have (and
indeed, has) many authors, a common spelling is a practical necessity.
There has been also a good number of articles about Walloon language and
culture and about Wallonia; yes the content is heavily tilted that way,
more than I thought at the beginning (but will change with time
probably), but on the other side I learned a lot of things that I
ignored previously, about writters, historic personnages, places or
rivers of my country, that I should have known but didn't, as there
isn't any public nor private mass diffusion of that info; in fact
wikipedia had come the first source of information on the internet
for some of those topics, and something we are proud of.
Also, the copying of articles from other wikipedias, have pushed the
need for Walloon terminology about some topics that traditionally
weren't spoken or written in Walloon, in particular we are growing
a list of articles about mushrooms that created the need to name
in a precise way the different specias; strange as it may seem,
there wasn't attested names for mushrooms (only a generic name
"mushroom"); a side effect of the wikipedia has been the creation
of Walloon names for a lot of mushrooms (from their French or latin
names).
Also, the creation of articles and the hyperlinks between them have
lead to the exploration of a lot of connex subjects, and the discovery
of Walloon names for some plants or animals that were used only
locally in some places, and the rehabilitation/revival of those names;
something that we wouldn't have thought about if it weren't for
the fact of putting [[ and ]] around some terms (for example, an apple
everybody knows what it is, there wasn't much thinking about it before;
but from the startting of the article about apples, there is a list
of apples species, and then we realize there is actually a lot to learn
and to say about apples, about their history, their cultivation,
their use in culinary preparations, etc)

Wikipedia is indeed a very powerfull tool; in the specific case
of Walloon (and probably that can be the case too for most minorized
languages) it is the *best* tool existing.

> Wikipedia for a nation of 500 thousand to, say, 5 million seems to be
> the best way of writing an encyclopedia in their language. And even if
> the English WP fails, that will not mean the idea is all wrong for
> every language on the Earth.

Even if English fails (because of unsustainable traffic, that seems the
greates problem for en:) other wikipedias, and particularly small ones,
can still continue to exist; the Walloon wikipedia ran on my own server
for the first months of it existance, and if the wikimedia hosting
should collapse some day for whatever reason (something I hope will
never happen) I will move it to somewhere else, but it wouldn't die;
it is a too valuous thing for us.

--
Ki ?a vos v?ye b?n,
Pablo Saratxaga

http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/		PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466
[you can write me in Walloon, Spanish, French, English, Catalan or Esperanto]
[min povas skribi en valona, esperanta, angla aux latinidaj lingvoj]
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from_name: Theresa Knott

body:
On Fri, 4 Mar 2005 03:41:59 -0800 (PST), ffdfsd dsfdsfsdf
<recyclingtroll at yahoo.com> wrote:

> It seems that Snowspinner has now, as part of a
> separate abuse, blocked me (claiming, in a bizzare
> side comment that I am a new user - I have been
> editing since October). He seems to think that
> collaborative editing is  a blocking offense, and that
> editing a page that another user has already edited is
> against the rules.

Let's say it how it is shall we? Collaborative editing? You were
stalking Rick. You were trying o upset him, to provoke him even, and
now you claim to be being abused? It's a 24 hour block not the end of
the world. If you feel you want to "collaborate" with someone, feel
free to stalk me.

Theresa

Theresa


subject: [WikiEN-l] Queen Elizabeth II

body:
Sigh! I shouldn't have bitten.

The Australia page has been through this before, and the  ,um, debate,
involving someone called Daeron , whose views seem similar to yours,
can be found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Australia/Archive_2.

Peter is not correct, period. India is a republic, yes, but Australia is not.

The wikipedia's articles are NOT meant to be an outlet for political
hopes and fallacies such as yours and Peter's. Nor is the wikien-l.

Do us all a favour, please take them elsewhere.

I won't be corresponding further on this issue.

----- Original Message -----
From: actionforum at comcast.net
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Queen Elizabeth II
Date: Fri, 04 Mar 2005 08:03:08 +0000

>
> ------------- Original message --------------
> > Peter, the Queen IS the Head of state here in Australia , though
> > the matter is complicated by the G-G representing her.
>
> But isn't Peter also correct that Austrailia is a republic?  I
> thought most constitutional monarchies were republics.  The salient
> point is whether the monarch or the constitution is supreme.  If
> the monarch cannot suspend or amend the constitution, then what you
> have is the rule of law, a "republic".
>
>                     -- Silverback
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR: Pluses vs Minuses

body:
What you wrote sounds fine, but it has not worked out all the time.

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Lee" <johnleemk at gawab.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] 3RR: Pluses vs Minuses
Date: Fri, 04 Mar 2005 16:00:29 +0800

>
> Arno M wrote:
>
> > On the minus, well, in addition to what I've already written
> > if there are several persons in the wrong about an article and
> > one person in the right, then the one in the minority is severely
> > disadvantaged
> > by the 3RR ruling.
> >
> >
> >
> Wikipedia operates on the theory that the good people always
> outnumber the bad. If the data is factually incorrect, call in
> outside help. The belief that just because you're right/extremely
> knowledgeable you can revert wantonly has created a lot of problems
> in the past.
>
> John Lee
> ([[User:Johnleemk]])
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR applied to both parties?

body:
I'm puzzled. I made a 3RR report when the other guy made 4 reverts in
24 hours. He'd stopped talking and had become abusive so I pulled the
trigger, having refrained from undoing his 4th revert. Yet I've been
blocked for a 3RR breach. How is this so?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/3RR#User:Adam_Carr

Pete (Skyring)


from_name: steven l. rubenstein

subject: [WikiEN-l] original research

body:
Charles Matthews wrote,
>Can't really agree with that.  Banning deductive logic from articles isn't a
>good idea.  As I have said here before, that seems to me to be an inflation
>of the original research policy, meant to bar crank theories, to an
>unreasonable extension of it.

I don't think this is Jay's point.  The problem is not deductive logic
itself, but to what use it is put.  If it is used to construct a new
interpretation or synthesis, then it is original research.

But let's face it -- the issue is not only the meaning of the rule, but its
enforcement.  These two are inevitably tied together because the people who
interpret the rules (the community) are the same as the people who enforce
them -- unless it goes to mediation.

There has been a fair amount of discussion about possible problems in the
mediation/arbitration process.  I don't want to get into that.  I just want
to remind people that the first, and I think most important, line of
enforcement is the community of editors.

Moreover, I want to suggest that strict rules, although good guidelines,
are not the only things that should be enforced.  I believe that the
community has standards and values that have not been written down, and
should not be written down, but which we need to keep in mind whenever
talking about the enforcement of an official policy.  These informal
standards shouldn't be written down -- and maybe not even put into words --
because doing so will eventually require more and more official agents of
enforcement -- I think this is what some people sense when they raise
concerns about creeping legalism; certainly it threatens the anarchic
nature of the community which is not (just) an end in itself but, as a
matter of faith, the unique quality of Wikipedia that we believe will lead
to great articles.

Here is how I see these unofficial, unarticulated standards being enforced:
through the presence or absence of controversy over an article.  In many
(NOT ALL) cases, an editor can make a change or add something without
stirring up any controversy.  I think that this is what Charles is talking
about -- there are cases where people can use their own logic to develop
articles.  Whether it is "original research" or not is a moot point as long
as no one complains about it -- and not one will complain about it if it
makes sense to everyone.  If it doesn't make sense to one or a few people,
there is need for discussion and people often can work out some
compromise.  In other cases, many people will complain (this is when an
article becomes controversial) and it is only at this point that I think
policies like "no original research" need to be enforced in the strictest
terms.

Please do not misconstrue what I am saying.  I am not saying that "no
original research" should be enforced only in extreme cases.  I am saying
that in most cases, where there is no controversy, the community of editors
should be guided by the policy but should have a lot of room to interpret
it, and flexibility in how to apply it.  I think we should give editors --
not just individuals, but the community of editors -- a lot of leeway for
deciding when we need to start enforcing strict rules uncompromisingly.  I
think we can wait and see whether a given edit provokes strong resistance
and controversy before going to the policy and arguing over how strictly to
enforce it.

And believe me, I am as committed to NOR as anyone else here.  My point is
procedural and not substantive.

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701


from_name: Tom Haws

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: 3RR--what's the problem?

body:
Do [[Human]], [[Mormonism and Christianity]], and [[Jehovah's
Witnesses]] count?  Heat is relative.  And from my experience, it only
takes the presence of one cool head to set the tone.  I can't understand
why, even in the presence of the biggest POV pusher, the group wouldn't
hold peace-making to be more important than reverting the article to
it's "pristine" condition.

What good is ever accomplished by turning a POV pusher into an outright
enemy?  I would prefer to show him how to negotiate.

I may leave a few articles in a state of disarray longer than some
editors, but I think the long term result is worth it.

Tom Haws
"And [the angel] said unto me: Knowest thou the condescension of God?
And I said unto him: I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I
do not know the meaning of all things."

JAY JG wrote:

>> From: "dpbsmith at verizon.net" <dpbsmith at verizon.net>
>>
>> I don't get it. I truly don't get it. I'm not an old-timer, but I've
>> been on
>> Wikipedia for mumble months and have made mumble thousand edits, and
>> not once
>> have I ever come close to encountering the 3RR.
>
>
> I suspect you might not be editing in the more heated areas of
> Wikipedia.  I could be wrong, of course.
>
> Jay.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR and gaming the system

body:
Skyring wrote:

>> a few
>>well-chosen words in Talk: will have the person promoting the idea that
>>"Australia is a republic" repudiating his views and voluntarily reverting
>>his contributions in no time at all.
>>
>>
>
>This is precisely the case. I can be swayed by facts and checkable
>sources. Abuse and hand-waving just doesn't do it for me.
>
>
Assuming good faith really does work miracles.  I love the quote at
[[Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers]]

"Remember Hanlon's Razor
<http://www.indopedia.org/Hanlon%27s_Razor.html>. Behavior that may
appear malicious to experienced Wikipedians is more likely due to
ignorance of our expectations and rules. Even if you're *100% sure* that
someone is a /worthless, no-good, low-down scum-sucking *Internet troll
<http://www.indopedia.org/Internet_troll.html>*/, vandal, or worse,
/comfort yourself as if they're not./ By being forgiving, instructive,
and respectful, you come away with much more dignity, and you reflect
well on our project."

Tom Haws


from_name: Jim Cecropia

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR and gaming the system

body:
Strongly agree with Danny.

I took a look at the <S>Star Chamber</S> ArbCom page and saw the latest effort against 172. Guess you never get tenure around here.

Meanwhile, groups of users take command of certain pages and trash Wikipedia's possibility of being a reliable encyclopedia for all but the least controversial topics. I can understand 172's frustration, even as I am at opposite ends of a lot of his politics. Take an article like the Attacks of 9/11. I put in content based on any up-close and personal familiarity with the Laws of Land Warfare--i.e., these were war crimes. With citations. Engaging and answering critics' questions on why this is true. Leave it alone for a few months and it's all gone. But everyone's favorite conspiracy theory is in there. Any blame the Twin Towers on Karl Rove yet?

My major point is that we're building a great bureaucracy to attack the out-of-favor Wikipedian, and to edify the Amateur Torquemadas; but I haven't seen us get one inch closer to building some kind of enforceable editorial judgment. Quite the contrary.

Cecropia

----- Original Message -----
From: daniwo59 at aol.com
To: wikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR and gaming the system
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2005 06:56:31 EST

>
> There is a serious problem. As the number of Wikipedia rules spiral, we are
> seeing people figure out how to play the rules for their own personal
> edification. Meanwhile, three old-time users--172, AdamCarr, and
> Mirv, who have
> thousands of valuable edits to their name (regardless of what
> anyone might think
> of any of them personally)--have either been blocked or left the project in
> the  past 24 hours.
>
> Frankly, I never supported the 3RR, either the first time it was
> implemented, or this, the second time. I certainly oppose the idea
> that it takes
> precedence, or is even on an equal footing, with the goal of
> creating an  _accurate_,
> NPOV, open-source encyclopedia. Comments equating it with that are
> misguided. 3RR was put in place, not as an objective in itself, but
> as a means  to an
> end, that end being the creation of an accurate corpus of human
> knowledge. And
> yet, while people are willing to block for violating the 3RR, how  many
> people are willing to block for pushing POV or adding inaccurate  information
> consistently? That is a problem.
>
> So I reiterate: 3RR is not a goal of Wikipedia. In an ideal world, it would
> not even be necessary. It is merely a means to an end.
>
> The problem begins when focus solely on 3RR, disregarding our real goals.
>
> People are gaming these rules. While I would like to believe that most
> people have the good of Wikipedia at heart, the fact is that it is downright
> impossible, given the size of Wikipedia, to follow all the
> arguments, follow all
> the reverts, and step in when necessary. It once was, but that is
> no longer the
>   case. Nor is it legitimate to expect people who do not have IRC to get it
> and go  there when they face a problem. This is not an IRC project.
>
> I do not know the solution to this problem, but I think that it should be
> stated. Personally, I hope that Jimbo appoints a group of trusted users to
> examine the problem and come up with some solutions.
>
> Danny
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Saterlandic Frisian Wikipedia

body:
On Fri, 04 Mar 2005 20:42:52 +0100, Wouter Steenbeek
<musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I would like to apply for a Wikipedia in Saterlandic (East) Frisian. Further
> details can be read at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saterlandic_Frisian_language and soon at the
> requests page.

I believe you mean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saterland_Frisian_language.

For the purposes of ISO 639 codes, Saterland Frisian is regarded as a
dialect of Frisian.  Can you provide a rationale for why working
within the Frisian Wikipedia is not tenable?

I seem to recall reading that there were different spelling
conventions for the Frisian spoken in Germany and that spoken in the
Netherlands.  I have no idea how significant these differences are.

Steve


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: 3RR--what's the problem?

body:
>From: daniwo59 at aol.com
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR and gaming the system

The problem begins when focus solely on 3RR, disregarding our real goals.
>
>People are gaming these rules. While I would like to believe that most
>people have the good of Wikipedia at heart, the fact is that it is downright

>impossible, given the size of Wikipedia, to follow all the arguments, follow
all
>the reverts, and step in when necessary.

I don't get it. I truly don't get it. I'm not an old-timer, but I've been on
Wikipedia for mumble months and have made mumble thousand edits, and not once
have I ever come close to encountering the 3RR.

It seems to me that the 3RR is sort of like driving 74 mph on a rutted dirt
road, where the posted speed limit is 65, and most people drive 15. And then
complaining when you get ticketed, because you think the cop should have
allowed an extra 10 mph. (For people who don't live in U. S., Myanmar, or
Liberia: read 120, 105, 25, and 16 kph respectively).

I mean, why should the 3RR inconvenience _anyone_ with _any_ sense?

And if for some currently-incomprehensible-to-me reason someone does get
caught by it, what's so darn terrible about taking 24 hours off from
Wikipedia?

(Please do not take this as a challenge to see whether it's possible to goad
me into make three reverts...)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Proposal on VFD: enforcement of nomination policy

body:
On Fri, 04 Mar 2005 23:05:39 +0000, Pete/Pcb21
<pete_pcb21_wpmail at pcbartlett.com> wrote:
> I love this approach.
> Hell, if policy and precedence says that a certain type of article
> should be deleted (or, conversely, kept) then why do we need to go over
> the unnecessary palaver of vfd over and over?

a) Because the community preference seems to wish for deliberation,
rather than unilateral action, over such a weighty decision as
deletion, except in very specific situations.
b) Because there is disagreement about many types of articles'
suitability for Wikipedia.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Queen Elizabeth II and 3R

body:
Skyring/Peter:

I will put in a postscipt after all.

I have now established a link between this republic matter and the 3R debate
being discussed here.

You and another user recently got caught out in this matter on the Government
of Australia article, and got your wrists slapped because of the 3R violation rule,
and you've now resorted to discussing this whole republic fiction here.

I'll reword and repeat the bit you did not quote me on before: wikien-l is
not the outlet for pushing POVs like yours. I'll add that I see little hope
in this 3R discussion for your assertions.

The only positive point you've made here as regards 3R is that you've illustrated
how unsatisfactory the 3R rule can be when it comes to settling disputes.

Arno

----- Original Message -----
From: Skyring <skyring at gmail.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Queen Elizabeth II
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2005 19:26:59 +1100

>
> On Fri, 04 Mar 2005 08:03:08 +0000, actionforum at comcast.net
> <actionforum at comcast.net> wrote:
> > ------------- Original message --------------
> > > Peter, the Queen IS the Head of state here in Australia ,
> > though the matter is
> > > complicated by the G-G representing her.
> >
> > But isn't Peter also correct that Austrailia is a republic?  I
> > thought most constitutional monarchies were republics.  The
> > salient point is whether the monarch or the constitution is
> > supreme.  If the monarch cannot suspend or amend the
> > constitution, then what you have is the rule of law, a "republic".
>
> Spot on. The Australian people drew up their Constituion through a
> People's Convention with popularly elected delegates, and the
> resultant constitution was approved by the people in each of the six
> colonies. The constitution may ONLY by changed by a majority of the
> voters in a majority of the six States.
>
> Neither the Queen, nor the Governor-General, nor Parliament, nor the
> Government may amend a single letter of the Constitution without the
> express approval of the people.
>
> The Governor-General's powers are given to him in the Constitution by
> the people, and the Queen is all but powerless. She cannot issue
> instructions nor may she exercise any of the Governor-General's
> constitutional powers.
> --
> Peter in Canberra
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR and gaming the system

body:
>From: daniwo59 at aol.com
>
>
>Frankly, I never supported the 3RR, either the first time it was
>implemented, or this, the second time. I certainly oppose the idea that it
>takes
>precedence, or is even on an equal footing, with the goal of creating an
>_accurate_,
>NPOV, open-source encyclopedia. Comments equating it with that are
>misguided. 3RR was put in place, not as an objective in itself, but as a
>means  to an
>end, that end being the creation of an accurate corpus of human  knowledge.
>And
>yet, while people are willing to block for violating the 3RR, how  many
>people are willing to block for pushing POV or adding inaccurate
>information
>consistently? That is a problem.
>
>So I reiterate: 3RR is not a goal of Wikipedia. In an ideal world, it would
>not even be necessary. It is merely a means to an end.
>

True.  However, I've seen instances where editors have reverted pages 14
times in half a day, against the will of a half dozen editors, with no
sanction then or now.  Enforcement of the 3RR has put an end to that kind of
nonsense.  POV pushing has always been a problem, but I've seen no
indication that 3RR enforcement has made the POV pushing problem any worse
than it was before, and it has demonstrably helped ameliorate egregious
edit-warring problems.

Jay.


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR: Pluses vs Minuses

body:
Arno M wrote:

>On the minus, well, in addition to what I've already written
>if there are several persons in the wrong about an article and one
>person in the right, then the one in the minority is severely disadvantaged
>by the 3RR ruling.
>
>
>
Wikipedia operates on the theory that the good people always outnumber
the bad. If the data is factually incorrect, call in outside help. The
belief that just because you're right/extremely knowledgeable you can
revert wantonly has created a lot of problems in the past.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


body:
>From: "Charles Matthews" <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
>Jay JG wrote
>
> >  The inevitable
> > response is "this isn't original research, these are simple facts."
>Even
>if
> > they are indeed "simple facts" (and that is often not the case), putting
> > "simple facts" together to build a case, in order to refute a quoted
> > argument or position you see in some article which you don't agree with,
>is
> > "original research."
>
>Can't really agree with that.  Banning deductive logic from articles isn't
>a
>good idea.  As I have said here before, that seems to me to be an inflation
>of the original research policy, meant to bar crank theories, to an
>unreasonable extension of it.

Yep, that's the more nuanced version of the argument.  However, the cranks
themselves are full of simple "deductive logic" arguments that they feel
need to be added to articles, in order to balance the "bias" they see in
some cited opinion.  And in any event "deductive logic" and "building a
case" are not quite the same thing.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR applied to both parties?

body:
>From: geni <geniice at gmail.com>
>
>Because that person would be thinking like an edit warroir. You ask
>for outside help. How hard is that?

Easy to ask; often hard to get.  People are busy, they don't know anything
about the topic, they don't want to get drawn into "edit wars" (particularly
if they aren't your buddy or don't know you).  Often an RfC will end with
zero or one or two people commenting on a Talk: page, and then leaving.
Even if they all agree with one editor, they are rarely interested in
getting involved in any other way, precisely because they are "good" editors
who don't want to edit war.  Either you just give up, and leave the soup
bone nonsense in (respecting process over content), or you end up edit
warring (respecting content over process).  Most of the "process" idealists
here seem to be repeating the mantra "just follow the process and everything
will work out".  On the other hand the "content" idealists seem to withdraw
from editing after many months of frustration.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR and gaming the system

body:
>From: David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>
>
>In this case, I'm amazed saying "Australia is a republic" isn't
>being counted as simple vandalism. Repeatedly putting in misleading
>and plainly factually incorrect information certainly counted as
>vandalism when User:Michael was going hogwild at it.

Tsk tsk, David.  Respect the process.  You must leave the erroneous
information in, and attempt to reason with the inserter on the Talk: page.
People who revert are simply thinking like an "edit warrior".  I'm sure the
postings on this list, including those from the person promoting the
"Australia is a republic"  idea itself,  have made it quite clear that a few
well-chosen words in Talk: will have the person promoting the idea that
"Australia is a republic" repudiating his views and voluntarily reverting
his contributions in no time at all.

Jay.


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR: Pluses vs Minuses

body:
Zoney wrote:

>All the 3RR does in *some* circumstances is re-enforce Wikipedia's
>majority bias. Even if it is a useful enforcement tool in many other
>cases.
>
>
It also, perhaps more importantly, contains damage by making revert wars
by necessity very short.  Prior to the 3RR, we'd sometimes have revert
wars going on for hundreds of reverts.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: 3RR--what's the problem?

body:
>From: "dpbsmith at verizon.net" <dpbsmith at verizon.net>
>
>I don't get it. I truly don't get it. I'm not an old-timer, but I've been
>on
>Wikipedia for mumble months and have made mumble thousand edits, and not
>once
>have I ever come close to encountering the 3RR.

I suspect you might not be editing in the more heated areas of Wikipedia.  I
could be wrong, of course.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR applied to both parties?

body:
On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 22:19:14 -0700, slimvirgin at gmail.com
<slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> If Geni's interpretation of 3RR is correct, then we have an unwinnable
> game of tic tac toe going on against editors trying to keep nonsense
> out of articles. Within four hours:
>
> Skyring inserted a falsehood
> Adam reverted: Adam's #1 revert
> Skyring re-inserted it: Skyring's #1 revert
> Adam reverted: Adam's #2 revert
> Skyring re-inserted it:" Skyring's #2 revert
> Adam reverted: Adam's #3 revert
> Skyring re-inserted it: Skyring's #3 revert
> Adam reverted: Adam's #4 revert.
> Skyring calls the cops.

As noted above, this is not the case. My insertion was a matter of
fact - namely because the term head of state is not defined in the
constitution it is a matter  of contention rather than convention. As
I have demonstrated.

Adam's four reverts took place within a matter of hours, but during
that time we were discussing the issue. Adam became increasingly
abusive when asked to provide checkable sources, I waited twelve hours
and seeing no resumption of the discussion I reported him.

All this can be checked, and that's the beauty of Wikipedia.

--
Peter in Canberra


subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR applied to both parties?

body:
On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 22:37:35 -0700, slimvirgin at gmail.com
<slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Peter, this probably isn't the place to discuss the factual details,
> but in brief you are doing original research. Here is the Governor
> General's page http://www.gg.gov.au/html/fset_role.html There's
> nothing republican about this description.
>
> We had a similar situation a few weeks ago when an editor kept
> deleting that Israel is a parliamentary democracy, because that editor
> believes that Israel is not democratic enough, and was able to quote
> other sources making the same point. But that's beside the point:
> Israel is recognized by reputable sources as a parliamentary
> democracy, so that's the term Wikipedia uses; similarly, the Queen is
> recognized as the Australian head of state by most reputable sources,

But that's the point, Sarah. She isn't. You might as well say that
she's the Queen of England. Lots of people would put money on this,
but they would be wrong.

I don't mind if incorrect popular opinion is mentioned so long as it
is clearly labelled as such.

--
Peter in Canberra


list: wikitech-l

from_name: notafish

subject: [Wikitech-l] Update of fr.wikinews interwiki links.

body:
Hi. It seems that the [[commons:Name_of_page_on_commons]] interwiki does
not work on fr.wikinews.
On the same topic, why doesn't a [[w:Article]] send directly back to
fr.wikipedia rather than English Wikipedia ? This would be very very handy.
And I have probably missed other links that don't work. I have noticed
on en.wikinews that every link of the form Wikipedia name space
[[Wikipedia:Foo]] sends back directly to Wikipedia, that does not work
on fr. Link should be of the form :[[Wikip?dia:Foo]] btw.

Thanx,

Delphine


body:
David Gerard wrote:
> So is the so-called deletion policy purely decorative, and in fact
> something that should itself be deleted to avoid confusion?
>
> 'Cos what I'm saying is to just enforce the policy that's already
> there, and is referred to both at beginning and end of VFD as being
> a thing to follow, in the hope of making VFD somewhat smaller so
> that it may be more humanly manageable.
>
> I really don't see what's so hard about actually putting a reason bearing
> a relationship to policy, particularly when VFD explicitly says to do so.

To clarify, I was responding to Pete/Pcb21's suggestion that was,
basically, "Why use VFD at all, we should just decide what should be
speedy deleted and use that."

I am much in favor of your suggestion that nominations at VfD that do
not reference a reason listed in the deletion policy should be removed
forthwith.

-Matt (User:Morven)


from_name: hipocratico

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikidiabetes

body:
I would like to be the administrator of a wiki that would give the
people valuable information about diabetes and its comorbilities. As
you see my english is very poor so I?m planning to do it in spanish,
basically. I want to do this because in my practice, I have a lot of
patients with this disease that need a lot information. I think a Wiki
could be a great opportunity to do it.

I hope you can consider this.

Thanks in advance

Dr Alan Flores MD.


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikidiabetes


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Suitable topics for the family-friendly version of
	Wikipedia

body:
Don't forget to make sure all Biblical topics are suitably screened.
I can just imagine the furore at Ezekiel 23:19-21.

(go look it up, I'm not giving spoilers here.)

And here's an actual Bell Canada advertisement. These are the sort
of minds the project will need to be suitable for:

   http://www.torontopics.com/dark/HPIM0418.JPG

Closeup: http://www.livejournal.com/users/lillim/752633.html

I'm sure this fills you all with enthusiasm to get categorising!
I can tell you, it sure does me.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal on VFD: enforcement of nomination policy

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion#How_to_make_VFD_of_manageable_size

One way to make VFD of manageable size is to enforce step 3 of the procedure
for nomination, which is: "3. Under the section, describe, in accordance
with our deletion policy, why the page should be deleted and clearly write
what action you think should be taken for the nominated article to assist
others in determining consensus. Don't forget to sign and datestamp (using
~~~~)."

An awful lot of nominations are bogus - listing reasons that are
nowhere to be found in [[Wikipedia:Deletion policy]].

Therefore, I propose:

     Any VFD nomination not listing a reason in Wikipedia:Deletion policy may
     be summarily removed from the page.

This alone would only be enforcing existing policy and would reduce the size
of VFD considerably.

(It could also be applied to votes, but that would be making new policy, not
reinforcing existing policy.)

I urge you to go to the above page and add your thoughts. Should this be
enforced, or is the deletion policy merely decorative?

- d.


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Foundation-l] Scaling the wiki, can we learn from Google?

body:
In light of the fact that one of the major issues for the Wikimedia
Foundation is developing its network of servers, I thought I would point
out the following article I recently ran across:
http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3487041

I don't know how helpful it is to those doing the actual work, but to a
technological ignoramus like myself it gives an idea of the issues we're
looking at in the future, and some of the solutions we may need to consider.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Charles Matthews

body:
Jay JG wrote

>  The inevitable
> response is "this isn't original research, these are simple facts."  Even
if
> they are indeed "simple facts" (and that is often not the case), putting
> "simple facts" together to build a case, in order to refute a quoted
> argument or position you see in some article which you don't agree with,
is
> "original research."

Can't really agree with that.  Banning deductive logic from articles isn't a
good idea.  As I have said here before, that seems to me to be an inflation
of the original research policy, meant to bar crank theories, to an
unreasonable extension of it.

Charles


from_name: Tomer Chachamu

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Q1 2005 Fund Drive was a phenomenal success

body:
(Sent incorrectly first time)

On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 17:08:12 +0000, Tomer Chachamu <the.r3m0t at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 05:48:13 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer
> <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > --- Tomer Chachamu <the.r3m0t at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 17:41:45 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer
> > > <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > > If I have time I'll conduct an analysis of the fund drive this weekend. I'm
> > > > particularly interested in what can be done to improve future fund drives.
> > >
> > > Please, could you find how much of the money came from donations of
> > > $100+ (or equivalent in other currencies), how much was from
> > > $75-$100...$10-20, $5-10, $0-5 ?
> >
> > Good idea.
>
> Wikimedia foundation site: "most donations we receive are the
> equivalent of $20 or less." - when I read that for the first time, I
> wondered whether these small donations were actually significant next
> to the occasional much larger one.
>
> Incidentally, the same page ("Wikimedia_needs_your_help") has a
> superscript "1" but there are no footnotes.
>
> So, er, what hardware are you actually planning to buy?
>
> Also, "10 more Squid/apache/memcached servers ordered on 14 January
> 2005. Shipped on 1 Feb with estimated delivery 8 Feb
> Delivered. Awaiting connection and setup. Likely to take several days
> for each step. JamesDay 04:24 Feb 9, 2005 (CET)"
>
> Are these servers up?


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] NYPL Digital Gallery Open to Public

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

Looks like the New York Public Library has but more than a quarter
million images online in the public domain!

Happy salvaging,
Magnus

http://slashdot.org/articles/05/03/04/1258219.shtml?tid=146&tid=126
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFCKKZGCZKBJbEFcz0RApEaAJ9fRaBu6YUikIHwllgHSvWdAQDACgCeNBMb
zyyFLOnae9aU26JmxPHfTAU=
=ybRe
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: SirJective

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Changing md5 of wikisysop user

body:
Export TheGeek wrote:
> First, let me say i hope this is the right list!
>
> well.. I forgot my password for sysop so I created a new md5 based off
> a new password and entered the md5 value into user_password in the
> user table on the wiki mysql database, but attempting to login still
> yeilds invalid password.. anybody have any thoughts on how to enter a
> new md5 and have it work? did i miss some sort of has / calculation
> done to the initial plaintext password?

Solution 1 (worked for me, without a md5hash-generator).
The "salt" Brion wrote about is determined by the user's ID.
So create another local installation of the mediawiki software.
You can then use SQL to copy the password hash from one installation to
the user with the same ID on the other installation.

Solution 2 (should work for you).
You can alternatively simulate the "salting" process by hashing your new
password, adding the user ID and a "-", to get a string "ID-md5hash" and
hash that again. This last hast is the value you need to enter in
user_password.

Christian
de:Benutzer:SirJective


subject: [WikiEN-l] Queen Elizabeth II

body:
On Fri, 04 Mar 2005 08:03:08 +0000, actionforum at comcast.net
<actionforum at comcast.net> wrote:
> ------------- Original message --------------
> > Peter, the Queen IS the Head of state here in Australia , though the matter is
> > complicated by the G-G representing her.
>
> But isn't Peter also correct that Austrailia is a republic?  I thought most constitutional monarchies were republics.  The salient point is whether the monarch or the constitution is supreme.  If the monarch cannot suspend or amend the constitution, then what you have is the rule of law, a "republic".

Spot on. The Australian people drew up their Constituion through a
People's Convention with popularly elected delegates, and the
resultant constitution was approved by the people in each of the six
colonies. The constitution may ONLY by changed by a majority of the
voters in a majority of the six States.

Neither the Queen, nor the Governor-General, nor Parliament, nor the
Government may amend a single letter of the Constitution without the
express approval of the people.

The Governor-General's powers are given to him in the Constitution by
the people, and the Queen is all but powerless. She cannot issue
instructions nor may she exercise any of the Governor-General's
constitutional powers.
--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiktionary capitalization

body:
Hi,

Could someone turn off the capitalization on http://bg.wiktionary.org and
http://ne.wiktionary.org ?

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Non-development_tasks_for_developers#Wiktionary

Thanks,
Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


subject: [Wiktionary-l] Wiktionary capitalization


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR applied to both parties?

body:
> Now this is complete nonsense, I've just made it up.  But if the one person
> who happens to know this is nonsense reverts it, and an edit war develops,
> in the end the second person will get banned for 24 hours for removing the
> information, because it is not obvious vandalism.
>
> Jay.

Because that person would be thinking like an edit warroir. You ask
for outside help. How hard is that?

--
geni


from_name: Mathias Schindler

body:
Magnus Manske schrieb:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Looks like the New York Public Library has but more than a quarter
> million images online in the public domain!

I read on that page "free for personal use".

I wonder if there is a more detailed explanation about the licensing of
their content...

Mathias


from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] Queen Elizabeth II

body:
On Fri, 4 Mar 2005 03:16:37 -0600, Jack Lutz <jack-lutz at comcast.net> wrote:
> Surely the Australian government has written a thing or two about whether it
> is a constitutional monarchy or republic?

The two terms are not exclusive. Australia has a republican form of
government where sovereignty resides in the people and executive power
is given to and exercised by elected and appointed officers, Howver,
the Queen has a highly visible symbolic role and has some remnant
functions, chief of which is the formal appointment of the
Governor-General.

The government directory calls the Governor-General the head of state
some years, other times says the Queen is the head of state. It's
impossible to find a definitive answer.

--
Peter in Canberra


subject: [WikiEN-l] Queen Elizabeth II

body:
On Fri, 04 Mar 2005 14:23:46 +0600, Arno M <redgum46 at lycos.com> wrote:
> Sigh! I shouldn't have bitten.
>
> The Australia page has been through this before, and the  ,um, debate,
> involving someone called Daeron , whose views seem similar to yours,
> can be found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Australia/Archive_2.

Some dodgy reasoning and a lot of shouting. No definitive source given.
>
> Peter is not correct, period. India is a republic, yes, but Australia is not.

Australia is a republic using just about every definition I've ever
seen. Including Wikipedia's.

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Wouter Steenbeek

body:
I would like to apply for a Wikipedia in Saterlandic (East) Frisian. Further
details can be read at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saterlandic_Frisian_language and soon at the
requests page.

Thanks in advance,

Caesarion

_________________________________________________________________
Altijd in contact met de kleinkinderen: MSN Messenger
http://messenger.msn.nl/


from_name: Roman Maurer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] de.wikipedia.org db dump

body:
Brion Vibber pravi:

>> I was just wondering why there is no individual de.wikipedia.org
>> database dump at http://download.wikimedia.org/?
>
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-February/027602.html

Is the mentioned problem with the dump process also the cause that there
is no statistics on http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/Sitemap.htm
since last year?
--
	Pozdrav,
	  Roman


subject: [WikiEN-l] original research

body:
steven l. rubenstein wrote

<snip>

> I think we should give editors --
> not just individuals, but the community of editors -- a lot of leeway for
> deciding when we need to start enforcing strict rules uncompromisingly.

I'm generally in agreement with this, and the rest of Steven's post.

It may make me seem contrarian, but when it is argued that certain
reasonable policies should be applied to the letter, to sort out edit wars
in the 'right' direction, I begin to be worried about them; and the extended
discussion Steven gave makes me feel I am perhaps not alone in this.  In the
point provoking this, it must be the use of fallacy rather than logic that
is really at fault.

Anyway, we appear to have an ongoing situation where some policies which are
founded in principle don't have support for pedantic enforcement; and some
policy - 3RR at least - is quite arbitrary but its pedantic enforcement has
quite general support.

Moreover there is a persistent 'semi-detached' tendency, of active editors
who are respected for their work, and who find this all the wrong way round.

Where it seems to get tricky is when it is argued that change in this
situation - which is perhaps quite a stable one, in fact - could deal with
perceived major issues.  Well, I remain sceptical about that.

Charles


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

Mathias Schindler schrieb:
> Magnus Manske schrieb:
>
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> Looks like the New York Public Library has but more than a quarter
>> million images online in the public domain!
>
>
> I read on that page "free for personal use".
>
> I wonder if there is a more detailed explanation about the licensing of
> their content...

I got the PD information from the /. comment. Don't tell me you actually
read TFA?? ;-)

Anyway, the older images will be PD by age anyway. Maybe they could be
convinced to release low-quality versions of the other images as GFDL or
CC-BY-SA or something, if someone from the Foundation writes a nice
letter. The additional publicity for supporting everyone's favourite
encyclopedia should be of high interest to them.

Magnus
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFCKL9ICZKBJbEFcz0RAgZiAJ9wN6Wna/D0Z8dumBrNn2GiFHgLZwCdGYDP
6jLJ4FaGi3Hv+cOXBrip9Kc=
=BYR+
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Kiss All

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for classical Chinese

body:
You are out of your mind. Period.

On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 19:12:00 +0900 (JST), abc_root
<abcd_root at yahoo.co.jp> wrote:
> Dear all:
>
> I would like to request a new Wikipedia for classical Chinese or kanbun(
> ??/???) which is the standard form of Chinese for about two thousand
> years and was used throughout East Asia as the formal form of writing. Its
> importance in East Asia is like that of Latin in Europe. Now that
> Wikipedias are running or being started for many of the languages in East
> Asia, it seems that the language which is the backbone of these languages
> should also have a place.
>
> One problem that might be encountered in writing articles for kanbun
> wikipedia is how the foreign loanwords (e.g. from English) should be
> phonetically transcribed when there is no corresponding word in kanbun
> itself. If they are transcribed using kanji (Chinese characters), there is
> the question of which language should be used to read the kanji. Here I
> suggest using an alphabet system of East Asia (e.g. Japanese kana or Korean
> hangul, or Taiwanese chu-yin) for the transcription and also note the
> original word in English (or any other language of origin or the roman
> transcription if the language is not written in roman alphabet). This
> allows kanbun users speaking different languages to know the original
> foreign word.
>
> __________________________________
> Let's Celebrate Together!
> Yahoo! JAPAN
> http://pr.mail.yahoo.co.jp/so2005/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Be good....


from_name: Theresa Knott

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR applied to both parties?

body:
On Fri, 04 Mar 2005 16:15:05 -0500, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: geni <geniice at gmail.com>
> >
> >Because that person would be thinking like an edit warroir. You ask
> >for outside help. How hard is that?
>
> Easy to ask; often hard to get.

I have to say that this has never been my experience. Maybe it's the
kind of page I edit,, i dunno but what I do know is that I've never
knowingly broken the 3RR and have always managed to find other
solutions to POV pushers. In my experience many people are perfectly
willing to deal with a POV pushers.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR and gaming the system

body:
On Fri, 04 Mar 2005 16:19:25 -0500, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>
> >
> >In this case, I'm amazed saying "Australia is a republic" isn't
> >being counted as simple vandalism. Repeatedly putting in misleading
> >and plainly factually incorrect information certainly counted as
> >vandalism when User:Michael was going hogwild at it.
>
> Tsk tsk, David.  Respect the process.  You must leave the erroneous
> information in, and attempt to reason with the inserter on the Talk: page.
> People who revert are simply thinking like an "edit warrior".  I'm sure the
> postings on this list, including those from the person promoting the
> "Australia is a republic"  idea itself,  have made it quite clear that a few
> well-chosen words in Talk: will have the person promoting the idea that
> "Australia is a republic" repudiating his views and voluntarily reverting
> his contributions in no time at all.
>
> Jay.

Actuakky what David was saying is if it's vandalism, just protecy the
page already, or block the vandal. Problem solved.

There is _never_ any need for a legit user to break the 3RR

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


from_name: Richard Holton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Strange fetishes

body:
On Fri, 04 Mar 2005 22:16:40 -0500, Michael Becker <wikimb at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wikipedia is a wiki community foremost and an encyclopedia second.

I wonder if how many people would agree with this sentiment. I have
read statements by some "important people" that would at least cast
some doubt as to which is foremost: the community or the encyclopedia.

I have always seen Wikipedia as an effort to create a free
multi-lingual unbiased encyclopedia that is as available as possible
to everyone everywhere. That's one of the reasons that a print version
is an important part of the whole project -- because many people will
not be able to access it via computer.

The Wiki community is a means to that end. A wonderfully (and somewhat
surprisingly) successful means, but only a means. I cannot imagine any
other means that is likely to achieve the end.

So, as I see it, the encyclopedia comes first, the community second.
But the community is essential to the encyclopedia.

-Rich Holton
en.wikipedia:User:Rholton


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Pictures on the Dutch Wikipedia do not work anymore

body:
Walter Vermeir schreef:
> Walter Vermeir <walter <at> wikipedia.be> writes:
>
>
>>The normal [[image:Whatever.jpeg]] still work but not
>>http://www.someserver.tld/foto.jpeg
>
>
> It works now again. Thanks.
>
> Walter

It works now on the Dutch wikipedia but the folowing projects use also
this counter system;

http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Hoofdpagina
http://fy.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haadside
http://nl.wikinews.org/wiki/Hoofdpagina
http://nl.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hoofdpagina

and there it does not yet work again.

--
[[w:nl:gebruiker:walter]]


from_name: Michael Becker

subject: [WikiEN-l] Strange fetishes

body:
Wikipedia is a wiki community foremost and an encyclopedia second. The
3RR is an easy rule to follow so there is no reason not to. If
"professional historians like Jtdril and adam Carr" would just learn to
follow the rules, they would not get blocked. There is no reason that
anyone ever has to break the 3RR, if it is a valid reversion, the
community will come to the rescue. There certainly is nothing stopping
them from seeking help from others to avoid breaking the 3RR. The fact
of the matter is this group of "professionals" feels for some reason
that it should get special treatment when it comes to breaking the
rules. They must eventually realize that in an internet community like
Wikipedia it doesn't matter who they are if they can't follow the
community standards for interaction.

On Fri, 04 Mar 2005 06:16:11 +0000, Abe Sokolov <abesokolov at hotmail.com>
wrote:
 > Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen at shaw.ca wrote:
 >
 > Actually, IMO at least it seems perfectly reasonable to enforce the 3RR
 > even against people who are making reverts that when made in isolation
 > would be considered "reasonable."
 >
 > That's actually my point. For Wikipedia to be managable, procedure
must be
 > followed and policies must be enforced. Thus, the statements that I'd
quoted
 > were **unfortunately** reasonable. The problem is the nature of the
 > procedure making this approach reasonable.
 >
 > IMO needs radical change, along the lines of Larry Sanger's
suggestions. The
 > way things are now, certain trolls flourish while professional
historians
 > like Jtdril (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jtdirl#3RR_block)
and
 > Adam Carr get blocked. Some bold structural changes would serve to
correct
 > this problem.
 >
 > -172
 >
 > _________________________________________________________________
 > Don?t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
 > http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
 >
 > _______________________________________________
 > WikiEN-l mailing list
 > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
 > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
 >

--
Michael Becker


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR and gaming the system

body:
Skyring wrote:
> On Fri, 04 Mar 2005 13:02:26 +0000, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

>>In this case, I'm amazed saying "Australia is a republic" isn't
>>being counted as simple vandalism. Repeatedly putting in misleading
>>and plainly factually incorrect information certainly counted as
>>vandalism when User:Michael was going hogwild at it.

> Perhaps you should read the discussion page. There is a gulf between
> public perception and reality here, obviously. Much like people
> incorrectly believing that Queen Elizabeth II is the Queen of England.

Ah, this makes it clear - it's [[original research]], then.

- d.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Suitable topics for the family-friendly version of
	Wikipedia

body:
David Gerard wrote:

> Don't forget to make sure all Biblical topics are suitably screened.
> I can just imagine the furore at Ezekiel 23:19-21.
>
> (go look it up, I'm not giving spoilers here.)
>
> And here's an actual Bell Canada advertisement. These are the sort
> of minds the project will need to be suitable for:
>
>   http://www.torontopics.com/dark/HPIM0418.JPG
>
> Closeup: http://www.livejournal.com/users/lillim/752633.html
>
> I'm sure this fills you all with enthusiasm to get categorising!
> I can tell you, it sure does me.
>
>
> - d.

Ermm, it seems to me like the livejournalers (I only read the first few,
admitedly) didn't actually understand the subtlety (such as it is) of
Bell Canada's advert?


body:
David Gerard wrote:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion#How_to_make_VFD_of_manageable_size
>
>
> One way to make VFD of manageable size is to enforce step 3 of the
> procedure
> for nomination, which is: "3. Under the section, describe, in accordance
> with our deletion policy, why the page should be deleted and clearly write
> what action you think should be taken for the nominated article to assist
> others in determining consensus. Don't forget to sign and datestamp (using
> ~~~~)."
>
> An awful lot of nominations are bogus - listing reasons that are
> nowhere to be found in [[Wikipedia:Deletion policy]].
>
> Therefore, I propose:
>
>     Any VFD nomination not listing a reason in Wikipedia:Deletion policy
> may
>     be summarily removed from the page.
>
> This alone would only be enforcing existing policy and would reduce the
> size of VFD considerably.
>
> (It could also be applied to votes, but that would be making new policy,
> not reinforcing existing policy.)
>
> I urge you to go to the above page and add your thoughts. Should this be
> enforced, or is the deletion policy merely decorative?
>
>
> - d.

I love this approach.
Hell, if policy and precedence says that a certain type of article
should be deleted (or, conversely, kept) then why do we need to go over
the unnecessary palaver of vfd over and over?

Pete


body:
On Fri, 04 Mar 2005 23:03:31 +0000, Pete/Pcb21
<pete_pcb21_wpmail at pcbartlett.com> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:

> Ermm, it seems to me like the livejournalers (I only read the first few,
> admitedly) didn't actually understand the subtlety (such as it is) of
> Bell Canada's advert?

Well. it's late, and i'm feeling tired and stupid, so please spell it
out for me because I didn't understand the subtlety myself.

Theresa


from_name: Stacey Greenstein

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wired News reporter would like to interview you

body:
Daniel, Here are my answers. Do you mind if I forward this to the Wiki
email list?

Stacey

On Fri, 4 Mar 2005 17:36:05 -0800, Daniel Terdiman
<daniel.terdiman at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Great. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.
>
> Here's the questions, then. Please answer them with as much information
> as you can. The more detail the better. And, as I mentioned, if you
> could get those answers back to me tonight, it would be a huge help.
>
> Thanks again,
> Daniel
>
> - During the last 30 days, you've been one of the most active
> Wikipedians, editing more than 1800 articles. Can you tell me what has
> driven you to be so active recently?

Well, it isn't quite so true that I've done 1800 in the past month.
That sounds like the number of edits I did back in December, which was
the last time those stats were updated. My company closes down the
site I work at for the week between Christmas and New Year's, so I had
quite a bit of extra time on my hands. With that time I made a big
push to translate many of the German language articles on Primates to
English (via various online translation tools). I've only done 700 or
so edits in the past 30 days, according to my "user contributions"
list.

I suppose knowing that the 1800 number was wrong says more about me
than the fact that I editted 1800 during some 30 day period.  Any of
these numbers are misleading, though, as they only say that I made
some kind of edit; it doesn't differentiate whether the edit was a
significant contribution, a minor correction in an article I have on
my watch list, or a reversion of vandalism. A significant portion of
my edits are either adding or (more typically) removing a "category"
tag, or making some other minor edit that is general not very
significant to the article itself. "Category" tags are a relatively
recent feture to MediaWiki. Some users have gone way overboard with
their use, while a number of us have a more moderate approach,
structuring the categories into subcategories, eliminating the need to
have several dozen categories on a single article.

> - You're also one of the most active overall, and I guess I'm curious
> you think what being so involved in editing Wikipedia articles says
> about you.

For one thing, I care a great deal about the Wikipedia project itself.
In many ways it represents the best of the possibilities in the
post-hacker-manifesto world. I'd guess that a number of Wikipedians
grew up after or came of age around the time of the hacker manifesto,
and the concept of "freedom to do as we please" has finally begun its
maturation to "responsible to do what we need".

That responsibility means doing what we can, given ones interests and
energy. For me, that means being active in the creation and management
of some kinds of articles, and being responsible for various other
aspects of the general improvement of the entire project.

> - What's it like to be fairly close to the top of the list of most
> prolific Wikipedians?

I'm rather proud of my placement in the list. I'd actually thought I
was much further down the list, both in overall and the monthly
statistics. However, I know some of the folks I expected to be above
me in the listings have moved on to more beaureaucratic roles,
something very needed as Wikipedia grows.

> - Your profile says you like to fix things, such as out of order books
> in bookstores or articles in Wikipedia that need fixing. Where does
> that come from? How long has that been an attribute of your
> personality?

In part it's out of frustration trying to find a book (or whatever)
that I'm looking for. I worked in a library when I was in high school,
and then again to help pay for college, so I'm sure that has had an
influence on my books-out-of-order frustrations. But also, I can't
understand why people would take a book off the shelf to see if they
like it, and then put it back in the wrong place. It seems simple
enough to me to put it back in the right place.

> - You also have a fairly broad cross-section of interests, at least as
> revealed by your profile. What would you say are the two or three
> topics you most frequently are working on in Wikipedia?

As far as new article creation and growth, I'd have to say my
interests lie primarily in primates and cephalopods. I've spent a good
deal of time researching primates and cephalopods for Wikipedia,
including buying a number of books that are geared more towards
college degree programs than as encyclopedia source material. I've
also recently gotten involved in working on NYC subway related
articles.

> - Clearly, Wikipedia has given you a forum for helping to ensure that
> things are the way you would like them to be. But what would you do if
> Wikipedia went away?

I'd find other hobbies that I enjoy. And Wikipedia isn't the only
hobby I have now anyway. I enjoy hiking through the many parks and
forests near where I live, I enjoy going into the city for museums and
shows, and I have an active religious life, too.

> On Mar 4, 2005, at 5:20 PM, Stacey Greenstein wrote:
>
> > Yes, I can do that.
> >
> >
> > On Fri, 4 Mar 2005 17:07:19 -0800, Daniel Terdiman
> > <daniel.terdiman at earthlink.net> wrote:
> >> Hi...If I sent you some email questions, would you have time to answer
> >> them this evening? Only because my story is due Monday.
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> Daniel
> >> On Mar 4, 2005, at 5:05 PM, Stacey Greenstein wrote:
> >>
> >>> Very cool! Unfortunately your email to me was delayed and I've just
> >>> now received it. I'll be out of town tomorrow so I won't be around
> >>> for
> >>> an interview, but I'd love to chat with you sometime next week.
> >>>
> >>> Stacey Greenstein
> >>> AIM: UtherSRG
> >>> Yahoo: stacey_hare
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Fri, 4 Mar 2005 19:49:41 GMT, WiredGuy
> >>> <daniel.terdiman at earthlink.net> wrote:
> >>>> Hi, there...
> >>>>
> >>>> My name is Daniel Terdiman. I'm a reporter with Wired News
> >>>> (wired.com).
> >>>>
> >>>> I'm doing a story that will present a series of small profiles of
> >>>> Wikipedia's top posters. So, I thought it would be interesting to
> >>>> talk to you for the story.
> >>>>
> >>>> I wonder if you might have any time to talk or answer some email
> >>>> questions sometime today or tomorrow?
> >>>>
> >>>> Thanks a lot.
> >>>>
> >>>> Daniel Terdiman
> >>>> Wired News
> >>>> daniel.terdiman at earthlink.net
> >>>> 415.647.7166
> >>>> AIM: Daniel Terdiman
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>


body:
Matt Brown wrote:
> On Fri, 04 Mar 2005 23:05:39 +0000, Pete/Pcb21
> <pete_pcb21_wpmail at pcbartlett.com> wrote:

>>I love this approach.
>>Hell, if policy and precedence says that a certain type of article
>>should be deleted (or, conversely, kept) then why do we need to go over
>>the unnecessary palaver of vfd over and over?

> a) Because the community preference seems to wish for deliberation,
> rather than unilateral action, over such a weighty decision as
> deletion, except in very specific situations.
> b) Because there is disagreement about many types of articles'
> suitability for Wikipedia.

So is the so-called deletion policy purely decorative, and in fact
something that should itself be deleted to avoid confusion?

'Cos what I'm saying is to just enforce the policy that's already
there, and is referred to both at beginning and end of VFD as being
a thing to follow, in the hope of making VFD somewhat smaller so
that it may be more humanly manageable.

I really don't see what's so hard about actually putting a reason bearing
a relationship to policy, particularly when VFD explicitly says to do so.

- d.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Queen Elizabeth II

body:
Stephen Forrest wrote:

>On Fri, 4 Mar 2005 20:33:51 +1100, Skyring <skyring at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>The two terms are not exclusive. Australia has a republican form of
>>government where sovereignty resides in the people and executive power
>>is given to and exercised by elected and appointed officers, Howver,
>>the Queen has a highly visible symbolic role and has some remnant
>>functions, chief of which is the formal appointment of the
>>Governor-General.
>>
>>
>I think that describing Australia in its present state as a 'republic'
>would be highly confusing.
>
It's a bit like the difference between "de facto" and "de jure".  Law
and the way things are done are often quite different.

>Australia and Canada (with which I'm more familiar) are constitutional
>monarchies.  They are not republics, at least not under any definition
>of the term which would be commonly accepted here in Canada.  The
>movement in Canada to remove the queen and install a citizen as head
>of state is called 'republicanism' (see e.g. [[Canadian
>republicanism]]).  I don't imagine things are too much different in
>Australia.
>
Canada, unlike Australia, India and South Africa, has not taken taken
steps to become a republic.  Not being a republic does help to
distinguish us from the Yanks even if it does mean putting up with the
vestiges of a mediaeval European form of govenment.  Even in Quebec
where they have even less use for the Queen than the rest of us, I can't
see any groundswell of republicanism.  And Lizzie is not about to step
in and make a fuss about it.  Occasionally, some republican individuals
will grumble about the apparance that Canada is not independent, and the
old crones having afternoon high tea at the Empress Hotel will feel
properly offended, but for most of us the fact that we have a "Queen of
Canada" is perfectly ignorable, and the statement comes with an
appropriate giggle.

>All that said, I think this sort of technical discussion should
>probably not be happening on the list.
>
I prefer to treat the subject as an expression of humour rather than a
technical discussion.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Strange fetishes

body:
On Fri, 4 Mar 2005 21:34:25 -0600, Richard Holton <richholton at gmail.com>
wrote:
 > But the community is essential to the encyclopedia.

Right this was my main point with that statement. This project would not
exist without the community period. To keep the community heathly, rules
have been impossed, such as the 3RR. Those who can not follow the
community rules, don't really belong here. Those who break wikiettique,
who offend others and scare off innocent contributors are often no
better than the trolls they claim they are fighting. IMO, it should not
matter one bit who they are in real life, or what qualifications they
say/think they have for writing an encyclopedia. These people who
blatently and repeatedly break our rules should NEVER be administrators.
It also is questionable weather they should be allowed to edit wikipedia
at all, or if we should ban them like the other trolls (which are often
banned for less).
--
Michael Becker


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] New elections for stewards

body:
Hi all

In the past months, some editors have expressed the
desire to become stewards. At the same time, some
editors expressed the regret that there is no steward
able to understand japanese or chinese and finally
some editors complained current stewards were
sometimes too slow to answer requests.

For these reasons, a new election to name a couple
more stewards will be held in the near future, as soon
as we agree on the election rules.

The past year activity showed that to be most useful a
steward :

* had to be available
* had to participate to request for permission and
steward log activity
* had to be ready to help in many languages (hence be
involved in the international community) rather than
only in his or her mother language.

Actually, we rather discourage steward activity in
one's own language for any removal of status.

This suggests to me the following rules

* it is useless to keep in steward list an inactive
steward. Activity is show best by activity on "request
for permission" (log is sometimes lost). I hence
suggest that any steward with no edits on RfP and no
mention in the log for 6 months be listed as inactive
and with no activity for a year, be removed.
* a new election will be held in march (or soon)
* candidates should have shown implication in
international matters, so we could possibly require
that the candidate has sysop status on meta.
* Candidates should have at least 80% support (neutral
not counted)
* Anyone can vote provided that the editor has a valid
account on meta with a link to at least one user page
on a project where the editor is a participant
* In case of suspicion of sock puppetry, developers
could be asked to check and sock puppet votes
cancelled.

What do you think ?

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards

Ant

__________________________________
Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday!
Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web
http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikidiabetes

body:
On Fri, 4 Mar 2005 17:25:16 -0600, hipocratico <hipocratico at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would like to be the administrator of a wiki that would give the
> people valuable information about diabetes and its comorbilities. As
> you see my english is very poor so I?m planning to do it in spanish,

A lot of this information could probably be added to Wikipedia. See
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetes_mellitus and the related
articles, for example.

You also have the option of starting a Wikibook on this. The Spanish
Wikibooks is at http://es.wikibooks.org and currently the only
medicine-related book there is
http://es.wikibooks.org/wiki/Documentaci%C3%B3n_en_l%C3%ADnea_de_OsiriX
which documenting some software which visualizes medical images.

You may be interested in starting a project in Spanish similar to the
English one at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Emergency_Medicine

For any information that does not fit in either Wikipedia or
Wikibooks, there is a Spanish language Medical Wikicity at
http://medicine.wikicities.com/wiki/Portada which you could contribute
to.

Angela
--
Angela Beesley
Wikipedia.org
Wikicities.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikidiabetes


from_name: Neil Harris

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Persistent page-move vandal using many accounts;
	next steps?

body:
The en: Wikipedia is currently being pestered by a persistent page-move
vandal that has used many names, including (today) [[User:Socksucker]],
[[User:Wikipedia is Fun]], and [[User:A freaking sick vandal!]]. Judging
by the user's MO, they are likely the same person as Willy on Wheels and
the "penguin shit" vandal.

They are persistent and devious, and clearly very familiar with the
Wikipedia software. They perform their vandalism in rapid bursts by
using a tabbed browser, so that they can quickly dumped a batch of fresh
vandalism before they can be blocked and their "work" unpicked; and they
are working hard at making that as difficult as possible for admins to
do.  Once they are blocked, they simply create a new account, and repeat
the process, which implies some level of IP agility.

Their goal appears to be to cause as much inconvenience as possible, and
consume as much admin time as possible.

I think it might be time for some bureaucrats/developers to use their
privileged access try to identify the origin of these attacks, to see if
this problem can be resolved by technical or other means.

What does the community think?

-- Neil


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Persistent page-move vandal using many accounts; next
	steps?

body:
Neil Harris wrote:

> The en: Wikipedia is currently being pestered by a persistent
> page-move vandal that has used many names, including (today)
> [[User:Socksucker]], [[User:Wikipedia is Fun]], and [[User:A freaking
> sick vandal!]]. Judging by the user's MO, they are likely the same
> person as Willy on Wheels and the "penguin shit" vandal.
>
> They are persistent and devious, and clearly very familiar with the
> Wikipedia software. They perform their vandalism in rapid bursts by
> using a tabbed browser, so that they can quickly dumped a batch of
> fresh vandalism before they can be blocked and their "work" unpicked;
> and they are working hard at making that as difficult as possible for
> admins to do.  Once they are blocked, they simply create a new
> account, and repeat the process, which implies some level of IP agility.
>
See also the following link to a Slashdot posting from "1337 Apple
Zealot <http://slashdot.org/%7E1337%20Apple%20Zealot/>", signed "Willy
on Wheels!", describing an MO which is consistent with the observed
pattern of edits from all of these vandal accounts:

http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=135333&cid=11292880

-- Neil