from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Steward elections

body:
Dariusz Siedlecki wrote:
> Here are the final results:
>
> Ausir (100%)
> Walter (100%)
> Jon Harald S?by (100%)
> Suisui (100%)
> Asc?nder (100%)
> Rdsmith4 (97,78%)
> Romihaitza (97,67%)
> villy (96,25%)
> Paginazero (90%)
>
> The other candidates didn't get 80% of support.
>
> Seeing as the Wikimedia projects need new stewards ("and a lot of
> 'em!"), I'd be really happy to see the Board supporting all of the
> mentioned candidates.
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Dariusz "Datrio" Siedlecki

Hi

Actually...

it would have been nice that you gave the time to the board to approve
all the mentionned candidates.

Next time we are supposed to give our opinion on the matter, it would be
  best to actually allow 24 hours for doing so. I do not think it really
matters in this case, but it would have both followed the elections
rules AND be polite to us.

------

Aside from this

I suggest that in a few months from now, we set up a "reconfirmation" of
current stewards (not those just elected, but the old chaps). Several
have been removed in the past few months, mostly because inactive. But
it might be that some editors are actually not happy with some stewards
and might wish to change their minds with them.

Second, I suggest that a sort of policy be done with regards to the use
of checkuser rights.
Stewards can use checkuser rights. Checkuser rights may impact the
Foundation privacy policy, so maybe the Foundation should have a say on
who gets this access. And checkuser rights involve technical skills. So,
these populations should be different.

Anthere


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Steward elections


list: wikien-l

from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How to bring back people who don't want to bother?

body:
On 1/12/06, Brock Batsell <wikipedia at theskeptik.com> wrote:
> Well, you seem to have removed the last sentence of my post, which
> read, "Obviously, this only applies to articles that merit inclusion
> in Wikipedia (i.e., meet the standards for notability and the
> like)."  A hoax article would obviously fall under these terms.  I'm
> *not* talking about articles like that, and I didn't think the
> discussion was either.
>
> --
> [[en:User:Bbatsell]]
>

It would be quite posible to write a hoax about Sn1 reactions. Doesn't
mean such reactions would not meet wikipedia's standards for
notability.

--
geni


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
geni wrote:

>On 1/12/06, Brock Batsell <wikipedia at theskeptik.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On Jan 11, 2006, at 7:39 PM, geni wrote:
>>
>>
>>>So? I'm free to chose to write about what i want rathen than what
>>>other people want to rant about.
>>>
>>>
>>I'm not sure I understand your argument.  In my opinion, if someone
>>is willing to go to the trouble to list an article on AfD, they
>>should be willing to go to the trouble to improve it to non-deletable
>>standards.
>>
>>
>Why? I might know that an article on an area of chemistry is a hoax.
>Doesn't mean I have the slightest interest in writeing about that bit
>of chemistry.
>
The essence of straw man arguments is to choose an example that everyone
will agree to, and use that as an excuse to apply the agreed solution
for the special case to an expanded environment.

To know that an article about chemistry is a hoax implies that you have
enough knowledge of chemistry to recognize a hoax.  The person to whom
you are responding made no mention of a hoax, and I would suspect that
being a hoax is a problem with only a very small portion of the articles
in question.  Debatable notability is far more often the cause of
disputes.  The information provided by "non-notable" articles may be
trivial or meaningless, but it is not deceptive and completely wrong in
the way that a hoax article would be.

Ec


from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

body:
> Perhaps, but I don't see many articles being nominated for AfD with the
> reason that it's a bad quality article. It might well be so. But the
> reason is usually, hoax, nonsense, or the most popular one "non notable".

AfD gets a lot of rotten press here and much of it is richly deserved. But
it's not completely hostile. Look at this little tale.

On January 8th a new user created the article [[Three cards and a top
hat]] with this content:

"Suppose you have three cards: one that is red on both sides, a second
that is white on both sides, and a third that is red on one side and white
on the other. The puzzles is this: Put all of the cards in the hat pull
one put and look at one side. Given that that side is red, what is the
probability the other side is also red."

Half an hour later the articles was, unsusurprisingly, on AfD. Four days
on it has grown into a substantial piece and will probably be kept.

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

It's "mathcruft" or "puzzlecruft" but once a reasonably decent article is
there we just can't bring ourselves to delete it.

Regards,
Haukur

> Mind you, I don't spend that much time on AfD so I could be missing a lot.
>
> Garion
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] checkuser log improvement

body:
hello

Looking at the checkuser log this morning, I thought that the current
information provided was unsufficient for proper follow up by other
editors with checkuser.

It had
Date of check  --- name of checkuser --- ip or user checked

Brion very nicely added a new column...

So, now, it has

Date of check --- name of checkuser --- ip or user checked --- local
project concerned.

For example

08:54, 12 January 2006 Brion VIBBER got IPs for Brion VIBBER on metawiki

Thanks Brion


from_name: Jean-Christophe Chazalette

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Steward elections

body:
What has been done can be undone no problem. As far as I'm concerned,
I'd rather be removed from the steward list the necessary time for the
board to get to a decision quietly, even if it means that - at the end
of it - it decides not to grant me the steward rights (for instance
because I had a weaker support than others or because there is no need
for such a bunch of new ones). At any rate, I'm not feeling at ease to
give a hand to the projects, as a second rate steward, a <tag>not
approved</tag> one. Just my POV.

villy ~~JC

2006/1/12, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>:
>
> Hi
>
> Actually...
>
> it would have been nice that you gave the time to the board to approve
> all the mentionned candidates.
>
> Next time we are supposed to give our opinion on the matter, it would be
>   best to actually allow 24 hours for doing so. I do not think it really
> matters in this case, but it would have both followed the elections
> rules AND be polite to us.
>
> ------
>
> Aside from this
>
> I suggest that in a few months from now, we set up a "reconfirmation" of
> current stewards (not those just elected, but the old chaps). Several
> have been removed in the past few months, mostly because inactive. But
> it might be that some editors are actually not happy with some stewards
> and might wish to change their minds with them.
>
> Second, I suggest that a sort of policy be done with regards to the use
> of checkuser rights.
> Stewards can use checkuser rights. Checkuser rights may impact the
> Foundation privacy policy, so maybe the Foundation should have a say on
> who gets this access. And checkuser rights involve technical skills. So,
> these populations should be different.
>
>
> Anthere
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Steward elections


from_name: SJ

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: userbox : insanity ?

body:
On 1/11/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:

> You're not alone: I came across a certain amount of confusion whilst I was
> looking those up.
>
> In one place there's a notice that Tor users are not welcome on Wikipedia
> because of the capacity for anonymous vandalism.
>
> OTOH I also found instructions for Tor users in China to get around the
> problem accessing Wikipedia from that country.

Where are those notice and instruction?  We should set up a page
specifically addressing dealing with Tor, and all of these confusions.

SJ


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How to bring back people who don't want to

body:
On 1/12/06, Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is> wrote:
> > Instead of redirecting or deleting, how about getting someone to merge it
> > into the immigration article?
>
> Merging a semi-coherent unsourced essay which is probably original
> research into even a half-decent article is not the way to go.
>
> But, by all means, anyone who is arguing that the best way to proceed with
> this case is not to delete the article, please do something. And here it
> is again:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changes_in_immigrant_groups_extended_family_positions
>
Frankly, in this particular case, I wouldn't have any problem if
someone who thinks the best way to proceed with this case is to delete
the article just deleted the article.  But apparently there isn't a
speedy criterion for it.

I do think a redirect would be better, but between deletion,
redirection, and just keeping it the way it is, I don't really think
it matters all that much.

Anthony


body:
You seem to be missing the point about why international standards exist
in the first place.  They protect against ambiguity.

There was absolutely no suggestion in there that she wanted to make any
of this information public.

Ec

GerardM wrote:

>Hoi,
>It is therefore NOT truly localised, when it is truly localised it is
>shown to you in a format that makes sense to the locale that can be
>associated with you.  A date format can be shown differently within
>one language depending on the locale. When you insist on an ISO format
>you in essence discriminate against a language that uses another date
>format if only because it uses different characters
>
>Then again showing the checkuser log indiscrimately is in my opinion
>not such a great idea. Yes, it is apparantly a central log..
>
>Thanks,
>    GerardM
>
>
>On 1/12/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 1/12/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>The term is "localised" meaning that you want to see them according to
>>>what is usual in your locale.
>>>
>>>
>>No, I'd prefer that they be displayed in the ISO international date
>>format so that they are NOT localized.  Right now they're in the local
>>language of the project that checkuser is run from, and as I don't
>>read Arabic or Polish, it makes reading the log occasionally
>>confusing.
>>


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Useless "developers"

body:
You're right, and it looks like you just die.  :-)
Ec

Mark Williamson wrote:

>I thought that required somebody to actually mention Hitler and/or Naziism?
>
>Mark
>
>On 12/01/06, Domas Mituzas <midom.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>
>>>Let me into a little secret. Seeing things without acting is why WW II
>>>could happen.
>>>
>>>
>>I guess it's time for Godwin's law.
>>


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: novial

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New Wikipedia request: Novial language

body:
At least four poeple have committed to contribute to a Wikipedia in the
constructed language Novial. This language was published in 1928 by
Professor Otto Jespersen followed by a multilingual dictionary in 1930.

In ISO 639-3 Novial has the 3-letter code nov.
The documentation is here:
http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=nov

On the basis of internet information the number of people who write this
language on the internet is in the order  of one dozen to twenty. The
language is well known among enthusiasts of international auxiliary
languages and is often said to be one of the best.

You can read our conversation which yesterday confirmed at least four
enthusiastic contributors at the novial-discussion group at Yahoo!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/novial-discussion/

If you wish to learn more about Novial see the Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novial_language

or the Novial Wikibook:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Novial

The voting is on this page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Non-natural

Thanks,

nov_ialiste


body:
> Surely it is easier to change an article into a one-line stub than it
> is to put it through the non-speedy deletion processes.

Let's do a case study. Here's an article which looks to me like useless
semi-coherent original research which we'd be better off without:

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

Yet the topic - which the article does a very poor job of defining - is
probably worthwhile. How would you recommend we proceed? Can you quickly
salvage a coherent useful stub out of this?

Regards,
Haukur


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Steward elections

body:
Welcome to all new stewards

Walter/Waerth


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Steward elections


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 1/12/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> The term is "localised" meaning that you want to see them according to
> what is usual in your locale.

No, I'd prefer that they be displayed in the ISO international date
format so that they are NOT localized.  Right now they're in the local
language of the project that checkuser is run from, and as I don't
read Arabic or Polish, it makes reading the log occasionally
confusing.

Kelly


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] How to bring back people who don't want to bother?

body:
geni wrote:

>On 1/12/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>
>>To tie back to AfD, if it were a project's prerogative to define
>>deletion criteria, then AfD could become more of a routing mechanism
>>that delegates articles' fates to projects. I'm not going to scan
>>AfD every day on the off-chance that a nautical topic comes up, but
>>would take time for a lower-volume "AfD/Ships", for instance.
>>
>>Stan
>>
>
>See the International whaleing commission for why this is a really bad
>idea. And why wikiproject schools would probably end up as the largest
>on wikipedia.
>
I don't see enough parallels with IWC to be meaningful - they have
large and competing economic interests involved, not a shared goal
of building a single work. And would "schools" be that large of a
project? My impression is that 90% of the contributors only work on
one school, don't even stick around long enough to join a project.

Stan


body:
(This discussion is on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changes_in_immigrant_groups_extended_family_positions
)

> Actually I don't think the topic is at all appropriate for an
> encyclopedia.  It'd make a good essay, but I seriously doubt you'd see
> such a title (or indeed any which start out "Changes in...") in, for
> example, Britannica.  For Wikipedia sometimes we get strange article
> titles like this for what is really a subpage of another article, but
> that doesn't seem to be the case here.

Nevertheless it would be possible to write a well-referenced article on
this topic in encyclopedic style and if we had such an article it would be
kept if brought up for AfD.

>> How would you recommend we proceed?
>
> Redirect to [[extended family]] (optionally merging if you think it's
> worthwhile).

I don't think it's worthwhile, I think it's worthless. But why should we
have a redirect there? The title is, as you noted, ridiculously long and
clumsy so no-one is likely to type it in. And the article has no incoming
links. Shouldn't we just delete it?

In any case I realize that since you feel that the topic of the article is
inappropriate for Wikipedia this was not in fact a good example for the
discussion we were having :)

Thanks for taking a look!

Regards,
Haukur


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Useless "developers"

body:
I thought that required somebody to actually mention Hitler and/or Naziism?

Mark

On 12/01/06, Domas Mituzas <midom.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> > Let me into a little secret. Seeing things without acting is why WW II
> > could happen.
>
> I guess it's time for Godwin's law.
>
> Domas
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] PHP error stats

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
> Are we also logging the request info when this happens

Alas, that's not included. It might be possible to hack PHP to dump REQUEST_URI
into the error messages or something...

> and where are the logs stored?

It goes into zwinger's syslog (/var/log/messages). If someone wants to fiddle
with the syslog setup, we could probably split them out to another file.

> In particular I'm interested in this for #6 which is in some code I
> wrote. It happens because exif_read_data() can return all sorts of
> funky stuff (apperently it's giving some key => array values insteaed
> of key => scalar there) and this isn't really documented, I debugged
> most of it when the Exif feature initially went live by making a
> custom log for it and studying the php module's source code but
> obviously I missed something, and to reproduce it properly I'd need
> the image name that was being parsed which I could get from the
> request info.

Yeah that'd be nice huh. :)

You could do a batch check over all images, should turn them up...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Rob Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] userbox : insanity ?

body:
I discerned as much.  The point is, the faction Fred is fearful of did not
exist, until ArbCom railroaded some editors in response to the demands of an
existing faction.  The remedy to an imaginary problem only created the
problem.  Now the faction cries out for leadership.  Pretending ideas don't
exist or can be dealt with by censorship solves nothing.

nobs

On 1/12/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> > From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> > [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Rob Smith
>
> > Well Fred has successfully confused me once again.  No less
> > than 5 times he's declared users did not "act in concert",
> > yet refused three motions to provide a Finding of Fact.
> > Oddly now, the very  faction Fred expresses fear of has been
> > created in response to the errors the ArbCom made in handling
> > the case. And this phenomenea is discussed in the Laird
> > Wilcox Report, the basis of the verifiable citations the
> > ArbCom attributed to Nobs as "personal attacks".
>
> Nobs, mate.
>
> I gave up hoping for justice or fairness from the wikijudiciary a while
> back.
>
> The fact is, if you do a lot of work for WP, you can be excused ANYTHING,
> even if there's a pile of hard evidence against you. And the longer you've
> been around the more you can get away with, mainly because you've got an
> established party of supporters to back you up and who will be offended if
> a
> decision goes against you.
>
> Don't think that this place is subject to the same sort of standards you
> expect in a court of law or even the due process of a government body.
> It's
> just a website, and the people running the show are all busy doing other
> stuff and while they are happy to assume the rank and power of their
> position, their top priority isn't listening to you point out their
> shortcomings, it's getting an encyclopaedia built.
>
> Accept that from your point of view the system is crooked and rigged and
> get
> on with it. Complaining about it only gets everyone offside.
>
> As I discovered.
>
> Peter (Skyring)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Wikify, why don't you?,
	was Re: How to bring back people who don't want to bother?

body:
On 1/12/06, Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is> wrote:
> >> And I *do* cleanup work in this category but the really
> >> frustrating thing is the cases where you'd be better off
> >> researching the topic and writing about it from scratch
> >> than trying to salvage the existing articles.
> >
> > You can do that, in fact. It leaves the old version in the history.
>
> Yes, of course you can. You're trying to tidy up the encyclopedia and you
> come upon a worse-than-useless article which doesn't fall under the CSD
> criteria. You have three options:
>
> 1. Research the topic and write a proper article, even if it's just a stub.
> 2. Drag the article, perhaps kicking and screaming, to AfD.
> 3. Do nothing.
>
There's always 4) Make it a redirect.

And if you're an admin, there's 5) Speedy delete it and hope you don't
get de-adminned. (Has anyone actually been de-adminned for speedy
deleting worse-than-useless crap?)

I'd argue that (1) doesn't really require much research in most cases,
especially when (4) isn't appropriate.

It would be nice if there were some other option which is easier to
implement than AfD but more consensus based than speedy deletion.
Semi-deletion was a proposal for such an option.

> It's not surprising that the third option is a popular one and that we
> have a large backlog of absolute crap. It's not a very serious problem
> because a lot of the crap has very low visibility to anyone not engaged in
> Wikipedia cleanup. But it's disheartening to those of us engaged in such
> cleanup.
>
> "Why isn't the first option taken more often?", you might ask. Well,
> writing a proper stub can be surprisingly hard work even if you manage to
> verify that the topic is reasonably worthy. And many of us have our
> favorite topics which we like writing articles about and do cleanup as an
> activity where we want to do more manual work and less brain work.
>
It doesn't have to be a "proper stub" to be "better than nothing".  A
simple one-liner stating whatever it is you know that verifies that
the topic is reasonably worthy should be enough.  If the article is
"worse than nothing", then surely it's worse than a one-line stub, so
you've improved the article and punted the problem to those people who
like to delete things.

> I'm not crying doom and gloom here, I'm just trying to justify why the
> quality of an article - not just its subject matter - legitimately affects
> whether it is deleted.
>
> An excellent article on a marginal topic is kept. A useless article on a
> marginal topic is deleted. A marginal article on a marginal topic may or
> may not be deleted. This is as it should be.
>
This is clearly your opinion, but you haven't really shown any reason
for someone with a differing opinion to change his or her mind.

> Then there is the rare case where a useless article on a marginal topic
> brought to AfD is vastly improved and then kept. This is what is happening
> with this article I mentioned:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_cards_and_a_top_hat
>
> But exceptional cases like that don't mean we should not take useless
> articles on marginal topics to AfD. Which in turn doesn't mean that I'm
> endorsing continually picking fights about something like webcomics.
>
> Regards,
> Haukur

I just don't see the point of spending your time listing something on
AfD (and thereby taking up a bunch of other people's time as well)
when you could have spent about the same amount of time replacing the
article with a redirect or a one-line stub.  To that effect, I don't
think one ever *should* take useless articles on marginal topics to
AfD.  (Which is not to say that there aren't situations where this is
a terrible choice, just that I can't think of any situation where it's
an optimal choice.)

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] userbox : insanity ?

body:
To contribute content, not to join a social club or be targeted and smeared
by ideological factions.  My contributions can wait, they will endure the
test of time, the ultimate test.

nobs

On 1/12/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> Kick against the pricks here and you get kicked back. At some stage you
> ask
> yourself just what you came here for in the first place, and if it's
> because
> you like people taking free kicks at you, then you probably shouldn't be
> here.
>
> Peter (Skyring)
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> > [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Rob Smith
> > Sent: Friday, 13 January 2006 07:12
> > To: English Wikipedia
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] userbox : insanity ?
> >
> > I discerned as much.  The point is, the faction Fred is
> > fearful of did not exist, until ArbCom railroaded some
> > editors in response to the demands of an existing faction.
> > The remedy to an imaginary problem only created the problem.
> > Now the faction cries out for leadership.  Pretending ideas
> > don't exist or can be dealt with by censorship solves nothing.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Using of mediawiki engine

body:
On 12/01/06, Jean Lamy <jean.lamy at revues.org> wrote:
> I've done some tests but it seems that the parser (Parser.php) is links
> to too many files.
>
> My dream :) was to have only 1 file to parse the Wiki content, allowing
> me to plug mediawiki extension.

Yes, others have had this dream, and failed - hence all the
alternative parsers out there. Of course, the dumpHTML script uses the
"real" parser, but then it uses the real database as well, so it
*needs* more than that one file. Still, it might conceivably be
possible to subclass Skin.php (or just Linker.php?) and get most of
the functions referenced in the parser. Still, a lot of work; probably
better to use one of the others...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: How to change topbar?

body:
Skins directory.

Rob Church

On 12/01/06, Andreas von R?den <Andreas.von.Rueden at web.de> wrote:
> Rob Church wrote:
>
> > Edit the skin files to change the order of elements in the document.
> Thank you... where can i find them?
>
> thanks for any information
>
> Andreas
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] userbox : insanity ?

body:
Admittedly, there is alotta technical stuff I don't know, or the background
of the project.  As an exilee I got the time to study.  But on return I'll
have a few hundred (or thousand) articles to contribute.

nobs

On 1/12/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> > From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> > [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Rob Smith
>
> > To contribute content, not to join a social club or be
> > targeted and smeared by ideological factions.  My
> > contributions can wait, they will endure the test of time,
> > the ultimate test.
>
> Well, in that case why don't you find a way that allows you to contribute
> without getting everybody including yourself hot and bothered?
>
> Peter (Skyring)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

body:
On 1/12/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/12/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> > To tie back to AfD, if it were a project's prerogative to define
> > deletion criteria, then AfD could become more of a routing mechanism
> > that delegates articles' fates to projects. I'm not going to scan
> > AfD every day on the off-chance that a nautical topic comes up, but
> > would take time for a lower-volume "AfD/Ships", for instance.
> >
> > Stan
>
> See the International whaleing commission for why this is a really bad
> idea. And why wikiproject schools would probably end up as the largest
> on wikipedia.

Ergo my earlier suggestion that, if we give more autonomy to
WikiProjects, we should have some sort of community accreditation for
it.  In other words, it would be up to the community at large to
delegate control to each specific project as necessary.  WikiProject
Schools may be too contentious, and may therefore be refused such
authority; but for many projects this would not be an issue.

Kirill Lokshin


subject: [WikiEN-l] userbox : insanity ?

body:
I've read some portions of your case; the content issues are interesting.
And I note Fred accepted as per the content issues.  Feel free to give your
perspective how the whole mess was handled.

nobs

On 1/12/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> > From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> > [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Rob Smith
>
> > Admittedly, there is alotta technical stuff I don't know, or
> > the background of the project.  As an exilee I got the time
> > to study.  But on return I'll have a few hundred (or
> > thousand) articles to contribute.
>
> WP is just a website. If you have useful stuff to contribute, contribute
> it.
> Just don't stick your head up where it's going to get kicked.
>
> Peter (Skyring)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] PHP error stats

body:
On 1/11/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Log extracts from Jan 11 04:04:30 through Jan 11 20:07:52; excluding zwinger and
> larousse where various batch operations and things run.
>
> 1116 total errors logged:
>
> Fatal errors:
> 996 'Allowed memory size of 52428800 bytes exhausted'
>  17 'Maximum execution time of 180 seconds exceeded' [1]
>   2 'Call to a member function on a non-object' [2]
>   1 'Call to undefined function:  memsess_key()' [3]
>
> Warnings:
>  34 'gzinflate(): buffer error' [4]
>  20 'rename(<path>,<path>): Not a directory' [5]
>  16 'preg_match() expects parameter 2 to be string, array given' [6]
>  12 'Cannot modify header information' [7]
>  10 various mysql_* connection errors
>   5 'unlink(<path>): Is a directory' [8]
>   1 'unlink(<path>): No such file or directory'
>   1 'filemtime(): Stat failed for <path> (errno=2 - No such file or directory)'
>   1 'mkdir(<path>): File exists'
>
>
> [1] Almost all are in the diff code; one in Parser::replaceInternalLinks.
> [2] Title.php on line 1749
> [3] User.php on line 1661
> [4] Revision.php on line 456; could indicate damaged compressed entries in text
> storage
> [5] Image.php on line 978 (renderThumb)
> [6] Exif.php on line 476
> [7] in StreamFile.php various places, output from warnings in Image.php
> [8] Image.php on line 981 (renderThumb)

Are we also logging the request info when this happens and where are
the logs stored?

In particular I'm interested in this for #6 which is in some code I
wrote. It happens because exif_read_data() can return all sorts of
funky stuff (apperently it's giving some key => array values insteaed
of key => scalar there) and this isn't really documented, I debugged
most of it when the Exif feature initially went live by making a
custom log for it and studying the php module's source code but
obviously I missed something, and to reproduce it properly I'd need
the image name that was being parsed which I could get from the
request info.

Great stats b.t.w., hope this'll be regularly updated.


subject: [WikiEN-l] userbox : insanity ?

body:
Similiar to my impressions.  There are what, 9 or 12 Arbitrators?  I think
one examines the portions of a case he feels like examining, makes findings,
and the rest rubber stamp it.  It pays to have friends and past
associations, the proper ideological convictions, or not be branded as
something by users with the proper ideological convictions.

My case was humourous, after I called attention on the WP:Verifiabilty
rewrite discussion & the Candidate election statements, that verifiabale
citations were being used as evidence of personal attacks, the next
day they pursued a different track, "editors with strong POV."  What a
comedy of errors.

nobs

On 1/12/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> I'm not going to rehash old stuff. Fred's summarising for the Arbcom was
> quite mistaken, but in his defence he didn't understand the constitutional
> subleties and he didn't have time to go looking at all the arguments. I
> was
> na?ve enough to think that the thing would be fully investigated, and I
> spent a lot of time being righteously outraged and making a damfool of
> myself.
>
> Peter (Skyring)
>
> > From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> > [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Rob Smith
>
> > I've read some portions of your case; the content issues are
> > interesting.
> > And I note Fred accepted as per the content issues.  Feel
> > free to give your perspective how the whole mess was handled.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Useless "developers"

body:
Quistnix wrote:
> I think Servien is frustrated by the fact that nds.wikipedia is
> effectively taken over by German nationalists who have succeeded
> in making people write a language spoken in parts of four countries,
> using grammatic rules and conventions from only one. the fact that
> the majority of the people writing in nds: lives in Germany was
> abused to vote to make it a "democratic" decision.
>
> Anton

Let me add a little secret. Most of our developers are very careful of
staying out of political issues.
Mentioning that the set up of a wiki *might* cause an uproar amongst
editors, whatever the reason (constructed language, nationalism,
dialect) will somehow launch a big warning flag... and is likely to slow
down even more the creation.

Wiki way :-)

Cheers up, developers are your friends

ant

> Servien Ilaino wrote:
>
>> Thanks for your comments... but I got the message, besides it wasn't
>> "childish" in my opinion, it was meant to get a reaction for once,
>> apparently this is what it takes :(. I took my chill pills, so we'll see
>> when it all happens :)
>>
>> Serv
>>
>>
>> 2006/1/8, Mark Williamson
>> <node.ue at gmail.com>:
>>
>>> Servien,
>>>
>>> When new Wikipedias have been created in the past, it wasn't because
>>> we called the developers names or resorted to other such childish
>>> tactics.
>>>
>>> It is because we were patient, treated them with respect, asked kindly
>>> and in a personal way, and didn't pout if they didn't give us what we
>>> asked for _right away_.
>>>
>>> If I had acted like you are right now in advocating for their
>>> creation, I'm betting we wouldn't have the Udmurt, Venet, Lombard,
>>> etc. Wikipedias.
>>>
>>> So take my advice and take it down a notch. Take a chill pill. You're
>>> not going to die if these Wikipedias aren't created immediately. You
>>> have to be patient. The developers are your friends.
>>>
>>> They are on a busy schedule, and remember that it is a volunteer job
>>> and they aren't paid except by donations (with one exception). The
>>> developers have to worry about "real" jobs, school, family, and every
>>> other concern of normal human beings because after all, they _are_
>>> normal human beings (a developer can correct me if I'm wrong there).
>>>
>>> So give them a break. If you do, the Wikipedias will be created
>>> eventually. If you don't, it will never be created.
>>>
>>> Mark
>>>
>>> On 08/01/06, Servien Ilaino
>>> <servien at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm sure they are usefull for developing software. But most people
>>>
>>>
>>> who've
>>>
>>>> requested a wiki are kind of getting tired of waiting all the time.
>>>
>>>
>>> First
>>>
>>>> they have to go through a long boring process which can take up to even
>>>
>>>
>>> half
>>>
>>>> a year before they are approved when it's approved they wait about
>>>
>>>
>>> another
>>>
>>>> half a year... by that time most people who initially wanted to work on
>>>
>>>
>>> the
>>>
>>>> project decided not to anymore.
>>>>
>>>> If someone would have told us the whole blikketyblek is frozen, we
>>>> would
>>>> have had some kind of understanding. ISO codes aren't enoug: these
>>>> wikis
>>>> have been approved this means there have been serious discussions.
>>>>
>>>> I really hope a new wiki will be created this year though. (if
>>>> possible)
>>>>
>>>> Serv
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 2006/1/8, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com>:
>>>>
>>>>> On 1/7/06, Daniel Mayer
>>>>> <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> A much better policy needs to be created that takes this into
>>>
>>>
>>> account.
>>>
>>>>> Preferably a much better and *retroactive* policy.
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Sam
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>>>>> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>>>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>>>>>


from_name: Dariusz Siedlecki

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Steward elections

body:
On 1/12/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> it would have been nice that you gave the time to the board to approve
> all the mentionned candidates.
>
> Next time we are supposed to give our opinion on the matter, it would be
>   best to actually allow 24 hours for doing so. I do not think it really
> matters in this case, but it would have both followed the elections
> rules AND be polite to us.

Okay, I have to agree I didn't wait for you - Angela and Jimbo
confirmed the 9 new Stewards, and seeing that you were interested
earlier in the election and didn't comment on any candidate, I thought
you won't have any doubts to any of them.

Well, I was just being bold, to make a long story short. I agree, I
should've waited for you to reply. Because of my behaviour, sorry
Anthere. Next time I'll wait for the whole Board to reply before
setting the rights, or doing anything else.

> Aside from this
>
> I suggest that in a few months from now, we set up a "reconfirmation" of
> current stewards (not those just elected, but the old chaps). Several
> have been removed in the past few months, mostly because inactive. But
> it might be that some editors are actually not happy with some stewards
> and might wish to change their minds with them.

That sounds like a pretty good idea. It would help in such situations
as Arno's stewardship ATM.

> Second, I suggest that a sort of policy be done with regards to the use
> of checkuser rights.
> Stewards can use checkuser rights. Checkuser rights may impact the
> Foundation privacy policy, so maybe the Foundation should have a say on
> who gets this access. And checkuser rights involve technical skills. So,
> these populations should be different.

Yes, that would be really useful. Right now I'm following my own
policy (go me), which says "If a project doesn't have CheckUsers, go
ahead with the check". But I know it isn't right and we should have an
official policy on that, or just simply state "Stewards can't do
CheckUser".

--
Pozdrawiam,
Dariusz "Datrio" Siedlecki


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Steward elections


from_name: charles matthews

body:
"Haukur ?orgeirsson" wrote

> Deleting all the contents of [[Category:Articles that need to be
> wikified]] would arguably improve the encyclopedia.

And arguably would not.  Rather than arguing, I'd prefer to wikify.  Why do
we have all these 'hanging judges'?  There has always been a proportion of
junk and random stuff up there.  We have always in the past tried to treat
bad articles as an opportunity for improvement.  I don't use a flamethrower
to weed the garden, either.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fair use images on user pages and enforcement

body:
Sam Korn wrote:

>On 1/12/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
>
>>Hi everyone,
>>
>>I'm just curious whether we have a policy on the use of fair use images
>>on user pages, rather than a guideline, and if so, what our procedure is
>>for enforcement of that policy if it says no such images permitted.
>>Obviously discussion is the first stepping stone, but if the user in
>>question refuses to remove it, what actions should admins take in order
>>to do so? I'm thinking of page protection and blocking here. I know
>>someone has been indefinitely blocked in the past because he did not
>>license his user page under the GFDL.
>>
>
>It's quite simple really.  Wikipedia's biggest reason for qualifying
>for fair use is that it is a free educational resource.  Userpages are
>just not educational.  User pages would, if I read the situation
>right, be very little different from a GeoCities website or the
>equivilent.  Image use would not qualify as fair use there; why should
>it here?
>
Seeing as how 99% of personal websites out there have images
infringing on somebody's copyright, most users have the impression
that nobody cares about the issue.

Perhaps it would be more effective to point out that WP is now a
high-visibility site, and that all the other sites at WP's level
(that are not personal page hosts) are pretty careful about copyright
and attribution. You could even ask the user to try to find even one
"fair use" picture on news.yahoo.com or some such, should drive the
point home.

Stan


from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

body:
>> Deleting all the contents of [[Category:Articles that need to be
>> wikified]] would arguably improve the encyclopedia.
>
> And arguably would not.  Rather than arguing,
> I'd prefer to wikify.  Why do we have all these
> 'hanging judges'?  There has always been a proportion
> of junk and random stuff up there.  We have always
> in the past tried to treat bad articles as an
> opportunity for improvement.  I don't use a
> flamethrower to weed the garden, either.

If only it were so simple that the articles
in [[Category:Articles that need to be wikified]]
actually just needed to be wikified. That's very
rarely the case.

And as I noted in my post I'm not actually saying
we should go and delete them all, it would destroy
*some* useful content and alienate a lot of people.
It wouldn't be worth it.

And I *do* cleanup work in this category but the really
frustrating thing is the cases where you'd be better off
researching the topic and writing about it from scratch
than trying to salvage the existing articles.

Regards,
Haukur


body:
> Instead of redirecting or deleting, how about getting someone to merge it
> into the immigration article?

Merging a semi-coherent unsourced essay which is probably original
research into even a half-decent article is not the way to go.

But, by all means, anyone who is arguing that the best way to proceed with
this case is not to delete the article, please do something. And here it
is again:

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

I will admit that most of the articles in the wikification category are
not this bad and many of them are quite decent and should not at all be
deleted. Sorry if I sounded overzealous.

Regards,
Haukur

> On 1/12/06, Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is> wrote:
>> > Surely it is easier to change an article into a one-line stub than it
>> > is to put it through the non-speedy deletion processes.
>>
>> Let's do a case study. Here's an article which looks to me like useless
>> semi-coherent original research which we'd be better off without:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changes_in_immigrant_groups_extended_family_positions
>>
>> Yet the topic - which the article does a very poor job of defining - is
>> probably worthwhile.
>
> Actually I don't think the topic is at all appropriate for an
> encyclopedia.  It'd make a good essay, but I seriously doubt you'd see
> such a title (or indeed any which start out "Changes in...") in, for
> example, Britannica.  For Wikipedia sometimes we get strange article
> titles like this for what is really a subpage of another article, but
> that doesn't seem to be the case here.
>
>> How would you recommend we proceed?
>
> Redirect to [[extended family]] (optionally merging if you think it's
> worthwhile).
>
>> Can you quickly salvage a coherent useful stub out of this?
>>
>> Regards,
>> Haukur
>
> Anthony
>
>> > How would you recommend we proceed?
>>
>> Redirect to [[extended family]] (optionally merging if you think it's
>> worthwhile).
>
> Actually, I'd recommend implementing semi-deletion so that the article
> could be deleted while the content kept viewable by everyone.  But
> since semi-deletion doesn't exist, redirects are the next best thing.
>
> Anthony
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Ivan Krstic

subject: [Wikitech-l] Using of mediawiki engine

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:
> Yes, others have had this dream, and failed - hence all the
> alternative parsers out there.

Didn't Magnus recently write a standalone parser that supports the full
MW syntax so he could convert wiki markup to XML, or somesuch?

If it works, it's probably exactly what the original poster is looking for.

--
Ivan Krstic <krstic at fas.harvard.edu> | 0x147C722D


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requests for rollback privileges

body:
Hi everyone,

The proposed "Requests for rollback privileges", which would give just
the rollback privilege to suitable editors who requested it, has
received a great amount of support with very few objections. Because of
this, I would like to have it become official policy and procedure. The
technical side which would make this possible is currently under
development. When it is ready, I believe that there is sufficient
consensus for it to be implemented immediately. I'd like to invite
everyone to read through the proposed mechanism and the discussion on
the talk page and if they have any worries or comments about this
proposal to make them!
  -->
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_rollback_privileges

Thanks,
Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


from_name: Peter Mackay

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of geni
> Sent: Thursday, 12 January 2006 13:39
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: How to bring back people who
> don't want to bother?
>
> On 1/12/06, Brock Batsell <wikipedia at theskeptik.com> wrote:
> > On Jan 11, 2006, at 7:39 PM, geni wrote:
> > >
> > > So? I'm free to chose to write about what i want rathen than what
> > > other people want to rant about.
> >
> > I'm not sure I understand your argument.  In my opinion, if
> someone is
> > willing to go to the trouble to list an article on AfD,
> they should be
> > willing to go to the trouble to improve it to non-deletable
> standards.
>
> Why? I might know that an article on an area of chemistry is a hoax.
> Doesn't mean I have the slightest interest in writeing about
> that bit of chemistry.

Likewise, if something or someone isn't notable, all the rewriting in the
world isn't going to make it so. [[Vicarius Filii Dei]] is an example. Lots
of pictures and pseudosources to cover a myth that Snopes doesn't even
bother listing.

Peter (Skyring)


from_name: Jean Lamy

subject: [Wikitech-l] Using of mediawiki engine

body:
Ivan Krstic a ?crit :

>Rowan Collins wrote:
>
>
>>Yes, others have had this dream, and failed - hence all the
>>alternative parsers out there.
>>
>>
>
>Didn't Magnus recently write a standalone parser that supports the full
>MW syntax so he could convert wiki markup to XML, or somesuch?
>
>If it works, it's probably exactly what the original poster is looking for.
>
>
Yes it is exactly what I want !

Jean


subject: [Wikitech-l] Using of mediawiki engine

body:
Jean Lamy wrote:
> Yes it is exactly what I want !

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-November/032395.html

--
Ivan Krstic <krstic at fas.harvard.edu> | 0x147C722D


subject: [Wikitech-l] Using of mediawiki engine

body:
Thank you I'm going to look at this.

Jean

Ivan Krstic a ?crit :

>Jean Lamy wrote:
>
>
>>Yes it is exactly what I want !
>>
>>
>
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-November/032395.html
>
>
>


body:
On 1/12/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The problem you have is that it will be less effort to bring in
> outsiders to support your position rather than to change your oponents
> position. This results in people not involved with the project being
> brought in solely to decide the result of votes.

If you mean in the case of disagreement within a project, their votes
could be discounted under the same reasoning that we discount votes
from very new users in AFD: they're not really part of the community
(referring, in this case, to the project rather than to Wikipedia as a
whole).  Given that most projects don't fall apart over day-to-day
disagreements, there's no reason to think that adding any formal
weight to the process would suddenly result in a rash of
vote-stacking.

There are, of course, a few projects that exist mainly as glorified
debating forums rather than resources for collaborative editing;
presumably they would not be given the authority to run their own
deletion discussions.

Kirill Lokshin


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 1/12/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/12/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> > It doesn't have to be a "proper stub" to be "better than nothing".  A
> > simple one-liner stating whatever it is you know that verifies that
> > the topic is reasonably worthy should be enough.  If the article is
> > "worse than nothing", then surely it's worse than a one-line stub, so
> > you've improved the article and punted the problem to those people who
> > like to delete things.
> >
>
> A one liner turns all the links blue. Fewer people will then notice
> that it needs some serious expansion.
>
>
> --
> geni

And you think this is a big enough problem that it renders the stubs
to be worth less than nothing?  If so, I disagree.  Logged in users
can mark links containing less than X characters specially anyway
(which is *better* information than just red vs. blue), and users that
aren't logged in couldn't even edit the article if it was deleted
completely.


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 1/12/06, Brock Batsell <wikipedia at theskeptik.com> wrote:
> Wasn't this discussion aimed at the listings for "bad-quality"
> articles (i.e., salvageable, but when listed, in bad shape)?

No.  It was my comment that started it, and my comment was that, in
general, bad articles are more likely to be deleted than good ones.  I
don't think anyone in the debate will contest that.

--
Sam


from_name: jayjg

body:
On 1/12/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm just curious whether we have a policy on the use of fair use images
> on user pages, rather than a guideline, and if so, what our procedure is
> for enforcement of that policy if it says no such images permitted.
> Obviously discussion is the first stepping stone, but if the user in
> question refuses to remove it, what actions should admins take in order
> to do so? I'm thinking of page protection and blocking here.

I'm a little concerned here.  While I think policy should be followed, I've
been disturbed by the way this has been handled recently.  Whether or not an
image is "fair use" is sometimes disputed, and in any event handling this in
a friendly way is far preferable to heavy-handed and drastic actions which
might well drive good contributors from the project.  If it's not an
emergency (and, given that these images have been on user pages for months,
if not years, I don't see how it could be), then I think delicacy and
diplomacy is the right way to go.

Jay.


body:
"Haukur ?orgeirsson" wrote

> And as I noted in my post I'm not actually saying
> we should go and delete them all, it would destroy
> *some* useful content and alienate a lot of people.
> It wouldn't be worth it.

Format is never a good reason for deletion, is it?

> And I *do* cleanup work in this category but the really
> frustrating thing is the cases where you'd be better off
> researching the topic and writing about it from scratch
> than trying to salvage the existing articles.

You can do that, in fact. It leaves the old version in the history.

Charles


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:
> On 1/12/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Date of check --- name of checkuser --- ip or user checked --- local
>> project concerned.
>>
>
> Now, if we could just get the dates internationalized....
>
> Kelly
Hoi,
The term is "localised" meaning that you want to see them according to
what is usual in your locale.
Thanks,
   GerardM


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Re: userbox : insanity ?

body:
"SJ" <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote in message
news:742dfd060601120755n3e55af2cvc0e0f0b99796a985 at mail.gmail.com...
On 1/11/06, Phil Boswell
<phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Where are those notice and instruction?

> > In one place there's a notice that Tor users are not welcome on
> > Wikipedia
> > because of the capacity for anonymous vandalism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_%28anonymity_network%29#Etiquette_and_abuse

http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/Sep-2005/msg00233.html

> > OTOH I also found instructions for Tor users in China to get around the
> > problem accessing Wikipedia from that country.

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

which was formally announced here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-10-31/China_block

>  We should set up a page
> specifically addressing dealing with Tor, and all of these confusions.

{{sofixit}} :-}

HTH HAND
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


body:
>> And I *do* cleanup work in this category but the really
>> frustrating thing is the cases where you'd be better off
>> researching the topic and writing about it from scratch
>> than trying to salvage the existing articles.
>
> You can do that, in fact. It leaves the old version in the history.

Yes, of course you can. You're trying to tidy up the encyclopedia and you
come upon a worse-than-useless article which doesn't fall under the CSD
criteria. You have three options:

1. Research the topic and write a proper article, even if it's just a stub.
2. Drag the article, perhaps kicking and screaming, to AfD.
3. Do nothing.

It's not surprising that the third option is a popular one and that we
have a large backlog of absolute crap. It's not a very serious problem
because a lot of the crap has very low visibility to anyone not engaged in
Wikipedia cleanup. But it's disheartening to those of us engaged in such
cleanup.

"Why isn't the first option taken more often?", you might ask. Well,
writing a proper stub can be surprisingly hard work even if you manage to
verify that the topic is reasonably worthy. And many of us have our
favorite topics which we like writing articles about and do cleanup as an
activity where we want to do more manual work and less brain work.

I'm not crying doom and gloom here, I'm just trying to justify why the
quality of an article - not just its subject matter - legitimately affects
whether it is deleted.

An excellent article on a marginal topic is kept. A useless article on a
marginal topic is deleted. A marginal article on a marginal topic may or
may not be deleted. This is as it should be.

Then there is the rare case where a useless article on a marginal topic
brought to AfD is vastly improved and then kept. This is what is happening
with this article I mentioned:

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

But exceptional cases like that don't mean we should not take useless
articles on marginal topics to AfD. Which in turn doesn't mean that I'm
endorsing continually picking fights about something like webcomics.

Regards,
Haukur


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Best audio file ever

body:
  http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Image:Adminses.ogg

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: checkuser log improvement

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:
> On 1/12/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Date of check --- name of checkuser --- ip or user checked --- local
>>project concerned.
>
>
> Now, if we could just get the dates internationalized....
>
> Kelly

:-)

If I had another wish, it would be to have search system, to list only
checks done by one checkuser, or checks done only on one project :-)

And soon, the log will be horribly long.....
so, maybe a <previous 1000><next 1000>

But it is not terribly urgent.

/me dreaming Ant


from_name: geni

body:
On 1/12/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> To tie back to AfD, if it were a project's prerogative to define
> deletion criteria, then AfD could become more of a routing mechanism
> that delegates articles' fates to projects. I'm not going to scan
> AfD every day on the off-chance that a nautical topic comes up, but
> would take time for a lower-volume "AfD/Ships", for instance.
>
> Stan

See the International whaleing commission for why this is a really bad
idea. And why wikiproject schools would probably end up as the largest
on wikipedia.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Steward elections

body:
Dariusz Siedlecki wrote:
> On 1/12/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>it would have been nice that you gave the time to the board to approve
>>all the mentionned candidates.
>>
>>Next time we are supposed to give our opinion on the matter, it would be
>>  best to actually allow 24 hours for doing so. I do not think it really
>>matters in this case, but it would have both followed the elections
>>rules AND be polite to us.
>
>
> Okay, I have to agree I didn't wait for you - Angela and Jimbo
> confirmed the 9 new Stewards, and seeing that you were interested
> earlier in the election and didn't comment on any candidate, I thought
> you won't have any doubts to any of them.
>
> Well, I was just being bold, to make a long story short. I agree, I
> should've waited for you to reply. Because of my behaviour, sorry
> Anthere. Next time I'll wait for the whole Board to reply before
> setting the rights, or doing anything else.

Sigh. Okay.
Well, I fully trust you all guys. And Angela had no opposition
whatsoever as well.

(guys...  errrr... yes, that's right... no gals... why ?)

One thing that makes me pretty happy is this

Ausir 			pl
Walter			nl
Jon Harald S?by		no
Suisui			ja
Asc?nder		es
Rdsmith4		en
Romihaitza		ro
villy			fr
Paginazero		it

This is pretty cool no ?

Next time, I suggest to put a new rule (positive discrimination I know),
a requirement of 50% of female stewards... a real challenge

>>Aside from this
>>
>>I suggest that in a few months from now, we set up a "reconfirmation" of
>>current stewards (not those just elected, but the old chaps). Several
>>have been removed in the past few months, mostly because inactive. But
>>it might be that some editors are actually not happy with some stewards
>>and might wish to change their minds with them.
>
>
> That sounds like a pretty good idea. It would help in such situations
> as Arno's stewardship ATM.

Yup. He seems not very happy...

>>Second, I suggest that a sort of policy be done with regards to the use
>>of checkuser rights.
>>Stewards can use checkuser rights. Checkuser rights may impact the
>>Foundation privacy policy, so maybe the Foundation should have a say on
>>who gets this access. And checkuser rights involve technical skills. So,
>>these populations should be different.
>
>
> Yes, that would be really useful. Right now I'm following my own
> policy (go me), which says "If a project doesn't have CheckUsers, go
> ahead with the check". But I know it isn't right and we should have an
> official policy on that, or just simply state "Stewards can't do
> CheckUser".

There is even another option...

Imagine we have one person we trust very much, who is not interested in
being a steward, but who has the technical skills to be a checkuser and
is showing good understanding of the checkuser privacy issues etc...

What about giving that person the checkuser status on many projects, if
not all projects (I suppose this could be set in the database), so that
this person can do the job on a more global scale ?

(Of course, I say one person, it could be several).

This would probably remove in most part the need of stewards making the
checks themselves, activity for which they may not be the most suitable
people.

Anthere

> --
> Pozdrawiam,
> Dariusz "Datrio" Siedlecki


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Steward elections


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

body:
On 1/12/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> I agree. I think a calm, friendly, and rational explanation of why fair
> use images cannot be used on user pages would be a simple way to get the
> vast majority of people who currently use them to remove them.
>
I think your idea of having a page to explain this is a good idea,
Chris, then users violating the policy (if it is a policy) could be
directed there, and asked in the first instance to consider removing
the image themselves. That would reduce a lot of the ill-feeling this
issue is otherwise generating. Then if after a suitable period, the
image is still there and fair use is still being claimed, it could be
removed by others.

Sarah


from_name: Gianluigi Gamba

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Steward elections

body:
Just joined in... thanks for the welcome, and thanks to Dariusz/Datrio for
having being bold.
;o)

Nevertheless, being the least supported among the new ones, I quote
Jean-Christophe and remit my band-new flag to the board's will.

Bye everybody.
G. (aka Paginazero)


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Steward elections


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Steward elections

body:
(Sorry... too many typos before, let me try again)

Just joined in... thanks for the welcome, and thanks to Dariusz/Datrio for
having been bold.
;o)

Nevertheless, being the least supported among the new ones, I quote
Jean-Christophe and remit my brand-new flag to the board's will.

Bye everybody.
G. (aka Paginazero)


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Steward elections


from_name: valdelli at bluemail.ch

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Steward elections

body:
>
>This is pretty cool no ?
>
>Next time, I suggest to put a new rule (positive discrimination I know),
>
>a requirement of 50% of female stewards... a real challenge
>

There is a discrimination if 50% of users are female!

But if the female users are less than 50% and it is fixed a barrage to the
election of male stewards this could became a discrimination... towards male
users.

A paradox. It's better to have a good steward (male or female).

Ilario


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Steward elections


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Steward elections

body:
valdelli at bluemail.ch wrote:
>>This is pretty cool no ?
>>
>>Next time, I suggest to put a new rule (positive discrimination I know),
>>
>>a requirement of 50% of female stewards... a real challenge
>>
>
>
> There is a discrimination if 50% of users are female!
>
> But if the female users are less than 50% and it is fixed a barrage to the
> election of male stewards this could became a discrimination... towards male
> users.
>
> A paradox. It's better to have a good steward (male or female).
>
> Ilario

This is exactly what is positive discrimination :-)

ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Steward elections


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Steward elections

body:
Apparently fixed.
Jimbo, Angela and myself agree.
And the final number is pretty cool.
So, all is well.

Now, the old stewards go on holidays and let you clean up the request
for bot status :-)

ant

Gianluigi Gamba wrote:
> (Sorry... too many typos before, let me try again)
>
> Just joined in... thanks for the welcome, and thanks to Dariusz/Datrio
> for having been bold.
> ;o)
>
> Nevertheless, being the least supported among the new ones, I quote
> Jean-Christophe and remit my brand-new flag to the board's will.
>
> Bye everybody.
> G. (aka Paginazero)


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Steward elections


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [Bug 4553] [patch] Green U marker for updated
 pages on watchlist and recent changes

body:
bugzilla-daemon at mail.wikimedia.org schrieb:

>http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4553
>
>------- Additional Comments From brion at pobox.com  2006-01-12 06:53 UTC -------
>incorrectly used a non-NULL value, assuming that timestamp columns were
>always VARCHAR. For whatever reason he still hadn't fixed this by the time his
>patches got applied to the 1.5 development branch, so it remained broken until I
>fixed up this code recently. We use proper datetime columns for non-MySQL databases (PostgreSQL and Oracle) and
>will likely fix this on MySQL at some point as well.
>
This was tried to be fixed --  see i.a.
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1855 -- but the developers
community did not want to migrate to fully use DATETIME at that early
stage, so I resigned from further devloping it.

Whenever you skip over to use DATETIME, I will resume that work, no
question.
T.
See also http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/datetime.html
and Brions comment#11
<http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1855#c11> from Brion
Vibber <mailto:brion at pobox.com> 2005-04-10 06:49 UTC [reply
<javascript:void()>]

            "Will use DATETIME."

Yes, please, go on


from_name: GerardM

body:
Hoi,
It is therefore NOT truly localised, when it is truly localised it is
shown to you in a format that makes sense to the locale that can be
associated with you.  A date format can be shown differently within
one language depending on the locale. When you insist on an ISO format
you in essence discriminate against a language that uses another date
format if only because it uses different characters

Then again showing the checkuser log indiscrimately is in my opinion
not such a great idea. Yes, it is apparantly a central log..

Thanks,
    GerardM

On 1/12/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/12/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The term is "localised" meaning that you want to see them according to
> > what is usual in your locale.
>
> No, I'd prefer that they be displayed in the ISO international date
> format so that they are NOT localized.  Right now they're in the local
> language of the project that checkuser is run from, and as I don't
> read Arabic or Polish, it makes reading the log occasionally
> confusing.
>
> Kelly
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

body:
>> An excellent article on a marginal topic is kept. A useless article on a
>> marginal topic is deleted. A marginal article on a marginal topic may or
>> may not be deleted. This is as it should be.
>>
> This is clearly your opinion, but you haven't really shown any reason
> for someone with a differing opinion to change his or her mind.

Regardless of the context this is such an excellent sentence that it made
me laugh out loud :) I'll have to keep it somewhere. This is so often the
case and I'm guilty as charged.

> I just don't see the point of spending your time listing something on
> AfD (and thereby taking up a bunch of other people's time as well)
> when you could have spent about the same amount of time replacing the
> article with a redirect or a one-line stub.

If I can replace absolute crap with a one-line stub then, sure, I'll do
that. But using redirects as a sort of pseudo-deletion is something I'm a
bit uncomfortable with.

- - -

I seem to be coming across as some sort of AfD-troll out to decimate badly
formatted marginal articles, or something :) That's not the case at all. I
don't think I've ever brought anything but slam-dunk cases to AfD and I
try to do it as gently as I can. Here's my most recent nomination:

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

Regards,
Haukur


from_name: Quistnix

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Useless "developers"

body:
Anthere wrote:

> Quistnix wrote:
>
>> I think Servien is frustrated by the fact that nds.wikipedia is
>> effectively taken over by German nationalists who have succeeded
>> in making people write a language spoken in parts of four countries,
>> using grammatic rules and conventions from only one. the fact that
>> the majority of the people writing in nds: lives in Germany was
>> abused to vote to make it a "democratic" decision.
>>
>> Anton
>
>
> Let me add a little secret. Most of our developers are very careful of
> staying out of political issues.
> Mentioning that the set up of a wiki *might* cause an uproar amongst
> editors, whatever the reason (constructed language, nationalism,
> dialect) will somehow launch a big warning flag... and is likely to slow
> down even more the creation.
>
> Wiki way :-)
>
> Cheers up, developers are your friends
>
> ant
>
>
Let me into a little secret. Seeing things without acting is why WW II
could happen.

Anton


body:
On 1/12/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> The essence of straw man arguments is to choose an example that everyone
> will agree to, and use that as an excuse to apply the agreed solution
> for the special case to an expanded environment.
>

No it isn't.  See [[Straw man]]. What I am in fact doing is
establishing the principle. People may now comence haggleing over the
price.

--
geni


body:
On 1/12/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ergo my earlier suggestion that, if we give more autonomy to
> WikiProjects, we should have some sort of community accreditation for
> it.  In other words, it would be up to the community at large to
> delegate control to each specific project as necessary.  WikiProject
> Schools may be too contentious, and may therefore be refused such
> authority; but for many projects this would not be an issue.
>
> Kirill Lokshin

The problem you have is that it will be less effort to bring in
outsiders to support your position rather than to change your oponents
position. This results in people not involved with the project being
brought in solely to decide the result of votes.

--
geni


body:
On 1/12/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:

> It doesn't have to be a "proper stub" to be "better than nothing".  A
> simple one-liner stating whatever it is you know that verifies that
> the topic is reasonably worthy should be enough.  If the article is
> "worse than nothing", then surely it's worse than a one-line stub, so
> you've improved the article and punted the problem to those people who
> like to delete things.
>

A one liner turns all the links blue. Fewer people will then notice
that it needs some serious expansion.

--
geni


body:
Hoi,
I have some idea why standards exist and ambiguity is not what results
from proper localisation. When you see a date in the format that YOU are
used to, there will not be any ambiguity whereas showing it in a
particular date format can bring its own confusion.

As to there being no suggestion to making information public, I would
hope not. When you only show information that is relevant in a context,
you hide much data and consequently it will be less insecure. Given that
this is not send using https, it is best to have as little go over a
line as necessary.

Thanks,
   GerardM

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> You seem to be missing the point about why international standards
> exist in the first place.  They protect against ambiguity.
>
> There was absolutely no suggestion in there that she wanted to make
> any of this information public.
>
> Ec
>
> GerardM wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>> It is therefore NOT truly localised, when it is truly localised it is
>> shown to you in a format that makes sense to the locale that can be
>> associated with you.  A date format can be shown differently within
>> one language depending on the locale. When you insist on an ISO format
>> you in essence discriminate against a language that uses another date
>> format if only because it uses different characters
>>
>> Then again showing the checkuser log indiscrimately is in my opinion
>> not such a great idea. Yes, it is apparantly a central log..
>>
>> Thanks,
>>    GerardM
>>
>>
>> On 1/12/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> On 1/12/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The term is "localised" meaning that you want to see them according to
>>>> what is usual in your locale.
>>>>
>>> No, I'd prefer that they be displayed in the ISO international date
>>> format so that they are NOT localized.  Right now they're in the local
>>> language of the project that checkuser is run from, and as I don't
>>> read Arabic or Polish, it makes reading the log occasionally
>>> confusing.


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

body:
Hi everyone,

I'm just curious whether we have a policy on the use of fair use images
on user pages, rather than a guideline, and if so, what our procedure is
for enforcement of that policy if it says no such images permitted.
Obviously discussion is the first stepping stone, but if the user in
question refuses to remove it, what actions should admins take in order
to do so? I'm thinking of page protection and blocking here. I know
someone has been indefinitely blocked in the past because he did not
license his user page under the GFDL.

Also, is there a straightforward page which can be used to simply
explain our rationale for not permitting fair use images in userspace?
If not, might I recommend the creation of one as then it could be linked
to. It may be the case that part of the reason that users are not
removing fair use images on request is because some people are being
heavy-handed with them in requesting removal. A page for this would be
more friendly, and a message could be added something like "Hi, you have
fair use images on your page, Image:X.png and Image:Y.jpg. These are not
permitted to be used on user pages. Please read [[Wikipedia:Why fair use
images are not permitted on user pages]] for more information on why
this is the case."

Just a thought,

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
geni wrote:

>On 1/12/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>The essence of straw man arguments is to choose an example that everyone
>>will agree to, and use that as an excuse to apply the agreed solution
>>for the special case to an expanded environment.
>>
>>
>No it isn't.  See [[Straw man]]. What I am in fact doing is
>establishing the principle. People may now comence haggleing over the
>price.
>
Thank you for a reference that proves my point.

Ec


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Useless "developers"

body:
Hi,
> Let me into a little secret. Seeing things without acting is why WW II
> could happen.

I guess it's time for Godwin's law.

Domas


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Useless "developers"

body:
Resen with typo corrected "did" in place of "die" :-[
Ec

Ray Saintonge wrote:

> You're right, and it looks like you just did.  :-)
> Ec
>
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>
>> I thought that required somebody to actually mention Hitler and/or
>> Naziism?
>>
>> Mark
>>
>> On 12/01/06, Domas Mituzas <midom.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>>> Let me into a little secret. Seeing things without acting is why WW II
>>>> could happen.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I guess it's time for Godwin's law.
>>


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fairness in voting

body:
Hi,

The conflict at the Moldovan Wikipedia has reignited.

A new user made a page called "Alegeri" (elections).

It starts with him espousing his POVs.

The requirements of the vote are:

1) You have to speak Romanian/Moldovan "adequately". Whether or not
your skills are "adequate", is to be judged by this particular user
himself.
2) You have to have at least 25 contributions on the Moldovan
Wikipedia... OR the Romanian Wikipedia!!!

Now, that strikes me as inherently unfair. Romanian Wikipedians are
allowed to vote, sort of like a free pass? But no other Wikimedians??
It's not the ROmanian Wikipedia after all, it's the Moldovan
Wikipedia!

You may argue all you want about whether or not Moldovan and Romanian
are a single language, whether or not that Wikipedia should exist, but
to let everybody from one Wiki vote for the future of another one, but
nobody from any other wikis may participate, seems inherently unfair.

The same user has been very... shall we say, "headstrong". He moved
dozens and dozens of pages from Cyrillic titles to Latin titles
(instead of creating brand-new pages in Latin), and replaced their
entire contents with direct copy from ro.wiki, systematically. He
obviously didn't even review his work, because many images were broken
because the image tag for ro: ([[imagine:...]]) doesn't work on
mo.wiki (you have to use the default, [[image:...]]).

Now, so far, of all the people who voted, the vast majority are
Romanians. How is that fair? Romanians get to decide the future of the
Moldovan Wikipedia, but no *other* foreigners may weigh in?

Well, maybe some Romanians don't see themselves as foreigners, but in
the eyes of the world, they are. And besides, very clearly, there are
two separate subdomains. Whether or not Romanians are Moldovans and
vice-versa, very clearly most ro.wikipedians are NOT mo.wikipedians,
though a few are.

Your thoughts, please?

Also, I encourage everybody to vote. I explained it at the enwiki
village pump--news.

Mark


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Useless "developers"

body:
> I thought that required somebody to actually mention Hitler and/or
> Naziism?
You're Wikipedian, you could relate WWII to them. Anyway, now they're
mentioned. yay.

Domas


body:
jayjg wrote:
> I'm a little concerned here.  While I think policy should be followed, I've
> been disturbed by the way this has been handled recently.  Whether or not an
> image is "fair use" is sometimes disputed, and in any event handling this in
> a friendly way is far preferable to heavy-handed and drastic actions which
> might well drive good contributors from the project.  If it's not an
> emergency (and, given that these images have been on user pages for months,
> if not years, I don't see how it could be), then I think delicacy and
> diplomacy is the right way to go.

I agree. I think a calm, friendly, and rational explanation of why fair
use images cannot be used on user pages would be a simple way to get the
vast majority of people who currently use them to remove them.

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 1/12/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm just curious whether we have a policy on the use of fair use images
> on user pages, rather than a guideline, and if so, what our procedure is
> for enforcement of that policy if it says no such images permitted.
> Obviously discussion is the first stepping stone, but if the user in
> question refuses to remove it, what actions should admins take in order
> to do so? I'm thinking of page protection and blocking here. I know
> someone has been indefinitely blocked in the past because he did not
> license his user page under the GFDL.

It's quite simple really.  Wikipedia's biggest reason for qualifying
for fair use is that it is a free educational resource.  Userpages are
just not educational.  User pages would, if I read the situation
right, be very little different from a GeoCities website or the
equivilent.  Image use would not qualify as fair use there; why should
it here?

I would really appreciate if some statement from on high could clarify
this point, as people don't seem likely to listen otherwise.

--
Sam


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>On 12/01/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>
>>But the size of the community is definitely making the adjustment
>>process more chaotic and dysfunctional. A couple months ago, I estimated
>>that the functional size of the English Wikipedia community was
>>equivalent to a town of 15,000 people. It might be as much as 20,000
>>now, though due to the change in procedure for the Arbitration Committee
>>elections, I'm unable to update my method of estimating this.
>>
>>
>Incidentally, 20,000 is a largish university. It may be a better
>analogy than a town, in many ways... but on the other hand, it's far
>past the level at which an informal collegiate system works.
>
>
Indeed, colleges and universities are far more rigid and structured even
when small in size. But that's partly because their workflow and product
requires it - imagine if the curriculum and awarding of degrees
proceeded as haphazardly as Wikipedia article development.

In terms of mission, I agree that we might have more in common with a
university than a town. But my focus was more on the social and
political aspects, and there I still think the town is a stronger
analogy. Though there is no denying that politics happens at colleges
and universities, too.

--Michael Snow


body:
On 1/12/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> And you think this is a big enough problem that it renders the stubs
> to be worth less than nothing?  If so, I disagree.

Single lines are not stubs

>  Logged in users
> can mark links containing less than X characters specially anyway
> (which is *better* information than just red vs. blue), and users that
> aren't logged in couldn't even edit the article if it was deleted
> completely.

Most loged in users however don't

--
geni


from_name: Pedro Sanchez

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 30, Issue 109

body:
> Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 12:55:28 -0000 (GMT)
> From: Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: How to bring back people who don't want to
>         bother?
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID: <42791.206.165.150.70.1137070528.squirrel at webmail.hi.is>
> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
>
> (This discussion is on
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changes_in_immigrant_groups_extended_family_positions
> )
>
> > Actually I don't think the topic is at all appropriate for an
> > encyclopedia.  It'd make a good essay, but I seriously doubt you'd see
> > such a title (or indeed any which start out "Changes in...") in, for
> > example, Britannica.  For Wikipedia sometimes we get strange article
> > titles like this for what is really a subpage of another article, but
> > that doesn't seem to be the case here.
>
> Nevertheless it would be possible to write a well-referenced article on
> this topic in encyclopedic style and if we had such an article it would be
> kept if brought up for AfD.
>
>
> >> How would you recommend we proceed?
( ....)
> Thanks for taking a look!
>
> Regards,
> Haukur
>

That entry should and must be deleted. It doens't exclude the
possibility of getting a new worthy entry  later if the topic is
deemed useful

Likewise on the hoaxes. They should be gone, but that doens't exclude
the possiblity of someone recreatgn the entry with good content.

The problem with AFD is that most people don't seem to understand that
it doens't forbid you recreating the entry under a different and
imprived version. Afd is NOT final. It judges the entry that currently
exists, not entries that will exist at some point.

-- User:Drini


body:
On 1/12/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> Seeing as how 99% of personal websites out there have images
> infringing on somebody's copyright, most users have the impression
> that nobody cares about the issue.
>
> Perhaps it would be more effective to point out that WP is now a
> high-visibility site, and that all the other sites at WP's level
> (that are not personal page hosts) are pretty careful about copyright
> and attribution. You could even ask the user to try to find even one
> "fair use" picture on news.yahoo.com or some such, should drive the
> point home.

Perhaps it might also be worth mentioning that Wikipedia is *lucky* to
be able to use material under fair use at all.  In the UK you wouldn't
be able to, nor in most other countries.

Copyrights is an are where we have to be particularly careful.  IAR
just cannot apply to it (though I have seen someone trying to),
because there is enough confusion as it is and selective application
of copyright law is plainly not going to help that.  Copyrights is a
fundamental policy, on a line with NPOV and that whole "you can edit"
madness.  Choosing when to apply NPOV would be asking for trouble.
Choosing when to apply copyrights policies would certainly not be
quite on the same scale, but it would have extremely unpleasant
results.

I really do think that the only way people will not say "but $reason
means it's alright" would be a blanket ban.  As this is not about to
come from our community, which is very fractured over this issue, it
can only come from above.

This would be an ideal time for a fiat. :=)

--
Sam


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 12/01/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:

> But the size of the community is definitely making the adjustment
> process more chaotic and dysfunctional. A couple months ago, I estimated
> that the functional size of the English Wikipedia community was
> equivalent to a town of 15,000 people. It might be as much as 20,000
> now, though due to the change in procedure for the Arbitration Committee
> elections, I'm unable to update my method of estimating this.

Incidentally, 20,000 is a largish university. It may be a better
analogy than a town, in many ways... but on the other hand, it's far
past the level at which an informal collegiate system works.

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


body:
On 1/12/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Single lines are not stubs

Um, they aren't?  I guess _de jure_ they aren't, but _de facto_ any
that isn't is a permanent dicdef and needs transwiki-ing.  Could you
explain?

> >  Logged in users
> > can mark links containing less than X characters specially anyway
> > (which is *better* information than just red vs. blue), and users that
> > aren't logged in couldn't even edit the article if it was deleted
> > completely.
>
> Most loged in users however don't

Perhaps it would be a good idea to make this a default.

--
Sam


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Useless "developers"

body:
Domas Mituzas wrote:
>> I thought that required somebody to actually mention Hitler and/or
>> Naziism?
>
> You're Wikipedian, you could relate WWII to them. Anyway, now they're
> mentioned. yay.
>
> Domas

And the winner earns to removal of his moderation flag on wikipedia-l...
  to join the discussion on new languages.

Moderation on number of emails posted will be welcome ;-)

cheers

Ant


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] visitor stats

body:
Chuck Smith wrote:
> I was recently asked by the Esperanto press for visitor statistics for
> the year.  I realize that grabbing the statistics is a very traffic
> consuming process, but could we at least allow it to happen once a
> year so we can see how much traffic we're really getting or are we
> purging the logs regularly?

The logs produced are many gigabytes per day; there's simply no way we can store
them for any long period.

Currently we simply have logging disabled on the squid caches. It improves
performance and we weren't able to do anything regularly with them anyway...

Some nonintrustive statistical logging would probably be useful, but this hasn't
happened yet.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: kelvSYC

subject: [WikiEN-l] kelvSYC's take on userboxes

body:
>> * Is there a way to appeal to copyright holders to allow their fair
>> use images in spaces other than the main space?  Conversely, is there
>> a mechanism for holders to declare that certain images are
>> permissible in spaces other than the main space?  I ask as I am aware
>> of the fair use thing, and while I think that it sucks (for stylistic
>> reasons), it is necessary and something we all have to live with.
>
> 1.Yes if they release it under GFDL or CC (or PD)
> 2.Yes if they release it under GFDL or CC (or PD). with premission is
> not acceptable

... and it's going to be mighty hard to get those released under
compatible licenses from the companies that people would like to see
on a template...  (Sigh...)

>> * Some userboxes are humorous in nature ({{user ubx-5}} is an
>> example), and they should be deleted for the greater image of
>> userboxing (Did I say anything that remotely make sense?).  I don't
>> particularly care if someone is a native speaker of bullshit ({{User
>> en-B-N}}), 1337 ({{User 1337-N}}) or gibberish ({{User gb-N}}).  They
>> can all go to the bit bucket.
>
> 133t 534|<3r'5 have thier uses.

Name one.

>> * Some userboxes are irrelevant to the nature of Wikipedia.  I don't
>> care whether someone's favorite color is yellow ({{User yellow}}) or
>> not.  It doesn't help me work with other Wikipedia contributors in
>> making better articles.  They should be deleted.
>
> Doesn't really hinder you either.

True, but if it doesn't help, it's as good as dead weight, right?

>> * However, userboxes may be good for building communities.  We should
>> keep all of them that are "good" in nature, like the Babel ones, ones
>> that split users by location, ones that denote RC patrol, admins, the
>> ones that denote expertise in academic fields, etc.
>
> List user tell you who the admins are.

How about "admins by specialty" boxes?  "This user is a designated
user blocker" sounds mighty useful...

>> * The userbox fad, if left unchecked, may infect other stuff too...
>> such as a userbox for "this IP is blocked", "this user is blocked",
>> "this user has requested that the page be protected from
>> movement", etc.
>>
>
> {{subst:test5}}?

What would prevent someone, say, an admin, from rewriting this in
userbox (albeit a large one) form...?  And if a block is appealed,
what would prevent someone from writing their rebuttal in userbox form?


from_name: geni

body:
On 1/12/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> This would be an ideal time for a fiat. :=)
>
> --
> Sam

I'm working on it. Of course it's no secret I'd like to go the german route.

--
geni


body:
On 1/12/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/12/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Single lines are not stubs
>
> Um, they aren't?  I guess _de jure_ they aren't, but _de facto_ any
> that isn't is a permanent dicdef and needs transwiki-ing.  Could you
> explain?
>

A while back when there was only one stub catigory and it became
completely overloaded someone came up with the idea of substubs.
People tended to object to the template on the basis that substubs
shouldn't be in wikipedia at but that was mostly a side issue. the
core was correct. Single lines do not qualify as stubs. Of course when
we switched over to stubs by subject the substub catigory was lost.
Still all the details can still be found in the page history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Substub&oldid=32649995

> Perhaps it would be a good idea to make this a default.
>
> --
> Sam

The fight over the number of characters would be fun to watch. From a
safe distance.

--
geni


from_name: John Lee

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:
>
>> Recent policy initiatives, such as
>> the deletion of unsourced images and the restrictions on anonymous
>> creation of articles, have been driven by legal, financial, and public
>> relations concerns rather than anything that any contributors to the
>> project have said.
>>
>>
> I suspect that kind of policy initiative is simply more visible
> because it has to happen quickly. To take an example of an internally
> generated shift, consider the citing of sources. Two years ago, some
> editors would routinely not supply sources, and defend their practice;
> nowadays such edits risk being mass-reverted, and the editors' protests
> would be met with scorn by all.
>
> It would be nice to have more internal leadership. I think part of
> the trick is to model after professional societies and trade unions,
> where most leadership positions are part-time on a volunteer basis.
> For instance, projects could elect lead editors, whose special role
> during their terms is to preside over discussion on issues, and then
> make an executive decision, thus eliminating the indecision arising
> from those 56%-44% votes (think of city naming conventions). A lead
> for user page policy could have saved a lot of userbox anguish by
> being on top of the practice from the beginning.
>
> Stan
>
The problem is that these positions are often elected - and as we have
learnt from the debacle of this and last last year's arbcom elections,
campaigning for these positions is *brutal*. There'll be even more
anguish if the 56%-44% vote decides more than just one issue. My
suggestion would be something similar to the current arbcom elections,
but less divisive. The community nominates certain people (how this is
done is up to them), who will then write their candidate statements,
etc. Those who oppose/support must provide links/diffs/etc. showing why
they oppose/support. For instance, "Oppose. [a few links to instances of
POV pushing]" Unless the situation may be ambiguous, there should be no
need to say "POV pusher" or "bad attitude". Then, the board will review
the candidates' statements (and those of the people opposing/supporting
them), and make its decision. (If this was a bit hard to follow, please
let me know.) It sounds a bit bureaucratic, but I think it has a bit of
potential if we're going to have a "lead editor".

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


body:
On 1/12/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> A while back when there was only one stub catigory and it became
> completely overloaded someone came up with the idea of substubs.
> People tended to object to the template on the basis that substubs
> shouldn't be in wikipedia at but that was mostly a side issue. the
> core was correct. Single lines do not qualify as stubs. Of course when
> we switched over to stubs by subject the substub catigory was lost.
> Still all the details can still be found in the page history:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Substub&oldid=32649995
>

The way to get rid of the substub category was not to move all its
contents somewhere else.  The only way was by deleting them.  I see
your point about why they aren't stubs.

>
> > Perhaps it would be a good idea to make this a default.
> >
> > --
> > Sam
>
> The fight over the number of characters would be fun to watch. From a
> safe distance.

Let's have a poll across all WikiMedia sites, with double votes for
en.wp users and 1.5 times for sep11 users (hell, I feel like it).

--
Sam


body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
> I think your idea of having a page to explain this is a good idea,
> Chris, then users violating the policy (if it is a policy) could be
> directed there, and asked in the first instance to consider removing
> the image themselves. That would reduce a lot of the ill-feeling this
> issue is otherwise generating. Then if after a suitable period, the
> image is still there and fair use is still being claimed, it could be
> removed by others.

My thoughts exactly.

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


body:
Hi,

About how many people around the world are fluent in Novial?

I think that the primary concern here would be number of speakers,
rather than the actual quality of the language itself.

If it's widely spoken (on the order of, say, Interlingue-ex-Occidental
or Volap?k), I suggest you start a Test-Wiki at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/test-wp/nov/

Otherwise, it may warrant some extra discussion before anybody moves
forward so you don't waste effort.

Mark

On 12/01/06, novial <novial at tiscali.fi> wrote:
> At least four poeple have committed to contribute to a Wikipedia in the
> constructed language Novial. This language was published in 1928 by
> Professor Otto Jespersen followed by a multilingual dictionary in 1930.
>
> In ISO 639-3 Novial has the 3-letter code nov.
> The documentation is here:
> http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=nov
>
> On the basis of internet information the number of people who write this
> language on the internet is in the order  of one dozen to twenty. The
> language is well known among enthusiasts of international auxiliary
> languages and is often said to be one of the best.
>
> You can read our conversation which yesterday confirmed at least four
> enthusiastic contributors at the novial-discussion group at Yahoo!
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/novial-discussion/
>
> If you wish to learn more about Novial see the Wikipedia entry:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novial_language
>
> or the Novial Wikibook:
> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Novial
>
> The voting is on this page:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Non-natural
>
> Thanks,
>
> nov_ialiste
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia