from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
geni schreef:
> On 1/25/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I can't find the exact source, but Alan Cox, the Linux kernel
>> developer, said that he was learning Welsh because "in fifty years,
>> languages that aren't on computers won't exist." I suggest that
>> applies to languages without Wikipedias too. Do you think this can be
>> leveraged to invoke some local linguistic pride and work?
>>
>>
>
> After the Montenegrin mess do you really want to risk the forces of
> linguistic pride getting involved?
>
> In any case it isn't true. With have the data storage capacity today
> to make sure lanaguages don't cease to exist but the internet pushes
> us towards the situtation where they will be only one living language.
> Personaly I don't have a problem with this.
Hoi,
The refusal of the Montenegrin was not a mess. Furthermore this matter
is not closed with the denial of this project.

I sincerely hope that your vision of the future will never happen. To me
is is a horrible view of the future. One single language with many
cultures doomed as a result. No thanks. NB where to go on a holiday,
every thing is the same ... BRRRR

Thanks,
     GerardM


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Promotion of Indian languages


list: wikien-l

from_name: Omegatron

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]

body:
On 1/25/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> New York Times uses with permission for New York Times only. We don't.
>

"We did", you mean.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikigovernment

body:
On 1/25/07, ? Firefoxman <enwpmail at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wait, still wrong. Try

Ah, the joys of plain text email.

Welcome to 2007, Internet users!


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Wikitech-l] Protection expiration

body:
On 23/01/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Another of Werdna's contributions: page protections can now have an
> expiration time added. The accepted input format is the same as for
> custom block times.

I presume leaving 'Expiry' blank makes it infinite, like previously?
Maybe it would be good to change the text to 'Expiry (optional)' or
'Expiry (leave blank for indefinite protection)' to make the behaviour
clearer.

cheers
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikigovernment

body:
> Wait, still wrong. Try
>
> Ah, the joys of plain text email.
>
> Welcome to 2007, Internet users!

Isn't there some way we can get this list in HTML or at least rich text?
--Mets501


from_name: Andrew Garrett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Protection expiration

body:
Brianna (pfctdayelise) wrote:
>
> I presume leaving 'Expiry' blank makes it infinite, like previously?
> Maybe it would be good to change the text to 'Expiry (optional)' or
> 'Expiry (leave blank for indefinite protection)' to make the behaviour
> clearer.
>
> cheers
> Brianna
> user:pfctdayelise
>
Well, I need to rewrite that part to be more like blocking anyway, simply
because it's not localisable, it's a bad user interface, and because of the
reason you mentioned.

More evidence as to the investigation about Brion's stolen crack stash :-)

Andrew Garrett
(Werdna)


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] The downside of creating perfect articles

body:
On 25/01/07, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Mmm. Could you put it on-wiki? The enormous redlink farms are
> > occasionally a decent incentive to do something, and if nothing else
> > they help give an idea of what's still out there.
>
> You want a redlink farm?  Try
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:TUF-KAT/Topics_by_country

Cor, that's demoralising. (Though I think their name-syntax may be a
little off in some cases)

FWIW, the lists I was thinking of were on Charles Matthew's page: see
the huge list of lists near the bottom of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Charles_Matthews

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
geni wrote:

>On 1/25/07, Jeff Raymond wrote:
>
>
>>geni wrote:
>>
>>
>>>False.
>>>
>>>It includes elements of law so beautifully complex in their
>>>construction that a lifetime of study would hardly scratch the surface
>>>
>>>
>>False.  Our fair use policy is rooted in copyright paranoia.
>>
>>
>No it isn't. In any case I wasn't talking about "fair use".
>
Fair use is only one small corner of copyright law.  In many respects I
agree with both of you.  International copyright law as we know it is
incredibly complex, but adopting a policy based on lowest common
denominatior of risk aversion is paranoia at the same time.  Risk
frightens most people, and they would prefer not to take any at all.
It's no wonder that the risk averse will win nearly every time the
matter comes to a vote somewhere.

That being said, and as important as discussions about copyright are. at
this juncture they tend to set this important discussion off on a
tangent.  The need (or lack of need) to deal with sourcing issues will
still be there with or without copyritght material.

Ec


from_name: Roberto Alfonso

subject: [WikiEN-l] Forget worries about [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:CITE]]...

body:
On 1/25/07, Christopher Thieme <cdthieme at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> ...NUKE [[WP:CIVIL]] as it's unworkable, increases uncivil conduct, and
> encourages hypocrisy.
>
> And I am serious.  I also think [[WP:GA]] is incorrigible and
> unredeemable,
> that is has lost it's credibility and is better put out of its misery
> instead of remaining a mockery of its good intentions.
>
> Regards,
> Christopher D. Thieme
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Support. Delete [[WP:CIVIL]] and [[WP:NPA]] because they incentive users
to be uncivil and give them ideas about personal attacks per [[WP:BEANS]].

Joking,
RB


from_name: Thomas Dalton

body:
> There are more citations per article in Wikipedia than in Brittanica.
> Is Brittanica an unreliable source?

We know who wrote Britannica. We can (or at least, should be able to -
let's not get into a discussion about the actual reliability of
Britannica) trust that their authors really do know what they're
talking about, and even if they are writing from memory, their memory
is more reliable than that of a random Wikipedia user we know nothing
about. (Not necessarily more accurate, but it is more reliable.)


body:
> If you want to fundamentally change the whole concept and policies of
> the project, why not just start a fork?  Isn't that what Citizendium,
> Wikinfo, Digital Universe, and so on are trying to do?

He isn't trying to change the policies. WP:CITE and WP:RS are current
policies - it's the people that want to relax those policies that are
trying the change policies. Perhaps they should fork?


body:
Bogdan Giusca wrote:

>Thursday, January 25, 2007, 6:25:38 PM, Ken wrote:
>
>
>>WP:CITE and WP:RS are unreasonably easy to abuse
>>
>>
>What you call "abuse", others call improval of the sourcing and
>of the verifiability, and of therefore the credibility of Wikipedia.
>
What you are supporting is a what-do-the-neighbors-think kind of
credibility.

>From my experience on Wikipedia, almost all the criticism on the
>Reliable Sources requirements comes from people who edit mostly
>articles on anime, webcomics, furry subculture, internet memes
>and the like.
>
I am critical of them but do not write about any of the subjects you note.

>Those areas are not the core of an encyclopedia and protecting those
>areas should should not result in the compromising the rest of
>Wikipedia.
>
>We can't have two sets of rules: one for cruft and one for the rest.
>
Your use of the word "cruft" suggests that your opinion is not unbiased

>There are plenty of wikis for obscure stuff which fail our current
>policies on verifiability.
>
When was obscurity ever a criterion?

Ec


from_name: Guettarda

body:
On 1/25/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/25/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > From my experience on Wikipedia, unsourced articles are very
> unreliable
> > > > and may have plenty of wrong facts. Most of thse wrong facts are not
> > > > added due to malice (though that is not uncommon), but they were
> > > > added by people either from their (inevitable unreliable) memories,
> > > > from blogs and forums, which, on average have an awful lack of
> > > > accuracy or they are simply misinterpretations.
> > >
> > > From my experience with Wikipedia, unsourced articles are generally
> > > very accurate and moderately precise.  When I find them in areas for
> > > which I'm familiar with the body of knowledge and reliable sources, I
> > > will spend time to go find the appropriate citations and sources as
> > > time allows, to "back up" the already existing content with
> > > appropriate references.
> >
> > "Accurate" and "reliable" are not synonymous. Just because the article
> > happens to have everything right does not make it reliable, because
> > there is no way for you to know that it has everything right.
>
> There are more citations per article in Wikipedia than in Brittanica.
> Is Brittanica an unreliable source?

Yes, it is an unreliable source.  I would never cite Brittanica in an
academic paper, nor would I know how to find a reliable source for something
I read in Brittanica.  On the other hand, there are lots of Wikipedia
articles which can point me towards a source I would use in a paper.

That's what really matters - can an encyclopaedia article give you a good
introduction to a subject and point you towards a truly useful source?  If
it can't, it's just a toy.

I already know that Wikipedia is not completely reliable.  Insisting
> on source citations isn't going to fix that - someone could put in a
> citation that's bogus, or put one in that says something other than
> what they say, or put one in that they misinterpret, because they
> aren't an expert on the field.  All three of these things have
> happened to articles I have edited at one time or another.  I can't
> trust the citations, because I can't trust the identity and accuracy
> of the contributors who added them.  I'd have to go fact-check every
> source for an article to be really sure, and that scales pretty
> horribly.
>
>
> --
> -george william herbert
> george.herbert at gmail.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: George Herbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] school articles : enough

body:
On 1/25/07, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
> The Cunctator a ?crit :
> > Is this really a Foundation-level issue?
> The problem is that complaints about school articles generate a steady
> flow to OTRS, which is picked up by Foundation volunteers. Then, the
> decisions of these volunteers are challenged.

There needs to be more visibility into these problems by the community
at large.  First I'd heard that OTRS was seeing lots of school-related
complaints.

Can you describe in more detail what types of complaints?

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:

>>I recently wrote a stub on [[Heliophorus]], a genus of butterflies. It
>>links the existing article on its subfamily with the existing articles
>>of the species. As the subfamily article only lists genera, my new
>>article is the only way to go from the subfamily article to the
>>individual species. It is therefore useful, even though it contains
>>nothing more than a partial list of species.
>>
>>I created this list from wikipedia: it just contains all species that
>>have an article. If I had to list my source, it would have been
>>"Wikipedia", which is Not Acceptable, and would have been removed (I
>>guess). So I left it unsourced.
>>
>>
>Your article is basically a list - using Wikipedia as the source for a
>list is generally accepted. As long as the articles you link to have
>sources, then the sources don't need to be stated on the list.
>
This seems contrary to a recent thread about a list of people
responsible for the death of someone else. O:-)
I made the same argument at the time.  Accepting that such criteria may
be valid in some circumstances should not imply that the requirement
should be there for all circumstnaces.

Ec


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Change my name?

body:
I think Firefox and FireFox are much more of a "similar name problem". I
wouldn't worry unless too many people make the mistake.

Mgm

On 1/25/07, ? Firefoxman <enwpmail at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks!
>
> On 1/25/07, Mets501 <mets501wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > I have been contributing for a while, and I wonder if I should change
> my
> > name since it is so simmilar to FireFox.
> > >
> > > --
> > > -Firefoxman
> >
> > You can if you want, but there's so many similar names there's no big
> > hurry;
> > we have User:Firefox and User:FireFox as two separate people already.
> > --Mets501
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> -Firefoxman
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Steve Block wrote:

>Phil Sandifer wrote:
>
>
>>We should nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]. They are not working. They
>>have never worked. It is not a feasible project to go and add sources
>>to everything, and new contributors who are editing casually are
>>never going to be willing to do the extra work of having sources. The
>>result is a rule where we are always going to be playing catch-up.
>>
>>
>In all honesty if that happens I will probably walk.
>
The problem with this kind of argument as the very first one in a series
of comments is that it makes me feel blackmailed by whatever follows.  I
am disinclined to read further because because I feel that the
motivation for what follows will not be based on the objective issue,
but on finding reasons to keep you here.

Ec


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] school articles : enough

body:
Well, if we have articles for towns with just 2 inhabitants just
because RamBot made them, and as long as we're allowing articles for
Swedish towns with over 25K inhabitants, I don't see the issue with
allowing articles for all high schools with more than 25K Current
students+Living Alumni. If not that, you could set a higher boundary,
like 50K. (I didn't count dead alumni because they're dead and
frankly, dead people don't count. absentees can vote, as can expats,
at least in many countries, but dead people can't vote anywhere)

Really, just because they're voting to delete it at AfD doesn't mean
it deserves to be deleted. The article deletion mechanism on Wikipedia
is badly broken -- this is no better than [[Wikipedia:Quickpolls]] (I
wonder who around here remembers those? fun, fun, fun) except for the
deletion of pages. It's mob rule of things that shouldn't be ruled by
a mob (just because the 50 people on AfD haven't heard of it and can't
find it in their google searches does not mean it doesn't belong in an
encyclopaedia.)

Speaking of deletion... Despite what the Wikipedia article about the
Pok?mon argument says about the articles having been "improved", most
of the Pok?mon articles still have much less information than they
should to be allowed to be kept, imho, considering there are over 400
of the critters (back when I cared about them, there were 151, and for
a few months before I lost interest, 251), and many of them have
either 1) never been mentioned on the anime and are unimportant to the
plots of any of the games or 2) have only been mentioned in one
episode on the anime and are totally unimportant in the plots of the
games. I'm not sure why we can't combine them all into 4 or so
Pok?dex-type articles, with ''Main article: [[THIS POKEMON]]'' for the
ones that really _are_ notable and have information about them.

Mark

On 25/01/07, David Goodman <dgoodmanny at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/25/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The thing about high schools is that they have alumni. A particularly
> > large high school could have, I don't know, maybe 50,000 alumni? How
> > off am I?
> >
> > Anyhow, just because not that many people go to it *right now* does
> > not mean it's not notable. Junior high schools, elementary schools,
> > sure, but larger-volume schools that have upwards of 1000 students at
> > any given time are certainly notable.
> >
> > We may not have someone to maintain them, but that's because while we
> > have RamBot, we don't have SchoolBot. Maybe we should. (and unlike
> > city/town articles, we'd also need a SchoolAntiVandalBot to monitor
> > all the changes to those articles... the problem with high schools is
> > that those most interested in them tend to be their current students,
> > and their current students tend to include a large percentage of
> > dipshit vandals).
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 25/01/07, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> > > David Monniaux wrote:
> > >
> > > > But there's no reason we should have an article on my neighbouring
> > > > highschool, unless we also want articles on every company or organization...
> > >
> > > However, this "unless" is problematic.  A printed encyclopedia in
> > > 20 volumes can only contain so many articles, and has to cut off
> > > the long tail.  Wikipedia is far bigger and steadily growing.
> > > Small towns with 25,000 inhabitants in Sweden would never have an
> > > article in Encyclopaedia Britannica, but now have articles in the
> > > English Wikipedia, and everybody seem to agree that they *are*
> > > sufficiently notable.  So where is the limit drawn?  Should the
> > > three schools in that town also have articles? Maybe the answer
> > > is: Not now, when Wikipedia only has 1.6 million articles, because
> > > these schools are not among the 1.6 million most notable objects
> > > in this world.  But in five years time, when Wikipedia has 20
> > > million articles, this might be different.
> > >
> > > Maybe if the article is added now, and in five years time it is
> > > still one of the least used ones, ranking not 1.6M but 20M, then
> > > we know that now was not the right time to add this article? In
> > > that case, notability is not a property of the topic itself, but
> > > an issue in which order to add articles to Wikipedia.  But it is
> > > difficult to assess today if a topic has rank 20M when Wikipedia
> > > only has 1.6M articles.
> > >
> > > Can we compute a rank of how much each article is used now, and
> > > relate this to how many articles existed at the time when each
> > > article was created?  Then we would know how premature the
> > > addition of each article was.
> > >
> > > Again, my position is not that of judging what should be included
> > > now.  I'm only trying to understand the math behind this.
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > >   Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
> > >   Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
> As it seems, there is no consensus, even among the few of us in this
> exchange, because i do not think size is enough to make a school
> notable. What makes it notable is either things that may have happened
> there, or notable alumni.  Notable events are the same standard as any
> other N or  N-news.  For most, it will be alumni, and the practical
> question comes down to: how many- (of course it also depends who they
> are--One Nobel prize winner is enough) ). AfD seems to be deleting
> high school  articles with only 1 notable alumnus and no other special
> features.  I am not sure what the attitude would be towards 2, 3, etc.
> I am not even sure where I would draw the line.
>
> Intermediate and elementary schools are another matter; I wouldn't use
> the alumni criterion here for anyone less than the President, and
> there are rarely news events.
>
> The suggestion of giving each of the schools in a town section in a
> longer article is workable, though there be problems with cities.
>
> I recognize, however, that in much of the US, high schools, and
> especially high school athletic teams, may be the center of community
> life. So merging a single town school in with the article for the town
> is another possibility.
>
> --
> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


list: commons-l

from_name: bawolff

subject: [Commons-l] Fwd: Pushing User page photo's from wikinews to commons

body:
Note: this is in reference to the english wikinews

We have tons of personal photo's of users for userpages. most of them
are not licensed freely, if licensed at all (some of them even claim
they are ''fair use'' which is a total load of ...). I personally
think that they shouldn't be on wikinews whatsoever (as they'd
probably also be on the user's page at wikipedia, etc, and we
currently have no policy's regarding them, so it'd just be easier to
make them go somewhere that already has a policy), so I propose:

*All new self photo's for user pages go on commons, and follow their
policies ([[Commons:Criteria for
inclusion#Wikimedia_Commons_is_a_common_central_media_repository_of_all_Wikimedia_projects]])

*old ones can stay [at wikinews], we won't delete them for now if
there inproperly licensed as the user clearly wants them here, or
decide what to do with them later

*any new one's have to be at commons, or they go into the black abyss
of death and doom.

note: I'm cc-ing this commons-l, as it concerns them, and I have no
idea if they'll like it or not, so if they say no, its not happening.
its also posted on the wc at wikinews.

--[[user:bawolff|Bawolff]]


from_name: Pilotguy

body:
On 1/25/07, Gurch <matthew.britton at btinternet.com> wrote:Christopher Thieme
wrote:
> ...NUKE [[WP:CIVIL]] as it's unworkable, increases uncivil conduct, and
> encourages hypocrisy.
>
> And I am serious.  I also think [[WP:GA]] is incorrigible and
unredeemable,
> that is has lost it's credibility and is better put out of its misery
> instead of remaining a mockery of its good intentions.
>
> Regards,
> Christopher D. Thieme

Oh, just delete the whole project and start again. That would solve
everything.

-Gurch

Hah. At the rate we're going, that doesn't seem to be out of the question.

On 1/25/07, Gurch <matthew.britton at btinternet.com> wrote:
>
> Christopher Thieme wrote:
> > ...NUKE [[WP:CIVIL]] as it's unworkable, increases uncivil conduct, and
> > encourages hypocrisy.
> >
> > And I am serious.  I also think [[WP:GA]] is incorrigible and
> unredeemable,
> > that is has lost it's credibility and is better put out of its misery
> > instead of remaining a mockery of its good intentions.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Christopher D. Thieme
>
> Oh, just delete the whole project and start again. That would solve
> everything.
>
> -Gurch
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Pilotguy
pilotguy.wikipedia at gmail.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pilotguy

http://pilotguy.wordpress.com


from_name: Bogdan Giusca

body:
Thursday, January 25, 2007, 9:38:50 PM, George wrote:

> Here's the problem.  Academic rigor - which I understand, having done
> refereed papers for conferences and such - is all fine and good for
> scholarly original research papers.

> For an encyclopedia, the vast bulk of what we're trying to do is to
> simply convey the top level survey of a field to the general public.

You are arguing that for an encyclopedia, unlike for the academia,
reliability and fact-checking are not important.

The academic rigor exists not just due to their elitism: that's how
the Academia mentains their high standards of its publications.


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] What is the fundamental goal of the project?

body:
Omegatron wrote

> For instance, machine
> translations are considered "worse than nothing" because of their poor
> quality, so it would seem that "of the highest possible quality" is
> more important than "in their own language".

Unless they have got better recently, I wouldn't characterise machine translations as 'into' the target language.

> If Jimbo's statement is still valid, which objectives override the
> others?  Can they be arranged (preferably by Jimbo) in order of
> priority?
>
> Can this statement or the principles it represents ever be repealed or
> changed?  Who has the power to change it?  Is this simply a top-down
> authoritarian mandate that can't be challenged, or do regular
> Wikipedians have a say when changes are made to the ultimate goals and
> priorities of the project?

I expect the WMF Board can also issue mission statements, and update them.

Charles

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body:
Thursday, January 25, 2007, 10:00:34 PM, George wrote:

> Wikipedia is not the fact-based encyclopedia project you're demanding.
>  It can never be, because it's not structured that way in a semantic
> or knowledge flow manner.  Attempting to force Wikipedia into that
> model will blow up your mind and our project.  Please stop.

What's wrong with adding a reference after each sentence?

Hoping that your mind won't blow, here's a very well-sourced example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_general_election%2C_1946

Wikipedia's purpose, as said by Jimbo, is not to be a wiki, not to be
a community, but to simply create an encyclopedia. The rest are simply
means towards a goal.

> Killing our project here and now by turning it into Nupedia makes no
> sense.  If their model works, then perhaps we should all go work over
> there.  If it doesn't then leave the WP model alone...

Maybe you are the one on the wrong encyclopedia: Wikipedia requires
verifiability as an official policy.

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

And it's not Nupedia, everyone still can edit it, but one should add
the *source* of the addition.


body:
Francis Tyers wrote

> The only people who think that having to cite and verify articles with
> reliable sources is "abuse" are the kind of people who think "oh no my
> pokemans character studies are at risk again!"

You of course have a reliable source for this statement.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
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from_name: Francis Tyers

body:
On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 22:11 +0000, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
wrote:
> Omegatron wrote
>
> > For instance, machine
> > translations are considered "worse than nothing" because of their poor
> > quality, so it would seem that "of the highest possible quality" is
> > more important than "in their own language".
>
> Unless they have got better recently, I wouldn't characterise machine translations as 'into' the target language.
>

Between certain languages machine translations can be of very high
quality. The Catalan newspaper El Periodico de Catalunya uses machine
translation for translating their articles between Catalan and Spanish.

It really is a shame that the only machine translation people generally
get to absorb is that produced by SYSTRAN in its various guises (Google,
Babel Fish etc).

Fran


body:
On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 22:13 +0000, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
wrote:
> Francis Tyers wrote
>
> > The only people who think that having to cite and verify articles with
> > reliable sources is "abuse" are the kind of people who think "oh no my
> > pokemans character studies are at risk again!"
>
> You of course have a reliable source for this statement.

touch? ;)

Fran


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] Troubling news on Citizendium

body:
On 25 Jan 2007 at 02:25, "Alphax (Wikipedia email)"
<alphasigmax at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> > Fastfission wrote:
> >> Well, nobody has really called America the great melting pot earnestly
> >> for some time now (see [[melting pot]]).
> >>
> > What does it say now that Bush used the term in his State of the Union
> > speech? ;-)
>
> Eh, so long as nobody calls America a wok...

Multiple choice quiz:

America is most like a...

a) Melting pot
b) Crock pot
c) Frying pan
d) Flame broiler
e) Wok

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Gosh darn it,
 those spammers^Wmarketers will show us what for

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

Parker Peters wrote:
> Here's a stupid suggestion.
>
> Code it so that *NEW* links are nofollow by default (thus stopping
> linkspammers from being rewarded for linkspamming), but allow a process
> (request to an admin or something) whereby a link can simply be followed and
> then the "nofollow" tag removed from it if it's verified to not be a spam
> link.

Hey, remember when I said that would be welcome and people interested in
this should come help out?

I'm awaiting your patch.

But I guess it's easier to spread wild conspiracy theories then to get
involved.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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from_name: Gwern Branwen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikigovernment

body:
"Mets501" <mets501wiki at gmail.com> writes:

>> Wait, still wrong. Try
>>
>> Ah, the joys of plain text email.
>>
>> Welcome to 2007, Internet users!
>
> Isn't there some way we can get this list in HTML or at least rich text?
> --Mets501

Why do you want that? Email is a place to escape the "joys" of such modern
conveniences. I certainly don't want to see what abominable signatures
people can come up with - that sort of thing was only fairly recently
suppressed (to be optimistic) on the wiki.

--
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.


body:
Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> writes:

> The Cunctator wrote:
>> On 1/25/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>>> The Cunctator wrote:
>>>
>>>> Okay, so what's the right tag?
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Strictly speaking, you'd have to ask the owner of the photo. Given the
>>> specifics of that crowd, it wouldn't surprise me if they were planning
>>> to make money selling it. :-) In practice, it's probably a "fairusein",
>>> enumerating the articles for which you plan to use it. Lack of the
>>> actual photographer's name is going to be a problem - without that, no
>>> guarantee I wouldn't hit it with a "no source" tag should I run across
>>> it in future.
>>>
>>
>>
>> Nice to see you standing up for the rights of felons everywhere. :)
>>
> One never knows - haven't there been some convicted
> writers/photographers who were ordered by the court to sell their work
> so as to make restitutions from the proceeds?
>
> Stan

Curiously enough, the Unabomber is contesting that right now:
<http://www.slate.com/id/2158220/>

,----
| Does the government get the copyright when it seizes a prisoner's personal writings? Some legal scholars think it does, although Kaczynski is arguing otherwise. Even if the feds couldn't transfer the copyright on Kaczynski's writings, they'd probably be able to sell them. That's because they're not trying to reproduce them; instead, they're selling the papers as physical objects, along with other items he owned.
`----

--
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikigovernment

body:
> > Isn't there some way we can get this list in HTML or at least rich text?
> > --Mets501
>
> Why do you want that? Email is a place to escape the "joys" of such modern
conveniences. I certainly don't want to see what abominable signatures
people can come up with - that sort of thing was only > > fairly recently
suppressed (to be optimistic) on the wiki.

I guess I want it so I can express myself too with font sizes/faces/colors,
etc. :-)
It'd also be good for pictures and whatever
It's just annoying in plain text, but I guess it's better anyway; viewing
the archives and stuff with pictures and fonts and stuff would be much
harder.
--Mets501


from_name: Steve Block

body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
> No. That's a crappy stick, because quite frankly, West Coast Avengers
> #18-24 is a reliable source, and should remain a reliable source.
> (Because otherwise we get into a whole host of other problems.
> Primary source research like this is important.) The thing to tell
> someone who wants an article on Moon Knight's throwing arrows is "No,
> and stop being stupid." But we're doing a bad job of that, and so
> we've contorted our sourcing policies to try to cover this, which is
> a problem, because they do a very bad job of it.

No and stop being stupid is sadly unworkable, because you get told not
to be stupid back.  And I don't see why we can't have an article on Moon
Knight's throwing arrows if you throw WP:CITE and WP:RS out.  I don't
see why we can't have an article on anything then.  You need to come up
with something better than telling people not to be stupid.

>
>> Now I know that there's
>> a split in what Wikipedia is, and I know there are a lot of grey
>> areas.
>>   I will defend any article I believe is well written regardless of
>> source issues, and if there are such articles at afd please give me a
>> call, but I will more readily defend the ideal Wikipedia was
>> founded on.
>>   We need to focus on the general reader and focus on getting those
>> books into the hands of those African kids that Jimmy often mentions.
>> What value are those books going to be if they contain facts sourced
>> from my webpage?  And if you abandon reliable sources and citing,
>> why on
>> earth do you think we'll have quality articles?  How are you going
>> to do
>> it.  Sorry, but I'm battling POV pushers on too many fronts to even
>> entertain this idea humourously.
>
> POV pushers are often insidiously good at sources - have a look at
> [[2004 U.S. Presidential election controversy]] for why sourcing
> doesn't really fix the problem (and if anything makes it worse
> because POV pushers can resort to "But it's sourced!")

I'm well aware of what POV pushers do with sources, but imagine how much
worse it would be if there was no rquirement to source.  But look, I can
just add what I want and you can't stop me.  WP:3RR used to be enough to
stop that, but it won't anymore.  Wikipedia has simply gotten too big.

> Nonsense. Siegenthaler would have been fixed without recourse to
> sourcing had anybody looked at it. To try to solve a problem with a
> solution irrelevant to the problem is silly.

That's not my point but it's a side issue, I'll hope you will agree.
Sourcing has nothing to do with Siegenthaler but Siegenthaler also has
nothing to do with the argument that WP:CITE and WP:RS should go.

> You seem to be operating under the curious idea that [[WP:RS]] is the
> source of common sense and judgment in the world, and should it ever
> vanish everybody editing Wikipedia will become a dithering idiot.

No Phil, I'm just aware that a lot of people currently attempting to
edit Wikipedia are, to borrow your phrase, dithering idiots.  I make no
assertion that WP:RS is the source of common sense and judgement.  It is
simply somethin that can be pointed to.  I'm already having issues over
whether a fansite is a reliable source or not because RS doesn't mention
fansites.  There is an indication of what the problem will be if we do
away with this.  Look, I honestly don't care what the rules say, I'm
hopeful I'm pragmatic to make the right call in different circumstances,
but I see too many people who seem unable to work out how to best
compromise.  Good articles get deleted, bad articles get kept, people
get tied up in process when they should be editing, Wikipedia has become
a game.

  If
> someone puts a claim that reading comics makes you gay into
> [[comics]] we do not need any policy beyond "editors should exercise
> good judgment" to go "Ummm, that's an interesting claim you've got
> there, mate. I'm not so sure I believe it - you mind explaining where
> you're coming from?" And when the editor points to their website, we
> do not need a policy to say that they're being an idiot and that's
> not going in the encyclopedia. Policy is not the source of our
> ability to remove crap. Policy is an instruction manual for well-
> meaning editors who don't really understand what we're doing. But
> [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:CITE]] don't work as that - they're dense,
> painfully confused texts that try to oversimplify sourcing and
> research, which are both very complex topics. And they enshrine
> rigidity where flexibility, discussion, common sense, and consensus
> are necessary.

No Phil, it won't work.  I've been in, and still am in arguments where
it is me against one other person, and every cry for help goes ignored.
   There are too many rules now for this to work.  POV pushers can
enlist advocates to run rings around uneducated people like me, push
each and every button, accuse you of bad faith and god knows what,
misrepresent you, troll you, stalk you and make you feel like crap, and
all you've got at the end of the day is the idea that WP:CITE and WP:RS
mean something.  We do need something that written down that let's us
work out what works from what doesn't, because otherwise it's you
against me, and the mob rules.  And trust me Phil, the mob is a lot
bigger now.  I can't see this as working one jot.  I won't deny WP:CITE
and WP:RS aren't broken, but I can't work out what the hell we're
supposed to be doing here.  It seems like we just muddle through and
hope to hit gold somewhere along the way.  Whatever floats your boat I
guess.  Policy has become the source of how to remove stuff, because
we're spread too thin.

> One of the most common misconceptions and false attacks on Wikipedia
> has always been equating the consensus model with mob rule.

Phil, if you get 50 people pushing on one side and five on the other,
who calls the consensus.  Consensus may not equal mob rule, but mob rule
can override consensus.  Look at every fractious issue we've had
recently; the userboxes, the admin channel, they all occur because
nobody is interested in discussing to reach a consensus, they have too
much invested in their own opinion to budge one jot.  Consensus demands
that all sides discuss with the aim of reaching a consensus, not with
the aim of winning the day.  Mob rule can easily sweep aside consensus.

  > The solution is, in part, to get away from a system of rules and
> towards a system of principles. [[WP:V]] is a good page. [[WP:NOR]]
> is a good page. That's because they enshrine principles and goals.
> [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:CITE]] enshrine a hopeless bureaucracy that we can
> never hope to actually get working. If you want a model where people
> look at the goal instead of the method, you need policies that are
> principles and goals, not processes. [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:CITE]] are
> the ugly processes we wrote to try to support [[WP:V]] and
> [[WP:NOR]]. Cut out the process, leave the goal.

Look, I've written my fair share of crap process, and got my fingers
burnt when I tried to take it back, but WP:RS and WP:CITE don't enshrine
a bureaucracy.  That bureaucracy is everywhere.  Look at the hoops one
has to jump through to do anything now.  You can't speedy delete
anything anymore because it ends up at DRV, you can't speedy close a DRV
anymore because it ends up at WP:ANI, you can't write an article anymore
without it being prodded, hell you can't clean up an article without it
going to afd.  Christ, you can't do anything without working out what
all these acronyms are.  Wikipedia is a bureaucracy, and ironically, you
can't make it one because of the bureaucracy involved in changing
WP:NOT.  First you would have to discuss, it, then get a consensus, then
make the change, then engage in a revert war, then have the page
protected and god knows what.

WP:RS and WP:CITE are valuable.  Remove WP:RS and WP:V loses half its
meaning.  What you are railing against is not two pages, but the
cluelessness of many wikipedians.  Sadly, we can't say that on Wikipedia
because we have civility policies.  The people who invest time gardening
at the process pages or using them as deletion tools are the problem,
not the people using them to create and improve articles.

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.17.10/651 - Release Date: 24/01/07 18:48


body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:

> In fact, I suspect we'd have an easier time getting historical out-of-
> universe information if we let people who knew stuff about the
> history of Pokemon write articles without demanding they go back and
> figure out where exactly they read every single fact they're trying
> to include.

I would have no issue with that except that it borders dangerously the
issue of OR.  How do I tell whether this stuff is real or made up?  Is
Wikipedia striving to be a reliable source of information or a buyer
beware one.  We already are a buyer beware one, with the existence of
WP:CITE and WP:RS, so abolishing them won't get us anywhere different.
Some people hope it will make us more reliable.  I wish someone would
sort this out, though, so that I could ignore my watchlist and go back
to creating articles.

--
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Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.17.10/651 - Release Date: 24/01/07 18:48


from_name: Angela

body:
On 1/25/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> I expect the WMF Board can also issue mission statements, and update them.

They have done:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mission
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Vision

Older versions of the mission statement are at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_mission_statement

Angela.


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] school articles : enough

body:
On 25/01/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:

> Is this really a Foundation-level issue?

I wondered that too. Did David ask on en:wp or on wikien-l? If so,
what was the verdict there?

- d.


body:
Thursday, January 25, 2007, 10:21:27 PM, George wrote:

>> Hoping that your mind won't blow, here's a very well-sourced example:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_general_election%2C_1946
>>
> That's a terrible article.  It's not an encyclopedia article, it's a
> scholarly paper on the topic.

> It's not a bad scholarly paper, on first look, but it's not a good
> encyclopedia article.

Do you have any reasons you think so? I don't think there's any policy
claiming that Wikipedia articles should be dumbed down. For that,
there's simple English Wikipedia. :-)


from_name: Gurch

body:
Christopher Thieme wrote:
> ...NUKE [[WP:CIVIL]] as it's unworkable, increases uncivil conduct, and
> encourages hypocrisy.
>
> And I am serious.  I also think [[WP:GA]] is incorrigible and unredeemable,
> that is has lost it's credibility and is better put out of its misery
> instead of remaining a mockery of its good intentions.
>
> Regards,
> Christopher D. Thieme

Oh, just delete the whole project and start again. That would solve
everything.

-Gurch


from_name: geni

body:
On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> Exactly. And the problem is that the people take the process pages
> and bite the newbies. Elsewhere in this thread I used the
> hypothetical example of Susan:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> User:Phil_Sandifer/Susan
>

Problem is most of  the stuff our general corwd can do in that way has
already been done.

> That's the question here. How can we take away the ability of the
> clueless to bite the newbies.
>
> I suspect the easiest answer would be an arbcom with the balls to
> give a complete pass to a rogue admin who went and nuked about there
> dozen pages in a two minute time period, and to pass a finding
> "Admin's actions were completely right, and none of these pages
> should be recreated." Make the place hostile to the process junkies
> and get them to fork.

Wouldn't work. You see process junkies would take that as a new
process and use it to make your life misserable. In any case the odds
of arbcom getting to the case before the admin has been indef blocked
and all the pages undeleted are um nill.

It also makes adminship a seriously big deal.

>
> Actually, that would be a good policy page. [[Wikipedia:Bite the
> process junkies]]
>

[[Wikipedia:Just try and get along]]

--
geni


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-01-26

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r19662).

Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

  18 still FAILING test(s) :(
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (single parameter)
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (multiple parameters)
      * TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)
      * TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)
      * TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)
      * TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)
      * BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled
      * TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting
      * TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold
      * TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line
      * TODO: dt/dd/dl test
      * TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.

Passed 489 of 507 tests (96.45%)... 18 tests failed!


from_name: George Herbert

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Gosh darn it,
	those spammers^Wmarketers will show us what for

body:
On 1/25/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Parker Peters wrote:
> > Here's a stupid suggestion.
> >
> > Code it so that *NEW* links are nofollow by default (thus stopping
> > linkspammers from being rewarded for linkspamming), but allow a process
> > (request to an admin or something) whereby a link can simply be followed and
> > then the "nofollow" tag removed from it if it's verified to not be a spam
> > link.
>
> Hey, remember when I said that would be welcome and people interested in
> this should come help out?
>
> I'm awaiting your patch.
>
> But I guess it's easier to spread wild conspiracy theories then to get
> involved.
>
> - -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)

What's the accessibility of the current code base?  How far off the
1.9.whatever which was released is it?

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


body:
On 1/26/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> Which if I put on my copyright-paranoid hat I would say is insufficient for
> Wikipedia (aka "FAIR USE ISN'T FREE USE") but taking it off and being a
> practical Wikipedia I would say is plenty sufficient.
>
> In other words I don't think Wikipedia should (in this regard) hold itself
> to a higher copyright standard than the New York Times.

New York Times uses with permission for New York Times only. We don't.

--
geni


from_name: Eugene van der Pijll

body:
The Cunctator schreef:
> Some people are definitely descending into copyright paranoia...
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Abramoff_scotland_small.jpg

Why is this copyright paranoia? There is no mention of who took that
picture, neither on the image description page, nor in the original
source. So there is no way for us to check the claim it is {{PD-USGov}}.

According to the other copyright claim, it is "public use" because it is
"a picture introduced at a federal trial". If the uploader meant "public
domain": I've not seen this before; I doubt it is true.

Maybe it's fair use. Maybe. But surely not in all 5 of the articles it
is included in at the moment?

Eugene


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

George Herbert wrote:
> What's the accessibility of the current code base?  How far off the
> 1.9.whatever which was released is it?

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download_from_SVN
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Subversion
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Quick_and_dirty_guide_to_development

Drop by #mediawiki on Freenode and hang about if you have questions.

We bite, but not too much.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 1/25/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> There are large swaths of technical topics which are not computer-geek
> technical stuff which are covered extremely poorly, if at all.
>
> Engineering materials, for example - aluminum, steel, composite
> materials, others.  I went through and it seemed like doubled the
> structural and aerospace materials article count 2-3 months ago, and I
> haven't even gotten started properly...

Yeah, that's true actually. On a slight sidetrack, I've also started
to notice that while we have many articles about individual products
in certain categories (cameras and phones, for example), in non-geeky
fields such articles are often quickly designated "spam". This may be
fair enough, if we think about sales volume, but I'm going to pay
closer attention and see if it's actually reasonable.

> Structural design concepts that anyone in an industry knows from
> school and are common professional knowledge, and still have no WP
> coverage.

In IT as well...our articles on stuff like data warehousing, business
intelligence, database design etc are pretty rudimentary and not very
well organised. Even someone sitting down with a first year textbook
and getting some basic, even coverage would be a great help. As
opposed to the very evident biases (often just caused by particular
interests of contributors) causing lopsided coverage atm.

Steve


body:
On 1/26/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> George Herbert wrote:
> > What's the accessibility of the current code base?  How far off the
> > 1.9.whatever which was released is it?
>
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download_from_SVN
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Subversion
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Quick_and_dirty_guide_to_development

All good.

> Drop by #mediawiki on Freenode and hang about if you have questions.
>
> We bite, but not too much.

Can't do that from current work - SEC regulations would require it to
be logged 8-P

Contract ends next week, though, so perhaps not too much later.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


body:
On 1/26/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> But this is one of the problems. The burden of citing everything is
> larger than our editors, especially our casual editors, are willing
> to undertake. We will never reach a point where people will cite
> their sources in the first place. Hence the prospect of eternally
> playing catch-up.

It's more than just that. I recently wrote a stub on [[Wingan Inlet]].
I know the place exists: I went there. Do I have a source? No. Am I
confident that a source exists? Yes. Would I rather create an
unsourced stub, or leave a hole in our encyclopaedia? Unsourced stub,
with fries.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] school articles : enough

body:
On 1/25/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> The purpose of Wikipedia is not to make OTRS happy, any more than it
> is to make Articles For Deletion happy.

Every article on Wikipedia has a maintenance cost and a benefit to the
project as a whole. It's reasonable for us to choose not to keep
articles whose maintenance cost is greater than the benefit they
provide.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Preloading template in new articles

body:
On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> 1) The referencing system is non-intuitive, and a first-time editor
> can't use it. I still don't know how the fuck to use it, and have
> always found it to have a terrible interface from a reader's
> standpoint as well. And for good measure, I just read [[WP:CITE]],
> which is a godawful instruction manual.

This is mainly caused by our unwillingness to totally and utterly
abandon every superseded citation/reference system.

All you need to know is:

--
Here is my fact.<ref>Here is my source<ref>

==References==
<references />
--

Really. Just memorise that.

> 2) A casual editor who comes upon a mistake or a redlink is going to
> fix it from their personal knowledge, not references. This is a
> larger problem I've observed before - our demand for references
> fundamentally runs counter to the idea of "you can edit this page
> right now" in practice. We have to get realistic about references
> before we can get serious about them.

Yay. Someone agrees that we have to get realistic.

Steve


body:
On 1/26/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Here is my fact.<ref>Here is my source<ref>

That obviously should have been:

 Here is my fact.<ref>Here is my source</ref>

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikigovernment

body:
On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 20:57 -0500, Mets501 wrote:
> > Wait, still wrong. Try
> >
> > Ah, the joys of plain text email.
> >
> > Welcome to 2007, Internet users!
>
> Isn't there some way we can get this list in HTML or at least rich text?
> --Mets501

What a horrible idea, wash your mouth out (with delicious plain text
soap).

Fran


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:

>>If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good.
>>
>>
>No, we're not good. That's the whole point. People's memories were
>reliable enough when Wikipedia first started and nobody actually used
>it for anything. That's no longer the case.
>
So what's changed about people's memories?  Have people become so much
more stupid in six years' time?  If you want a simple answer for why
people use Wikipedia you only need compare the size then and now.
People looking for information will go where they can most easily find it.

>If we want to be a
>credible encyclopedia, we need our facts to come from reliable sources
>(citing them isn't the important part, that's just a way to prove the
>important bit - that the fact came from a reliable source).
>
We can have a credible encyclopedia without obsessing about it.  Your
distinction the source and the citation of that source strikes me as
more semantic than substantial.

>There seems to be a serious misunderstanding of what "source" means. A
>source isn't somewhere people can go to verify the fact, it is where
>the fact came from.
>
Sounds like a good definition for original research.

>Citing sources is easy, because you will always
>have the source with you when you write the article (if you think you
>don't, then it means the source is your memory, in which case you
>aren't using a reliable source and shouldn't add the fact). The
>problem isn't that people aren't citing reliable sources, the problem
>is that they aren't *using* reliable sources.
>
Sometimes a memory can be a reliable source; it just can't be verified.
What can be more frustrating than to have been at an event 35 years and
know that the citations are dead wrong because they relied on
contemporary newspaper clippings from publications that were openly
hostile to the event when it happened.  This often leaves us with
sterile articles that ignore the zeitgeiss of the event.  There is a
level beyond which the demand for sources becomes counterproductive.

Ec


from_name: Dan Jacobson

subject: [Wikitech-l] [Bug 8630] generateSitemap.php option documentation

body:
My problem is these sitemaps are only for Google. If one wants a
sitemap for a visitor to browse, one has to make one by hand. The code
doesn't mention what to do if one wants a traditional sitemap.


body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:

>On Jan 25, 2007, at 2:42 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
>
>
>
>>>If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good.
>>>
>>>
>>No, we're not good. That's the whole point. People's memories were
>>reliable enough when Wikipedia first started and nobody actually used
>>it for anything. That's no longer the case. If we want to be a
>>credible encyclopedia, we need our facts to come from reliable sources
>>(citing them isn't the important part, that's just a way to prove the
>>important bit - that the fact came from a reliable source).
>>
>>There seems to be a serious misunderstanding of what "source" means. A
>>source isn't somewhere people can go to verify the fact, it is where
>>the fact came from. Citing sources is easy, because you will always
>>have the source with you when you write the article (if you think you
>>don't, then it means the source is your memory, in which case you
>>aren't using a reliable source and shouldn't add the fact). The
>>problem isn't that people aren't citing reliable sources, the problem
>>is that they aren't *using* reliable sources.
>>
>>
>You are advocating the complete abandonment of the principles that
>underly Wikipedia.
>
>"You can edit this page right now." That's the mantra. That's the
>key. That's what got us where we are. It's foolish to give up on the
>thing that made us succeed where other things (Nupedia) failed.
>
This is a fundamental problem with volunteer based organizations,
particularly ones that are highly democratized.  The first wave comes
with the visionaries who see what needs to be done to produce a great
product.  The later wavefills in the blanks, it tries to protect what
the first wave produced, but in doing so destroys the vision.  The mass
of Elvis personators cannot be combined to create a new Elvis.

Ec


body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

>Phil Sandifer wrote:
>
>
>>If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good. But if Susan has
>>to go Google the fact to find it somewhere else, we're already losing
>>precious seconds of Susan's time.
>>
>>
>But how does that work out overall, when you save seconds of Susan's
>time, and cost me a half-hour of research to figure out why an article
>is inconsistent with all the ones it links with? Scholarship is tricky
>enough on its own, we don't need to make it harder by mixing in a bunch
>of random half-remembered bits.
>
This is one of those half-empty or half-full kinds of arguments.
Without Susan's edit her idea might never have been raised.  What she
sees as half-full you see as half-empty.  You evidently enjoyed your
half-hour of research, or you would not have done it.  The point that
she made was worth that much of your time.  At least you researched it.
The one who simply dismisses her comments out of hand and without
comment is really committing the same error that she did.

Ec


from_name: David Monniaux

subject: [Wikipedia-l] school articles : enough

body:
The Cunctator a ?crit :
> Is this really a Foundation-level issue?
The problem is that complaints about school articles generate a steady
flow to OTRS, which is picked up by Foundation volunteers. Then, the
decisions of these volunteers are challenged.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] school articles : enough

body:
The Pok?mon articles do not generate angry complaints. They are used to
mock Wikipedia, but are not a major target for libel and other issues
taking up precious resources.


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>
>> Phil Sandifer wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good. But if Susan has
>>> to go Google the fact to find it somewhere else, we're already losing
>>> precious seconds of Susan's time.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> But how does that work out overall, when you save seconds of Susan's
>> time, and cost me a half-hour of research to figure out why an article
>> is inconsistent with all the ones it links with? Scholarship is tricky
>> enough on its own, we don't need to make it harder by mixing in a bunch
>> of random half-remembered bits.
>>
>>
> This is one of those half-empty or half-full kinds of arguments.
> Without Susan's edit her idea might never have been raised.  What she
> sees as half-full you see as half-empty.  You evidently enjoyed your
> half-hour of research, or you would not have done it.  The point that
> she made was worth that much of your time.  At least you researched it.
> The one who simply dismisses her comments out of hand and without
> comment is really committing the same error that she did.
>
That's not a very good line of reasoning - vandalism sprees must also be
good things, because we spend a lot of time cleaning up after them, so
we must be enjoying doing so? I don't think so. No, when I clean up
after someone who didn't take the trouble to find out if a statement is
actually true, that person has just wasted my time. I used to watch a
lot of articles (19,000 at the high point), and it was multiple hours of
drudgery each day; eventually I cleared the list. Casual editors adding
bad material from memory is actually a worse problem for good articles
than vandalism, because it's good-faith and often looks plausible; it
can get by you and mislead readers for months, and worse, start seeping
into connected articles as others "correct" them to be consistent. So
even the what-does-it-hurt edit to an already-unsourced stub can have
consequences. Driveby editing was a great way to build up WP, but now
that we have the vast structure, we also need to think about how to
maintain its integrity.

Stan


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 1/26/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>> Seriously, by a number of quite reasonable standards Wikipedia already
>> _has_ become the best encyclopedia in the world. It's got more breadth,
>> it's cheaper, its IP rights are more flexible, and it's probably more
>> widely used than the old standbys like Britannica or World Book. It even
>> has comparable levels of accuracy. I'm very, very happy with what
>> Wikipedia has made of itself and have no desire to throw out any bits of
>> baby on account of the bathwater that's still mixed in with it.
>>
>
> I bought EB on CD. Dunno if I didn't get the full edition or
> something, but it doesn't come close to WP. I never use it, except for
> idle speculation about where they get their ego from.
>
I bought it too, and it's the full thing - compared sample articles with
old and new print editions. I think they only have the resources to
update articles that need changing to reflect current events, and no
money left over to expand or improve coverage in other areas. They'll
get to coast on the name for a while longer.

Stan


list: foundation-l

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Foundation-l] KJ and Wikimania

body:
Gil, Angela and I are excited to announce that KJ will be spending 50%
of her work time at Wikia over the next 6 months as a dedicated
volunteer for Wikimania 2007.  KJ will be one of the main organizers of
Wikimania 2007 and is responsible for Wikimania sponsorship. KJ is
responsible for preparing sponsor proposals and will be spending time
visiting the sponsors to discuss their proposals.

Part of my goal with Wikia is to build a commercial enterprise that
could contribute back to the foundation and I'm excited to see that
starting to happen.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] KJ and Wikimania


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikigovernment

body:
On 1/25/07, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
> Just got my latest "Funny Times," which contains a cartoon by Andy
> Singer... I can't find it online, sorry... it's headed "Alternative
> Forms of Government," and one of the options is "Wikigovernment:"
>
> "Anyone can appoint or fire government officials, online. But someone
> else can undo those appointments, until the entire nation is mired in
> internet voting gridlock." In the picture under the caption, a
> smaling woman says "I was President for two minutes," and a grinning
> man says "Now it's my turn!"

In the same vein, I just read a hilarious article on Slate about wiki-parenting.

http://www.slate.com/id/2158216?nav=tap3

Quote:

Now, my husband and I had more or less finalized our wiki entry on
caring for babies with colds. We had agreed, for instance, about the
germ theory over the outside-with-wet-heads theory. We were, in the
main, for hot liquids, baby Tylenol, hand-washing, and humidifiers.
But as our boys are increasingly exposed to a growing number of end
users, the markups of their illness wiki began to proliferate.

One of the great-aunts quickly submitted the milk markup. "No milk, no
cheese, no yogurt," she wrote definitively. I went back that afternoon
and edited this out. "The pediatrician has assured us that there is
absolutely no connection between dairy and mucous," I wrote. My mom
was spurred on to correct my error. "Absolutely no milk," she marked
up my markup. "Also, no baths!"

--Oskar


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [Wikipedia-l] school articles : enough

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

J.L.W.S. The Special One stated for the record:
> What, if any, are the notability criteria for schools?

Someone must state that it is a school.  That confers notability.

We did manage to delete the Hogwarts-manque "pay us and we will teach
you magic spells" scam, but it took some effort.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Modern art is what happens when painters stop
 sean at epoptic.com | looking at girls and persuade themselves
                  | that they have a better idea. --John Ciardi
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Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFui9Q/SVOiq2uhHMRApKyAKDbXdUl/FZ7pFfu+pSSqoo+7B4ipwCgwqFy
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body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
> On Jan 26, 2007, at 9:44 AM, Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>>  Driveby editing was a great way to build up WP, but now
>> that we have the vast structure, we also need to think about how to
>> maintain its integrity.
>>
>
> If maintenance is the goal, lock all existing articles and go to an
> expert system.
>
> Of course, maintenance isn't the goal. Improvement is. Which is
> different.
>
Exactly, we want edits that make improvements. There's almost no chance
that a driveby's unsourced addition to a featured article will improve
it, for instance. In fact, FA watchers have already adopted an informal
practice of reverting many of those on sight, they're simply not willing
to spend all their time trying to salvage the marginal. Since we don't
have statistics on sourced vs unsourced additions, it's impossible to
say whether there are huge numbers of unsourced additions worth
salvaging. Anecdotally, I think the crackdown combined with availability
<ref> is having the desired effect; I'm noticing that even trivia
sections are getting citations now, when such a thing was unheard-of a
year ago.

Stan


from_name: David Strauss

subject: [Foundation-l] MediaWiki 2.0 Development

body:
I think you'd be getting in over your head.

Virgil Ierubino wrote:
> If a user (like myself) happened to take it upon himself to begin work on
> coding brand new wiki software based on MediaWiki, and released it under a
> free license, and made it fairly easy to upgrade to on a server running a
> MediaWiki database (i.e. just change all the PHP files), and it was (assume
> this) in fact much better than MediaWiki 1.10a, would the Wikimedia
> Foundation adopt it for its projects?
>
> Just a question. Because MediaWiki 2.0 would be pretty sexy, but no one
> seems to be proactive about it. And I'd like to be.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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body:
I think you'd be getting in over your head.

Virgil Ierubino wrote:
> If a user (like myself) happened to take it upon himself to begin work on
> coding brand new wiki software based on MediaWiki, and released it under a
> free license, and made it fairly easy to upgrade to on a server running a
> MediaWiki database (i.e. just change all the PHP files), and it was (assume
> this) in fact much better than MediaWiki 1.10a, would the Wikimedia
> Foundation adopt it for its projects?
>
> Just a question. Because MediaWiki 2.0 would be pretty sexy, but no one
> seems to be proactive about it. And I'd like to be.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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body:
I think you'd be getting in over your head.

Virgil Ierubino wrote:
> If a user (like myself) happened to take it upon himself to begin work on
> coding brand new wiki software based on MediaWiki, and released it under a
> free license, and made it fairly easy to upgrade to on a server running a
> MediaWiki database (i.e. just change all the PHP files), and it was (assume
> this) in fact much better than MediaWiki 1.10a, would the Wikimedia
> Foundation adopt it for its projects?
>
> Just a question. Because MediaWiki 2.0 would be pretty sexy, but no one
> seems to be proactive about it. And I'd like to be.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] David is on Channel 4 tonight re MS issue

body:
on 1/26/07 9:33 AM, David Gerard at dgerard at gmail.com wrote:

> Suit looks like it was hit by a truck, so leather jacket and Rollins
> shirt it is!

Sounds good!! Best of luck to you (whoops, I guess in show biz that should
be "break a leg").

Marc Riddell


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 1/26/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/26/07, Omegatron <omegatron+wikienl at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 1/25/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > New York Times uses with permission for New York Times only. We don't.
> > >
> >
> > "We did", you mean.
>
> I tend to deal with how things are. We also once allowed unlimited
> reverts and had the US flag as our logo what of it?

We never allowed edit wars.

The US flag as our logo?

Wha?


subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Articles that do not cite reliable published
	sources will be deleted."

body:
On 1/26/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Saw this when creating a redirect. Aren't we a little early for April Fool's?
>
Welcome to the shiny new perfect Wikipedia.


from_name: Rob Church

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [19667]
	trunk/extensions/NewestPages/NewestPages.i18n.php

body:
On 26/01/07, brion at svn.wikimedia.org <brion at svn.wikimedia.org> wrote:
> another dutch masquerading as english

In one of mine, too.

A possible reason it's not immediately obvious with a "brief test" is
because a "brief test" probably consists of accessing the extension
page or whatever with uselang=XX applied. However, if someone
overwrites the English messages, which act as a fallback, then
uselang=XX will fall back to the "English", which of course, will
contain whatever they just added, and it'll all appear to work.

I suggest that people extend their testing to *at the very minimum*:

* Do a lint (php -l blah.i18n.php)
* Check the thing still works as expected in English and ideally
another of the pre-existing languages
* Check the newly-added language works properly

Cheers,

Rob Church


from_name: Rich Holton

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Have a look at [[Club skifield]] (which I wrote). Follow the external
> link. Is it really worth our (my) while attempting to write something
> that surpasses the link in terms of quality, depth, comprehensiveness
> of coverage? Practically speaking, who is going to be reading
> Wikipedia that doesn't have access to the net, but needs that
> information?
>

Wikipedia is not a web directory. There are (or were, at least) people
who condense Wikipedia on CD/DVDs for use by those who don't have
(reliable) internet access. This sort of distribution is a fundamental
objective of the project. Suggesting that we don't need to include
information because it's available elsewhere on the web suggests a
misunderstanding of the project.

-Rich


from_name: Aude

subject: [Foundation-l] need assistance for spam blacklist

body:
Need assistance from any meta admin available to add two sites to the spam
blacklist

See:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spam_blacklist#supermortgagerate.info_and_besttradelink.info

On enwiki, there is a proxy spammer right now, spamming links with an edit
summary "Online Forex Trading - Free Practice Account - All Resurse"

For example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Norwest&curid=3346024&diff=103386601&oldid=100720621
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Noel_Ahern&curid=1387412&diff=103386365&oldid=90258330
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nonrecourse_debt&curid=2844943&diff=103386260&oldid=61231347

Is there is a faster way to get track down a meta admin?  I don't have IRC
here and not sure who hangs out there anyway.

Thanks.

--
Aude


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]

body:
Bogdan Giusca wrote:

>Thursday, January 25, 2007, 9:38:50 PM, George wrote:
>
>
>>Here's the problem.  Academic rigor - which I understand, having done
>>refereed papers for conferences and such - is all fine and good for
>>scholarly original research papers.
>>
>>
>>For an encyclopedia, the vast bulk of what we're trying to do is to
>>simply convey the top level survey of a field to the general public.
>>
>>
>You are arguing that for an encyclopedia, unlike for the academia,
>reliability and fact-checking are not important.
>
You are overstating his case.

>The academic rigor exists not just due to their elitism: that's how
>the Academia mentains their high standards of its publications.
>
Academic rigor is a learned skill.  For some students it may take the
better part of their freshman year to grasp the idea. Demanding this
rigor on one's very first article attempt is akin to asking the its full
extent on the first day of a freshman class.  New editors need to be
sympathetically guided through the process rather than punished for not
getting it right on the first try.

>From my experience on Wikipedia, unsourced articles are very unreliable
>and may have plenty of wrong facts.
>
Some do; some don't.  Your anecdotal observation does nothing to
establish how extensive this problem is.  If we are to adopt rigid rules
about sourcing information should we not be equally rigid about applying
scientific methods to measure accuracy?  Of course some articles have
wrong facts; that's inevitable in a project this size, but don't delude
yourself into believing that just because an article is sourced it will
magically cease to include wrong facts.

>Most of thse wrong facts are not
>added due to malice (though that is not uncommon), but they were
>added by people either from their (inevitable unreliable) memories,
>from blogs and forums, which, on average have an awful lack of
>accuracy or they are simply misinterpretations.
>
Cited sources are just as susceptible to misinterpretation.

Ec


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Articles that do not cite reliable published
 sources will be deleted."

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Saw this when creating a redirect. Aren't we a little early for April Fool's?

And, once again, it links to the guideline [[Wikipedia:Citing sources]]
as part of this absolute statement. I complained about something similar
back in November and it got taken out pretty quick. At least this time
there isn't also a link to [[Wikipedia:Reliable sources]].

Is there some place where changes to this statement are discussed that
I'm unaware of, or is it just being jerked back and forth at individual
whim?


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 26/01/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/26/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > George Herbert wrote:

> > > What's the accessibility of the current code base?  How far off the
> > > 1.9.whatever which was released is it?

> > http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download_from_SVN
> > http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Subversion
> > http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Quick_and_dirty_guide_to_development
> > Drop by #mediawiki on Freenode and hang about if you have questions.
> > We bite, but not too much.

> Can't do that from current work - SEC regulations would require it to
> be logged 8-P
> Contract ends next week, though, so perhaps not too much later.

See, Brion does stuff like this as part of a CUNNING PLAN to recruit
new devs. THAT's the CONSPIRACY.

- d.


from_name: Ken Arromdee

body:
On Thu, 25 Jan 2007, Phil Sandifer wrote:
> >   Think I made that article up?  People quite reasonably believe the
> > batarang deserves an article.  Extend that to Moon Knight's throwing
> > arrows, which I could quite happily add an article on the basis of
> > West
> > Coast Avengers #18-24 or thereabouts.  The best stick we've got at the
> > moment to cut away at this is reliable sources.
> No. That's a crappy stick, because quite frankly, West Coast Avengers
> #18-24 is a reliable source, and should remain a reliable source.
> (Because otherwise we get into a whole host of other problems.
> Primary source research like this is important.) The thing to tell
> someone who wants an article on Moon Knight's throwing arrows is "No,
> and stop being stupid." But we're doing a bad job of that, and so
> we've contorted our sourcing policies to try to cover this, which is
> a problem, because they do a very bad job of it.

I think you're otherwise right, but the correct thing to tell someone
who wants an article on Moon Knight's arrows is "that isn't notable."

Stretching WP:RS to encompass something that really should be under notability
is a bad idea.


body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

>Phil Sandifer wrote:
>
>
>>I'd be similarly shocked if one could write a good article on high
>>temperature physics or group theory while being totally dependent on
>>published reliable sources, because those sources were never written
>>for the purpose of being used to explain the concept to novices.
>>
>>
>The best sources for general topics are textbooks actually; reliable,
>and written to explain concepts. I find the introductions to monographs
>and papers as useful for WP as the bodies; at least the more articulate
>writers manage to get in a few words intelligible to the nonspecialist. :-)
>
That's a significant obseration.

>Although I think the formal policies may be overdoing it, we do need to
>make some effort to change the culture. Can Susan be so certain of her
>twenty-years-ago memory that she can just  starting typing away with
>confidence? I would rather she make a library visit first, or simply
>leave a note on the talk page - several times I've been able to use
>somebody else's talk page note as a starting point  for doing a bit of
>research of my own, or triggered somebody else's further research by
>asking questions. We would also have a lot fewer edit wars if people
>didn't just wade in and start adding/deleting based on their faulty
>memory or understanding.
>
If you would rather that Susan make a visit to the library discuss it
with her.  Also take time to discuss the function of the talk page with
her.  It could very well end up that spending a half-hour doing this is
more productive than a half-hour spent cleaning up the article. Either
way there's no getting around spending the half-hour.  Robotically
starting the deletion process or putting a canned statement on her talk
page may be quicker, but it does not achieve the same results.  The edit
wars are slightly different because those articles are probably ones
that have passed the tests that keep them from being deleted; the
article talk page adds another opportunity for discussion.

I acknowledge that it can be frustrating to go over the same arguments
with a hundred different people, and I can see where the urge to find a
quick fix can be very inviting.  Nevertheless it still the first time
for the newbie.

Ec


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] question regarding page_restrictions table

body:
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Hash: SHA1

Peter wrote:
> Is there any reason why you work with pre-defined levels for page protection
> (default, block unregistered users, users with the sysop right), why not
> base the protection on the available groups available in the user_groups
> table?

Are you asking about the actual page_restrictions field/table contents,
or the interface for ?action=protect ?

The interface isn't as flexible as the backend in theory allows;
currently it only allows you to select one from a presumably rising
series of 'levels' (which list is fully customizable via
$wgRestrictionLevels), while the backend in theory allows storing
multiple allowed groups for each restriction type (edit, move).

Also I think it's a little funky as to whether it's supposed to be
checking for permission keys or group names. It's old code that's been
hacked over several times for changes, so... it's kind of uggy. ;)

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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body:
On 26/01/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> What you read suggests to me that I should understand what you write. I
> however do not.. What is a lint ??

I had a look in this rather comprehensive online encyclopedia I know
of, and found this page:

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

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Forget worries about [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:CITE]]...

body:
On Thu, 25 Jan 2007, Christopher Thieme wrote:
> ...NUKE [[WP:CIVIL]] as it's unworkable, increases uncivil conduct, and
> encourages hypocrisy.
>
> And I am serious.

While we're at it, get rid of [[WP:AGF]], for pretty much the same reason.
The majority of uses of it are when a user commits an abuse and deflects
criticism by saying "you aren't assuming good faith about me".


from_name: George Herbert

body:
On 1/26/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Which set of chemistry teachings did you have in mind?
>
> For example, I discovered a few days ago, talking to some friends of
> mine studying Chemistry at uni, that diatomic oxygen is, in fact, not
> double bonded, as my Chemistry teachers said it was.
>
> I can understand the reason for the simplification, but they should at
> least say they are simplifying things.

Anything that isn't the full quantum-mechanical electron orbitals
analysis of the chemical structure is oversimplification, but "works"
for 99.9% of the chemistry that anyone ever does.

We still teach people Newtonian physics first, then Relativity if you
reach college and take science major / engineering major level physics
courses.  Almost nobody remembers the fully relativistic versions of
the equations of motion, because you essentially have to be a particle
physicist or high energy physicist or cosmologist for it to matter.

The simplifications aren't wrong.  And it's not wrong to teach them to
people.  It's wrong to not tell people that there is a more precise
underlying theory, but I don't generally run into physics or chemistry
teachers at any level who don't make that distinction.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: geni

body:
On 1/26/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Fair use is only one small corner of copyright law.  In many respects I
> agree with both of you.  International copyright law as we know it is
> incredibly complex, but adopting a policy based on lowest common
> denominatior of risk aversion is paranoia at the same time.

That would be Mexican copyright terms of life plus 100 years. We don't
follow them.

> Risk
> frightens most people, and they would prefer not to take any at all.
> It's no wonder that the risk averse will win nearly every time the
> matter comes to a vote somewhere.
>

That makes the rather flawed assumption that people understand the
risks. They don't.

> That being said, and as important as discussions about copyright are. at
> this juncture they tend to set this important discussion off on a
> tangent.  The need (or lack of need) to deal with sourcing issues will
> still be there with or without copyritght material.
>

I was demonstrating that cite and RS ware hardly unique.

--
geni


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] The downside of creating perfect articles

body:
On 26/01/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/26/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Cor, that's demoralising. (Though I think their name-syntax may be a
> > little off in some cases)
>
> Heh, yeah, I just "fixed" a huge number of redlinks by changing
> "Religion of X" to "Religion in X" :)

As an aside, this is the other use for redlink farms - they're a
really good way to find places to put sensible redirects.

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


from_name: Thomas Dalton

body:
> So what's changed about people's memories?  Have people become so much
> more stupid in six years' time?  If you want a simple answer for why
> people use Wikipedia you only need compare the size then and now.
> People looking for information will go where they can most easily find it.

Nothing has changed about people's memories, what's changed is what
people expect from Wikipedia. When we were a new site used only by a
handful of geeks, most of which were contributors, nobody cared how
reliable we were. That is no longer the case.

> We can have a credible encyclopedia without obsessing about it.  Your
> distinction the source and the citation of that source strikes me as
> more semantic than substantial.

It's necessary to make that distinction in order to point out the
flaws in the "let someone else add the sources" arguement.

> >There seems to be a serious misunderstanding of what "source" means. A
> >source isn't somewhere people can go to verify the fact, it is where
> >the fact came from.
> >
> Sounds like a good definition for original research.

What are you talking about? Are you one of these people that doesn't
know the difference between "original research" and "research"?

> Sometimes a memory can be a reliable source; it just can't be verified.

Only if we know who's memory it is. When it comes to Wikipedia
contributors, we rarely know who is doing the editing.

> What can be more frustrating than to have been at an event 35 years and
> know that the citations are dead wrong because they relied on
> contemporary newspaper clippings from publications that were openly
> hostile to the event when it happened.  This often leaves us with
> sterile articles that ignore the zeitgeiss of the event.  There is a
> level beyond which the demand for sources becomes counterproductive.

That's frustrating, yes, but if you're allowed to add true details
from your memory, what's to stop me adding made up details? Nothing at
all. Sources are a requirement for verifiability.


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> If you would rather that Susan make a visit to the library discuss it
> with her.  Also take time to discuss the function of the talk page with
> her.  It could very well end up that spending a half-hour doing this is
> more productive than a half-hour spent cleaning up the article. Either
> way there's no getting around spending the half-hour.  [...]
>
I don't think it has to work that way. The half-hour comes from "wha?
where did that come from"; studying article history, looking at editor
contribs, comparing to other articles, etc - basically coming up to
speed on a suspicious change. The editor making the original edit
already knows what and why, so it would take much less of everybody's
time to start from a cited reliable source. Fixing mistakes is part of
the process, not entirely avoidable, but we don't actually have the
capacity to fix up after a "bring it on, do whatever you want" policy
(as witness the school articles).

Stan


from_name: Peter Ansell

subject: [WikiEN-l] What is the fundamental goal of the project?

body:
On 26/01/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> You could try a machine translation, but if the intended audience don't
> understand the article because it's badly translated you've achieved
> nothing. That's why we don't do it. It is worse than nothing, because it can
> confuse the reader.
>
> Mgm

Stating the entire situation in terms of possible bad effects is a bit
misleading. I have friends who are researchers in the area of machine
translation and yes, they say its not the best, but saying that a
possible confusion is worse than nothing is a personal view on it. If
they realise that half of the article was not translated well, but
they gain something from the other half I would assume they got
something out of it despite confusion.

In saying that some confusion is worse than nothing you underestimate
human abilities.

Peter Ansell


body:
On 1/26/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
>
> David Gerard wrote:
> > On 26/01/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Dare I play the devil's advocate here and say that we should allow this
> >> sort of thing?
> >
> > I see your point, but I'm imagining what the sort of minds who filled
> > our pages with linkspam till we had to switch on nofollow, and who are
> > now whining that we must switch it off again *because* we owe them a
> > living, would do with such a permission, however sensibly worded.
>
> And that's fair as well.  I do think that we're being naive with the way
> we handle this sort of "conflict of interest."  The situation you describe
> helps no one, the situation with Microsoft, at least in theory, helps
> everyone.  I still think it's better to approach it from the vantagepoint
> that we can get a very strong benefit than to assume that anything that
> could be construed as a COI is inherently bad, which is the attitude that
> I get.
>
> I had an off-wiki conversation with someone about a similar issue earlier,
> so it's interesting that it comes up again here.  At the end of the day,
> shouldn't we worry more about the quality of the contributions in terms of
> benefit to the encyclopedia (even the poorly written ones) as opposed to
> who's contributing it?  If paying someone $100 to add information to a
> stubby, but necessary, article improves the quality of the encyclopedia,
> why are we standing in the way?

I am still of two minds on the paying-for-edits issue, but I don't
believe it's going to change soon.

I was thinking of something different over the weekend.  A Wikipedia
Article Subjects Noticeboard, where people or organizations could post
things which they object to (short of what the Office would *have* to
deal with) and editors can watch and respond to normally.

I was thinking that the process could be something like "First, please
post a comment on the article talk page with a detailed explanation of
what you object to and why, and identifying who you are and what your
official standing is.  Then, add an entry to the top of the list below
with template {{Subjectnotice|articlename}}, add some comments, and
sign it...  Please do so from a logged in account so that people can
respond on your talk page as well as the article talk page."

I haven't created the template (I have no idea how they work).

Does anyone think this is a bad idea?  Positive comments?

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
>
> I picked those examples precisely because there weren't good or
> usable textbooks for them. (Or, at least, I asked a random chemistry
> grad student I had nearby for two topics that would fit that bill and
> that's what she gave me. Damned if I know what the hell group theory
> is.)
>
Group theory is math, and I personally have three textbooks left over
from my younger days, any of which would be quite suitable. Perhaps the
grad student was wishing for one that tied into crystallography
applications better. :-)

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Troubling news on Citizendium

body:
> Which set of chemistry teachings did you have in mind?

For example, I discovered a few days ago, talking to some friends of
mine studying Chemistry at uni, that diatomic oxygen is, in fact, not
double bonded, as my Chemistry teachers said it was.

I can understand the reason for the simplification, but they should at
least say they are simplifying things.


body:
On 1/26/07, Omegatron <omegatron+wikienl at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/25/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > New York Times uses with permission for New York Times only. We don't.
> >
>
> "We did", you mean.

I tend to deal with how things are. We also once allowed unlimited
reverts and had the US flag as our logo what of it?

--
geni


from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
On Jan 26, 2007, at 9:44 AM, Stan Shebs wrote:
>  Driveby editing was a great way to build up WP, but now
> that we have the vast structure, we also need to think about how to
> maintain its integrity.

If maintenance is the goal, lock all existing articles and go to an
expert system.

Of course, maintenance isn't the goal. Improvement is. Which is
different.

-Phil


body:
On 1/26/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 26/01/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I was thinking of something different over the weekend.  A Wikipedia
> > Article Subjects Noticeboard, where people or organizations could post
> > things which they object to (short of what the Office would *have* to
> > deal with) and editors can watch and respond to normally.
>
>
> That's the sort of idea I was thinking of.
>
> Would enough regular editors actually respond? That's the only thing
> I'm wondering about.

I think it would be less frustrating than a lot of other admin stuff
people do.  I'd watch the page.  I can't speak for others, though.

> > I was thinking that the process could be something like "First, please
> > post a comment on the article talk page with a detailed explanation of
> > what you object to and why, and identifying who you are and what your
> > official standing is.  Then, add an entry to the top of the list below
> > with template {{Subjectnotice|articlename}}, add some comments, and
> > sign it...  Please do so from a logged in account so that people can
> > respond on your talk page as well as the article talk page."
> > I haven't created the template (I have no idea how they work).
> > Does anyone think this is a bad idea?  Positive comments?
>
>
> It sounds n00b-hostile. What's the lightest-weight process from both
> sides that would do the job?

Good point.  Making a process optimized for the WP experts is not the point...

What do people think the easiest consistent process is which we could
do which would allow article subjects with little WP experience to
find out what to do, and do it, to make such a notification?  Let's
brainstorm...

We can disconnect the subject notifying us from WP process tracking it
once notified.  So they can be different mechanisms.

Ask them to put a comment in the talk page with a {{SubjectObjection}}
tag, which adds the talk page to a category?  Can we explain that
easily enough?

Create a mailing list for it and publicize the address?

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com