subject: [WikiEN-l] Print edition

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>I've been approached by a major publisher about the possibility of
>working with us to producing and publish a print edition of Wikipedia.
>The concept that they are most interested in at the moment is a single
>large volume, something similar to the Columbia Encyclopedia (a
>desktop encyclopedia, 3200 pages) or Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
>(2067 pages).
>
>The Britannica Concise has 28,000 entries.  The Columbia has 51,000
>entries.  I have no idea of estimated word or byte counts for those.
>
>One goal would be to have something ready for market by October 1st,
>in time for the holiday gift season.  I'm unsure of how early before
>that *we* would need to be ready.
>
>I've only begun talking to them about it, which is why I won't say who
>it is just yet.  But they understand our license and want to work with
>us.
>
>The question was asked of me, and I ask of the community: can we have
>something like that ready in time?  Or should we shoot for next year?
>
>I have long stated a goal that "Wikipedia 1.0" be ready in December of
>this year, although we haven't actually made any formal decisions
>about how we're going to do that.
>
Considering that just last night, I raised the complaint that 1.0 was
the sort of thing that was all talk and no action, I have to react
positively to this news. I also believe that getting this project under
way may ease the inclusion/deletion wars.  The kind of deletions that
have raised so many objections on Wikipedia may actually be welcome in 1.0.

How does ready for market by October 1 translate into when the material
needs to be ready for printing?  The publisher will need time to do his
work.

To work in that time scale the first edition has to be quite modest.  A
lot more can go into the second edition. For now there is a need to
decide what topic areas can be included.  I think it would be better to
have fewer areas, but ones where we can feel sure that a comprehensive
presentation can be made.  [[Countries of the World]] would be an
obvious area, but someone will need to go through all the articles to
ensure that all countries have been brought to the same standard.

Editing will need to be a lot more disciplined than has been the case on
Wikipedia, with little time for wrangling.

Ec


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Nick Pisarro

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New magic variables?

body:
Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org> writes:
>Additionally, I really don't think it should be possible to include any
>article in any other article. An article should be clearly marked as
>being "includable" (which it is by being in the MediaWiki namespace). I
>don't know if it is currently possible to place a {{msg:}} inside a page
>on the MediaWiki namespace, but I believe that should be disallowed to
>prevent circular references (infinite recursion).

If you did implement this feature, as you build up the page you *would*
have to watch for circular references. You could do this by stacking the
fully qualified names of what your in the middle of including and make
sure the new file isn't already on the stack.

You should really do this anyway if there is nested inclusion now.

Marking an article as includable is a thought, but how would you do that?
You could restrict your inclusion to a special "Templates" name space, but
that would not be as powerful. I don't think that would be necessary,
unless there are caching considerations.

Nick Pisarro


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Arvind Narayanan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Requiring image sources

body:
On Mon, Feb 23, 2004 at 10:30:25AM +0000, Imran Ghory wrote:

> Please re-read my original statement. I said nothing about licencing
> issues. I simply said that all uploads have to give a source to show
> where they came from.
>
> If it's fair use, the Berne convention and ethics would requires us to
> give a source. If it's PD we should give a source so others can verify it
> is PD.
>
> Is there any legitimate reason why anyone wouldn't be able to give a
> source for an image ?
>
None at all. This is a very good idea. I would suggest we have a "Image
source" textbox in the upload form.

Arvind
--
Its all GNU to me


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] Yahoo, Google etc.

body:
user_Jamesday wrote:
> When discussing search engine placments with Yahoo, Google and AOL,
>do remember that they make money whenever we send a searcher to their
>search results page, because that searcher sees their ads. These deals
>can be expected to involve the search company paying the hosting
>company money.

It would be problematic at best for us to accept money for sending
search traffic to proprietary search resources.  We've provided the
google search as an alternative to our own fulltext search simply
because we have not had the techincal resources to keep our fulltext
search going.

(This should change very soon when we get our 2nd db server in place.)

--Jimbo


list: wikien-l

from_name: James Rosenzweig

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Print Edition

body:
Thanks, Jimbo, for giving us something positive to
talk about here. :)  I think we can be ready, and I'm
ready to chip in as much as I can to help that happen.
 I am sure there are plenty of reasons we can think of
why not, but honestly, I do not think this project
will be less distracted by trolls, policy issues, and
POV conflicts as time goes on -- not noticeably,
anyway.  We'll always have issues, and yet despite
issues we've done good work, and will continue to do
it.  I'd love to see that good work show up in a book
on a Barnes&Noble shelf somewhere -- for one thing, it
would establish our name even more firmly, and attract
more serious contributors (who might feel more
interested in contributing if they thought those
contributions might achieve the semi-permanence of
print).  I think we should aim high -- excelsior! :-)

James Rosenzweig

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Get better spam protection with Yahoo! Mail.
http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools


subject: [Wikitech-l] Optimizations

body:
Bravo!  Excellent analysis!

Keep in mind -- we have money in the bank, but there's probably about
a 2 week lead time on getting new servers if we include time for us to
puzzle over the exact needs before making another order.

We don't want to prematurely throw hardware (money!) at any problems
that are really software problems, but at the same time, if we feel a
need for more stuff, we can get it.

Jason is working on the migration of Bomis to here, and as that goes
forward, at some point whatever Wikimedia Foundation owns in the San
Diego colo will get transferred here.  The older slower machines can
probably be used for little stuff, or if it's the judgment of the
technical staff (that's you guys) that we're better off not using it,
then we can sell it, either to Bomis (but I want to be VERY careful
not to raise any conflict of interest issues... the money should
always flow *from* me *to* wikipedia, not the other way around, or I'm
sure some jerkoff will say something) or on ebay.

--Jimbo

user_Jamesday wrote:

> To give some idea of what makes a difference, here are some of the things discovered over the last two weeks:
>
> 1. Storing the PHP files on NFS doubled the page load time, from around 180ms to around 360ms. So, that's no longer being done and effectively no complicated programming was needed to double performance.
>
> 2. Squid using the disk reached cache hit rates of 78% and still rising, compared to 60% without the disk, but...
>
> 3. Squid using synchronous I/O blocked on disk and would sometimes result in timeouts. So, disk was turned off for the last week.
>
> 4. The Apaches started slowing down at peak load times earlier this week, so more Squid investigation started, using asynchronous disk I/O this time. Given the past disk caching experience, this has the potential to cut the load the Apaches see by around 25-50% (they see 40% of load without disk, disk cut that to 22%).
>
> 5. There's a parameter in Squid which tells it when to ignore the disk, based on the number of file descriptors in use. If the limit is exceeded, Squid ignores the disk and just passes the request directly to the Apaches, or skips saving the page to the disk. Tuning of this parameter is currently ongoing. When set correctly it should let Squid deliver all it can from combined disk and RAM, but only up to the point where it doesn't start to block waiting for the disk.
>
> So, there's no need to get too enthusiastic about tuning the code. The new server setup still isn't tuned fully yet... and it probably won't be before we get a nice fast database server, a second Squid and some more Apaches to spread the load around.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] About Plautus Satire

body:
In emails to me today, Plautus Satire has accused me of lying to him
about his being moderated on the mailing list.  (He is not, has never
been, and it's his own inability to function even after people have
explained the problem to him that's to blame for the mailing list
problems.)

He's also asked me about my "revenue streams" from Wikipedia, and
whether they might somehow be "dependent on popular misconceptions
being substituted in place of relevant, unpopular, dispassionat [sic]
facts?"

I consider both of those remarks to be so preposterous as to cut off
any further possibility of hope for sensible discussion.

Here's a hint for trolls of the future -- when writing to me to beg
for a rehearing, try to avoid insulting me to my face twice in one
day.

--Jimbo

p.s.  Just to make sure I'm clear on what I find insulting about the
"revenue streams" question, it isn't the notion that I might someday
make some revenue from wikipedia.  It's my dream, in fact, that this
could someday be my fulltime job, an honorable job which I would be
proud to have earned.  It's the notion that I'd debase my ideals for
the encyclopedia in the process that I find offensive.


from_name: Arno M

subject: [WikiEN-l] Plautus - the last three days

body:
Hmm, after viewing messages about Plautus, I must say that I find Jimbo's "All you need is love" response most disappointing.

I must say that he's a busy little beaver. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&hideminor=0&target=Plautus_satire&limit=500&offset=0 shows that he has made over 500 edits over the last three days alone. This includes some articles such as quasar, but mainly in advocating and splattering his ,um, views all over the talk pages.

For instance, on the Sep 11 Attacks page, Plautus is now arguing that the Flight 93 passengers did not charge the hijackers, and is veering that page off in a direction there that may see this site crashing into a lawsuit or two. (He does seem to be saying that the families who reported the phone calls are all liars) The size of the talk page is also growing.

People have now left the wikipedia site, or so I hear, and there's a list of complaints growing on Jimbo's talk page. Let's also not forget what might happen if his stuff gets copied across to other sites that use wikipedia material as all or part of their content.

My own feeling is that Plautus should be given the "Get back to where you once belonged" treatment.
He is completely fouling thiongs up here.

____________________________________________________________
Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10


subject: [Wikitech-l] Code at the head branch seems to be broken

body:
Is there more to be done?

The following code in Parser.php starting at line 165 has a problem. The
'else' needs a left brace following it. But even fixing that there are
execution errors.--Nick Pisarro

		$doesexist = false ;
		if ( $doesexist ) {
			$sql = "SELECT l_from FROM links WHERE l_to={$id}" ;
		} else
			$sql = "SELECT cur_title,cur_namespace FROM cur,brokenlinks WHERE
bl_to={$id} AND bl_from=cur_id" ;
		}

		$res = wfQuery ( $sql, DB_READ ) ;


subject: [Wikitech-l] Yahoo, Google etc.

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> If Yahoo feels grateful for the increased traffic, and starts making
> anonymous donations to WikiMedia, you're not going to tear up the
> checks, are you?

No, of course not.  Indeed, I would encourage any company or person
who uses our content, or finds it beneficial in any way, to make a
contribution that they feel is appropriate.

It's just that accepting money in exchange for traffic sent, in some
kind of 'pay per click' deal, comes far too uncomfortably close to
advertising.  We provide those links as a service to our end users.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Print edition

body:
Delirium wrote:
> Well, part of that would hinge on what exactly we're going to be doing
> for them.  Are we going to give them wikitext and they're going to
> properly format it and work out the GFDL issues and whatnot?  Or are we
> expected to provide them material in whatever their preferred format is,
> and with all the details worked out?

I'd say that's open ended at this point.  Everything is.  We should
brainstorm about it.

Of course any publisher can come in and take the wikitext and make
their own "Joe's Publishing Company Encyclopedia", without consulting
us.

But what makes more sense for us, and for a publisher I think, is for
us to use this to "prove" our quality by going to print, under the
Wikipedia name.  And for that we probably want to do as much of the
work as we can.

--Jimbo


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Once again. This paragraph- becomes-a-long-sentence
	business can be a PITA

body:
Hmm, after viewing messages about Plautus, I must say
 that I find Jimbo's "All you need is love" response
 most disappointing.

I must say that he's a busy little beaver. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&hideminor=0&target=Plautus_satire&limit=500&offset=0 shows that he has made over 500 edits over the last three days alone. This includes some articles such as quasar, but mainly in advocating and splattering his ,um, views all over the talk pages.

For instance, on the Sep 11 Attacks page, Plautus is
 now arguing that the Flight 93 passengers did not
 charge the hijackers, and is veering that page off in

a direction there that may see this site crashing into

a lawsuit or two. (He does seem to be saying that the

families who reported the phone calls are all liars)

The size of the talk page is also growing.

People have now left the wikipedia site, or so I hear,
 and there's a list of complaints growing on Jimbo's
talk page. Let's also not forget what might happen if
 his stuff gets copied across to other sites that use
 wikipedia material as all or part of their content.

My own feeling is that Plautus should be given
 the "Get back to where you once belonged" treatment.

He is completely fouling things up here.

____________________________________________________________
Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10


subject: [WikiEN-l] Print edition

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> How does ready for market by October 1 translate into when the material
> needs to be ready for printing?  The publisher will need time to do his
> work.

That's an excellent question.  I'll try to get that clarified.

I suppose it depends in part on how "finished" the product would be
upon delivery.  Formats, things like that.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Faster parsing

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Although I agree with Brion that someone should probably do some
> profiling, I see no harm in discussing improvements that may not turn
> out to be *major* improvements. I certainly do NOT agree that anything
> that is clearly on-topic and constructive, should be "forbidden" by
> anybody.

I agree with you, even though I also agreed with Brion.  He was just
joking, and so was I.

His point was that some discussions of optimizations really are
premature until we spend some time working out just where bottlenecks
actually are.

--Jimbo


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Print edition

body:
On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> I've been approached by a major publisher about the possibility of
> working with us to producing and publish a print edition of Wikipedia.
> The concept that they are most interested in at the moment is a single
> large volume, something similar to the Columbia Encyclopedia (a
> desktop encyclopedia, 3200 pages) or Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
> (2067 pages).
>
> The Britannica Concise has 28,000 entries.  The Columbia has 51,000
> entries.  I have no idea of estimated word or byte counts for those.
>
> One goal would be to have something ready for market by October 1st,
> in time for the holiday gift season.  I'm unsure of how early before
> that *we* would need to be ready.
>
> I've only begun talking to them about it, which is why I won't say who
> it is just yet.  But they understand our license and want to work with
> us.
>
> The question was asked of me, and I ask of the community: can we have
> something like that ready in time?  Or should we shoot for next year?
>
I've been toying with the idea of creating my own "Geoff's 0.9" snapshot
of Wikipedia, just as a proof-of-concept. Unfortunately, the work would
involve a lot more than one person can do in a few days, but here are
the steps I considered, after getting a complete dump of the Wikipedia
database:

1. Compile a list of articles, organized by links. This would include
non-existant articles. From this list, decide that only the top 30,000
to 50,000 articles will be included.

2. Comb through all of the articles that have been the subject of
great disagreement, read the arguments in the Talk: pages, & make a
final decision on which side is right, & make the edit.

3. Finish any stub articles that appear in this listing.

4. Review every article that has either not been edited for a year or
has hed less than, say, 5 edits. If more work needs to be done, do it.

5. Monitor the New Articles list, to fill in any non-existant articles.

6. Write non-existent articles, using public domain material, or material
from Talk: pages. (I actually consider this would be the least pleasant
step.)

7. Remove all Talk: pages, User: pages, unlinked Disambiguation pages,
history pages, & other material that can be considered housekeeping.
(Although the Wikicivics pages should be kept.)

8. Verify that all external links work.

9. Offer for review. Yes, it will be uneven, biassed & widely criticised --
but at least it will offer everyone concerned a high-level view of what
needs to be done, & those of us more interested in a finished product
can devote themselves to that -- & leave the current version of Wikipedia
to those who want to deal with certain contributors.

Of course, the first step after 1.0 would be to figure out how to
integrate that version into the pre-1.0 Wikipedia material. (In other
words, if you thought dealing with certain contributors was a pain, this
would be even worse. :-()

Geoff


subject: [WikiEN-l] Coding for Number of Edits a User Can Make

references:
<BC632598.1927%fredbaud@ctelco.net> <93bAulYxpVB@erik_moeller>
	<20040226181757.GS21056@joey.bomis.com>
	<403E4AD5.407@rufus.d2g.com>

body:
Delirium wrote:
> Some people are only problematic on a very few articles,

I think that's right, but that also those same people are not
necessarily _unproblematic_ on other topics.  At least for me, I
sometimes wonder if I'm being excessively benevolent when I think "Oh,
well, this person is just really heated up about thus and such a
topic, but they would be good elsewhere."

Sometimes we assume that, out of benevolence, but it probably isn't
true a lot of the time.

--Jimbo


from_name: Viajero

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: I like Plautus

body:
First Lir writes:

> Plautus adds a lot of bullshit to the wikipedia

Then:

> People that disagree with Plautus should edit for
> NPOV, they should not delete and censor him.

I see, so we are to accept his "bullshit" and not delete it?

Lir, is there anything you think does NOT belong in Wikipedia???

"Wikipedia is not a dumpster"

V.


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Fred-
> We need software that will allow throttling down the number of edits problem
> users can make. Please code something so that we could restrict, should we
> decide to, someone like this to a set number of edits per day.

This is a good idea, I think, as long as it is not overused. This, per-
article bans and a strictly enforced edit war policy should give us some
peace.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Crony Capitalism

body:
On Wed, 25 Feb 2004, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> I've noted this at Wikipedia as a Press Source
>
> The CBC Newsworld <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBC_Newsworld> programme
> Counterspin in a discussion on "Corruption and the Political Process"
> made use of the Wikipedia definition of crony capitalism
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism> , February 25.
>
> It's interesting to see that we are being quoted by the primary Canadian
> TV Network in the context of a current domestic political scandal. :-)
>
Should we consider that we're establishing a corollary to Gresham's Law
("Bad money drives out good")? That would be, "People tend to refer to
the least expensive (or most most widely accessible) source of facts."

Geoff


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Faster parsing

body:
On Feb 26, 2004, at 12:49, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
>> Although I agree with Brion that someone should probably do some
>> profiling, I see no harm in discussing improvements that may not turn
>> out to be *major* improvements. I certainly do NOT agree that anything
>> that is clearly on-topic and constructive, should be "forbidden" by
>> anybody.
>
> I agree with you, even though I also agreed with Brion.  He was just
> joking, and so was I.
>
> His point was that some discussions of optimizations really are
> premature until we spend some time working out just where bottlenecks
> actually are.

Working on performance improvements costs developer time, and that is a
precious resource. If we spend all our time talking about things that
might not help much, we are in fact decreasing the actual improvements
we can make. (In economics this lovely concept is called opportunity
cost; think of all the fun things you could have done in your life if
you hadn't been sitting around in front of the computer! ;)

Sure, it's possible to put a lot of effort into something that yields
very little improvement, but, y'know, why?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Vigilantism or due process

body:
Gareth Owen wrote:

>Caroline Ford <caroline at secretlondon.me.uk> writes:
>
>
>
>>It's far too open to abuse. There is an element of popularity contest about
>>it. No-one seems to object to banning unpopular users.
>>
>>
>
>The question is *why* are those people unpopular.
>
>You have opinions which are undoubtedly unpopular with many wikipedians, but
>I've not seen calls for your banning because you express those within the
>confines of norms of Wikipedia behaviour.
>
>No-one called for RK to be banned, until he started hurling abuse at people,
>even though he was in in frequent disagreement with people from the other side
>of the Israeli-Palestine conflict.
>
>The present set of people are being banned *not* because they have
>unpopular opinions, but because they behave in an antisocial manner,
>and refuse to cooperate with others.
>
>
Well, what's "abuse" versus "unpopular political opinions" seems to vary
depending on the particular dispute.  In the Germany/Poland and
Israel/Palestine disputes, for example, there've been more than a few
calls for various people to be banned primarily because they were seen
as an "anti-Polish activist" or "right-wing Israeli apologist" or
whatnot, rather than because of any particular abuse (though sometimes
abuse is also alleged, but it usually seems to not be the primary
issue).  Three examples that come to mind are Nico for his
pro-German-names advocacy, Srpska for his pro-Serbian-nationalist
advocacy, and OneVoice for his pro-Israeli-right advocacy (none of whom
I personally feel should be banned, temporarily or otherwise, but all of
whom at least one person has asked to be banned).

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] About Plautus Satire

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>p.s.  Just to make sure I'm clear on what I find insulting about the
>"revenue streams" question, it isn't the notion that I might someday
>make some revenue from wikipedia.  It's my dream, in fact, that this
>could someday be my fulltime job, an honorable job which I would be
>proud to have earned.  It's the notion that I'd debase my ideals for
>the encyclopedia in the process that I find offensive.
>
>
Oddly enough, you've even been one of the more stringent voices against
putting Wikipedia in a position where that might even unintentionally,
as might happen if it were to become financially reliant on large grants
from a particular government or organization (which would then be able
to say "well, you can do what you want, but we don't feel we can
continue to support you if you do [...]").

So really a content-free email, but I think most (all?) of us here
aren't too worried about that possibility.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] My Turn to Complain about Someone

body:
See [[Talk:Eber]] for details, where a kook demands an apology from
me.

Zestauferov has been pushing his own idiosyncratic racial theory about
Jews into as many articles that he can. As far as I can tell, no one
else has ever suggested that the proto-Hebews are a distinct people,
& are somehow related to a number of other peoples (e.g., inhabitants of
the Caucasus, the Hurrians, etc.) Requests for sources that prove these
theories are _not_ his own ideas, when answered, fail to offer any
such evidence -- simply more arguments of questionable quality that this
is fact. And now he's taken to insulting me, & still refuses to even
acknowledge that what he is stating is a theory -- not fact.

I have no problem with "alternative" theories; I know it's more than
likely some will end up being proven true. And the rest are best dealt
with under daylight where they can be seen for what they are. However,
I have problems with people who want to push their own wild ideas into
Wikipedia & claim that they are fact.

I never thought another contributor to Wikipedia would ever get under
my skin like this, but if I were given to such actions, I'd probably
act like a vigilante (e.g., banning him, doing massive reverts to every
article he has touched, etc.) to my discredit.

Geoff


subject: [WikiEN-l] Print edition

body:
It should be no problem.  Any revenue from the book sales would be
taxable as unrelated business income.  I'll get specific guidance
before doing anything, though.

Caroline Ford wrote:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> >But what makes more sense for us, and for a publisher I think, is for
> >
> >us to use this to "prove" our quality by going to print, under the
> >Wikipedia name.  And for that we probably want to do as much of the
> >work as we can.
> >
> >--Jimbo
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >
> >
>
> We need to check how this affects our not-for-profit status.
> I guess that the plan would be for the wikimedia foundation to get some
> sort of profit share? In the UK this could count as primary purpose
> trading under UK Charity Law (depending on what the objects of the
> charity were) - and would be legal. In some cases a trading company
> would have to be set up.
>
> I know _nothing_ about US not-for-profit law - I just thought I'd flag
> it as a potential issue.
>
> Caroline
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Print edition

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>It's too hard to keep a running list with more than 100 links.
>
>How about an invisible marker like {ready for print} near the top of the
>article text?
>
>
I think we need to split out versions somewhere else, because we're
looking for concise articles, not full encyclopedia articles.  Simply
marking [[World War II]] as "ready for print" doesn't do anything
towards getting us a good one-to-two-paragraph summary of World War II.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Print edition

body:
Delirium wrote:
> I think we need to split out versions somewhere else, because we're
> looking for concise articles, not full encyclopedia articles.  Simply
> marking [[World War II]] as "ready for print" doesn't do anything
> towards getting us a good one-to-two-paragraph summary of World War II.

Maybe you're right.  Probably you're right.

But I wonder.  It's up to us, presumably, to determine the content,
although of course we want the result to be useful.

We have 214,720 articles.  Let's assume that this is a total of X
pages.  But we need to hypothetically pare it down to X/3, i.e. 1/3 as
much total content.

We can pare it down by editing longer articles into shorter articles.
Or we can (also) pare it down by simply omitting articles that aren't
as "important" in some sense.

I have here a very old concise encyclopedia.  It's printed with 3
columns of text.

World War II takes up 2 full pages of fairly fine print.  Francis
Scott Key takes up about 1/3 of 1 column, i.e. about 1/9th of a page.

The Wikipedia entry looks similar to the Francis Scott Key entry.  Our
World War II entry looks similar, too.

I'm going to try to get an estimate of how many words are in
Wikipedia, and how many words are in this book.  That'll give us
a better idea of what we're looking at.

--Jimbo


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Please do quote evidence in your favor by providing a URL to the evidence.

Fred Bauder member of the arbitration committee

> From: Plautus Satire <plautus at shaw.ca>
> Reply-To: plautus at shaw.ca, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 20:27:46 +0000
> To: wikien-l at wikimedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] point 1: frenetic tone of opposition to Plautus satire
>
> I do not quote and cite the evidence here because it is copious. Also unquoted
> and uncited are about half the comments from this email list on this issue
> regarding banning me (and others, apparently).


from_name: Plautus Satire

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: personal curiosity; escalation to arbitration

body:
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 20:57:26 -0000
X-Mailer: YahELite
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Forwarded message follows:

Return-path: <jwales at bomis.com>
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Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 12:38:31 -0800
From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
Subject: Re: personal curiosity; escalation to arbitration
In-reply-to: <0HTP00F0BL6CG5 at l-daemon>
To: Plautus Satire <plautus at shaw.ca>
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Original-recipient: rfc822;plautus at shaw.ca

Plautus Satire wrote:
> Because it is irrelevant to my defense.

But it's completely relevant.  I just wrote about it to the list,
actually.  The fact that you would simultaneously insult me while
asking me for a rehearing is *exactly* relevant to the situation.

You're a complete and total asshole, and getting rid of you will be
a great joy.

You may attempt to divert the discussion to issues having to do with
your crackpot pseudo-scientific theories, but those are not the real
issue.  The real issue is your insulting behavior towards me and
towards others who have tried to help you.

You seem completely oblivious to that behavior, though, so I don't
suppose there's any hope for your change.  I've told you several times
today in simple language what the problem is, and it's as if you're
completely deaf to what I'm saying.

--Jimbo


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: About Platus Satire

body:
> > Here's a hint for trolls of the future -- when writing to me to beg
> > for a rehearing, try to avoid insulting me to my face twice in one
> > day.
> >
> > --Jimbo
>
> Can you, or anyone else here, with a straight face say that; if they
> were banned, and felt that there was absolutely no reason for the ban,
> would be able to stay completely calm as a saint?

I believe that I would be angry and therefore extremely sarcastic, but
would not personally insult the person I was asking for help.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Print edition

body:
mapellegrini at comcast.net wrote:

>First, let me say that the idea of a printed version of Wikipedia is *GREAT*
>
>I'd like to make a modest logistical proposal for the print edition. I think
>that each article, in addition to having an associated talk page, should have
>an associated "Wikipedia 1.0" page - a page containing a print-encyclopedia
>worthy summary. This is important, because a printed encyclopedia should
>contain no web links, or internal links, but we don't want to remove them from our articles either. Some longer articles need to be shortened for the print version as well. I think this is the most workable way to do it.
>
>
This is an important point I'd been meaning to bring up: if at all
possible, it'd be nice if people would avoid doing things like
non-obvious piped links, where knowledge of the fact that a particular
word is linked is necessary for the sentence to make sense, as these
translate very badly to print, and usually would have to be reworded.
Plus it's actually easier to read on the internet too if you don't have
to mouseover the link to find out what exactly is meant by an oddly-used
term.  Things like "more details are available [[Another
article|elsewhere]]." are the most obvious cases (reword to "see
''[[another article]]'' for more details), but there are plenty of
others as well.

-Mark


from_name: Gareth Owen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Vigilantism or due process (was: Plautus)

body:
"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> writes:

> How many people want admins to have the Authority to temp-ban any user
> who (in their opinion) has violated a community rule?

Yes, please.

Troublemakers (like Wik, Iriskook and Plautus) only have to show a slight bit
of subtlety and we bend over backwards to please them, frequently alienating
actual, useful contributors.

--
Gareth Owen
"It's not a human or civic right to edit wikipedia."
                                 -- kq cuts to the core of the banning debate


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Faster parsing

body:
On Feb 26, 2004, at 13:52, Timwi wrote:
>> Sure, it's possible to put a lot of effort into something that yields
>> very little improvement, but, y'know, why?
>
> Similarly: Why not? - seeing as I'm not going to help with the
> profiling either way, I might as well help with the database
> optimisation.

If you can add something to
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_Database_Schema_Changes
please do.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Yahoo, Google etc.

body:
When discussing search engine placments with Yahoo, Google and AOL, do remember that they make money whenever we send a searcher to their search results page, because that searcher sees their ads. These deals can be expected to involve the search company paying the hosting company money.

Jimmy probably already knows this, but just in case...:)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Optimizations

body:
To give some idea of what makes a difference, here are some of the things discovered over the last two weeks:

1. Storing the PHP files on NFS doubled the page load time, from around 180ms to around 360ms. So, that's no longer being done and effectively no complicated programming was needed to double performance.

2. Squid using the disk reached cache hit rates of 78% and still rising, compared to 60% without the disk, but...

3. Squid using synchronous I/O blocked on disk and would sometimes result in timeouts. So, disk was turned off for the last week.

4. The Apaches started slowing down at peak load times earlier this week, so more Squid investigation started, using asynchronous disk I/O this time. Given the past disk caching experience, this has the potential to cut the load the Apaches see by around 25-50% (they see 40% of load without disk, disk cut that to 22%).

5. There's a parameter in Squid which tells it when to ignore the disk, based on the number of file descriptors in use. If the limit is exceeded, Squid ignores the disk and just passes the request directly to the Apaches, or skips saving the page to the disk. Tuning of this parameter is currently ongoing. When set correctly it should let Squid deliver all it can from combined disk and RAM, but only up to the point where it doesn't start to block waiting for the disk.

So, there's no need to get too enthusiastic about tuning the code. The new server setup still isn't tuned fully yet... and it probably won't be before we get a nice fast database server, a second Squid and some more Apaches to spread the load around.


from_name: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

body:
On Thu, 2004-02-26 at 16:10, Gareth Owen wrote:

    "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> writes:

    > How many people want admins to have the Authority to temp-ban any user
    > who (in their opinion) has violated a community rule?

    Yes, please.

    Troublemakers (like Wik, Iriskook and Plautus) only have to show a slight bit
    of subtlety and we bend over backwards to please them, frequently alienating
    actual, useful contributors.

    Gareth Owen

Oh, please no.

The dangers are more salient than the benefits. We can afford to lose
any number
of users to exasperation with vandals and trolls. What we can not afford
is to
create (even with the best of intentions) a insular culture of obeisance
and
initiatory progression through the ranks. Sysophood is already too often
withheld
from unpopular users(/users holding unpopular views). Openness is the
jewel of
wikipedia, and it should be protected at nearly any cost.

I understand the will to prevent useful users from leaving in
frustration, but
we must be more concerned about the whole of wikipedia, than any one, or
even
several users. "The law created before me, shall outlast me." As much as
it pains
us all, it is _most_ important to lay down rules which can be justified
without
reference to current cases, and personages.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro)

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from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New magic variables?

body:
Nick Pisarro wrote:

> I notice that the latest wikipedia home page does inclusions by using the
> {{msg:...} "transclusion" variable.
>
> It seems to me that inclusions like this should come from the
> $wgMetaNamespace  or other namespace, not the MediaWiki namespace. The
> MediaWiki namespace is really for running the software, and should not
> really contain specific user modifyable site data.

I completely disagree. Whoever said the MediaWiki namespace was "for
running the software"? Or for anything, for that matter? Factually, we
can use the MediaWiki namespace to do the {{msg:...}} stuff, so we do.
It is a very useful feature, and its functionality and usefulness is in
no way at all influenced by the name of the MediaWiki namespace. (For
usability by newbies, maybe the MediaWiki namespace should instead be
called Includables or something, but as I said, this does not affect the
functionality.)

Additionally, I really don't think it should be possible to include any
article in any other article. An article should be clearly marked as
being "includable" (which it is by being in the MediaWiki namespace). I
don't know if it is currently possible to place a {{msg:}} inside a page
on the MediaWiki namespace, but I believe that should be disallowed to
prevent circular references (infinite recursion).

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Regarding MediaWiki:All_messages

body:
Nick Pisarro wrote:

> Based on the unstable branch, the article "MediaWiki:All_messages", used
> for maintaining msg values is an interesting idea, but I believe this
> would be better built as a dynamically built page, i.e. as
> "special:all_messages", rather than as a static page in the database.

It seems that the title of [[MediaWiki:All messages]] is misleading,
because it actually displays only the messages used by the software, not
those inserted by users. (And, quite frankly, I don't think it should;
[[Wikipedia:MediaWiki custom messages]] is already a huge mess, and
desperately needs splitting up.)

A Special page would either
(1) have a hardcoded list of messages to display (which would then need
     to be updated whenever a new message is introduced into the
     software; admittedly, this would be easier than updating
     [[MediaWiki:All messages]]; or
(2) display *everything* in the MediaWiki namespace, which (as described
     above) would be horrendous.

Timwi


references:
<E506B3FF6BC1254C9AC1B948C380BC280217F4F9@sm-nyny-xm05.nena.wdpr.disney.com>
	<r5ibrnm53tk.fsf@gill.maths.keele.ac.uk>
	<1077806236.32294.18.camel@myhome.home>

body:
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <jheiskan at welho.com> writes:

> The dangers are more salient than the benefits. We can afford to lose any
> number of users to exasperation with vandals and trolls.

No we can't.

> What we can not afford is to create (even with the best of intentions) a
> insular culture of obeisance

You call it obeisance, I call it following the community rules and norms of
behaviour.  If you don't like the rules, campaign to have them changed but
don't tolerate the breaching of the rules.

There are many ways to introduce new ideas into articles, without getting
involved in edit and reversion wars.

>  and initiatory progression through the ranks.

Theres no progression to sysophood, except for those with copious free time.
Its not a promotion, its a voluntary duty.  There are many, I'm sure, for whom
it holds not appeal.

> As much as it pains us all, it is _most_ important to lay down rules which
> can be justified without reference to current cases, and personages.

We have rules.  The question is, what do we do to people with no apparent
desire to work within them?  Waste man-hours attempting rehabilitation, or
prevent them from causing any more trouble.

It strikes me that the only (partially) succesful rehabilitation of a
troublemaking user (Lir) came through a ban, rather than any "arbitration."
The addition of a layer of committees and bureaucracy has not, as far as I can
tell, achieved anything of any note.
--
Gareth Owen
"It's not a human or civic right to edit wikipedia."
                                 -- kq cuts to the core of the banning debate


from_name: Jake Nelson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Crony capitalism

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:
> Should we consider that we're establishing a corollary to Gresham's Law
> ("Bad money drives out good")? That would be, "People tend to refer to
> the least expensive (or most most widely accessible) source of facts."

 "Most convenient", I'd say.

-- Jake


subject: [WikiEN-l] Print edition

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> The question was asked of me, and I ask of the community: can we have
> something like that ready in time?  Or should we shoot for next year?

Once we set out to do it, we can do it. This sounds like a great
opportunity- let's strike while the iron's hot.

-- Jake


from_name: Jeff Meyer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mapping complement to Wikipedia?

body:
Hi all -

Has anyone looked into or heard anything about a map-based complement to the
Wikipedia?

I am looking at putting something together that would be targeted at K-12,
but might have some nice tie-ins.

The plan is to deliver an easily searchable repository (content & searchable
clearinghouse) of quality map content to cover the entirety of human
history. Along with it would be a freely distributable, open source map
player. People could then link their existing maps, add modifications, build
new map content, etc.

There are a lot of reasons why a text-based search metaphor doesn't work
well for map-based data and why a lot of the maps on the web fall short of
current technologies potential for delivering better map-based experiences.

I am hoping to base this loosely on what the folks at TimeMap and the ECAI
have already established, but their current tools, setup, and content would
need to be modified and expanded to be useful for K-12 education.

Naturally, it would be great to provide contextual links to related web
resources... like the Wikipedia.

Anyway, if anyone has heard of something similar, or has any suggestions,
please let me know.

Thanks,
Jeff

jeff at gwhat.org
www.gwhat.org


subject: [Wikitech-l] Mapping complement to Wikipedia?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Plautus

body:
Ed-

you're probably right. Plautus is just a misguided individual. All this
calling other users "dumb motherfuckers" and "fucking ignorant assholes"
has to be expected from a confused newbie. After all you yourself once
created a "Fucking asshole" account to make a point, remember?

Surely it is acceptable to lose 10 devoted, creative Wikipedians if we can
keep a single crackpot around. I should really stop being so judgmental
and leave the important decisions to the people who got their priorities
straight, instead of looking at silly things like polls and hard evidence.

If Ed believes that an individual is reformable, then we need to all sit
back and let the spirit of Sun Myung Moon work through him. I can't wait
to see you do your magic, Ed!

I have just one condition.

If this whole thing blows in your face, I want you to take full
responsibility for it. That means that I want you to go through every
single page Plautus satire edited in the last few days, to take diffs of
these edits and fix them if necessary. That includes erased comments on
talk pages, something he is very fond of.

How about it, Ed? Do you want the whole community to share your faith, or
are you ready to fix things up if that faith turns out to be mistaken?

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Robert Michel

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] > 230 request/second - but no Wikipedia news on
 slashdot ; ) what is this?

body:
Salve,

where does the peak of > 230 request/second came from?
This is + > 100%.

The German PR in one online magazin Spiegel.de was only +30%,
and yesterdays TV repoprt in German First TV program ARD +20%
what is it now?

rob


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Vigilantism or due process (was: Plautus)

body:
Gareth Owen wrote:

> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <jheiskan at welho.com> writes:
>
>>The dangers are more salient than the benefits. We can afford to lose any
>>number of users to exasperation with vandals and trolls.
>
> No we can't.

"We can afford this!" - "No we can't!" - No offense, people, but some
rational arguments would probably go a somewhat longer way...

> Theres no progression to sysophood  [...] Its not a promotion [...]

It certainly felt like a progression towards a promotion to me.

And I'm pretty sure I'm not alone there. Sometimes, what most people
perceive something to be is more important to consider than what you
perceive it to be (a.k.a. what you think it actually is).

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: update Webalizer stats

body:
On Feb 26, 2004, at 15:11, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> We are missing some old logs that might still be on the old machines.

For the record, it really doesn't matter that much. If we're missing
chunks we're missing chunks; the stats are mainly for fun -- we like to
see how insanely many people are clicking on our project, and it's more
important to have continuing data than a spot of old data.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: DNS still not changed

body:
On Thu, 26 Feb 2004 06:02:16 -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Also, that contact information is horribly out of date.

Who can change this? There are about 200 requests per second currently,
browne is highly loaded and coronelli still idle.
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: NPOV facts (was: I like Plautus)

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> Bcorr used this puzzling phrase:
>
> * "NPOV facts"
>
> 1. Excuse me, folks, but that is a blatant contradiction in terms. I see
> the terms "POV" and "NPOV" misused quite a lot, and I think this misuse
> betrays a fundamental misunderstanding.
>
> NPOV = [[Neutral Point of View]]
>
> The NPOV is a /policy/ about how to describe ideas or facts which are in
> dispute. The term is /not/ a synonym for "objective truth".

I can only underline this. Just yesterday I talked about this with a
friend, and we agreed on this. Most people seem to think "NPOV" means
"no POV", which it doesn't, and we came up with the following easy
visualisation of it:

Imagine death penalty was universally accepted as an adequate
punishment. Do you think our articles would mention any concerns of the
moral/ethical implications of it? Certainly not. Not because these
concerns are invalid or anything, but because no POV represents them.
Thus, favouring death penalty *is* *the* NPOV of that hypothetical world.

Timwi


body:
On Feb 26, 2004, at 15:06, Jeff Meyer wrote:
> Has anyone looked into or heard anything about a map-based complement
> to the
> Wikipedia?

There has been some discussion and experimentation, see various pages
linked from:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maps

Not much solid yet, unfortunately.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] > 230 request/second - but no Wikipedia news on
	slashdot ; ) what is this?

body:
Arvind Narayanan schrieb:

> I've been searching 'wikipedia' on news.google.com, there's
> nothing recent. Looks weird to me.

see news.google.de for German press coverage.

or http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_TV_coverage_of_Wikipedia

--
nach uns der synflood.


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikitech-l] Yahoo, Google etc.

body:
If Yahoo feels grateful for the increased traffic, and starts making
anonymous donations to WikiMedia, you're not going to tear up the
checks, are you?

Ed


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV facts (was: I like Plautus)

body:
Ed Poor wrote

>The job of the NPOV is not to determine facts, but to describe
/opinions/ about reality without endorsing them. Let's get this
straight. Please.

Let's see - I'm not a big fan of courtroom dramas of the LA Law type, and am
glad they're less in fashion than a few years ago.  I did notice that you
never get to hear the judge's summing-up of the hotshot lawyers' arguments.
That is, summaries of advocacy of contentious matters, properly put in the
context of the 'common ground' in a case, don't make good television.  On
the other hand they are good for Wikipedia.

Charles


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New magic variables?

body:
Timwi-
> I completely disagree. Whoever said the MediaWiki namespace was "for
> running the software"?

The software is called MediaWiki. The namespace is called MediaWiki. But
it is used for purposes that have nothing to do with the software. That is
confusing (bad usability!) and should be changed.

There is really no significant added overhead in making it impossible to
create new MediaWiki: pages and having a separate Template: namespace. In
my opinion that is much more user-friendly and keeps interface
translation/adaption and content management separate.

Nick's idea of arbitrary inclusion requires some more discussion. It would
be more difficult to cache pages for inclusion. Right now we can load all
the articles in the MediWiki namespace into memcached, which is fairly
manageable. Once any article can be transcluded, we have to rely on the
database.

On the other hand, arbitraty inclusion would open some pretty neat
possibilities. It's very close to Ted Nelson's Xanadu visions. You could
start thinking about specifiers like {{include:Religion#2-}}, which would
include all sections except the intro from the religion article. Using
such mechanisms you could then build different views of an article (long,
detailed pages or smaller, more specific pages). Of course you'd also get
a whole barrel of new problems. Nevertheless, I think we should remain
open to the possibility while keeping caching in mind.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Robert Michel wrote:

>Salve,
>
>where does the peak of > 230 request/second came from?
>This is + > 100%.
>
>The German PR in one online magazin Spiegel.de was only +30%,
>and yesterdays TV repoprt in German First TV program ARD +20%
>what is it now?
>
>
If it's not Germany, maybe some bot running amok?


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] ony traffic jam - was: > 230 request/second - but no
 Wikipedia news on slashdot ; ) what is this?

body:
Salve Armin,

Am Donnerstag, 26. Februar 2004 15:00 schrieb Arvind Narayanan:
> > what is it now?
>
> I've been searching 'wikipedia' on news.google.com, there's
> nothing recent. Looks weird to me.

I had also checked news.google.com, slashdot, bbc, cnn bevore, but no results.
IMHO it was not another good PR - just a netork traffic jam. See
wikimedia.org/stats/live there was -50% reqests over some minutes bevore. So
every wikipedian tried to get a page for several times later. Must be a self
produced peak.

PR Peaks would have no brake down (-50%) before ;)

Sorry to have been to euphoric, but it was fun to see Wikipedia on one major
news-TV-show yesterday in Germany - watch the screenshot on:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Aktuelles
*g*

Greetings,
rob


body:
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote

>Sysophood is already too often withheld
from unpopular users (/users holding unpopular views).

Hang on - I haven't observed enough of the process to contradict this
statement; but why have votes if you don't want to expose people as
'unpopular'?  A recent VfA candidate had written some remarkably silly
things about British spelling on a talk page - I didn't vote either way, and
in the end it didn't matter, but this wasn't 'holding unpopular views' so
much as not giving a damn about opinions of a 'minority'.  People who wear
their opinions as a badge of honour obviously do risk not being taken
seriously for an admin job.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] HOWTOs/Recipes/Instructions and other imperativecontent

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote

<snip>

> Those with a passion for rule making need to understand the human
> consequences of their rule-making.  Today's rules fill many pages, and
> that is not to anybody's advantage.

Actually if you write that 'WP is to a large extent self-organizing, and it
is not easy to get an overview', it strikes me as more truthfully said, and
less a reason to be doomy.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Print edition

body:
Timwi,

It's too hard to keep a running list with more than 100 links.

How about an invisible marker like {ready for print} near the top of the
article text?

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recipes

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote

<snip>

> The war is between two competing visions of Wikipedia.  One side, the
> "deletionists", believes in deleting material which they consider to be
> diminishing the reputation and authoritative quality of Wikipedia.  The
> other side, the "inclusionists", believes that the purposes of Wikipedia
> are better served by having articles in an ever expanding sphere of
> knowledge defined in the broadest terms, even if it is in subjects that
> others may find trivial.  I am clearly in the latter camp.

I was fairly neutral about this - believing that the trivia/ephemera/popular
culture stuff is pretty harmless in its place.  Until a recent VfD
experience, that was, with a mathematical article where the 'keeps' really
couldn't know why the content was objectionable, and precisely 'diminishing'
to WP.  So there is more to it, and I have a beef with the 'radical'
inclusionist stand (not with the Power Rangers completists).

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recipes

body:
"Charles Matthews" <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> writes:

> Until a recent VfD experience, that was, with a mathematical article where
> the 'keeps' really couldn't know why the content was objectionable, and
> precisely 'diminishing' to WP.

Can you be more specific please, so we can look up what you're referring to.
--
Gareth Owen
"The best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity"


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recipes

body:
Gareth Owen wrote

> "Charles Matthews" writes
>
> > Until a recent VfD experience, that was, with a mathematical article
where
> > the 'keeps' really couldn't know why the content was objectionable, and
> > precisely 'diminishing' to WP.
>
> Can you be more specific please, so we can look up what you're referring
to.

Certainly - [[unifying conjecture]] survived VfD recently.  It was a load of
tendentious sociological twaddle by a once-notorious now-banned user.  It
seems that 'looks interesting' is enough in some quarters.  After the vote I
moved it to [[unifying theories in mathematics]], to give context to the one
sentence that wasn't pretty well false as it stood.  That's not a finished
article, though it's not bad, by the way.

Charles


from_name: mapellegrini at comcast.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Plautus

body:
"But some people are just not suitable for editing here, and that's
just a simple brute fact." --Jimbo

Then Jimbo, I'd like to ask you the same question I asked earlier - just
what does someone have to do to be banned? Drive multiple useful
contributors away? (Been there - Evercat and Finlay) Harass other users (Done that)  Convince virtually the entire community to ban you? (Yep) Reject all advice to follow the rules of the community (Again, yes).

Where do you draw the line between someone who says he'll change from someone who actually will? When do 'silly things' like hard evidence and overwhelming community opinion come into play?

--Mark Pellegrini
User:Raul654


subject: [WikiEN-l] The limits of mercy (was: Why so upset, Jumbo?)

body:
Would you reach out your hand to save a drowning man if you thought he
might pull you in?


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Print edition

body:
Timwi wrote:

> So, someone wanna start [[Wikipedia:Articles selected for print]] as
> well as [[Wikipedia:Print candidate articles]] (or [[Wikipedia:Vote
> for inclusion in print]] or whatever)?

I think it needs to be more systematic than that.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Plautus

body:
>Because arbitration is the end of a long, painful process that has taken
several weeks, if not months, to get there.  We keep getting promises that
something, somehow, will get accomplished, and we see absolutely zip.

RickK

I have to say I'm not someone who appreciates RickK's line here.  Can I ask
him whether he truly believes nothing will _ever_ come of this process?  Or
is it that he just feels that needling the arbitration committee will, by
some mysterious process, benefit Wikipedia?

Charles


body:
Talthen wasn't entirely wrong but I think something was lost in translation. In a work for hire the copyright is generally lost, at least in every jurisdiction I'm familiar with. However, the moral rights may well not be.

In some jurisdictions, perhaps those Talthen is familiar with, it's not possible to transfer moral rights and they remain with the creator. In others, they can be transferred independently of the copyright. And in the US, for textual works, moral rights barely exist at all and the issue almost doesn't exist for text.

US readers are probably not very familiar with the concept of moral rights and will probably understand this better after reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights .

So, Talthen was wrong but he did incidentally point to an area where there's significant international variation in law. Whether and to what extentthis matters to the Wikipedia is uncertain but it seems possible that there's a jurisdiction where the author, regardless of any contract with the Wikipedia, could insist on their moral rights in local courts and complicate life for the Wikipedia if it had a local affiliate which could be subject to legal judgements in that jurisdiction.

But this is all really pretty peripheral to the discussion of how varying laws relating to fair use, fair dealing and such interact with the GFDL.

I'm not a lawyer; this is not legal advice; it is, though an accurate description of the law - at least, in as much as anything can be accurate for several hundred different jurisdictions/countries at once.:)

-----Original Message-----
From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 17:10:05 -0800
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] What would Richard Stallman say? (IP users)

talthen at wp.pl wrote:
> > Whether the writer of the text is anonymous or not should have no
> > effect on these issues.  The writer holds the copyright unless it is a
> > work made for hire.
> Writer owns the copyright forever no matter what. Even if you made smth for
> hire, you still owns the copyright. Copyright is smth you can't sell, can't
> buy, can't lose. "Copyright by John Smith" means exactly: "John Smith has
> made this". It's just to state the fact.

Look, I appreciate people chiming in with information, but if you
don't know what you're talking about, please don't chime in as if you
are speaking authoritatively.  This is an unmoderated list, so you're
welcome to post, but really, I think a bit of restraint is in good
taste.

For the record, the stuff that talthen at wp.pl wrote is all completely
wrong, and has absolutely no applicability to anything we're
discussing.

And a lot of stuff that other people are writing, though I prefer not
to name names, is equally speculative and wrong.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] A compromise proposal for the Plautus issue

body:
Nobody is really debating that Plautus is a known vandal, that's a given by now. The only quesiton is what to do with him now. I'd like to offer a compromise.

Those of us aligned squarely in the
ban-him camp want him banned permanently and immediately. We feel that
Ed's noble efforts to reform him are doomed (if not already so
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tornado - "I feel you abused my trust,
Ed Poor, and for that reason you are not likely to get it again in the future.").
We are not willing to sit around waiting for the arbitration committee to get its
act together (however long that might be) while he is free to
vandalize articles and cause grief to other contributors.

By the same token, there are others who feel that vigilantism/unilaterialism is
bad; that the dispute resolution guidelines are worthless if we don't follow them.
This is also a very valid point.

I think both sides can be placated. I propose that we ban him, until such time
as the arbitration committee can get together and render a verdict. This would
remove much of the urgency from the issue. The arbitration commitee would be free
to go at whatever pace they want.

I think this is a fair way of giving both sides what they want. In legal terms,
think of it an emergency injunction. He'll get his due process, we in the community
will be protected from a known vandal.

--Mark Pellegrini
User:Raul654

PS: Jimbo, I didn't mean to give people the impression I was quoting you - I apologize. I was actually quoting Erik/Eloquence.


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Thu, Feb 26, 2004 at 03:10:07PM +0100, Robert Michel wrote:
> Salve,
>
> where does the peak of > 230 request/second came from?
> This is + > 100%.
>
> The German PR in one online magazin Spiegel.de was only +30%,
> and yesterdays TV repoprt in German First TV program ARD +20%
> what is it now?

Kuro5hin maybe ?


from_name: Lee Pilich

subject: Criticisms of arbitration (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Plautus)

body:
At 01:21 26/02/2004 -0800, Ec wrote:
>>Well, I can't say how long it will take, because I simply don't know, but
>>I sorely hope it will indeed be days rather than weeks. If we're not in a
>>position to decide on hearing cases directly (ie, not through Jimbo) by
>>this time next week then I'll be disappointed.
>>
>>The problem is that we're all volunteers, and we have other committments.
>>I've been very pressed for time recently and so unable to take part in
>>the discussion much, so it's not really fair for me to criticise the
>>slowness of the process. I honestly believe that the arbitrators as a
>>whole are going as fast as they can.
>
>I can't understand why accusers are so impatient about getting results
>from the arbitration committee.  One week would not be unduly long.
>Impatence should perhaps be taken as evidence that diminishes the
>impatient person's case.  Impatience puts unfair pressure on volunteer
>arbitrators.

Yes, but to be fair to our critics, they're not actually complaining about
the length of time it takes to decide on a case once we accept it (which,
as you say, is no more than a week). They're complaining about the fact
that it takes us so long to accept the case in the first place. We're still
not in a position to hear cases directly - we have to wait for Jimbo to
refer them to us. The critics are seeing this as causing an unnecessary
slow-down.

Of course, carefulness in making these decisions is no bad thing, and to be
careful you have to be slow to some degree. But the problem isn't exactly
that we're slow in making decisions as such; it's more that we're currently
slow in deciding whether to consider making a decision or not (does that
make sense?).

This is why I'm hoping we can complete our guidelines (or "policy" if you
like) in some form in the next few days so we don't have to rely on Jimbo
to refer cases to us. We can always refine the guidelines and our ways of
working as we learn from experience and get feedback from other users. Then
we can move on to all the other problems...

Lee (Camembert)


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration progress report #6

body:
sannse wrote:

>Is the arbitration committee going to make up their numbers by finding a
>replacement for Uninvited Company?
>
>If so, can I suggest (in an annoyingly PC way) that the new member is a
>woman.  As far as I know there are no women on the arbitration committee and
>I see no harm in balancing this a little.
>
>
Perhaps it shows my political leanings, but I don't really like that
approach.  Certainly we should have all opinions represented, and if
certain opinions are only represented by women, then we should have
women represented.  But we should represent all opinions, not based on
simple categorizations like gender, race, etc.---you can't assume that
someone has certain personality or characteristics because they're
female, or male, or hispanic, or whatnot (certainly most people I know
offline don't follow the stereotypes, and many fit 'opposite' roles
better).  As far as wikipedia goes, things like inclusionist vs.
deletionist, pro- vs. anti-banning, etc., are all more relevant
distinctions by at least an order of magnitude.

So if there's a woman on the arbitration committee (or multiple women),
it should be because of who they are, not just because we wanted to
throw a token woman on there.  Which, fortunately, is how Wikipedia
normally works---I often can't tell if someone is male or female until
it gets mentioned long after I've interacted with them for a while, and
there's some surprises (for whatever reason, I thought that evercat was
female, and that anthere was male).

And, FWIW, we allowed *everyone* on a committee who wanted to be on
one.  So at the moment the reason there are no women is because no women
volunteered.  If someone wants to volunteer, male or female, we could
use an extra member to keep the numbers at the right level, so talk to
Mr. Wales asap. =]

-Mark


from_name: David Speakman

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: recipes

body:
> Peter Jaros wrote:

I suppose I am in my own camp, or perhaps a deletionist sympathizer in
the inclusionist camp.  To stretch the word "sympathizer" a bit.

I am in favor "an ever expanding sphere of knowledge defined in the
broadest terms".  What I am wary of is becoming the Unedited Guide at
h2g2.  This is the body of entries not in the Edited Guide,
encompassing works-in-progress, community pages, and random junk.
Random junk is fine in a system with an Edited distinction, but here
everything is in the main product.

Peter

----
Begin Davodd comment:

Maybe folks with a passionate interest in this area can work on updating

[[Wikipedia:WikiProject Food and Drink]]
to include format suggestions for historical, geographic or cultural
importance
In addition to the How-to element.

Davodd
--
David Speakman
http://www.DavidSpeakman.com


body:
Jeff Meyer wrote:

>I am looking at putting something together that would be targeted at K-12,
>but might have some nice tie-ins.
>
>The plan is to deliver an easily searchable repository (content & searchable
>clearinghouse) of quality map content to cover the entirety of human
>history. Along with it would be a freely distributable, open source map
>player. People could then link their existing maps, add modifications, build
>new map content, etc.
>
>There are a lot of reasons why a text-based search metaphor doesn't work
>well for map-based data and why a lot of the maps on the web fall short of
>current technologies potential for delivering better map-based experiences.
>
>
If you have a way to do this, or get it started, by all means start
adding high-quality maps to Wikipedia!  If it's specialized content that
doesn't fit in Wikipedia, you can start a Wikibook as well.

I for one would love to see maps of the Roman Empire's extent every 50
years through its history, to name just one example, and possibly these
could be put into an animation of some sort as well (though to keep
things flexible for technologically-impaired browsers and possible
printed versions, we should probably have map snapshots illustrating the
article as well as a link to the animated map).

Is that the sort of thing you had in mind?  If so, it's something I've
been looking for for a while, but I have no idea how one would go about
creating that sort of thing.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Evidence which surfaces during mediation

body:
At 19:15 26/02/2004 +0100, Anthere wrote:
>Fred Bauder a ?crit:
>>Evidence regarding what went on in mediation is inadmissible in
>>arbitration. That allows folks to talk candidly with the mediators about
>>their actions and feelings without that information being thrown up to
>>them later.  This is pretty much standard procedure anywhere mediation is used.
>>Fred Bauder, member of the arbitration committtee
>
>Even in case the people involved want the information public ?

Obviously, if everybody is happy for the info to be made public, then it
can be. I think Fred's point was a general one: people should be able to
feel confident that mediation will occur in private if that's what they
want, and that nothing they say during mediation will come back to bite them.

Lee (Camembert)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Print edition

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>
>> It's too hard to keep a running list with more than 100 links.
>>
>> How about an invisible marker like {ready for print} near the top of the
>> article text?
>
> I think we need to split out versions somewhere else, because we're
> looking for concise articles, not full encyclopedia articles.  Simply
> marking [[World War II]] as "ready for print" doesn't do anything
> towards getting us a good one-to-two-paragraph summary of World War II.

Agreed.  Simply marking an article as "ready for print" would
effectively freeze it from further editing.  The living Wikipedia
article needs to be continually editable so that the version that is on
the 2nd printed edition can show further improvements.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Mapping complement to Wikipedia?

body:
Hi Mark -
You've sort of hit the nail on the head of what I'm envisioning.

While the tool I'm thinking about might need to be a fat client or a heavy
Java plug-in, I agree that it would need to be able to provide output to
tech-challenged browsers.

Side note: the interesting thing about picking a fixed interval for
animations is that a lot of weird stuff can take place in that gap, but
that's a problem for a little further down the road.

If you're looking for a cool application that comes close to what I have in
mind, check out: www.timemap.net.

As for Wikipedia integration, I think there are some challenges to working
with map-based data that would make just contributing maps to Wikipedia a
partial solution. That said, hopefully we can get a more sophisticated
solution to generate maps and linked objects for the Wikipedia and then
crank out what we need as content is contributed.
- Jeff

"Delirium" <delirium at rufus.d2g.com> wrote in
message news:403EA598.8060706 at rufus.d2g.com...
> If you have a way to do this, or get it started, by all means start
> adding high-quality maps to Wikipedia!  If it's specialized content that
> doesn't fit in Wikipedia, you can start a Wikibook as well.
>
> I for one would love to see maps of the Roman Empire's extent every 50
> years through its history, to name just one example, and possibly these
> could be put into an animation of some sort as well (though to keep
> things flexible for technologically-impaired browsers and possible
> printed versions, we should probably have map snapshots illustrating the
> article as well as a link to the animated map).
>
> Is that the sort of thing you had in mind?  If so, it's something I've
> been looking for for a while, but I have no idea how one would go about
> creating that sort of thing.
>
> -Mark


body:
Hi Peter -
I'm thinking of maps as any sort of data that is described with correlation
to some geographic background.
Could be a totally geo-based map, like terrain information, or thematic,
political, etc. maps.
Does that help?
- Jeff

"Peter Jaros" <rjaros at shaysnet.com> wrote in
message news:D3C3E072-68C6-11D8-930E-000A27B3913C at shaysnet.com...
> On Feb 26, 2004, at 6:05 PM, Jeff Meyer wrote:
>
> > Has anyone looked into or heard anything about a map-based complement
> > to the
> > Wikipedia?
>
> Could you please explain what you mean by 'map'?
>
> Peter
>
>                                   -- ---<>--- --
>                         A house without walls cannot fall.
>            Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
>                                   -- ---<>--- --


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Plautus

body:
cprompt a ?crit:
> On Wed, 2004-02-25 at 19:39, Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>
>>This situation is much clearer than it was with Clutch, and Clutch was
>>banned.  It is much clearer than it was with Helga, and Helga was banned.
>>It is much clearer than it was with Lir, and Lir was banned.
>
> Something interesting to note: Lir is unbanned, he doesn't not
> participate in reversion wars.

Facts to ensure truth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA
http://en.wikipedia/org/wiki/Nucleic acid


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Where the Power Lies

body:
Any accusee has the right to be heard for defense in the real world.
This takes time. In France, it can take years. 2 weeks is a minimum :-)

When there is very strong suspicion of crime, he can be maintained in
jail before the trial actually occur.

Rick a ?crit:
> That's ridiculous.  TWO WEEKS?  When a logged-in user is causing chaos
> and an attempt by anyone to do something about it will lead to THEIR
> being banned or having their sysop privileges taken away?  That is NOT
> hasty, that's molasses slow.  I see no reason why anything more than
> three days is necessary.
>
> RickK
>
> Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
>     I think the way you hold power in your own hands it that you, who are in
>     contact with the problem, can initiate the conflict resolution
>     procedure,
>     beginning with talking to the party, asking for mediation, then
>     arbitration.
>
>     The arbitration committee (who if they are careful, are not in
>     contact with
>     the situation, at least not slugging it out) can if a case comes to us,
>     rather rapidly decide a matter and prescribe a remedy. (A week or two is
>     very rapid indeed in this context, even hasty).
>
>     Fred Bauder, member of the arbitration committee
>
>      > From: Anthere
>      > Reply-To: anthere8 at yahoo.com, English Wikipedia
>      > Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 08:43:36 +0100
>      > To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>      > Subject: [W ikiEN-l] Re: Plautus
>      >
>      >
>      >
>      > Martin Harper a ?crit:
>      >> Arno M wrote:
>      >>
>      >>> When will something be done?
>      >>
>      >>
>      >> Brian Corr wrote:
>      >>
>      >>> Could someone give an update on a timeline for action?
>      >>
>      >>
>      >> Something will be done about Plautus when you do something about
>      >> Plautus. The timeline for action on Plautus is roughly:
>      >> 1) You decide to act.
>      >> 2) You act.
>      >
>      > I liked your answer
>      > But...I have another question
>      >
>      > Some people think that something should be done about Lir.
>      >
>      > Question they ask : When will something be done ?
>      >
>      >
>      >
>      > Answer they received from UserA :
>      > * There is no problem with user Lir. So, you have no problem
>      >
>      > ====> Answer of the type : your opinion is irrelevant
>      >
>      >
>      >
>      > Answer they received from UserB :
>      > * We are busy thinking about the matter. Please be patient, do not do
>      > anything, we'll fix the problem for you, that is our job
>      >
>      > ====> Answer of the type : please, hold on, you are not in charge, we
>      > are in charge. Go back to your own business
>      >
>      >
>      > ---------
>      >
>      > Still, nothing happen
>      >
>      > ---------
>      >
>      >
>      > What they do
>      > 1) They decide to act.
>      > 2) They act.
>      >
>      > Answer they received from UserC
>      > * Your action was incorrect. You are out of the game. Next time,
>     refer
>      > to suggestion of UserB instead of trying to decide and act by
>     yourself.
>      >
>      >
>      > -------
>      >
>      > Comment from Anthere
>      >
>      > When general guidelines are inconsistant, and that half of people say
>      > ''you are in charge, take charge'' and the half say ''do not do
>      > anything, those who have responsa bility here will take care of the
>      > matter for you'', is there proper consistancy in our message ?
>      >
>      > The vaccum cleaner hole is more than a hole.
>      > People just do not know, whether they should refer to a group of user
>      > from now on to fix their problems
>      > Or if they should manage to deal with problems themselves
>      >
>      > -------
>      >
>      > So, yes, that is a good answer, but at least people from the
>     arbitration
>      > committee should be consistant in their answer, to those of us
>     who are
>      > wondering what action power we still hold. At least, to know whether
>      > your answer, Martin, is the correct one, or the incorrect one.
>      >
>      > (I can have my own answer, but I suppose I would be the one to find
>      > myself in front of arbitration if I applied it, so will I dare ?)
>      >
>      >
>      >
>      >
>      >
>      >
>      >
>      >
>      >
>      > _______________________________________________
>      > WikiEN-l mailing list
>      > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>      > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>     _______________________________________________
>     WikiEN-l mailing list
>     WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>     http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Get better spam protection with Yahoo! Mail
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>
>
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from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Where the Power Lies

body:
So where is the Wikipedia jail?  Right now, the accuseds are allowed to continue what they were doing, willy-nilly.

RickK

Anthere <anthere8 at yahoo.com> wrote:
Any accusee has the right to be heard for defense in the real world.
This takes time. In France, it can take years. 2 weeks is a minimum :-)

When there is very strong suspicion of crime, he can be maintained in
jail before the trial actually occur.

Rick a ?crit:
> That's ridiculous. TWO WEEKS? When a logged-in user is causing chaos
> and an attempt by anyone to do something about it will lead to THEIR
> being banned or having their sysop privileges taken away? That is NOT
> hasty, that's molasses slow. I see no reason why anything more than
> three days is necessary.
>
> RickK
>
> Fred Bauder wrote:
>
> I think the way you hold power in your own hands it that you, who are in
> contact with the problem, can initiate the conflict resolution
> procedure,
> beginning with talking to the party, asking for mediation, then
> arbitration.
>
> The arbitration committee (who if they are careful, are not in
> contact with
> the situation, at least not slugging it out) can if a case comes to us,
> rather rapidly decide a matter and prescribe a remedy. (A week or two is
> very rapid indeed in this context, even hasty).
>
> Fred Bauder, member of the arbitration committee
>
> > From: Anthere
> > Reply-To: anthere8 at yahoo.com, English Wikipedia
> > Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 08:43:36 +0100
> > To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> > Subject: [W ikiEN-l] Re: Plautus
> >
> >
> >
> > Martin Harper a ?crit:
> >> Arno M wrote:
> >>
> >>> When will something be done?
> >>
> >>
> >> Brian Corr wrote:
> >>
> >>> Could someone give an update on a timeline for action?
> >>
> >>
> >> Something will be done about Plautus when you do something about
> >> Plautus. The timeline for action on Plautus is roughly:
> >> 1) You decide to act.
> >> 2) You act.
> >
> > I liked your answer
> > But...I have another question
> >
> > Some people think that something should be done about Lir.
> >
> > Question they ask : When will something be done ?
> >
> >
> >
> > Answer they received from UserA :
> > * There is no problem with user Lir. So, you have no problem
> >
> > ====> Answer of the type : your opinion is irrelevant
> >
> >
> >
> > Answer they received from UserB :
> > * We are busy thinking about the matter. Please be patient, do not do
> > anything, we'll fix the problem for you, that is our job
> >
> > ====> Answer of the type : please, hold on, you are not in charge, we
> > are in charge. Go back to your own business
> >
> >
> > ---------
> >
> > Still, nothing happen
> >
> > ---------
> >
> >
> > What they do
> > 1) They decide to act.
> > 2) They act.
> >
> > Answer they received from UserC
> > * Your action was incorrect. You are out of the game. Next time,
> refer
> > to suggestion of UserB instead of trying to decide and act by
> yourself.
> >
> >
> > -------
> >
> > Comment from Anthere
> >
> > When general guidelines are inconsistant, and that half of people say
> > ''you are in charge, take charge'' and the half say ''do not do
> > anything, those who have responsa bility here will take care of the
> > matter for you'', is there proper consistancy in our message ?
> >
> > The vaccum cleaner hole is more than a hole.
> > People just do not know, whether they should refer to a group of user
> > from now on to fix their problems
> > Or if they should manage to deal with problems themselves
> >
> > -------
> >
> > So, yes, that is a good answer, but at least people from the
> arbitration
> > committee should be consistant in their answer, to those of us
> who are
> > wondering what action power we still hold. At least, to know whether
> > your answer, Martin, is the correct one, or the incorrect one.
> >
> > (I can have my own answer, but I suppose I would be the one to find
> > myself in front of arbitration if I applied it, so will I dare ?)
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Code at the head branch seems to be broken

body:
On Thu, 26 Feb 2004 12:40:35 -0500, Nick Pisarro wrote:

> Is there more to be done?
>
> The following code in Parser.php starting at line 165 has a problem. The
> 'else' needs a left brace following it. But even fixing that there are
> execution errors.--Nick Pisarro

<Me too>
--
Gabriel Wicke


body:
I vote against

It is not one admin who should decide that
The community should
In case of urgency, there should be a poll, and if say 80% agree, the
guy is temp banned by a sysop

A sysop is not there to take decision for the rest of the community, he
is there at the service of the community. If the community widely wishes
a temp ban, a sysop will appropriately act as the community wishes.

If a sysop is allowed to unilateraly, temporarily ban of user, free of
any later accusation, I ask that

* from now on, no person is made sysop with less than 100% agreement
from the community
* that any sysop time is temporary, let's say 6 months. After 6 months,
the sysop should be reconfirmed. If any user oppose a vote to his
nomination, he should not be a sysop any more.

The sysop voice should not hold more weight than another user voice. The
sysop position does not allow to take decisions unilateraly. The sysop
is not a cop, allowed to pull out a gun whenever he feels like it, and
get out of it free.

Rick a ?crit:
> I vote for admins to have the authority to temp-ban any user.
>
> RickK
>
> "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
>
>     Erik (Eloquence) has called for a 'return to vigilantism'. I oppose
>     this. Let's vote.
>
>     How many people want admins to have the Authority to temp-ban any user
>     who (in their opinion) has violated a community rule? (Confession: This
>     is precisely what I did myself with Wik a couple of weeks ago, so there
>     is, er, "blood on my hands").
>
>     How many people want to decisions on banning (except for clear-cut
>     "simple vandalism" or "emergencies") to be handled Only By The
>     Arbitration Committee?
>
>     1. Please clarify whether you agree that these are the two alternatives.
>     2. Please indicate which alternative you want.
>
>     If enough of us on the mailing list have strong feelings about this, I
>     will create a policy polling page on the English Wikipedia, and we
>     cansee if a consensus develops that merits a change in policy.
>
>     Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed
>
>     P.S. I'm trying to be impartial about this, even though I have an
>     opinion.
>     _______________________________________________
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>
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Where the Power Lies

body:
Rick wrote:

> So where is the Wikipedia jail?  Right now, the accuseds are allowed
> to continue what they were doing, willy-nilly.

To summarize the matters currently under consideration:
* Plautus Satire is currently temp-banned for a week pending a decision
in his case, as Jimbo did so, and there was significant consensus that
this should be done.
* Irismeister was banned for 3 days or so, but is currently unbanned,
and his case is being considered.  He is not currently temp-banned
pending review partly because it seems we have no good way of deciding
when there's a consensus to do so, besides Jimbo doing it, and partly
because it's a lot easier for him to add material in his defense to the
pages where we ask him to add such material if he's not banned.
* Wik was banned by various users for various periods, and is currently
unbanned, and his case is being considered.  He is not currently
temp-banned pending review because there is no consensus that his
behavior is worthy of censure---the comments at
[[Wikipedia:Matter_of_Wik#Statements_by_others]] are 4 in favor of
banning him, 3 opposed to banning him, and 1 neutral.

-Mark


body:
Fred Bauder a ?crit:
> Evidence regarding what went on in mediation is inadmissible in
> arbitration. That allows folks to talk candidly with the mediators about
> their actions and feelings without that information being thrown up to
> them later.  This is pretty much standard procedure anywhere mediation
> is used.
>
> Fred Bauder, member of the arbitration committtee

Even in case the people involved want the information public ?

My, what a loss of time then...And a loss of energy.

(I fear there is something broken in the process. I regret deeply
Alex756 is not there anymore to help)

Never mind then.
I said nothing


subject: [WikiEN-l] Vigilantism or due process (was: Plautus)

references:
<1077806236.32294.18.camel@myhome.home>
	<E506B3FF6BC1254C9AC1B948C380BC280217F4F9@sm-nyny-xm05.nena.wdpr.disney.com>
	<r5ibrnm53tk.fsf@gill.maths.keele.ac.uk>
	<1077806236.32294.18.camel@myhome.home>

body:
At 14:44 26/02/2004 +0000, Gareth wrote:
>It strikes me that the only (partially) succesful rehabilitation of a
>troublemaking user (Lir) came through a ban, rather than any "arbitration."
>The addition of a layer of committees and bureaucracy has not, as far as I can
>tell, achieved anything of any note.

I don't think the committees are supposed to be achieving anything new,
really, so if they achieved anything of note, it wouldn't necessarily be a
good thing...

Think back to 18 months ago: if there was a very serious dispute that was
causing a lot of trouble, then Jimbo would talk to the involved parties and
try to resolve it. If it couldn't be resolved and the problem really was
serious, then he might ban somebody. I think this system worked well.

Now Jimbo has said that he wants to slowly withdraw from having such a big
role in these sorts of decisions (him doing everything wasn't scalable in
any case). So we have the mediation committee which exists to amicably
resolve disputes between arguing parties, and the arbitration committee
which exists to consider bans or other binding solutions in serious cases.
They're just doing the same job that Jimbo used to do on his own.

The past couple of months have been a bit rough. We've had some dodgy users
come along and cause some upset, and those people they've upset haven't
seen any clear way to complain and get something done about the situation.
Hopefully the committees will give them a way. Yes, it's another layer of
beaurocracy, and yes that's awful, but we've got to deal with these
problems somehow, and I'm not sure there's a credible alternative at the
moment (vigilantism may solve one problem but it creates another).

We've got to remember that the nature of the Wikipedia is such that there
will always be conflict to some degree, and there will always be trouble.
There's no magic way to stop it altogether. We're in the business of damage
limitation really, and that's no easy task either.

Lee (Camembert, off to write some articles)


from_name: Arvind Narayanan

in_reply_to:
<200402261510.07337.news@RobertMichel.de>;
	from news@RobertMichel.de on Thu, Feb 26, 2004 at 03:10:07PM +0100

body:
On Thu, Feb 26, 2004 at 03:10:07PM +0100, Robert Michel wrote:
> Salve,
>
> where does the peak of > 230 request/second came from?
> This is + > 100%.
And I'm getting > 1 min access times and timeouts. I guess
I'm not the only one?
>
> The German PR in one online magazin Spiegel.de was only +30%,
> and yesterdays TV repoprt in German First TV program ARD +20%
> what is it now?
I've been searching 'wikipedia' on news.google.com, there's
nothing recent. Looks weird to me.

Arvind
--
Its all GNU to me


from_name: Plautus Satire

subject: [WikiEN-l] rebuttal

body:
I intend to use this forum to present my defense. My primary contention is that I was banned due to a perversion of the discuss-mediate-arbitrate-ban process, which henceforth I will refer to as the "paint by numbers ban procedure". In my defense I will attempt to explain clearly and succinctly why I feel this process was perverted, nay, subverted, and in particular how my attempt to use this process to peacefully settle disputes was perverted and turned against me.

Codie Vickers


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New magic variables?

body:
Nick Pisarro wrote:

> Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org> writes:
>
>>Additionally, I really don't think it should be possible to include any
>>article in any other article. An article should be clearly marked as
>>being "includable" (which it is by being in the MediaWiki namespace). I
>>don't know if it is currently possible to place a {{msg:}} inside a page
>>on the MediaWiki namespace, but I believe that should be disallowed to
>>prevent circular references (infinite recursion).
>
> If you did implement this feature, as you build up the page you *would*
> have to watch for circular references. You could do this by stacking the
> fully qualified names of what your in the middle of including and make
> sure the new file isn't already on the stack.

It would still be possible to create a ridiculously long chain.

> You should really do this anyway if there is nested inclusion now.

Yes, I agree. I don't know if this is done.

> Marking an article as includable is a thought, but how would you do that?

It's already possible. By putting the "article" into the MediaWiki
namespace.

> You could restrict your inclusion to a special "Templates" name space,

That namespace already exists, except it's called "MediaWiki".

Timwi