from_name: Josip Rodin

body:
On Sun, Oct 09, 2005 at 06:35:12PM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
> Rather than letting politics blind you, why not try to look at things
> from the point of view of "What will be best for the Wikipedia in my
> language?". I think that the answer to this, is a merger of these 3
> Wikipedias, because it will result in a much larger workforce and much
> more power and capability.
>
> Currently, Croatian WP has just over 10000 articles, Serbian WP has
> just over 14000 articles, and Bosnian WP has almost 5000 articles.
> Now, imagine, if all people from all 3 Wikipedias had been working
> together from the start, maybe we'd have 30000 articles in a unified
> Serbocroatian WP already.

Yes, you might have 30K articles, but you also wouldn't have an
encyclopedia, because the articles would fluctuate in
language/style/whatever randomly. And as an added bonus, you'd have a
massive potential for an edit war in every single article, as people
couldn't agree on the norm used.

I myself have complained at the sh: editors already for being silly and
combining things that were never combined even during SFRY, but I'm not
particularly interested in shutting their version down. It's clutter, but
it's fairly harmless. Combining all four into one, now that would be a
particularly ghastly idea.

--
     2. That which causes joy or happiness.


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: elephantus

subject: Ant: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia - a policy question?

body:
> I don't want to force anything on anyone, but I reallythink that  everybody would be better off
here
> with a single WP whereall standards is converted and/or accepted.MarkOn

I read all of your e-mails. I thought about this carefully, it's
not a whim or anything.

On the matter of unity vs. separateness:
Bitter (and sometimes bloody) experience has shown us that any
gains made by having a larger number of speakers/writers are
more than offset by the energy wasted in petty bickering and/or
ill-will generated by the neccessary compromises on many things.
Normally, I wouldn't have anything against ill-informed people
trying this out one more time for themselves and banging
their head against a wall, but in this case I'm interested
in the well-being and progress of Croatian Wikipedia.

I tried to put a banner on the Main Page pointing the
way to the three other Wikipedias after several people asked
me why the Croatian Wikipedia is named "Serbocroatian". You, Dejvid
and Pokrajac removed this without a word of explanation, even
calling it "vandalism". Now you may or may not be aware of this,
but many people from the former Yugoslavia, when they see a
project (organization, institution) having a "Serbocroatian"
section automatically assume that people there haven't yet switched
to the three separate languages and simply turn around and walk away.
This is what I'd like to avoid.

Elephantus (from the Croatian Wikipedia)

--
Odaberite XXLadsl i iskoristite 60 dana neograni?enog surfanja za samo 1 kn!
Uz svaki XXLadsl poklanjamo Iskonov glazbeni CD. http://www.iskon.biz/xxladsl


list: wikien-l

from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Current events

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

Lyndagayle62 at aol.com stated for the record:

> Hello,
> Out of curiosity, I have followed the threads to this one of a last site I
> will research today
>
>  What are you? Are you self-appointed? Why is the word "bias" chosen  explain
> your existence and goal?
>
> ...
>
> No stone thrown.
> Lyndagayle62

I hope you brought enough of those drugs to share.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | If you insist upon discussing my fiasco, I
 sean at epoptic.com | shall forthwith go home. --Nadreck of Palain
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body:
On Sun, Oct 09, 2005 at 06:30:04PM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
> I recall something about a Croatian law requiring all Serbian movies
> to be subtitled (or vice-versa?). Rather than reacting with
> nationalistic pride when seeing these subtitles for a language that is
> basically identical to their own, moviegoers generally laughed at the
> attempts of "translation".

You recall wrongly. A similar incident is described at en:Differences in the
official languages in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia or whatsitcalled, but
there was never a law requiring subtitling anything.

> With Croatian, it seems that people try hard to make it a different
> language from Serbian, but it isn't really except in a sociolinguistic
> sense (and even then, not all Croatians perpetuate the idea of a
> separate Croatian language). Macedonian, on the other hand, has truly
> different words and spellings, rather than artificial divisions
> created by linguists for political purposes.

It is actually awkward for us in .hr to listen to foreign words, accent and
style, regardless of how similar they are to our words, accent or style, and
the consensus is that we shouldn't have to do it. Nothing more, nothing less.

The country didn't collectively hire linguists to invent words, and then
hire gorillas to force four million people to stop using old words and use
the invented ones. That simply never happened, not by a long shot. There
were politicians and linguists who had an agenda of modifying their speech
and the speech of others, but their influence has always been finite, and
generally minor.

Recent nationalism has caused many outsiders to treat Croatians as some sort
of excessively xenophobic people who now go out of their way to be different.
However, the way we speak, and how that is different from the people in
Serbia, dates much further back than the creation of the Croatian state.
We have always spoken a bit differently, hence the variance in
Serbo-Croatian/Croato-Serbian. The official sanction of a Croatian language
is merely a different type of an acknowledgement of the existing situation,
not an attempt to construe something out of thin air.

--
     2. That which causes joy or happiness.


body:
>I don't know how much different the languages/dialects are. I do know
>that from both sides people are moving towards separate languages. If
>we consider languages to be variations with at least a given amount of
>difference, they are indeed dialects of the same language. But if we
>consider languages to be dialects with a special formal status,
>they're different languages.

For an illustration of the differences between the standard
Serbian and Croatian, I'd like to use an economic comparison: If
I were buying a paper encyclopedia with the same content, but, say,
translated into both Serbian Latin and Croatian, I'd be willing
to pay probably around 50% more for the Croatian translation, simply
because it's easier to use for me, it's more comfortable etc.

If the encyclopedia were in Serbian Cyrillic it would be almost
worthless to me, except as a curiosity (I can read Cyrillic, albeit
slower). And I was born before the downfall of Yugoslavia and have
read (and own) many books in Serbian. The younger generations would
probably be even more uncomfortable reading Serbian.

Elephantus (from the Croatian Wikipedia)

--
Odaberite XXLadsl i iskoristite 60 dana neograni?enog surfanja za samo 1 kn!
Uz svaki XXLadsl poklanjamo Iskonov glazbeni CD. http://www.iskon.biz/xxladsl


from_name: Mark Ryan

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] IRC : change of channels and ownership of ...
	channels

body:
To answer myself, I have now transferred #fr.wikipedia to
#wikipedia-fr, and #de.wikipedia to #wikipedia-de. I have also
transferred the access list and settings of the old channels across to
the new ones. I also carried the ban on tor on #fr.wikipedia's
autoremove list over to #wikipedia-fr. FennecFoxen is now the channel
contact for these two channels. Anthere is the #wikipedia-fr alternate
contact and JeLuF is the #wikipedia-de alternate contact.

The old channels, at #fr.wikipedia and #de.wikipedia, redirect to the
new channels, so most IRC users won't be adversely affected (except
for a few that use one Linux client called Irssi or something like
that).

If you want me to make this change for any other channels, I'm more
than willing to help out.

~Mark Ryan


body:
> In the future sh.wiki hopes to implement an automatic converter
> between Cyrillic, Latin, Ijekavski, and Ekavski, so these
> stylistic/dialect/variety issues won't be a problem anymore.
>
> Now, with such conversion, you wouldn't have to worry about edit wars
> over what norm is used, because no matter what norm it is written in,
> it is displayed in the chosen norm (possibly based on IP range-- users
> in Croatia and Bosnia get Ijekavian, users in Serbia get Ekavian;
> users in Croatia, Bosnia, and Montenegro get Latin alphabet, users in
> Serbia get Cyrillic, but of course you can change these preferences).
>
> Mark

Differences between standard Serbian and Croatian are larger than
just differences of ekavian/ijekavian. A text in Serbian converted
to ijekavian feels to us just a little less Serbian (somewhat Bosnian)
than the original, it's not somehow magically transformed into
Croatian. And please, don't throw NPOV phrases at me, because how
on earth are you going to NPOV-ize loads of technical, scientific
and everyday vocabulary, syntax etc.? Do you plan to write slashes
between variants? Write the same sentence twice? Believe me,
all of this has been tried before, immense force, threats, everything
was applied and the end result was the same – zero.

Elephantus (from Croatian Wikipedia)

--
Odaberite XXLadsl i iskoristite 60 dana neograni?enog surfanja za samo 1 kn!
Uz svaki XXLadsl poklanjamo Iskonov glazbeni CD. http://www.iskon.biz/xxladsl


from_name: actionforum at comcast.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] FW: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender

body:
I got a bounce from wikien-l, although I got a copy of my
message through the list.  Did this message go out
to everybody it should have.   Does something
need to be fixed?
          -- Silverback

-------------- Forwarded Message: --------------
From: MAILER-DAEMON at mail.wikimedia.org (Mail Delivery System)
To: actionforum at comcast.net
Subject: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 10:15:48 +0000


subject: [WikiEN-l] resend of wikien-l error message

body:
Apparently my mailer sends forwards as attachments,
and the wickien-l mailer strips off attachments,
so I am resending with a copy/paste instead
of a forward.   -- Silverback
This is the Postfix program at host mail.wikimedia.org.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not be
be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to <postmaster>

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the attached returned message.

			The Postfix program

<wikien-l at wikipedia.org>: mail forwarding loop for wikien-l at wikipedia.org

(Attachments successfully scanned for viruses.)
Attachment 1: Name Unknown (message/delivery-status)

Attached Message

From:actionforum at comcast.net  [ Save Address ]
Reply-to:English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
To:English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Subject:Re: [WikiEN-l] The 3RR is an electric fence, not an entitlement.
Date:Mon, 10 Oct 2005 10:15:46 +0000 (UTC)

-------------- Original message --------------
> >You can call it tit-for-tat, but when a clique has control of a page, and is
> >claiming a certain standard in rejecting your edits such as "dictator" being
> >POV and pejorative even when applied to a world class dictator like
> >Fidel Castro, you can at least embarass them some with their hypocrisy
> >if they insist on maintaining the term for a petty corrupt dictator such
> >as Batista. His oppression only extended to the measures necessary
> >to keep him in power and luxury. There is a difference between
> >being anti-democratic for selfish reasons, and essentially enslaving
> >(because they can't leave) a pool of cheap labor to implement
> >your grand plans for the economy.
> >
> If this weren't so hilarious I would be tempted to see it as the ravings
> of an anti-Catro lunatic. The notion that a person who bases his
> dictatorship on personal gain and profit is morally superior to one who
> does so in order to achieve honest reforms is beyond belief.

Try believing it.  One at least lets you leave and even come back if
you want to, without holding your family hostage.  Sure the
totalitarian is will to improve his stock of slaves by educating
them because he knows he will get to reap the benefits, after
all, they will find it difficult to escape.
                    -- Silverback
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

PLEASE NOTE: THE ABOVE MESSAGE WAS RECEIVED FROM THE INTERNET.

On entering the GSi, this email was scanned for viruses by the Government Secure
Intranet (GSi) virus scanning service supplied exclusively by Energis in
partnership with MessageLabs.

Please see http://www.gsi.gov.uk/main/notices/information/gsi-003-2002.pdf for
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In case of problems, please call your organisational IT helpdesk

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from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] The 3RR is an electric fence, not an entitlement.

body:
On Mon, 10 Oct 2005, Kelly Martin wrote:

> On 10/10/05, actionforum at comcast.net <actionforum at comcast.net> wrote a
> bunch of stuff about Castro, forgetting that this is wikien-l, not
> bitchaboutcommunistdictatorsofcarribeanislands-l.
>
I've stopped reading his emails here a day or two ago myself -- about
the time I realized that he was repeating himself. Would the list
moderators do us a favor & start reviewing his postings?

Geoff


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: I demand a daily spot for great writing

body:
On 10/10/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Yes, that's probably why there was a lot of opposition to removing the
> underlining from links on en: - I'm not sure if it ever happened or not,
> because I've overridden it in my user css file.

IE, not logged in, gives underlined red and blue links.

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


from_name: Han Dao

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frameset doesnt work

body:
It not wikimedia, but MediaWiki. You are using the testing version of the
wiki instead of the stable one.

On 10/9/05, Rafi Ahmad <rafiahmad at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi there,
> I am new to wiki and just became member of wikimedia mailing list.
> I have a small problem. I want to use frameset in my wiki webpage so
> that i can use .php pages to make it dynamic.
>
> i read the faq page which says removing following lines from
> skins/common/wikibits.js should work, but it doesnt. Please help.
>
> // Un-trap us from framesets
> if( window.top != window ) window.top.location = window.location;
>
>
> I am using wikimedia 1.5.0 the most recent one.
>
> --
> With Regards,
>
> Rafi Ahmad
> _______________________________________________
> 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: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
colored underlined links are the default on the web. Creating
something more subtle may ease reading, but is no doubt going to cause
confusion for people who don't keep their mouse in the link long
enough, or for those who don't have scripts or other needed options
enabled for them to see mouseover images.

--Mgm

On 10/10/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
>
> Michael Turley wrote:
> > On 10/9/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>On 10/9/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> >>
> >>>Tony Sidaway wrote:
> >>>I tend to use wikilinks
> >>>to help me skim sentences for the important subjects they refer to.
> >>>
> >>
> >>I think the problem with the Language article is that it's far too heavily
> >>wikified. In some sentences nearly all words are needlessly peppered with
> >>blue link. As if someone would find himself unable to understand what was
> >>meant by "sounds" or "gestures" in the opener, and a link to the articles
> >>for those words would help.
> >
> >
> > Perhaps you should choose (or design) a skin that doesn't highlight
> > wikilinks unless you glide your cursor over them.
> >
> > In general, I would agree that our blue wikilinks are a little too
> > contrasting with the text body, making them a distraction, and would
> > prefer something more subtle as the default.
> >
>
> I think that blue was initially chosen as the default for hyperlinks in
> browsers due to red/green colourblindness...
>
> - --
> Alphax                      |   /"\
> Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
> OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
> http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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> =xSIh
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> 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: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Odd installation side effect

body:
Paul D. Buck wrote:
> With version 1.5, it is MUCH more insistent that it be installed in  the
> target directory with no if, ands or buts. even when the  configuration
> file SHOULD only need the one variable with the path  name changed, this
> does not seem to properly take effect. Restarting  apache does not seem
> to change things, nor does dumping the cache.

I'm afraid we won't be able to help much without a more detailed
description of the problem. In what way is it "insistent"? What things
do not seem to be changed?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Article quality deterioration (was: a valid criticism)

body:
> On 10/10/05, uninvited at nerstrand.net <uninvited at nerstrand.net> wrote:
> > The problem is that people come along and make incremental changes
> > each of which, taken alone, is unremarkable -- neither helpful nor
> > especially detrimental to the article.  In aggregate, such changes
> > destroy the organization of the article and compromise any
> stylistic
> > unity that may be present.

> What are we supposed to do when editors cause the writing in
> an article to deteriorate, if  not revert? Are a bunch of
> people who care about good writing supposed to be on hand
> constantly to carefully tidy up after others, just so that we
> can avoid wholesale reverting?
>
> Sarah

I agree with both Uninvited and Sarah (SlimVirgin) about piecemeal
revisions. It simply doesn't work, much of the time.

The only solution is a periodic full re-write of the article. The
[[cult]] article is a good example. I've given it a full rewrite once or
twice already. The last time, I made sure I found a definition of "cult"
which all sides could agree on and stuck in the intro. The last time I
checked, the definition had survived the test of time: no reverts by ANY
parties in over 6 months. (The article might have been renamed to [[list
of purported cults]] or the like.)

The key is to come up with an intro (in a paragraph or two) which
provides a theme that unifies the remainder (body) of the article.
Anyway, this is the approach that the peace foundations EP is using. I
believe Britannica uses the same approach.

Ed Poor


from_name: Paul D. Buck

body:
Ok, I install all the files to something/b-w/

Run the index page, get a config file, stand up the WIki. Make sure
it works and so on.

Now, rename the directory to the "real" target, say something/boinc-
wiki ... change the one line in the config file ... it should come
up. Nope, no site.

Restart apache, flush the caches in the browser, try a browser never
pointed there before ... it still seems to not want to come "alive".

Strange.

Paul

On Oct 10, 2005, at 1:58 PM, Brion Vibber wrote:

> Paul D. Buck wrote:
>
>> With version 1.5, it is MUCH more insistent that it be installed
>> in  the
>> target directory with no if, ands or buts. even when the
>> configuration
>> file SHOULD only need the one variable with the path  name
>> changed, this
>> does not seem to properly take effect. Restarting  apache does not
>> seem
>> to change things, nor does dumping the cache.
>>
>
> I'm afraid we won't be able to help much without a more detailed
> description of the problem. In what way is it "insistent"? What things
> do not seem to be changed?
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
On 10/10/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Wrong, it hasn't gotten worse, at least Batista is no longer
> > called a dictator, as he once was. That is how much the clique, did
> > not want Castro labeled a dictator. Note that Batista still has a regime,
> > which has been regarded as POV on other pages. Batista did not shoot
> > people trying to escape Cuba, Castro does.
>
> Well, do you not see that all you're talking about is a tit-for-tat affair?
> What does the issue of killing people trying to escape Cuba have to do with
> the question of whether we call Batista or Castro dictators? Both of them
> instituted a government by force of arms, so they would both fit the
> traditional standard. Shah Pahlavi, for that matter, when dismissed by
> Massadeq, was reinstalled by military force, so I guess we could call him a
> dictator too. But the editors of the Pahlavi article, for whatever reason,
> are not squabbling.
>

One could simply cite an authority (or authorities) who believes that
Castro fits within the definition of "dictator", and cite an authority
(or authorities) who believes the opposite. Then it's up to the reader
who they believe.

NPOV will save the world.*

* Presuming people actually read it.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 10/10/05, actionforum at comcast.net <actionforum at comcast.net> wrote a
bunch of stuff about Castro, forgetting that this is wikien-l, not
bitchaboutcommunistdictatorsofcarribeanislands-l.

Kelly


from_name: Michael Turley

body:
On 10/9/05, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> There's no way to discern a 'good' (adding to the content) wikilink and a
> 'bad' (not adding to the content, such as [[sound]] or [[the]]...yes I
> suppose the latter is an extreme example) wikilink, and I believe that's
> what Tony Sidaway is talking about

I am aware of the overlinked articles Tony is speaking of.  But just
as we cannot convince everyone to adopt a certain style of prose
immediately, we cannot instantly convince everyone to follow our own
ideas of what is overlinking and what is underlinking.  We have to
gradually negotiate our way, article by article, always pointing
people to established examples to guide them.

We can't solve the problem all at once, so I've suggested an option to
make it less troublesome in the meantime.  If the default wikilink
colors (blue and red) were closer to black unlinked text and less of a
contrast, the articles would all be instantly much more readable.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


body:
Paul D. Buck wrote:
> Ok, I install all the files to something/b-w/
>
> Run the index page, get a config file, stand up the WIki. Make sure  it
> works and so on.
>
> Now, rename the directory to the "real" target, say something/boinc-
> wiki ... change the one line in the config file ... it should come  up.
> Nope, no site.

What does this mean, "nope, no site"?

Can you describe it? Can you provide a URL to the site for us to look
at? Is it blank? What's in your error log? Are you keeping an error log?
What have you tried so far? Have you confirmed that you haven't
corrupted the LocalSettings.php file, causing a fatal parsing error? etc

Please see: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: IRC : change of channels and ownership of ...
	channels

references:
<diah78$bat$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<a4a70770510091826t60c4fa7dudb856b51293f96c8@mail.gmail.com>
	<did163$3hm$1@sea.gmane.org> <did22r$5o2$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Hi Anthere.

I registered the fr and de channels when I heard about the Freenode
naming scheme change, because I envisaged problems with people
registering these channels, and being uncontactable. As it was, I had
to get a Freenode staffer to give me access in the old French and
German channels to make the change. The only two channels that I
registered, though, are the French and German ones. I think I'll go
through now and register those which remain unregistered, just to be
on the safe side.

I've kept the old French and German channels with the same
registration and password (ask Fennec for it if you want it) as the
new ones, so that if people change their mind and want to go back to
the old name, that's fine.

Do you think there is support for changing all the channels over asap?
Or should we let them work out when they want to do it?

As for the information page, I think I'll add to the existing page
which details the forthcoming naming scheme change (which will be the
new title, but with a slash instead of a dash/hyphen).

~Mark Ryan

On 10/10/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> oh, by the way Mark...if you are the owner of several channels and take
> care of migration and information for all, would you possibly write a
> short note on the implications on meta (something like, "no worry, no
> changes of nicknames", "this is a change of freenode policy not of
> wikimedia foundation" etc...), so that each time there is a migration,
> you can point out the new channel to that note ?
>
> I suggest this only because I see the perplexity of french irc users
> this morning ;-) Might save time not to explain it each time ...
>
> Cheers
>
> Ant
>


from_name: uninvited at nerstrand.net

subject:
[WikiEN-l] re: Article quality deterioration (was: a valid
	criticism)

body:
Mgm wrote:

---If incremental changes mess up the page's organization the way to fix
it is to implement the changes into the organization, not to revert
and remove them altogether.

I'm also wondering why uninvitedcomany thinks an edit with great
improvements would require him to become a revert warrior. If the
changes are really that good you'll be able to get others to revert
for you.---

I think I described the edits we're talking about here as "unremarkable
-- neither helpful nor
especially detrimental to the article."

Probably the best example is an accurate, though perhaps poorly worded
and misplaced summary of a fact that already appears elsewhere in the
article.  Such prose can't be improved or rewritten, because it already
exists in the article in the proper place with the appropriate wording.
There is nothing useful to be done but revert the change, even though it
was done in good faith and was factually sound, and even perhaps
well-referenced.

One of the things I've learned about Wikipedia is that the editing
experience differs considerably among subject areas.  There are many
areas of the project that aren't controversial, and that are edited
primarily by disinterested Wikipedians.  It is in these subject areas
-- which include the vast bulk of the articles -- where MGM's
statements are absolutely true.  In other more controversial areas,
such laudable civility does not hold.  There are parts of Wikipedia
where you can change "a" to "the" and have it seem as though you have
detonated a land mine, so fragile is the editing truce that prevails.

The Uninvited Co., Inc. (a Delaware corporation)


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Help needed on [[Open gaming]]

body:
Help would be appreciated from anyone with knowledge of [[Open
gaming]] to help sort out a slow revert war that's been going on since
January between [[User:Bblackmoor]], who has also edited as
68.10.113.7, and [[User:Axon]]. I don't know anything about the
subject and so I can't even describe what the substantive issues are,
but Bblackmoor has been pretty uncivil about it, frequently calling
Axon a "net loon" and vandal, and has been blocked for proxy editing
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/3RR&diff=next&oldid=10550118#User:Bblackmoor
and disruption. The article is currently protected.

Bblackmoor filed an RfAr, which doesn't seem to have been filed
properly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Axon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Axon/Evidence
and a RfM, which didn't go anywhere.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_mediation&oldid=9949715#User:Axon_vs._User:Bblackmoor
There was apparently also an RfC, which I can't find. More details on
[[Talk:Open gaming]].

Cheers,

Sarah


list: foundation-l

from_name: Any File

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Is Wikip/media politic?

body:
Jakob Voss wrote:
[...[
>
> In my opinion every encyclopaedia is politic; Jean-Baptiste Soufron
> wrote about "The political importance of the Wikipedia Project" [1]:
[...[
> There is several distinct questions:
> 1. Is Wikipedia politic?
> 2. Does the community think that Wikipedia is politic
> 3. Is Wikimedia Foundation a politic organisation?

You have to define what the "politic" word means
a) A structure that has all the systems and infrastructures needed to manage a comunity (ethimologically a city)
b) A structure paied by some parties
c) a structure made to promote a political party
d) ...
e) ...

--
___________________________________________________________
Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Milos Rancic

body:
Just to say that at least very small minority (maybe one contributor
on sr: ) agrees to merge sr, hr and bs Wikipedias into one. Even it is
so, Serbian and Croatian communities cooperate very good.

There are some ideas how to make cooperation better, but, please,
don't force talks about merging because such ideas make cooperation
harder.

And about sh: Wikipedia: Yes, Elephantus is right when he says that
our communities (Serbian and Croatian) have problems with sh:
Wikipedia. People who want to cooperate would prefer sh: Wikipedia and
we would have only strong nationalists on our projects. Unfortunately,
there are more strong nationalists then people who want to cooperate
in Balkans. The consequences are: big Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian
Wikipedias with a lot of nationalist POV and small Serbo-Croatian
Wikipedia with specific NGO POV from Balkans.

Also, I want to say again: sh: Wikipedia was reopened too early. It is
opened and I don't think that it would be better to close it again.
But, we have some problems and I don't know how to solve it... And,
please, don't make pressure for merging sr:, hr: and bs:.


from_name: Ilya N.

subject: [WikiEN-l] New mailing list for newbies?

body:
I don't see the point of a mailing list for that when there's a page on
wikipedia

On 10/10/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/9/05, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hm? Angela's announcement of the list and request for admins was on
> > September 4th!
>
> Yes, it was a month ago, and there are now four list admins, which is
> more than enough. However, help is still needed with actually
> answering the questions sent to that list, which anyone can do by just
> subscribing at http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/helpdesk-l
>
> Angela.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
~Ilya N.


from_name: Timwi

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Two patches that would make things much easier for
 bots and scripts

references:
<4347FD35.6020104@brightbyte.de> <dibarc$6s0$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<dibkuv$2lj$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Jamie Bliss wrote:
>
>> I wrote such a feature before, but with the parameter &debugmsg=1
>> rather than as a "pseudo-language". It was live at some point, but
>> apparently it's not anymore. Someone must have reverted it.
>
> That is a feature I don't quite understand. Why would a bot want it? To
> simplify screen-scraping?

Well, when *I* wrote it it was not targeted for bots, but rather for
people trying to translate the interface or trying to correct an error
they found. Seeing a string in context gives you a better idea of what
it should translate as, so I thought it would be useful to be able to
append &debugmsg=1 to see the stringcode and then find it to do the
translation/correction.

> What about messages like [[MediaWiki:Sidebar]], which are not litterally
> pasted?

That *may* be the reason the feature was removed again.


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Questions about Scott Burnside article -- unattributed
	quotes

body:
Bob wrote:

>I was reading Scott Burnside's article,
>  http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/preview2005/news/story?id=2172427
>about top NHL rivalries, and I discovered that some passages appear to
>have been directly lifted or slightly edited from The Sporting News and
>Wikipedia articles. Who do I contact to address these concerns?

I tend not to worry about it too much, it just shows that Wikipedia is
very much the quick-research option for pressured journalists ;-) You
might email him thanking him for a nice article, and that you're
pleased Wikipedia is reliable enough for him to use as a research
tool, and asking if he can include links to the source articles in
future as that would be very helpful to a reader. i.e. gently let him
know you've spotted his source ;-)

- d.


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:
> The problem is that people come along and make incremental changes each
> of which, taken alone, is unremarkable -- neither helpful nor
> especially detrimental to the article.  In aggregate, such changes
> destroy the organization of the article and compromise any stylistic
> unity that may be present.
>

Simple technical solution: Each article gets a special counter. After X
days, or X edits, or not-minor edits, or X bytes changed, or some
combination thereof, the article gets added to a special "review" list.
This is for people who like to specialize is style/flow/structure/etc of
articles. These can then be reformatted/reworded. Calling it "review"
might help to suppress edit wars; after all, this is not because of a
special edit, but because some criteria say "this might need
restructuring". Also, it is not to remove information, rather to
rearrange it into readable form.

Magnus


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 10/10/05, Poor, Edmund W <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> > Simple technical solution: Each article gets a special
> > counter. After X
> > days, or X edits, or not-minor edits, or X bytes changed, or some
> > combination thereof, the article gets added to a special
> > "review" list.
> > This is for people who like to specialize is
> > style/flow/structure/etc of
> > articles. These can then be reformatted/reworded. Calling it "review"
> > might help to suppress edit wars; after all, this is not because of a
> > special edit, but because some criteria say "this might need
> > restructuring". Also, it is not to remove information, rather to
> > rearrange it into readable form.
>
> Please program this, and create a special page listing articles which
> need review.

The problem is... how do we "reset" the counter? You'd need to have
some way of tagging the article to say "restructured on date X", and I
can't offhand think of an easy way to do this.

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


from_name: actionforum at comcast.net

body:
------------- Original message --------------
> >Really? Integrity and character, fairness, tolerance
> >and equality under the rules matter on little things
> >such as wikipedia articles too. When a clique, gets
> >ahold of a page, the wikipedia rules no longer apply,
> >they make the rules. Sometimes you can shame them
> >a bit with their hypocrisy, sometimes they are shameless.
> >But being a clique or a "consensus" doesn't make them
> >right.
> >
> Leave it to the anti-Castro clique to declare that principles should
> only be applied when to do so would be of minimal consequence.

No, but applying them in small things is good practice.  For instance,
the police and prosecution in the OJ Simpson case knew from
the beginning that the media glare would be on them because
of Simpson's involvement, yet they were so out of practice
that even knowing their every move was watched they couldn't
behave correctly.

Similarly police officers that lie in a traffic case will have no qualms
about doing so in a murder case also.

> >Guantanamo is an embarrassment, but wars are messy,
> >I'm probably a pacifist myself (I'm not quite sure), but
> >what seems plain is that the non-pacifists who oppose
> >the war in Iraq and who somehow have supported some
> >other war and how that war was fought, are probably
> >among the worlds greatest hypocrits. The U.S. has
> >liberated Iraq without using conscript/slaves, with careful
> >targeting to avoid unnecessary damage to civilians and
> >civilian infrastructure, with no territorial ambitions, and
> >without using "allies" that are beneath contempt such
> >as Stalin, certain warlords in Afghanistan or the U.N.
> >
> So you would have us believe that the warlords with whom the U. S. has
> allied itself in Afghanistan are more virtuous than the ones it
> opposes! That may be the case on your planet, but not on earth.

I was referring to the warlords that were US allies, it was as immoral
for the US to associate with them as it was to aid Stalin in WWII,
and as it was to conscript innocent US civilians in WWII and the
Vietnam war.

> Some of us do believe in respecting the views of others, and I do know
> that there are others here who might share some of your POV. The point
> is that this started off with your, "What matters is what is right." As
> much as I may disagree with that position, I can recognize it as being
> relevant to writing an encyclopedia. But what do Fidel Castro and the
> Iraq War have to do with it? Do these topics represent your extension
> of Goodwin's Law? If you have nothing better to do than attempt to
> inflame passions maybe you should just go away.

No more than your mention of Guantanamo was.  Goodwin's Law hasn't
been proven yet any way.  Sorry I inflame your passions, I meant to
stimulate you to question your assumptions, since you seemed so
sure that your moral relativism would be accepted without question.
                          -- Silverback


from_name: Alphax

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Michael Turley wrote:
> On 10/9/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On 10/9/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>>
>>>Tony Sidaway wrote:
>>>I tend to use wikilinks
>>>to help me skim sentences for the important subjects they refer to.
>>>
>>
>>I think the problem with the Language article is that it's far too heavily
>>wikified. In some sentences nearly all words are needlessly peppered with
>>blue link. As if someone would find himself unable to understand what was
>>meant by "sounds" or "gestures" in the opener, and a link to the articles
>>for those words would help.
>
>
> Perhaps you should choose (or design) a skin that doesn't highlight
> wikilinks unless you glide your cursor over them.
>
> In general, I would agree that our blue wikilinks are a little too
> contrasting with the text body, making them a distraction, and would
> prefer something more subtle as the default.
>

I think that blue was initially chosen as the default for hyperlinks in
browsers due to red/green colourblindness...

- --
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from_name: u.sorib at gmail.com

subject: [Foundation-l] Request: Wikinews Russian version.

body:
I would like to request the creation of Russian Edition of Wikinews.
Sorib (see also at :
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-August/004049.html)


body:
Kelly wrote:
> On 10/10/05, actionforum at comcast.net wrote a
> bunch of stuff about Castro, forgetting that this is wikien-l, not
> bitchaboutcommunistdictatorsofcarribeanislands-l.
>
> Kelly

And you appear to have written this:

    Please note that the purpose of  the 3RR is as a tripwire
    to stop edit warring; it is not punitive.
    I therefore recommend against blocking him.
    Kelly Martin 14:27, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

forgetting that you really think this:

     I'm not inclined to care a whole lot. People who hit the
     3RR have already gone beyond reasonable editing. Whether
     they get blocked for  24 hours or a week is not that great
     of a concern to me.


body:
-------------- Original message --------------
> On Mon, 10 Oct 2005, Kelly Martin wrote:
>
> > On 10/10/05, actionforum at comcast.net wrote a
> > bunch of stuff about Castro, forgetting that this is wikien-l, not
> > bitchaboutcommunistdictatorsofcarribeanislands-l.
> >
> I've stopped reading his emails here a day or two ago myself -- about
> the time I realized that he was repeating himself. Would the list
> moderators do us a favor & start reviewing his postings?
>
> Geoff

I assume a hasty "review" would suit your purposes better
than a careful one based on your incorrect assessment
above.

I believe I only repeated myself once,  and that was in
response to Kelly Martin's dismissive comment, which
was as wasteful of bandwidth as yours here.  My other
emails were good faith clarifications or elaborations
that were responsive to comments.
         -- Silverback


from_name: Angela

body:
On 10/9/05, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hm? Angela's announcement of the list and request for admins was on
> September 4th!

Yes, it was a month ago, and there are now four list admins, which is
more than enough. However, help is still needed with actually
answering the questions sent to that list, which anyone can do by just
subscribing at http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/helpdesk-l

Angela.


from_name: Michael Snow

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Article quality deterioration (was: a valid
	criticism)

body:
uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:

>Probably the best example is an accurate, though perhaps poorly worded
>and misplaced summary of a fact that already appears elsewhere in the
>article.  Such prose can't be improved or rewritten, because it already
>exists in the article in the proper place with the appropriate wording.
>There is nothing useful to be done but revert the change, even though it
>was done in good faith and was factually sound, and even perhaps
>well-referenced.
>
>
An edit summary of "remove redundant information" seems quite adequate
and appropriate for this situation. I don't think the point would be
difficult to get across, even if the other person's editing skills are
sub-optimal.

That being said, I grant that there are cases where bad editors are also
too dense to realize that they're bad editors.

Because we emphasize being welcoming, it's very difficult for us to
reverse direction and suddenly tell someone that their contributions are
not helpful. ("Sorry, but when we said anyone can edit, we didn't mean
you.") However, I think if someone consistently degrades certain
articles, it would be appropriate to ask them not to edit those
articles. This could be handled through arbitration or perhaps some
alternative to the current dispute resolution process. In doing this, we
should still avoid getting into the substantive content of the article;
the focus would be on poor writing.

An incremental approach of taking people off particular articles is less
drastic and leaves them free to make more helpful edits elsewhere. Those
that are particularly attached to their material would have a powerful
incentive to retrain themselves, since we don't have time to be their
writing tutors. However, if someone gets asked off of a number of
articles, then at some point we would need to look at asking them not to
edit any more. Incidentally, I would still very much like to see a
per-article blocking feature.

--Michael Snow


subject: [WikiEN-l] And it's that happy time of year again

body:
The Arbitration Committee elections are coming along, and the
candidates are putting up statements already:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2005/Candidate_statements

All the candidates so far are good editors and sincere candidates,
which is nice - Lir, Plautus, MARMOT and Enviroknot haven't thrown
their hats into the ring. But I think we need some more.

I was more or less drafted onto the AC - people saying "X is running.
Could you please run so we have someone to vote for." What I want you
reading this to do is to look at the above page, think of who *should*
be running and isn't, and ask them to. That's all. (And there are a
few I'll be approaching ...)

Also, consider yourself in the job. Necessary attributes are
significant clue about the Wikipedia community, a level head,
unflappability and a skin like a rhinoceros.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] An instant solution to bad writing in articles

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Send them over to simple.wikipedia!

Maybe we could redirect en: to simple: for a while and have the /decent/
articles on en: proper after they meet an acceptable writing level.

- --
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body:
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Hash: SHA256

MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> colored underlined links are the default on the web. Creating
> something more subtle may ease reading, but is no doubt going to cause
> confusion for people who don't keep their mouse in the link long
> enough, or for those who don't have scripts or other needed options
> enabled for them to see mouseover images.
>

Yes, that's probably why there was a lot of opposition to removing the
underlining from links on en: - I'm not sure if it ever happened or not,
because I've overridden it in my user css file.

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from_name: geni

body:
On 10/10/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> If incremental changes mess up the page's organization the way to fix
> it is to implement the changes into the organization, not to revert
> and remove them altogether.
>
> I'm also wondering why uninvitedcomany thinks an edit with great
> improvements would require him to become a revert warrior. If the
> changes are really that good you'll be able to get others to revert
> for you.
>
> --Mgm

Shear size of wikipedia means that many conflicts are 1 on 1 and most
people don't like getting involved in conflicts that don't otherwise
involve them.

--
geni


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
On 10/10/05, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> What are we supposed to do when editors cause the writing in an
> article to deteriorate, if not revert?

Two words: dispute resolution.

The community can make decisions about article quality. What it can never do
is condone the open warfare that tends to result from using reverts to
enforce policy.


body:
On 10/10/05, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> We've got an RfC going at the moment
> about an editor accused of reverting too much, when what he was doing
> was trying to preserve halfway-decent writing, and one of the people
> who has commented here in praise of good writing has criticized this
> editor in the RfC for reverting too much, which strikes me as somewhat
> contradictory.

It isn't at all contradictory. The use of edit warring by an experienced
editor to impose the manual of style in that case has not improved the
articles, and it has alienated numerous relatively new editors. We cannot
make things better by using bad methods.


subject: Ant: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia - a policy question?

body:
Just remember that if you want to merge projects, you need to merge
communities. And differences between communities are not only
political based. (For example, the main reason why I don't want to
merge Serbian Wikipedia with Serbo-Croatian is that their community,
as I see, is too much authoritarian.)

On 10/10/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Milos Rancic wrote:
>
> >Just to say that at least very small minority (maybe one contributor
> >on sr: ) agrees to merge sr, hr and bs Wikipedias into one. Even it is
> >so, Serbian and Croatian communities cooperate very good.
> >
> >There are some ideas how to make cooperation better, but, please,
> >don't force talks about merging because such ideas make cooperation
> >harder.
> >
> >And about sh: Wikipedia: Yes, Elephantus is right when he says that
> >our communities (Serbian and Croatian) have problems with sh:
> >Wikipedia. People who want to cooperate would prefer sh: Wikipedia and
> >we would have only strong nationalists on our projects. Unfortunately,
> >there are more strong nationalists then people who want to cooperate
> >in Balkans. The consequences are: big Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian
> >Wikipedias with a lot of nationalist POV and small Serbo-Croatian
> >Wikipedia with specific NGO POV from Balkans.
> >
> >Also, I want to say again: sh: Wikipedia was reopened too early. It is
> >opened and I don't think that it would be better to close it again.
> >But, we have some problems and I don't know how to solve it... And,
> >please, don't make pressure for merging sr:, hr: and bs:.
> >
> I basically agree.  I think that there is a big difference between
> encouraging the Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia, and insisting that the other
> three be merged into it.  Before a merger can be possible the partisans
> need to be shown that co-operation can work.  It's hard to say whether
> the sh:wikipedia was opened too early; for some any opening would be too
> early. The challenge at this stage is for those on the combined project
> to find ways of co-operating.  I'm sure that all three projects have
> some relatively uncontroversial articles that can be copied into the
> combined project.  Can an active edit history be copied as well?
>
> For a merger to happen (and all three do  not need to happen at the same
> time) the participants in the separate projects need to feel that their
> participation there is a waste of time, and just let that project fade
> away.   When it is obvious that a project has no participants, and all
> the contents have been copied into the sh project it can be allowed to
> fade away.  That will take as long as it needs to take.  Until then it
> is an individual option to work on the separate or combined projects.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
On 10/7/05, Bob <hamneggr at comcast.net> wrote:
> I was reading Scott Burnside's article,
>
>  http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/preview2005/news/story?id=2172427
>
> about top NHL rivalries, and I discovered that some passages appear to
> have been directly lifted or slightly edited from The Sporting News and
> Wikipedia articles. Who do I contact to address these concerns?
>
> Thanks
>
> -Bob
I suggest you go to
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?page=contact/index and ask
them to properly cite their sources in as friendly a manner as you can
muster.

--Mgm


body:
If incremental changes mess up the page's organization the way to fix
it is to implement the changes into the organization, not to revert
and remove them altogether.

I'm also wondering why uninvitedcomany thinks an edit with great
improvements would require him to become a revert warrior. If the
changes are really that good you'll be able to get others to revert
for you.

--Mgm


body:
On 10/10/05, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't see the point of a mailing list for that when there's a page on
> wikipedia

There's a good probability, at least to my eye, that people simply
don't get the helpdesk - they leave questions, sort of, eventually -
but they just never come back and look at them again. A sizable
proportion of "please explain what you mean"s are never replied to -
how often do people (esp. with the completely random things) look back
to the helpdesk?

Email at least ensures we can know that they *got* the answer, even if
they ignore it. It's also a friendlier medium - people understand
email a lot better than they do a (heavily trafficked) wikipage, and
so it's going to be more productive.

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


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 10/10/05, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> But there is an elegant solution somewhere between protecting an
> article (too rigid) and article rating (too complex) - every article
> can have a marker indicating the last-agree-upon-version. Anyone can
> change the marker to point to a particular version in the edit
> history, in wiki fashion. In effect, it would be the version that "the
> crowd" considers the most acceptable one, while editing, sparring,
> major revisions are happening on the 'current' one. If there is
> consensus that it is generally good, the marker can be moved upon
> every edit to be the current one. Or if overhauling is being done, the
> marker can be kept back to an older rev while issues are ironed out.
> (It removes the angst of having your edits "winning" and being in the
> current version, and removes much of the 3RR angst.)
>
> The marker system is easy to understand, straightforward to implement,
> minimally impacts current working methods, does not require agreed
> upon metric values, and is inherently wiki.

I'd rather see a radical expansion of the the featured articles system.
Instead of nominating an article, you'd nominate a version of an article.
The standards would be radically lessened from the current featured article
standard, of course. As long as an article was well structured, had adequate
references, lacked non-free images, was NPOV, etc., it'd pass. No
requirement that the article actually be one of "the best", just that it be
acceptable for a static/semi-static copy (think CD/DVD distro).

Even if an article failed this process, it'd produce a list of what needed
to be fixed.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Current events

body:
I'm sorry, but I don't get what you're talking about. Can you please
specify which article you are trying to change and what you're trying
to do?

> What are you? Are you self-appointed? Why is the word "bias" chosen  explain
> your existence and goal? Are you not attempting to do the very thing you  are
> attempting to re-write? We all have an opinion, so why the Hawaiian
> "wiki-wiki" word base to everything that is your opinion? This seems like  another
> attempt to re-write history, is it? To what goal/purpose? It seems you  are using
> the thing you are trying to describe that you are/do, to describe what  you
> are/do?
Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia written by its users which strives
to be neutral. Of course, it's not going to happen overnight and
there's always going to be people who try to push in their views, but
that's not accepted by most people in the community of dedicated
users. "Wiki" was chosen for its sound and the idea that with a lot of
people chipping in you could get great articles "quickly" which is
essentially what wiki-wiki means.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Replies_to_common_objections

--Mgm


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Hi Milos,

This is often the case with smaller Wikipedias.

Since there is such a small community, the authority is still very
centralised, though hopefully this will change.

However, any user who makes significant contributions may apply for
adminship, and if you did that (for example), I would support it.

Cheers
Mark

On 10/10/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> Just remember that if you want to merge projects, you need to merge
> communities. And differences between communities are not only
> political based. (For example, the main reason why I don't want to
> merge Serbian Wikipedia with Serbo-Croatian is that their community,
> as I see, is too much authoritarian.)
>
> On 10/10/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > Milos Rancic wrote:
> >
> > >Just to say that at least very small minority (maybe one contributor
> > >on sr: ) agrees to merge sr, hr and bs Wikipedias into one. Even it is
> > >so, Serbian and Croatian communities cooperate very good.
> > >
> > >There are some ideas how to make cooperation better, but, please,
> > >don't force talks about merging because such ideas make cooperation
> > >harder.
> > >
> > >And about sh: Wikipedia: Yes, Elephantus is right when he says that
> > >our communities (Serbian and Croatian) have problems with sh:
> > >Wikipedia. People who want to cooperate would prefer sh: Wikipedia and
> > >we would have only strong nationalists on our projects. Unfortunately,
> > >there are more strong nationalists then people who want to cooperate
> > >in Balkans. The consequences are: big Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian
> > >Wikipedias with a lot of nationalist POV and small Serbo-Croatian
> > >Wikipedia with specific NGO POV from Balkans.
> > >
> > >Also, I want to say again: sh: Wikipedia was reopened too early. It is
> > >opened and I don't think that it would be better to close it again.
> > >But, we have some problems and I don't know how to solve it... And,
> > >please, don't make pressure for merging sr:, hr: and bs:.
> > >
> > I basically agree.  I think that there is a big difference between
> > encouraging the Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia, and insisting that the other
> > three be merged into it.  Before a merger can be possible the partisans
> > need to be shown that co-operation can work.  It's hard to say whether
> > the sh:wikipedia was opened too early; for some any opening would be too
> > early. The challenge at this stage is for those on the combined project
> > to find ways of co-operating.  I'm sure that all three projects have
> > some relatively uncontroversial articles that can be copied into the
> > combined project.  Can an active edit history be copied as well?
> >
> > For a merger to happen (and all three do  not need to happen at the same
> > time) the participants in the separate projects need to feel that their
> > participation there is a waste of time, and just let that project fade
> > away.   When it is obvious that a project has no participants, and all
> > the contents have been copied into the sh project it can be allowed to
> > fade away.  That will take as long as it needs to take.  Until then it
> > is an individual option to work on the separate or combined projects.
> >
> > Ec
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject: [WikiEN-l] Merge vs. Keep/Delete

body:
On 10/8/05, Aaron Sherman <ajs at ajs.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, 2005-10-08 at 11:09 +0200, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> > On 10/8/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Michael Snow wrote:
>
> > > > Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
> > > > [...] I don't see why the authority to
> > > > merge-and-redirect should be limited to administrators. I've always
> > > > found the resistance to merges puzzling.
>
> The reason is that an admin is required to end the AfD, not that an
> admin is required to click on the "edit" button.

Why is an admin required to end an AfD? Doesn't this contradict the
statement on [[Wikipedia:Administrators]] that "Administrators are not
imbued with any special *authority"?

*It used to be the case that non-admins could close any VFD with a keep
result. This has been changed, though, and now we're only supposed to close
"unambiguous" keep decisions. See [[Wikpedia:Deletion process]]. An admin
*isn't* required to end an AfD.

Time to remove the statement about admins not having any special authority,
I suppose.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Image licenses; a small suggestion

body:
I'd like that:

I believe I put a copyright tag on my userpgae image. That, or GFDL-self
with a note to please not use outside the user namespace.

I, as a 14-year-old, do not want my image spread across anywhere except
where I put it, and I do believe it's illegal anyways without my permission
(which nobody else has and which GFDL-self might in essence be forcing me to
give...)

On 10/10/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Today, I noticed {{Userpage-image}} on WP:TFD - basically a template
> saying "permission granted only to use this on userpages".
>
> Obviously unfree, and should be deleted under existing policy.
> However, it got me thinking about that self-same policy. First, a
> caveat - I am not a lawyer. Especially not a Florida copyright lawyer.
> That said, let us float an idea.
>
> We don't accept non-freely licensed images because they can't be used
> in a commercial (or, in some cases, any other) daughter project, which
> is fine and dandy and a core principle. However, any daughter project
> consists basically of the encyclopedia pages, the images on them, and
> a credit.
>
> Talk pages? Not needed. The scads of Wikipedia namespace
> administrivia? Almost entirely deadweight - what possible print
> version will want to have a copy of the 4,987th ROUGE ADMIN!!!1one!
> complaint on WP:AN? User pages? Helpful for attribution, but keeping
> them can (as we found with our neo-nazi friends) be, uh, prone to
> rather unfortunate misinterpretation. Indeed, I believe we now offer
> dumps filtered of all user-space material to avoid this. We're seeing
> the divide between "front-end" material and "supporting material"
> beginning to be a bit clearer.
>
> All text is GFDL-licensed, and I'm not suggesting changing that, but I
> 'm proposing creating a class of images which are *not intended* for
> redistribution because they're not a part of the encylopedia we're
> producing - in much the same way that we're starting to discourage
> redistribution of some parts of the project to downstream users as,
> basically, not particularly relevant.
>
> So, a suggestion. {{project-image}}. "This image is intended for use
> in developing Wikipedia content. Copyright is, unless explicitly
> stated otherwise, owned and retained by the uploader; it is an
> internal working document, not an encyclopedic image, and not intended
> for use in articles. Permission is granted to create derivative works
> under the conditions of this license." (or something in that general
> vein)
>
> And, using a broad definition of working on the encyclopedia, we have
> the small amount of editing overhead that goes into strengthening a
> working community - not the aim of the wiki, by a long shot, but
> necessary to keep it running well. And, as a part of that, people keep
> adding photos...
>
> Yes, this suggestion was prompted by people not wanting to freely
> license their userpage photos, but I do feel it has potential for use
> in other roles (personally, I have no intention of putting a photo of
> me up there!); a case of "build it and they will come", in a way.
>
> Are there any practical reasons, other than a blanket "we don't accept
> non-reusable images", that this couldn't work? We're already resigned
> to keeping around a large collection of images that are only legally
> valid in certain articles & off-limits to whole namespaces (fair use),
> which knocks down the "but if it's lying around, people will use it"
> argument.
>
> Comments appreciated, though I suspect I'll wake up tomorrow morning
> to find half a dozen "this is insanely unworkable, and here's 46
> reasons why" notes. C'est la vie.
>
> On a related note, though a little less contentious, a tag along the
> lines of {{fairuse-project}} could be handy. I can think of contexts
> where it's legitimate to have a fair-use image as part of a discussion
> on a discussion page ("purposes such as criticism, comment, [or]
> scholarship", remember), but where it wouldn't be appropriate to use
> the image in the main articlespace for one reason or another
> (inappropriateness for the article, or quality issues).
>
> When I was doing image tagging, I found a good few fair use images on
> talk pages - mainly maps, as I recall, presumably because they're hard
> to "quote". However, as it stands now, our Fair Use guidelines are
> solid on "article illustrations only". Comments?
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
> andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
~Ilya N.


body:
In fact (sorry about double post), I just noticed that my userpage image was
listed as IFD!!!!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Merge vs. Keep/Delete

body:
> * *It used to be the case that non-admins could close any VFD with a keep
> result.
>

Ah, here's what I was looking for: [[Wikipedia:Maintenance]] "Non-admins can
help keep deletion pages clean by resolving discussions.
Administrators<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators>are
needed to actually delete pages. Anyone can nominate pages for
deletion."

And here's where the explicit statement was removed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Maintenance&diff=19962502&oldid=19961923

"There is a common misconception that only
[[Wikipedia:administrators|administrators]] can deal with [[Wikipedia:Votes
for deletion]]. This is not the case. Over half of the pages listed are
never deleted, so at least half the work can be done by non-sysops." 04:19,
31 July 2005<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Maintenance&oldid=19962502>

Time to remove the statement about admins not having any special authority,
> I suppose.
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] The 3RR is an electric fence, not an entitlement.

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:
>On Mon, 10 Oct 2005, Kelly Martin wrote:

>> On 10/10/05, actionforum at comcast.net <actionforum at comcast.net> wrote a
>> bunch of stuff about Castro, forgetting that this is wikien-l, not
>> bitchaboutcommunistdictatorsofcarribeanislands-l.

>I've stopped reading his emails here a day or two ago myself -- about
>the time I realized that he was repeating himself. Would the list
>moderators do us a favor & start reviewing his postings?

We don't like the big stick 'cos we're really nice, and anyway it
resembles work. But I'd certainly ask him to avoid it except as direct
examples of the issues to hand, and even then if possible. I don't
expect anyone here to particularly agree with anyone else on political
or other POVs, but being able to discuss examples without seeming to
snap at each other - or edit-warring - is probably essential to
writing an NPOV encyclopedia.

- d.


from_name: Paul D. Buck

body:
I mean, enter the URL, hit show page, no page is returned.

I do not have an example site, at this time, "visible", I suppose I
could try to set one up. My only example right now is on my home
system, you are welcome to stop by ... ;)

Yes, no corruption. A simple change from b-w to boinc-wiki and back,
with the change to the folder name is all that is done. So, no 404
error saying the page could not be found, but no page content either
(though most browsers "pretend" to load a page before coming up blank).

It should not be hard to see if you see the same problem. On a small
test installation, change the folder name, change the local settings
file to have the new name, and see if what I have seen is
reproducible. Maybe it is just me. I will look at the FAQ to see if
anything leaps out at me.

And if I can set up a test instance I will let you know. My problem
is one of resources, time and so forth, but I will try. As far as an
"Error Log" is this something I need to turn on? If not, where is the
contents written, I can look there. I do NOT have command line access
to the "visible" site, so, that limits me somewhat ... but the local
site, including if Apache is supposed to be logging errors (or you
can tell me how to turn this on for testing purposes). NONE of the
configuration documentation (which is not very intuitive or
organized) is constructed in a way that tells a new person how to
improve their "self-defense". I have some notes on *MY* experience
and I was planning (in my copious free time) to make some additions
to the documentation you have.

Thanks, and I will let you know what I can do, if I can show an
example site that you can look at ... or not, if what I say
happens ... :)

On Oct 10, 2005, at 2:56 PM, Brion Vibber wrote:

> Paul D. Buck wrote:
>
>> Ok, I install all the files to something/b-w/
>>
>> Run the index page, get a config file, stand up the WIki. Make
>> sure  it
>> works and so on.
>>
>> Now, rename the directory to the "real" target, say something/boinc-
>> wiki ... change the one line in the config file ... it should
>> come  up.
>> Nope, no site.
>>
>
> What does this mean, "nope, no site"?
>
> Can you describe it? Can you provide a URL to the site for us to look
> at? Is it blank? What's in your error log? Are you keeping an error
> log?
> What have you tried so far? Have you confirmed that you haven't
> corrupted the LocalSettings.php file, causing a fatal parsing
> error? etc
>
> Please see: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Paul D. Buck wrote:
> I mean, enter the URL, hit show page, no page is returned.
>
> I do not have an example site, at this time, "visible", I suppose I
> could try to set one up. My only example right now is on my home
> system, you are welcome to stop by ... ;)
>
> Yes, no corruption. A simple change from b-w to boinc-wiki and back,
> with the change to the folder name is all that is done.

You still haven't said what you've tried to change in the configuration,
where, when, how, or with what.

You need to provide this kind of information if you want people to be
able to help you.

At a minimum, if renaming the parent directory you will likely need to
update the $IP and $wgScriptPath variables in LocalSettings.php.

> So, no 404
> error saying the page could not be found, but no page content either
> (though most browsers "pretend" to load a page before coming up blank).

Please see php.ini for the error logging options. (Try adding
ini_set('display_errors',1); early in LocalSettings.php, which may or
may not help in some cases if you can't access php.ini.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
On 10/11/05, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> The marker system is easy to understand, straightforward to implement,
> minimally impacts current working methods, does not require agreed
> upon metric values, and is inherently wiki.
>
> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

So people just edit war over the position of the marker.

--
geni


from_name: Ryan Norton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia and autism

body:
>
> Should the world's first encyclopedia that anyone can edit continue
> knowingly to alienate, abuse and reject autists?

HUH? I'd say it does the opposite. Redwolf24 is one of the most
tolerant admins I know, if he really blocks you for two weeks, then you
probably deserved it.

 > Maoririder, whose case is before the arbitration comittee and is still
 >in the evidence phase, is not an obvious vandal or troll
I mean how is

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/
index.php?title=User_talk:Maoririder&diff=prev&oldid=25001203

acceptable?

Speaking of which what does this have to do with Autism? I couldn't
find it mentioned here.

More to the point I work with lots of autistic people on the
autism-related pages. Its just like a lot of other pages - some are
whip-smart and more or less are easy to work with - others exist to do
annoying things (push original research, push their organization etc.).

Thinking deeper though, I was diagnosed with Kanner-style autism myself
at a very young age, and rather resent being categorized like this
(esp. since I've never flipped anyone off, LOL). Fact is, there are a
lot of factors at work here. People, esp. autistics, mature in
different ways and in different speeds. For those who read my user page
you'll find some of the criticism from my days as a wx-developer - I
didn't exactly fare too well there and it was a rather stressful two
years (counting hair pieces lost here...). Basically, people are
situated for different things - some people get along better at some
places then others.

At some point people have to move on. Maybe someday they will come back
to Wikipedia and become valued contributers, but as is it sounds like
(at least in Maoririder's case) they need a break, most likely for
their own good. There are aspects of psychology that play in here too
(something about people going back to the same place and acting
similarly as before even though they have grown up past the situation).
The supposed "discrimination" part here might be unfortunate, but if
they are unwilling to stop the nonsense then maybe its best for them to
find a different place to go (and yes, its a difficult thing).

Oh, and I've never made a stub - I don't believe in the things. I only
write real articles, LOL :).

Thanks,
Ryan

[[User:RN]] at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RN
Ryan Norton at wxforum: http://wxforum.org


body:
On 10/11/05, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/11/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > So people just edit war over the position of the marker.
>
> Yes, that's why it's inherently wiki. :)
>
> But there's less disruption than trying to force your definitive edit
> in the "current" version. And it would seem a step in the right
> direction towards "version 1.0."
>
>
Edit wars effectively devolve to dicking around with the marker, especially
under MediaWiki 1.5 in which we keep a single copy of the text and only
create a new timestamp entry.


body:
On 10/11/05, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/11/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 10/11/05, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > The marker system is easy to understand, straightforward to implement,
> > > minimally impacts current working methods, does not require agreed
> > > upon metric values, and is inherently wiki.
> >
> > So people just edit war over the position of the marker.
>
> Yes, that's why it's inherently wiki. :)
>
> But there's less disruption than trying to force your definitive edit
> in the "current" version.

No it isn't

--
geni


body:
Today, I noticed {{Userpage-image}} on WP:TFD - basically a template
saying "permission granted only to use this on userpages".

Obviously unfree, and should be deleted under existing policy.
However, it got me thinking about that self-same policy. First, a
caveat - I am not a lawyer. Especially not a Florida copyright lawyer.
That said, let us float an idea.

We don't accept non-freely licensed images because they can't be used
in a commercial (or, in some cases, any other) daughter project, which
is fine and dandy and a core principle. However, any daughter project
consists basically of the encyclopedia pages, the images on them, and
a credit.

Talk pages? Not needed. The scads of Wikipedia namespace
administrivia? Almost entirely deadweight - what possible print
version will want to have a copy of the 4,987th ROUGE ADMIN!!!1one!
complaint on WP:AN? User pages? Helpful for attribution, but keeping
them can (as we found with our neo-nazi friends) be, uh, prone to
rather unfortunate misinterpretation. Indeed, I believe we now offer
dumps filtered of all user-space material to avoid this. We're seeing
the divide between "front-end" material and "supporting material"
beginning to be a bit clearer.

All text is GFDL-licensed, and I'm not suggesting changing that, but I
'm proposing creating a class of images which are *not intended* for
redistribution because they're not a part of the encylopedia we're
producing - in much the same way that we're starting to discourage
redistribution of some parts of the project to downstream users as,
basically, not particularly relevant.

So, a suggestion. {{project-image}}. "This image is intended for use
in developing Wikipedia content. Copyright is, unless explicitly
stated otherwise, owned and retained by the uploader; it is an
internal working document, not an encyclopedic image, and not intended
for use in articles. Permission is granted to create derivative works
under the conditions of this license." (or something in that general
vein)

And, using a broad definition of working on the encyclopedia, we have
the small amount of editing overhead that goes into strengthening a
working community - not the aim of the wiki, by a long shot, but
necessary to keep it running well. And, as a part of that, people keep
adding photos...

Yes, this suggestion was prompted by people not wanting to freely
license their userpage photos, but I do feel it has potential for use
in other roles (personally, I have no intention of putting a photo of
me up there!); a case of "build it and they will come", in a way.

Are there any practical reasons, other than a blanket "we don't accept
non-reusable images", that this couldn't work? We're already resigned
to keeping around a large collection of images that are only legally
valid in certain articles & off-limits to whole namespaces (fair use),
which knocks down the "but if it's lying around, people will use it"
argument.

Comments appreciated, though I suspect I'll wake up tomorrow morning
to find half a dozen "this is insanely unworkable, and here's 46
reasons why" notes. C'est la vie.

On a related note, though a little less contentious, a tag along the
lines of {{fairuse-project}} could be handy. I can think of contexts
where it's legitimate to have a fair-use image as part of a discussion
on a discussion page ("purposes such as criticism, comment, [or]
scholarship", remember), but where it wouldn't be appropriate to use
the image in the main articlespace for one reason or another
(inappropriateness for the article, or quality issues).

When I was doing image tagging, I found a good few fair use images on
talk pages - mainly maps, as I recall, presumably because they're hard
to "quote". However, as it stands now, our Fair Use guidelines are
solid on "article illustrations only". Comments?

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


from_name: Justin Cormack

body:
On 11 Oct 2005, at 03:25, Andrew Gray wrote:

> Today, I noticed {{Userpage-image}} on WP:TFD - basically a template
> saying "permission granted only to use this on userpages".
>

So did I, because on ifd there were some images marked with this.
The user was objecting to them being deleted even though s/he had
created them but didnt want them released under a free license. As
far as I know this user's images are the only ones under this template.

> Obviously unfree, and should be deleted under existing policy.
> However, it got me thinking about that self-same policy. First, a
> caveat - I am not a lawyer. Especially not a Florida copyright lawyer.
> That said, let us float an idea.
>
> We don't accept non-freely licensed images because they can't be used
> in a commercial (or, in some cases, any other) daughter project, which
> is fine and dandy and a core principle. However, any daughter project
> consists basically of the encyclopedia pages, the images on them, and
> a credit.
>

(snip)

> On a related note, though a little less contentious, a tag along the
> lines of {{fairuse-project}} could be handy. I can think of contexts
> where it's legitimate to have a fair-use image as part of a discussion
> on a discussion page ("purposes such as criticism, comment, [or]
> scholarship", remember), but where it wouldn't be appropriate to use
> the image in the main articlespace for one reason or another
> (inappropriateness for the article, or quality issues).

There are a few cases. I have never seen one.

> When I was doing image tagging, I found a good few fair use images on
> talk pages - mainly maps, as I recall, presumably because they're hard
> to "quote". However, as it stands now, our Fair Use guidelines are
> solid on "article illustrations only". Comments?

The guidelines might be. The usage is not.

And the image dumps include all images, free or non free, which
is wrong.

I am coming to the conclusion that the only solution is to transwiki all
non free images to a different server, restrict upload rights there,
and force non free tagging of all image links to there. "Free use"
ie copyright violation is so prevalent, there are perhaps 10,000 (guess)
claimed free use images that are not (I have so far found under 10
images that I would be prepared to support in court as fair use),
and deleting them doesnt help as more are uploaded to replace them.

Justinc


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia and autism

body:
On Tuesday, October 11, 2005, at 03:17  AM, Tony Sidaway wrote:

> On 10/11/05, Ryan Norton <wxprojects at comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Maoririder, whose case is before the arbitration comittee and is
>>> still
>>> in the evidence phase, is not an obvious vandal or troll
>> I mean how is
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/
>> index.php?title=User_talk:Maoririder&diff=prev&oldid=25001203
>>
>> acceptable?
>>
>
> Yes, alas.  If I were treated as Maoririder has been, I'd probably
> lose my rag a bit.  I'm shocked that his loss of composure (which he
> removed) is being treated here as evidence of his being a troll of
> vandal.
>
> More than shocked, actually.  I'm fucking livid.  But never mind.

I don't think the user is a vandal or troll (and indeed the block-quote
implied otherwise which I apologize for :)), but Lucky spent nearly an
entire month trying to help with him only to end up getting personally
attacked like that. It's more sad then anything I suppose, and after
reading the "You're back" part of the user's talk page and the hope it
had there its quite disconcerting that it would end up that way.

Thanks,
Ryan

[[User:RN]] at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RN
Ryan Norton at wxforum: http://wxforum.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Seeking image manipulation websites

body:
> *When there is a picture of a painting; changing the colours is BAD. A photo
> reflects what the picture looks like. Changing the colours arbitrarily
> because it "looks good" is falsifying what the picture is about.

The colours reflected in a photograph are not nessecarily the "true
colour" of the object. It depends on lighting, and on the individual
camera. Thus, a photo of a painting may look differently than if you
were to put the painting in a flatbed scanner (not a good idea for,
say, van Gogh's Starry Night).

If somebody's changes are an attempt to get closer to the true colour,
or to fix irregularities in the colour, then I think it's OK.

If, however, they're changing a colour saying "Well, yes, that's the
colour it is in the actual painting, but I think the painting would
look better if it were this colour so I'm going to just change it".

What I mean is, colour changes such as hue, brightness, etc., are one
thing; arbitrarily changing all of the pinks to reds is quite another.

> *There is a lot of resistance to websites that use Wikipedia material
> commercially without them making due reference to the original site an
> original author. This resulted in the inclusion of watermarks that were then
> deleted.

That's one of the things that you have to deal with when you're a free
content provider. While sites are SUPPOSED to make due reference, they
don't nessecarily, even though that's really not lawful (I don't
think). Obviously, we're not going to sue every last one of them,
which would be pretty pointless since we don't lose any money when
people don't view our site anyhow (except for the fact that they may
not see donation banners).

We don't write "WIKIPEDIA" in between every word on Wikipedia
articles, why should we do the same for images?

Mark


body:
> The same goes for the text of an article.  Don't change the facts
> only for the purpose of making the lines rhyme.  But if the text

That's actually a fun idea. It would be fun/horribly upsetting if some
vandal or group of vandals in the future did such a thing on a massive
scale. "Wikipedia's a free encyclopedia / which provides you with lots
of free media"...

> Perhaps a "diff" function for images is the first function we
> need, so versions could be compared against each other.

Do you mean a pixel-by-pixel "here's what's changed", or just showing
the two images next to each other for comparison?

Mark


subject: [Wikitech-l] Odd installation side effect

body:
Brion,

Actually I have said it repeatedly.

Make a wiki installation.
Make sure it works.
Rename the folder containing the Wiki on the server
change the $wgScriptPath      from say "/b-w" (original installation)
to "/boinc-wiki";
try new url, changing only /b-w/index.php to /boinc-wiki/index.php

At this point I get a blank page.

Nothing hard, so, I am failing to understand why we are not
communicating here. Each time you ask, I say I did this. The only
changes are to try to make the steps clearer. And I don't know how to
do that. Not hard to make the changes, but, it is hard to understand
why the new site does not show up where it has been "moved". And,
yes, I do make the change to the localsettings file.

And, I have been trying to provide the information. Perhaps you have
been thinking I am doing some major surgery. Nope, simple move.

Paul
On Oct 11, 2005, at 1:43 AM, Brion Vibber wrote:

> Paul D. Buck wrote:
>
>> I mean, enter the URL, hit show page, no page is returned.
>>
>> I do not have an example site, at this time, "visible", I suppose I
>> could try to set one up. My only example right now is on my home
>> system, you are welcome to stop by ... ;)
>>
>> Yes, no corruption. A simple change from b-w to boinc-wiki and back,
>> with the change to the folder name is all that is done.
>>
>
> You still haven't said what you've tried to change in the
> configuration,
> where, when, how, or with what.
>
> You need to provide this kind of information if you want people to be
> able to help you.
>
> At a minimum, if renaming the parent directory you will likely need to
> update the $IP and $wgScriptPath variables in LocalSettings.php.
>
>
>> So, no 404
>> error saying the page could not be found, but no page content either
>> (though most browsers "pretend" to load a page before coming up
>> blank).
>>
>
> Please see php.ini for the error logging options. (Try adding
> ini_set('display_errors',1); early in LocalSettings.php, which may or
> may not help in some cases if you can't access php.ini.)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia and autism

body:
Tony wrote:

> There are two cases that concern me a lot because of the
> characteristics exhibited by the main editors involved.
>
> Maoririder, whose case is before the arbitration comittee and
> is still in the evidence phase, is not an obvious vandal or
> troll.  He has made  large numbers of vanishingly small
> stubs, some of which have grown into very impressive
> articles, and also asked intriguing, childlike, questions in
> an appropriate forum.

I agree with Tony. We should not automatically delete stubs. Sometimes
they are like seeds, which can grow into fine articles. Not everybody
can put into words what they know.

Last weekend, I say the smartest man I know become tongue-tied while
delivering an extemporaneous speech. It may have embarrassing. He had to
ask, "What's the word for this?" But that did not diminish my respect
for his leadership qualites, or even his wisdom. Anyone can get a "brain
cramp".

We should be helping each other, not cutting each other down, deleting
half-formed works just because they're not "complete" or "perfect".

Intriguing, childlike expressions of joy and wonder and curiosity have
driven many scientific discoveries, fueled many enterprises. The guy who
founded [[Federal Express]] got a "D" on his term paper at business
school for his "stupid idea" of instituting a hub and spoke airmail
service. Jimbo and Larry thought of making an encyclopedia that anyone
can edit ("Oh, that would never work.")

Let's stick together and encourage each other to contribute, each in
whatever way they can. I say, long live the stubs! May the grow to
maturity and bear good fruit. I say, hats off to the autistic and the
geeky!

Uncle Ed
Vacationland, USA


from_name: Chris Lüer

subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
At 07:03 PM 10/7/2005, Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

>We shouldn't give up the principle of open editing but we should
>make clear now from the beginning that we seek good writers and
>knowledgeable people, not anyone. Yes, anyone _can_ edit an article.
>But not anyone _should_ edit any article.

But how to keep the people who can but shouldn't away? Without
becoming an exclusive club where you have to be friends with five
senior members before you can even be considered for joining.

A required tutorial for newbies? Hoping that the not-so-good editors
will lose interest before the tutorial is over?

         Chl


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article quality deterioration (was: a valid criticism)

body:
uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:

>But Responsible Wikipedians Don't Revert Changes.  They compromise, and
>discuss, and don't bite the newbies, and revert as a last resort.
>Especially not on articles where there are POV warriors already
>reverting each other, because in that case it is too easy for a good
>editor trying to organize the article to be mistaken for a POV warrior.

And Responsible Wikipedians don't believe that they are infallible,
and you never know, that anonymous user that did a one-sentence
change might be the world authority on the subject, and so I better
go and find a reference that clearly contradicts this before I revert it...

         Chl


from_name: uninvited at nerstrand.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia and autism

body:
In an earlier post, Tony Sidaway advocated an inclusive policy regarding
autistic contributors.

This is a tough issue that many online communities have struggled with.

Autistic people often find themselves facing punitive measures in online
communities because behaviors that result from their autism contravene
community norms or formal community policies.  Debate ensues, as it has
here, over the extent to which the community should forebear from
enforcing its norms and policies where violations stem at least in part
from disability.  In general, there is no satisfactory resolution of
these matters because the principles of civility and inclusiveness are
in conflict and most communities are unwilling to compromise either
principle.

In deciding how to answer this difficult question for Wikipedia
particularly, I believe it is important to bear our mission in mind.
We are not a socal club.  We are not a service organization.  We are
here to provide a free information resource to the world, and there are
a great number of would-be contributors to that endeavor who we turn
away every day because they are unable to further our goals, because
they lack a sufficient combination of knowledge, writing ability,
reasearch skills, and willingness to compromise.  We should consider
the contributions of autistic contributors in the same critical light
in which we view the contributions of others.

Regarding such stubs as the "Big-eyed bug" and "Bloody-nosed Beetle," we
neither suffer a shortage of such stubs nor a shortage of people who are
willing to create more of them.  Stubs are a resource that is both
abundant and renewable, and it seems unlikely to me that the project
will ever fall short of its goals due to a paucity of stubs.  Our
growth is limited by the number of people who are willing to organize
facts, check references, research questionable assertions, and deal
with community issues.  And an overwillingness on our part to indulge
uncivil contributors will risk alienating this rather more important
group.

Writing skill and an ability to respect group norms are both (in U.S.
regulatory parlance) essential requirements of the job.