body:
2006/8/24, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com>:

> > Problem is, they ARE behaving as they should. Or at least, they are
> > behaving like those who work on them think they should.
>
> I don't know, I've pointed out a few local weirdnesses in categories
> to people and they've generally been fairly receptive. It *seems*
> logical at first that Category:John Lennon is a subcategory of
> Category:The Beatles. But not when you consider that John Lennon ends
> up being a subsubcategory of Category:English rock bands.

No, then you assume that everything that goes into a subcategory also
belongs to the main category. Categorisation is not strict set theory,
and bundles similar notions. A category:Germany is thus a subcategory
of Category:Country, because it is a country.

You may think it's logical that being in a subcategory means that
there some kind of connection with the main category, and I may think
so, but others don't. And when they don't think that something is
illogical, they don't think their own actions that lead to such  a
situation are undesirable.

> > The category system is a mess, a labyrinth. But I don't see any way to
> > improve that any more. I have given up on them, to me they're just the
> > sewer of Wikipedia now. Which is a shame, because they looked so great
> > when introduced. But apparently it's typically something where the
> > lowest common demonimator decides the level of the whole. Where
> > there's two possibilities, both will have people in favor of them, and
> > in the case of categories, it's the stupidest of those two who will
> > prevail.
>
> I interpret it differently. I think categorising stuff well is more
> difficult than editing articles. Generally, categories are structured
> relatively badly, and used relatively badly - not through ill will,
> but just lack of understanding. OTOH, it actually doesn't take that
> long to totally clean up a category.

It does. At least in the way I want to clean it up. That is, move
stuff from too-small subcategories to the main category. You have to
apply for deletion of the subcategory, get an objection to that, and
nothing happens. That's pretty slow I say - 2 weeks to NOT get what
you want.

> Maybe 2 hours to evaluate and
> recategorise 100 articles.

I could go and do some categories, but at best it's a mere small
improvement where elsewhere there's double as much worsening. More
likely I will simply get reverted. If I'm unlucky I'm getting reverted
AND branded a vandal.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Truth is Out!

body:
On 24/08/06, Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:

> But then again you ask for "evidence" - always a good habit. What I said was
> what I interpreted from once idly skipping through the archives of this very
> mailing list (with the goal of getting to know the people, especially Jimbo)
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/ <- there you go

Fabulous.

> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-August/027842.htmlgo
> <- there, a particular example of what I am talking about.
> But there's probably better material that I'm not finding right now

That's evidence for your assertion that Jimbo "brought on a ton of
jewish people to administrator posts"?

You appear to be a net negative to wikien-l. Bye.

- d.


from_name: stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Truth is Out!

body:
> Dabljuh wrote:
> >To a degree the guy does have a point. Wikipedia
> >has a huge jewish/zionist bias on a large number
> >of articles.
> >(Newsflash: There's biased articles in/on Wikipedia?)

But thats not because of the software, its policy, or its people.
Its because of 1) the "Islamofascists" dont follow NPOV and 2)
other... fascists, who exploit the above weakness to their own views.

> >But the guy is ultimately wrong. Of course it's not
> >that Wales & Sanger are secret zionist overlords.

Sophisticated reasoning (somewhat) is good...

> >Wales, like many americans and many liberals, just
> >has a rather common pro-israel/pro-judaism bias.

Ugh. Liberals = pro-Israel? I dont recall ever hearing the current
"neo-conservative" political administration called "liberal." And
keep in mind that that (apparently "conservative") anti-war movement
which probably could have derailed the Iraq War was scattered largely
due to the problem that certain people were confusing anti-Israeli policy
with anti-Semitic beliefs.

That "confusion" of course has often been attributed to Muslims (rightly
or not) and its something which... others have exploited politically.
With much success I might add -- a point which Ray pointed out quite well.
So don't confuse Judaism with Zionism, which in fact has undergone extreme
changes from its origins as a religious "homeland" movement to whats now
largely an statist ideology (both having only the ethnic dimension in common).

There are ethnic biases on Wikipedia, just as in the world, so it should be
understood that opposing biases are easily exploited to serve some short-sighted
agenda. To acceptance of any bias means that the tie between NPOV and universality
and therefore human rights will continue to be clouded by this same... exploited
confusion.

-SV

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from_name: Dabljuh

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Truth is Out!

body:
On Thu, 24 Aug 2006 10:16:24 +0100
"Sam Korn" <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:

> This exchange should be framed and hung on [[WP:NOR]] as an example to
> the world.

Wasn't there recently a ruling that people who invoke WP:NOR or WP:NPOV
to talk pages, user pages, or mailing lists, get crucified?


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject:
[Wikitech-l] How bad is a category with 21,
	008 pages for the servers?

body:
On 8/24/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:

> No, then you assume that everything that goes into a subcategory also
> belongs to the main category. Categorisation is not strict set theory,
> and bundles similar notions. A category:Germany is thus a subcategory
> of Category:Country, because it is a country.

So what *do* our subcategories mean? It'd be nice to be able to have
*some* strict subcategories, to allow assumptions to be made by bots
or editors. And then to have other categories where anything goes...

> You may think it's logical that being in a subcategory means that
> there some kind of connection with the main category, and I may think
> so, but others don't. And when they don't think that something is
> illogical, they don't think their own actions that lead to such  a
> situation are undesirable.

All of this is caused by the fact that we don't state anywhere what
"subcategory" means. It doesn't mean anything! Maybe even a convention
of locally defining it, like "Subcategories of this category must ..."
would be a start.

> It does. At least in the way I want to clean it up. That is, move
> stuff from too-small subcategories to the main category. You have to
> apply for deletion of the subcategory, get an objection to that, and
> nothing happens. That's pretty slow I say - 2 weeks to NOT get what
> you want.

Why on earth do you want to do this?

> I could go and do some categories, but at best it's a mere small
> improvement where elsewhere there's double as much worsening. More
> likely I will simply get reverted. If I'm unlucky I'm getting reverted
> AND branded a vandal.

If you're proposing going around deleting most categories without
discussing it with anyone, then yes, you would probably be branded a
vandal. :)

Steve


from_name: Daniel Kinzler

body:
Rob Church wrote
> I don't know if it's quite what we're looking for, but we could
> inspect the category browser feature (for efficiency and load etc.)
> and perhaps switch it on...?
>
>
> Rob Church

I'm working with Tim on making the CategoryTree extension fit for use on
Wikipedia. It would help to make navigating categories easier - and
would hopefully help to find messy bits. It does not solve the problem
in principle, i'm afraid - IMHO, only a "facette classification" could,
i.e. having distinct hierarchies for time, place, topic, etc.

In my dreams we would get rid of categories and have a system of
meaningful relations between articles - like the semantic mediawiki project.

-- Daniel


subject: [WikiEN-l] Idealism

body:
--- George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think you're misinterpreting that.
> It would be good if every fact in WP was referenced.

But are all references the same? How do we distinguish between references?

"References" seems to include to other web pages which people can quickly verify
but may not be quite authoritative. Voluminous books which may be considered
authoritative but might only found in the dusty libraries of elite collections.

Face it: even where a source is extremely old, and therefore considered "canonical"
such often show the limitations and biases of the time and culture wherin they
were written. Note the difference between a reference and a quotation, either by a
respected philosopher whose codification has come to be a canonical one, or by
a claimed authority on the subject. There is a huge subjective variance here.

For example, Augustine, who had no physics credentials whatsoever, was perhaps the
first to explain the nature of time as having 'begun with the creation of the
universe, before which there was no time.' His assertion was based in religious
terms of course, but nevertheless came some years before physical theories.
Is he not an "authority"? Or is he not a canonical authority?

> I have toyed with the idea of an underlying data structure for listing facts
> (factual claims, referenced facts).  Over time, it would be good if there
> were a slow evolution towards nearly everything being referenced, well
> referenced and multiply referenced if possible.

Good. There was that Wikidata idea out there a couple years back...

> Just because something hasn't had references added to date, doesn't mean we
> should inherently mistrust it or throw the articles out or anything.   This
> is in a sense the ultimate "leave something for others" project aspect...

Well said.

SV

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list: foundation-l

from_name: Daniel Bregman

subject: [Foundation-l] Language Requests at Wikimedia Incubator

body:
Wikimedia Incubator is there for testing new languages and new project
ideas. To this end we feel that it would make sense to move the
existing Meta page (Requests for new languages, Proposed projects
etc.) to Incubator.

We've had a couple of ideas about how to do this (specifically for the new
language requests).

   1.
    New requests are made at Incubator, old requests finish as they
would at Meta until the Meta page is empty.
   2. All the current requests are moved to the Incubator and continued
   there.
   3. All the current requests are finished without consensus, and left
   to start again at Incubator.

What do you lot think? Similar things could happen with new project
proposals, although it is more complicated (because of project description
pages etc.).

Thanks, Daniel.

-http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dbmag9

   1.


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2006/8/24, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com>:

> > You may think it's logical that being in a subcategory means that
> > there some kind of connection with the main category, and I may think
> > so, but others don't. And when they don't think that something is
> > illogical, they don't think their own actions that lead to such  a
> > situation are undesirable.
>
> All of this is caused by the fact that we don't state anywhere what
> "subcategory" means. It doesn't mean anything! Maybe even a convention
> of locally defining it, like "Subcategories of this category must ..."
> would be a start.

It wouldn't solve anything. The category "British rockbands" would
have "Subcategories of this category should be British rockbands" and
category "Beatles" would have "subcategories of this category should
be closely related to the Beatles" - or in my example, countries would
say ''Subcategories of this category should be countries" and Germany
would say "Subcategories of this category should be categories with
German topics"

> > It does. At least in the way I want to clean it up. That is, move
> > stuff from too-small subcategories to the main category. You have to
> > apply for deletion of the subcategory, get an objection to that, and
> > nothing happens. That's pretty slow I say - 2 weeks to NOT get what
> > you want.
>
> Why on earth do you want to do this?

Because a category, to me, is a way to find related pages. And that is
easiest with a certain size, say between 10 and 40 pages in the
category. If there is a nice category with 15 subjects, I don't want
to have to stroll through itself and all its 7 subcategories and
sub-subcategories to find them all. And that's not an example that
took me long to find.

> > I could go and do some categories, but at best it's a mere small
> > improvement where elsewhere there's double as much worsening. More
> > likely I will simply get reverted. If I'm unlucky I'm getting reverted
> > AND branded a vandal.
>
> If you're proposing going around deleting most categories without
> discussing it with anyone, then yes, you would probably be branded a
> vandal. :)

Well, that's one thing. Another would be putting [[Germany]] in
[[Category:Countries]] and taking [[Category:Germany]] out of it.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Idealism

body:
On 8/24/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I think you're misinterpreting that.
> > It would be good if every fact in WP was referenced.
>
> But are all references the same? How do we distinguish between references?
>
> "References" seems to include to other web pages which people can quickly
> verify
> but may not be quite authoritative. Voluminous books which may be
> considered
> authoritative but might only found in the dusty libraries of elite
> collections.

References clearly aren't all the same.  And won't in a real world all
agree.

We already deal with this in presenting multiple points of view including
significant minority opinions.  Well referenced academic works routinely
cite multiple sources, including leading opposing opinions.

I'd like to see both easily followable web links *and* paper-library
references for stuff.  Web links, so that people can follow the chain and
see another online source, and paper-library references because a lot of
classical knowledge still isn't online properly.  Over time, maybe with
book-scanning projects etc, that will change.

Face it: even where a source is extremely old, and therefore considered
> "canonical"
> such often show the limitations and biases of the time and culture wherin
> they
> were written. Note the difference between a reference and a quotation,
> either by a
> respected philosopher whose codification has come to be a canonical one,
> or by
> a claimed authority on the subject. There is a huge subjective variance
> here.

Absolutely.  Some of this eventually regresses into determining what our
definition of knowledge is... which ceases to be information science and
moves into philosophy.

Well written WP reference articles will be able to put topics and references
into the subjective context, as well as a notional commonly agreed upon
objective framework.

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


body:
On 8/24/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> It wouldn't solve anything. The category "British rockbands" would
> have "Subcategories of this category should be British rockbands" and

I would have thought subcats of "British rock bands" should more
specific categories of British rock bands, or British rock bands
categorised by city etc. Or maybe even "Defunct British rock bands"
etc etc. Of course, *articles* in the category should be actual
bands...

> category "Beatles" would have "subcategories of this category should
> be closely related to the Beatles" - or in my example, countries would
> say ''Subcategories of this category should be countries" and Germany
> would say "Subcategories of this category should be categories with
> German topics"

You're very negative about your fellow editors :)

> > Why on earth do you want to do this?
>
> Because a category, to me, is a way to find related pages. And that is
> easiest with a certain size, say between 10 and 40 pages in the

Remember how I was saying "subcategories don't work"? Here's why. In
theory, there is absolutely no reason you'd want one category of 50
articles rather than 5 subcats of 10 articles each. It's simply that
the MediaWiki software is particularly bad at browsing categories.
(Mostly because we don't know what subcategories actually mean.)

> category. If there is a nice category with 15 subjects, I don't want
> to have to stroll through itself and all its 7 subcategories and
> sub-subcategories to find them all. And that's not an example that
> took me long to find.

You're absolutely right. But your solution is wrong.

> Well, that's one thing. Another would be putting [[Germany]] in
> [[Category:Countries]] and taking [[Category:Germany]] out of it.

That seems to me to be the right thing to do. If anything,
Category:Germany should be in "Category:Country categories" or
something.

Steve


body:
2006/8/24, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com>:
> On 8/24/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Category:Cities in Tokyo - is both in "Geography of Tokyo" and "Tokyo". Why?
> > Category:Romanian military aircraft 1930-1939 - there are 3 articles
> > in this category. There's also 3 categories to put it in. Need I say
> > more?
>
> We lack good model categories, I think. For me, a category like
> "Tokyo" should only contain two things: Subcategories (Geography of
> Tokyo, Tokyo culture, People born in Tokyo...), and articles waiting
> to be subcategorised. It's totally consistent with the wiki principle
> that articles can be dumped in the simplest category, and then moved
> later by an editor with more "local" knowledge.

I haven't denied that.

> To answer your "why?" question: Because subcategories don't work. The
> princple that "If X is a subcat of Y, then Z should not be in both X
> and Y" is totally bogus and unworkable - at the moment.

Why that?

> > Category:Sendai class cruisers - A category with only 2 pages is
> > functioning more to confuse than to enlighten. A subcategory of
> > "cruiser classes" although it is rather than has cruiser classes.
>
> There is general blurring of the distinction between classes of things
> and things themselves. See [[Category:Elephants]] for an example. The
> solution is probably to branch these categories into "Famous X's",
> "Classes of X" etc. For a category with only 5-6 members I'm not
> fussed if it contains both articles on general classes of things and
> specific instances of those things, but for bigger categories we
> should be more precise.

This is another case: It is a category for classes, containing a
subcategory for instances.

> > Category:Fictional Jeet Kune Do practitioners: I hate this type of
> > category, but alas, putting it directly in the parent categories would
> > be even worse
>
> Why? It seems to be in the right place, a subcat of both Fictional
> martial artists and Jeet Kune Do practitioners. Should probably be a
> subcat of some "Computer game characters" or something too.

Just my gut feeling - what's the use of this category? Would anyone
think "Hey, this is a fictional Jeet Kune Do practitioner, I would
want more of those". Still, I agree that after all the category is
good, because you *would* want to have them in Category:Jeet Kune Do
practioners, but when getting to that category from a real person, you
don't want to bump into the fictional characters. So, in the end, I'm
happy with this one.

> > Category:Indoor ice hockey venues in Sweden: What is gained by having
> > indoor and outdoor ice hockey venues in separate categories, except
> > that there are more categories with more possibilities for getting
> > lost?
>
> I disagree - everything is to be gained by splitting categories
> whenever they can be unambiguously and precisely split.

I disagree with that. Strongly. A category is to find similar
subjects, and that is best done by having a certain size of
categories. Split them up further, and you only give more work to
those trying to look something up. Going with your principle would
leave only categories with 1 page and categories with 2 categories -
everything else can be split. The goal of categorization is to make
navigation easier, it is not to categorize as much as possible.

> > Category:Haywood County, Tennessee: The type of case we are
> > discussing. Only parent category: Tennessee counties
>
> Seems to be in good working order?

Well, it's the thing we discussed before. Or at least the thing I
thought we were discussing before. It's a subcategory of tennessee
counties, but the articles in it are not about Tennessee counties, but
about cities. I don't see why you vehemently oppose putting "Jesus"
under 'People executed for heresy" yet consider putting "Haywood
County, Tennessee" in "Tennessee counties" 'good working order'. To me
it's twice the same kind of thing.

> > Category:1862 in Mexico: That's two articles. And no doubt many
> > similar categories. There's even a category Underpopulated (Year) in
> > Mexico categories.... Categorizing for the sake of categorizing. Or
> > worse.
>
> What's wrong with "Categorizing for the sake of categorizing"? And
> what's wrong with underpopulated categories? It's just like a stub -
> awaiting further development.

We are here to make the encyclopedia, not to make a classification
scheme of everything. It would, in my opinion, be so much more useful
to have (for example) one category about "1860s in Mexico" than to
have to go through 11 categories to find those. Again my question is:
What is the use of categories? To me it is, getting similar pages
together. And that is done not by splitting up further and further
until you have all 1- and 2-page categories, but by bringing them
together to a manageable size.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


subject:
[WikiEN-l] [[New anti-Semitism]] and violations of NPOV re: top
	image

body:
--- Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

> What I have a problem with is people turning up at articles they've
> made no contribution to, in an area they've done no research, making
> an image invisible, adding an OR tag, wikilawyering about policies,
> violating 3RR, starting a thread on AN/I, starting various threads on
> people's talk pages, and now starting another one on wikiEN-l.

ROFL. But thats exactly how you conduct yourself SlimV! :)
Case in point, from my talk:

"Speaking of which, here's an entry from Denis Dutton's Fourth Bad Writing Contest
(1998). It reminds me somewhat of the previous introduction to God and the current
introduction to Beauty:"

-SV

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subject: [WikiEN-l] The Truth is Out!

body:
On Thu, 24 Aug 2006 13:15:50 +0100
"David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Wasn't there recently a ruling that people who invoke WP:NOR or WP:NPOV
> > to talk pages, user pages, or mailing lists, get crucified?
>
>
> Please prove you're not an idiot before the end of today.

You're basically asking the impossible - the negation of an universal negative?
(Proving you an idiot?)

But then again you ask for "evidence" - always a good habit. What I said was
what I interpreted from once idly skipping through the archives of this very
mailing list (with the goal of getting to know the people, especially Jimbo)

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/ <- there you go

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-August/027842.htmlgo
<- there, a particular example of what I am talking about.
But there's probably better material that I'm not finding right now

What I remember was that, to my surprise, Jimbo appeared to be rather
nervous regarding certain threats of neo-nazi-sites (namely stormfront)
to insert their point of view, and announced that he would not let this
happen to some degree - for which he, I remember, has then been criticised
by other members of the list: NPOV and the regular process should (and would,
imho) have proven sufficient without resorting to outright censorship.

I also remember reading somewhere a presentation that, IIRC, WP:RS was at
least partly modified or instated in reaction to this "threat."
Or first instated as a reaction, then again modified to specifically
include stormfront as an example for invalid / unreliable sources.
However that is the presentation of a site that I remember as being
rather Wikipedia-critic, (not a nazi site mind you)
I don't remember which one though. Memories are blurry ;)


body:
2006/8/24, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com>:
> On 8/24/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It wouldn't solve anything. The category "British rockbands" would
> > have "Subcategories of this category should be British rockbands" and
>
> I would have thought subcats of "British rock bands" should more
> specific categories of British rock bands, or British rock bands
> categorised by city etc. Or maybe even "Defunct British rock bands"
> etc etc. Of course, *articles* in the category should be actual
> bands...

Yes, that's what YOU would have thought, and what I would have
thought. But someone who wants to put Category:Beatles in
Category:British rockbands is going to think differently. And act in
that way. And we can say "you should not put categories about rock
bands in here", but that's just the same argument that we previously
had about [[Category:The Beatles]]. There's nothing won by putting
such a text on the category page, because someone who is of the
opinion that [[Category:The Beatles]] should be in, is just going to
put a text there so that it can go in, and someone who is of the
opinion that it should not be in, is going to put a text there so that
it cannot go in. Only difference is the place where you get the edit
war.

> > category "Beatles" would have "subcategories of this category should
> > be closely related to the Beatles" - or in my example, countries would
> > say ''Subcategories of this category should be countries" and Germany
> > would say "Subcategories of this category should be categories with
> > German topics"
>
> You're very negative about your fellow editors :)

Yes, but also realistic. Someone is not going to change their mind
just because they have to write it down somewhere else.

> > Because a category, to me, is a way to find related pages. And that is
> > easiest with a certain size, say between 10 and 40 pages in the
>
> Remember how I was saying "subcategories don't work"? Here's why. In
> theory, there is absolutely no reason you'd want one category of 50
> articles rather than 5 subcats of 10 articles each. It's simply that
> the MediaWiki software is particularly bad at browsing categories.
> (Mostly because we don't know what subcategories actually mean.)

Well, I want solutions that work now, not solutions that would work if
the code were changed as well as the policies.

> > Well, that's one thing. Another would be putting [[Germany]] in
> > [[Category:Countries]] and taking [[Category:Germany]] out of it.
>
> That seems to me to be the right thing to do. If anything,
> Category:Germany should be in "Category:Country categories" or
> something.

That's your opinion, and mine. Not that of those who have a say about
the category structure on the Dutch Wikipedia.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


body:
On 8/24/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, that's what YOU would have thought, and what I would have
> thought. But someone who wants to put Category:Beatles in
> Category:British rockbands is going to think differently. And act in
> that way. And we can say "you should not put categories about rock
> bands in here", but that's just the same argument that we previously
> had about [[Category:The Beatles]]. There's nothing won by putting
> such a text on the category page, because someone who is of the
> opinion that [[Category:The Beatles]] should be in, is just going to
> put a text there so that it can go in, and someone who is of the
> opinion that it should not be in, is going to put a text there so that
> it cannot go in. Only difference is the place where you get the edit
> war.

I'm getting the impression you don't like wikis much...;)

> Well, I want solutions that work now, not solutions that would work if
> the code were changed as well as the policies.

Patience, grasshopper...since this is the technical mailing list, why
not discuss the code changes that would make all of this pain go away?
What would the right solution be?

Steve


body:
2006/8/24, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com>:

> I'm getting the impression you don't like wikis much...;)

Let's just say that I wouldn't hate Wikipedia this much if I wouldn't
love it this much. I've been with Wikipedia for over 5 years now, and
I'm proud to have been part of it. But that also means that I'm
getting much too worked-up each time things don't go as I think they
should go. And that's not good - I have broken for quite some money
over petty, useless fights about Wikipedia the last few days (I
deformed an unused cd rack bent my curtain track beyond repair while
discussing with you). I know I should just stop, but I can't. It's too
addictive.

> > Well, I want solutions that work now, not solutions that would work if
> > the code were changed as well as the policies.
>
> Patience, grasshopper...since this is the technical mailing list, why
> not discuss the code changes that would make all of this pain go away?
> What would the right solution be?

I don't know. Showing pages in subcategories with the category
(preferably such that it can be switched off but is switched on by
default) would be a good idea, but I'm afraid it should have been
finished not yesterday but one year ago to really work. The
possibility to have different 'aspects' and get an intersection would
be nice too, but probably would take very little time to become as
much of a mess as are categories now.

Imagine that we would want to have the full Wikipedia on one wiki
page, and then allow only section editing on the lowest level. That's
the kind of mess categories have become.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


body:
--- jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/24/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Then why on earth would you comment?
>
> > Although it may be true that in practice we may apply a weaker NPOV
> > requirement to image, the idea that you must find some explicit
> > requirement in policy is ludicrous, and it is offensive to hear that
> > an arbcom member would make such a claim.
>
> It is even more offensive for you to make such a claim without
> actually knowing what is going on.  I haven't argued for any "weaker
> NPOV requirement" for the image; rather, the image is perfectly NPOV
> as it stands, as it make *no* claims as to its true meaning.

I dislike Greg's usage of the term "offensive" here as well, particlarly
for a hypothetical. But then I also dislike Jay's apparent willingness to
pick up the same exact weapon and reuse it. Verbal terrorism has no winners.

On the actual issue, I agree with SlimJay that the image is rather emblematic
of that fine line between opposition to policy and bigotry. Its inclusion of
"fake Jews" might put it over the line, but that

But on the other hand, I'm all in favour of concise, descriptive, and eloquent
captions (like the one I wrote for the God article, which Slim moved to the
Names of God article: title=Names_of_God&diff=70792902&oldid=70204022 )

But then I disagree with using the caption as a place to characterise how the
image is characterised, other than by a general reference to "which some claim."

Hey! A perfect example of how writing supercedes sourcing!

SV

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms - First post here by myself

body:
On 8/24/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> However, there's much less damage that a PR company can do at your
> example of a specific car model.  The worst we get is an uploaded
> brochure, and hopefully some pictures we can use.  The puffery can be
> edited out, the factual stuff can stay.
>
> -Matt

Problem is the odds are the image uploaders won't have the right to
release the images under a free lisence.

--
geni


body:
On 24/08/06, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:

> The problem of external PR companies is (IMHO) associated with the
> kind of articles that each wiki allows. If you focus on concepts and
> principles and more about the thing in general, rather than a destinct
> product from a specific company, you might be able to avoid a lot of
> problems as there is no place for PR companies to land. Focus on
> [[car]] not on [[Mercedes L-400 2006 edition 1,5l diesel with ipod
> socket]].

en: has articles on types of products ([[videocassette recorder]]),
lines of products ([[Casio Exilim]]) and on individual products
themselves ([[Ford RS200]]).

For edits from companies, the main benefit they could bring to the
wiki would be references for the sort of detail that product geeks
really want to see.

- d.


from_name: Mathias Schindler

body:
On 8/22/06, Michelle D'israeli <m.k.disraeli at bham.ac.uk> wrote:

> Before my main thoughts, an idea just (literally) occured to me -
> have the Germans discussed this yet? They seem to be ahead of
> the game on a number of points, from what i've bumped into.
> Unfortunately, my german vocabulary is very limited, so I can't
> really go have a look :(

de.wp had a similar discussion in 2005 about politicians and political
activist groups that were messing around in wikipedia in biographies
of opposing politicians. In general, dewp does not appear to have
major problems with PR companies. And if so, it would not be much
different to how we already deal with entities who are discovering
wikipedia via an article about themself (which is fine) and messing
around with it (which is not fine). We talk to them, if possible.
Several german speaking magazines from the PR industry have issued
warnings about editing in wikipedia in an inproper way because of the
risks associated with it of being exposed in public. The general
strategy could be described as "talk to them, encourage them to use
the talk page, ask them to behave nicely".

The article about the Siemens company is quite often edited by IPs
from the Siemens network. The vast majority of these edits is positive
such as updating of figures. This is insofar funny as I spoke with an
employee from Siemens' PR department and he insisted that they should
be the only from Siemens to edit the article and that no other
employee is allowed to make public statements about Siemens. He later
realized by himself that he shouldn't be worried about this Siemens
policy or Wikipedia but rather about his superiois finding out that
the PR department is getting more and more redundant :)

The problem of external PR companies is (IMHO) associated with the
kind of articles that each wiki allows. If you focus on concepts and
principles and more about the thing in general, rather than a destinct
product from a specific company, you might be able to avoid a lot of
problems as there is no place for PR companies to land. Focus on
[[car]] not on [[Mercedes L-400 2006 edition 1,5l diesel with ipod
socket]].


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
On 8/24/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>Because of this, it is sound policy to warn on the first incident rather than
>>block.
> Unless there is an evident pattern in the editor's behaviour, the only
> way to resolve the problem is to fix the error, and go on with life.
> Warning a person for making an obvious typo, and blocking him if he
> makes a second typo strikes me as an extremist attitude.

I hope I'm misunderstanding you.  If someone is editing a paragraph
and changes the year 105 to [[1050]] you think it would be inapproiate
to warn them to execute more care?


body:
On 8/24/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > To answer your "why?" question: Because subcategories don't work. The
> > princple that "If X is a subcat of Y, then Z should not be in both X
> > and Y" is totally bogus and unworkable - at the moment.
>
> Why that?

Because, as we've agreed, it's not easy to browse both a category and
its subcats at the moment. Your response is not to use subcats. My
response is to put articles in both the category and its subcat.

> Just my gut feeling - what's the use of this category? Would anyone
> think "Hey, this is a fictional Jeet Kune Do practitioner, I would
> want more of those". Still, I agree that after all the category is
> good, because you *would* want to have them in Category:Jeet Kune Do
> practioners, but when getting to that category from a real person, you
> don't want to bump into the fictional characters. So, in the end, I'm
> happy with this one.

I think you're overlooking the value of categories as semantic markup.

> I disagree with that. Strongly. A category is to find similar
> subjects, and that is best done by having a certain size of

That's only one, fairly narrow use.

> categories. Split them up further, and you only give more work to
> those trying to look something up. Going with your principle would

Because the software is no good at grouping subcats together. (Not
blaming the developers, we just don't have a good category/subcategory
model).

> Well, it's the thing we discussed before. Or at least the thing I
> thought we were discussing before. It's a subcategory of tennessee
> counties, but the articles in it are not about Tennessee counties, but
> about cities. I don't see why you vehemently oppose putting "Jesus"
> under 'People executed for heresy" yet consider putting "Haywood
> County, Tennessee" in "Tennessee counties" 'good working order'. To me
> it's twice the same kind of thing.

Sorry, that's my mistake, didn't realise that the *category* "Haywod
County, Tennessee" was in "Tennessee counties". There's got to be a
better model for this stuff that makes more sense.

> We are here to make the encyclopedia, not to make a classification
> scheme of everything. It would, in my opinion, be so much more useful

Well, we could simply have 1,300,000 uncategorised pages. Or we could
build an information rich categorisation scheme that makes pages easy
to find and establishes meaningful links between them.

> to have (for example) one category about "1860s in Mexico" than to
> have to go through 11 categories to find those. Again my question is:
> What is the use of categories? To me it is, getting similar pages

They seem to have lots of uses, and the better the model, and the
better the implementation, probably the more uses we will come up
with. Saying "Categories are only good for X" is unnecessarily
restrictive.

Steve


from_name: Sarah

body:
On 8/24/06, Scott Stevenson <wikinetscott at gmail.com> wrote:
> No one's responded to me about why NPOV shouldn't be followed in adding to
> the caption the quote from the image's source (Zombie of Zombietime.com)
> "Zombie of Zombietime.com describes this poster as, "the most anti-Semitic
> sign ever seen at any protest rally in the United States." I've just been
> presented with straw man arguments. I've got no problem with the image but
> what I do have a problem with is when an image is presented outside of
> neutral point of view.
>
What I have a problem with is people turning up at articles they've
made no contribution to, in an area they've done no research, making
an image invisible, adding an OR tag, wikilawyering about policies,
violating 3RR, starting a thread on AN/I, starting various threads on
people's talk pages, and now starting another one on wikiEN-l.

The photograph perfectly reflects the debate about new anti-Semitism.
Some people look at it and instantly see a highly anti-Semitic image.
Others see an anti-Zionist one. Others again see the latter but
believe there's sometimes not a big difference between the two. So it
is with new anti-Semitism, as the article describes. The cutline
doesn't need commentary from someone who has done no research into the
subject and who seems to be out to cause trouble only.

Sarah


body:
On 8/24/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't know. Showing pages in subcategories with the category
> (preferably such that it can be switched off but is switched on by
> default) would be a good idea, but I'm afraid it should have been
> finished not yesterday but one year ago to really work. The
> possibility to have different 'aspects' and get an intersection would
> be nice too, but probably would take very little time to become as
> much of a mess as are categories now.

Imagine it were possibly to say, formally (with some special syntax)
"This is a strict taxonomy. Every item in every subcategory is
effectively in this category too." Would this be good? Some
possibilities:

* It would be *possible* to show all those eventual subsubsubcategory
articles on the same page (resolving most of your concerns)
* Hypothetical "random article from category" would be really useful.
* Generate graphical trees, and navigate the tree.

I guess I'm proposing a model where categories overall form a loose,
generally acyclic graph, but with local trees. I wonder what's the
simplest way this could be done? Probably something as simple as a
special tag on the parent category, or maybe a special naming scheme.

I'm liking this idea.

Steve


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Random article from a category

body:
Rob Church wrote:
> On 22/08/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>>In my mind, therefore, the obvious solution is to add a cl_random column
>>to the categorylinks table. Then you select a random article from a
>>category in the same way you select a random article from the entire site:
>
> That isn't what the *links tables are for, however.

WTF? What sort of argument is that? o.O

But why do I care -- it's not like /I/ want that feature :-p


body:
On 8/22/06, Michelle D'israeli <m.k.disraeli at bham.ac.uk> wrote:

> Before my main thoughts, an idea just (literally) occured to me -
> have the Germans discussed this yet? They seem to be ahead of
> the game on a number of points, from what i've bumped into.
> Unfortunately, my german vocabulary is very limited, so I can't
> really go have a look :(

This is timing. The german newspaper "Die Welt" has just today written
an article just about mywikibiz

http://www.welt.de/data/2006/08/24/1009086.html

Als wichtigstes Nachschlagewerk des Internets wird Wikipedia immer
mehr zum Ziel von Werbe- und PR-Profis. Enzyklop?dieartikel gegen Geld
bietet nun eine PR-Agentur ihren Unternehmenskunden. Ein Angebot, das
die Wikipedia-Community in Aufregung versetzt.

(Being the most important reference work of the internet, Wikipedia is
becoming more and more a target of PR and advertisement-professionals.
A PR agency is now offering encyclopedic articles for money to their
customers. [This is] an offer that causes quit a stir within the
Wikipedia community)

80% of the article is about the mywikibiz.com thing, the remaining
part is about the Siemens thing when someone edited [[:de:Klaus
Kleinfeld]].

Mathias


from_name: Rob Church

references:
<ecaspe$6pt$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<e692861c0608202046n4ae62ffem4eee07bb63b2a3c3@mail.gmail.com>
	<ecbll4$omd$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<f1c3529e0608210017v215f3754ha36be562ebce6026@mail.gmail.com>
	<ba1b6b9f0608210022nfa52889j2ba23a69a6de18ca@mail.gmail.com>
	<e92136380608210415r63be79b3m7b362236f82f6098@mail.gmail.com>
	<ecc5lc$a8d$1@sea.gmane.org> <ecfev0$5ki$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<e92136380608221037t477dcc5es2ed0e589332dd92f@mail.gmail.com>
	<eckfpq$fch$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 24/08/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Rob Church wrote:
> > On 22/08/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> >
> >>In my mind, therefore, the obvious solution is to add a cl_random column
> >>to the categorylinks table. Then you select a random article from a
> >>category in the same way you select a random article from the entire site:
> >
> > That isn't what the *links tables are for, however.
>
> WTF? What sort of argument is that? o.O

I thought it had all the nice hallmarks of a classic wikitech-l
argument. Trivial, pointless and full of bull shit. Oh well.

I'd prefer to see a separate table to aggregate data for randomisation, however.

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
Simetrical wrote:
> Why is downloading from an unknown server any less secure than
> downloading from an unknown user?  You have to ensure that the file is
> non-malicious either way.

The uploaded file itself is not the only source of a potential security
problem here.


body:
On 8/24/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:

> However, there's much less damage that a PR company can do at your
> example of a specific car model.  The worst we get is an uploaded
> brochure, and hopefully some pictures we can use.  The puffery can be
> edited out, the factual stuff can stay.

The worst we can get regarding this exaple is a company "updating"
this article with no-one around to fix it with people reading this
shit with other companies following this bright example.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
> I have already implemented it. It is the same upload page, just with the
> textbox instead of the <input type=file>.

Still sounds like a separate page (for the user) instead of a simple
radio button. Why?

> This isn't really a security feature, as an Evil User (tm) can still
> upload any file (s)he wants.

People can *already* upload any file they want (subject to size
restrictions). I wasn't addressing that problem because it is not a
problem of "upload via URL". I was trying to address the security issues
that come from the user's ability to cause the server to perform any GET
request to any server. But now that I think about it more, I haven't
actually solved that issue at all: the necessity to retrieve the "token
file" would still grant the user that ability... so scratch it all :)

> So, to solve my original problem, I'd have to
> find a commons admin, and write on his/her talk page to please upload
> the files I stored at (URL), maybe give the file description/license
> there or insert it myself once it's up.

(You can actually place that information on the Image page even before
it's up.)

Timwi


body:
On 8/24/06, Scott Stevenson <wikinetscott at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> I've explained that in accord with NPOV, text saying that "Source X says Y
> about Z" needs to be added to the caption but Jayjg has Wikilawyerly asked
> me to show specific NPOV text that applies to images.
[snip]

Without looking at the situation beyond your post here, I'd say that
you sound correct. (i.e. if you were misrepresenting it, I wouldn't
know)

Although it may be true that in practice we may apply a weaker NPOV
requirement to image, the idea that you must find some explicit
requirement in policy is ludicrous, and it is offensive to hear that
an arbcom member would make such a claim.

An example of in image which had been removed due to NPOV concerns,
but restored with an attributing caption is at
[[Terry_Schiavo#Rehabilitation_efforts]].

If there is a citable dispute over an image, we should never include
the image without making an attempt to explain the situation in a
neutral and factual manner.


body:
On 8/24/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> We have put the image at the very top of an article titled [[New
> anti-Semitism]].
> If we aren't describing the image as an example of anti-semitism then
> it should be removed.

The image cutline shouldn't say anything beyond the basic description
of where and when taken. It is very clearly a photograph of something
that is *arguably* anti-Semitic, but there are people who think it
isn't. Similarly, we show anti-Semitic photographs taken by the
Community Security Trust (part of the body that represents the Jewish
community in England), and we show those without comment, saying only
where and when taken. There is no need to labor the point, and
sometimes it's important not to.

Sarah


from_name: jayjg

body:
On 8/24/06, Scott Stevenson <wikinetscott at gmail.com> wrote:
> Greetings,
> Got a bit of a dispute going on over on [[New anti-Semitism]] that involves
> [[User:SlimVirgin]] and [[User:Jayjg]] surrounding an image and neutral
> point of view.
> The article is prominently displaying an image with a caption that does not
> establish the relevance of the image to the article.
> I have tried to include in the caption that the image's source believes it
> to be an example of Anti-Semitism but my edit have been reverted.
> Due to text in the image being small and difficult to read, at first glance
> the image does appear anti-Semitic but upon further analysis it is arguably
> sooner an example of anti-Zionism. My edits to establish what the image's
> source has said about the image (and thereby establish it's relevance to the
> article) were removed with the reasoning that we should, "let the reader
> decide".
> I've explained that in accord with NPOV, text saying that "Source X says Y
> about Z" needs to be added to the caption but Jayjg has Wikilawyerly asked
> me to show specific NPOV text that applies to images. I pointed out that
> WP:NOR states as much and yet I'm still rebuffed. Since, another editor has
> joined the discussion and agreed that the image should have a caption
> establishing it's relevance to the article but he too has been rebuffed.
> Some additional eyes on this would be very helpful. See this talk:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_talk:NewASAnti-Semiticposter.jpg  and
> this talk:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:New_anti-Semitism#Question_about_top_poster_image

As the article Talk: page has made quite clear, some people look at
the image and think it is a clear example of anti-Semitism, others
look at it and think it's anti-Zionism. The article discusses at
length the debate over whether some (or all) anti-Zionism is
anti-Semitism - indeed, to a degree, that is what the whole article is
about.  Thus, again, as has been explained, the arguably ambiguous
nature of the image is a perfect example of the topic of the article
itself.

Something about this image bothers Netscott, and he has tried to
modify, explain, remove, etc. this image on various grounds. He keeps
claiming it violates policy; yet when asked to explain what policy he
thinks it violates, he keeps making vague (and changing) references to
various policies, but refuses to actually quote the specific section
of policy he thinks this violates.  If there's any wikilawyering going
on, it's Netscott's claim that something violated policy, but refusal
to actually quote the policy.

In addition, I find it tiresome that people bring their article
content disputes to this list. This is the fourth place Netscott has
insisted on having this discussion; on the article Talk: page, on my
Talk: page, on WP:AN/I, and now here. If he wants to raise an article
RfC let him do so.

Jay.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Weird block message

body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
>
> I'm not 100% sure why, and it's so rare that it's _extremely_ hard to
> be sure, but my working theory is that by pure random fluke two
> session_id strings or two session file names/keys have clashed,
> resulting in user identity getting confused.

I had that thought too, but Steve already explained why this is not the
cause.

In addition, also note that the original posting that started this
thread was talking about a block message. Blocks are per IP, not per
session token, so this falsifies your theory too.

The original report shows that for some pageviews, the system thinks
you're coming from a different IP than you really are.

My theory is that the system (either MediaWiki or the squids) mixes up
two simultaneous connections. Two people requesting a page from the same
server (or the same squid) at the same time, and both receiving the
output that was meant for the other person.

As long as such pageview mix-up is extremely rare, there is next to no
chance for anyone to exploit it maliciously, but it *is* possible, and
it becomes more possible is this happens more frequently.

By the way, I have reason to believe that PHP makes sure that session
tokens are unique when they are assigned.

Timwi


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Good writers always welcome (was A tidy way of
	handling "popular culture" references)

body:
On 8/24/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> The disadvantage of the words "anyone can edit" are threefold:

<snip>

Agree with all that. In a nutshell: "Anyone can edit" was good when we
actually needed to encourage people to write something, *anything*.
Now, there's no shortage of people writing, we're happy to be a little
more selective.

Steve


body:
On 8/24/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/24/06, Scott Stevenson <wikinetscott at gmail.com> wrote:
> [snip]
> > I've explained that in accord with NPOV, text saying that "Source X says Y
> > about Z" needs to be added to the caption but Jayjg has Wikilawyerly asked
> > me to show specific NPOV text that applies to images.
> [snip]
>
> Without looking at the situation beyond your post here, I'd say that
> you sound correct. (i.e. if you were misrepresenting it, I wouldn't
> know)

Then why on earth would you comment?

> Although it may be true that in practice we may apply a weaker NPOV
> requirement to image, the idea that you must find some explicit
> requirement in policy is ludicrous, and it is offensive to hear that
> an arbcom member would make such a claim.

It is even more offensive for you to make such a claim without
actually knowing what is going on.  I haven't argued for any "weaker
NPOV requirement" for the image; rather, the image is perfectly NPOV
as it stands, as it make *no* claims as to its true meaning.

Jay.


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Surname disambiguation urgently needs its own Manual page

body:
I have been arguing for a while that the disambiguation by surname is a very special case. Now, a rash of users misapplying the WP:MOSDAB 'rules' (they are merely suggestions) are starting to delete and prod lists by surname.

I need hardly say that this kind of pedantry is completely negative for the navigation of enWP. Please can we urgently have some guidelines that apply so that what is going on at [[Allen (surname)]] and its Talk need not be repeated.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikitech-l Digest, Vol 37, Issue 96

body:
> Just out of curiousity, I tried it in MySQL with real data (25,000 rows of
> categorylinks - not wikipedia, but something).  I cycle through each type of
> query 100 times, and did no other processing besides running the loop and
> executing the query.  Each way took about 20 seconds for the 100 loops.  I
> also ran a control query ("SELECT * FROM categorylinks LIMIT 1") and it took
> lik .05 seconds, and then .014 or something - it must be caching the query.
> I didn't try it with the joins yet.  So it looks like MySQL handles it
> differently than MSSQL.  I wonder if there's a better way than both of these
> (maybe using the joins?  I'll have to try it.).

As you already mentioned, it might be caching the query. If you run it
100 times, maybe it takes some time to run the query once, and then a
constant time to look up the result in the cache 99 times.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>On 8/24/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>>Because of this, it is sound policy to warn on the first incident rather than
>>>block.
>>>
>>>
>>Unless there is an evident pattern in the editor's behaviour, the only
>>way to resolve the problem is to fix the error, and go on with life.
>>Warning a person for making an obvious typo, and blocking him if he
>>makes a second typo strikes me as an extremist attitude.
>>
>>
>I hope I'm misunderstanding you.  If someone is editing a paragraph
>and changes the year 105 to [[1050]] you think it would be inapproiate
>to warn them to execute more care?
>
You aren't misunderstanding me at all.  That change may or may not be
valid.  Wikifying  the date is a perfectly normal edit.  Maybe 1050 was
the correct year; maybe adding that "0" was a simple slip of the finger;
I can't know outside of the context.  I would assume good faith, fix the
error, and carry on with something else.  If he persists in the error
after that I might want to initiate a friendly dialogue.

I have been around here long enough to have made my own share of typos,
some of which I find exceedingly stupid when they are pointed out.  That
happens to the best of editors.  Unless you can convince me that all
your edits are perfect, it would be better that you not expect
perfection from others.  When you berate newbies with such trivialities
you do a good job of showing that this is NOT a welcoming community.

Ec


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 8/24/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/24/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/23/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 23/08/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Follow De's lead and retire the text that says 'anyone can edit' in
> > > > favor of 'Good writers always welcome'?
> > >
> > >
> > > OH YES PLEASE.
> >
> > Please not. See the earlier thread:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-June/049731.html
>
> I didn't throw it out as a really serious suggestion, but I don't
> agree with your argument.

You proceed to argue that "anyone can edit" is a bad slogan. But I
have never argued that it is not; I simply think that "good authors
are always welcome" is considerably worse. I've made this point in the
thread referenced above, here:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-June/049738.html

Is there a page on the wiki yet to collect slogan ideas?
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Finding deleted contributions of a user

body:
On 24/08/06, Adam Lorenz <kungfuadam at gmail.com> wrote:

> Is there a simple way (for admins) to find the deleted contributions of a
> user?

Don't think so. Not even checkusers can find them easily at present.
Time to get coding!

- d.


from_name: jkelly at fas.harvard.edu

body:
  Hi,

Quoting Scott Stevenson <wikinetscott at gmail.com>:
>Got a bit of a dispute going on over on [[New anti-Semitism]]...
>... surrounding an image and neutral point of view.

  I don't think that this is a very helpful way to think about this image usage.
 It is true that we've done very little thinking about the way in which images
might give undue weight to minority or fringe positions.  I'd go so far as to
say that we seem to be comfortable taking a very naive position on what can be
communicated through photography, and I think it would be interesting to have a
thoughtful discussion about that.

  But this doesn't seem to be your concern.  Instead, you're arguing that the
photograph being used is not an example of what it is supposed to be
identifying.  Jayjg is actually referring you to the correct page -- we do make
an exemption in our No Original Research rule for images.  If a Wikipedian takes
a picture of tree, we don't ask that the assertion that it is a tree first be
published in a reliable source.

                      Jkelly


body:
On 8/24/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 24/08/06, Adam Lorenz <kungfuadam at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Is there a simple way (for admins) to find the deleted contributions of a
> > user?
>
>
> Don't think so. Not even checkusers can find them easily at present.
> Time to get coding!

used to be on tool server but there are problems with that aproach

--
geni


body:
On 8/24/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> As the article Talk: page has made quite clear, some people look at
> the image and think it is a clear example of anti-Semitism, others
> look at it and think it's anti-Zionism.

No orignal research Jay, I could care less what you and other random
spectators think of the image.

You are making a value judgement about the image by putting it on the article.

The source of the image
(http://www.zombietime.com/sf_rally_february_16_2003/) includes an
extensive analysis of the symbolism in the image to justify their
position that the image is anti-semitism.

Netscott would seem to be satisfied by attributing the claim and
linking to the source. What can your objection to that be?   To me it
would seem to best match NPOV.

> The article discusses at
> length the debate over whether some (or all) anti-Zionism is
> anti-Semitism - indeed, to a degree, that is what the whole article is
> about.

And hopefully the claims in the article are sourced and are not
original research.

> Thus, again, as has been explained, the arguably ambiguous
> nature of the image is a perfect example of the topic of the article
> itself.

If it's explained, it's only explained through original research. To
resolve this problem we attribute the claim to it's source, who makes
a good effort to back it up.

> Something about this image bothers Netscott, and he has tried to
> modify, explain, remove, etc. this image on various grounds. He keeps
> claiming it violates policy; yet when asked to explain what policy he
> thinks it violates, he keeps making vague (and changing) references to
> various policies, but refuses to actually quote the specific section
> of policy he thinks this violates.

On the talk page of the image he quite clearly argues that he believes
our description of the image as Anti-Semitic is original research. I
am inclined to agree.  His editing history on the article has
attempted to attribute the claim to the source of the image, along
with a link to their argument. I am inclined to agree that doing so ls
likely the best resolution of this absolutely idiotic edit war.

>If there's any wikilawyering going
> on, it's Netscott's claim that something violated policy, but refusal
> to actually quote the policy.

It's inappropriate to respond to simple criticisms backed by easily
understandable arguments with a demand to cite chapter and verse of
the policy.


body:
On 24/08/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:

> "Anyone can edit" is a poor, reductionist and inaccurate slogan with
> negative connotations. I don't think that the idea behind "good
> authors are always welcome" can be expressed in a way that doesn't
> have the problems that I have enumerated; as long as you're referring
> to _people_, rather than their contributions, it will always come
> across as condescending and judgmental.

"Good contributions always welcome" ?

(the wording is clunky)

> Our slogan should not be
> engineered as a social filter; it won't work.

Nah. Every POV pusher considers their contribution marvellous.

- d.


body:
On 8/24/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Without looking at the situation beyond your post here, I'd say that
> > you sound correct. (i.e. if you were misrepresenting it, I wouldn't
> > know)
>
> Then why on earth would you comment?

Because I can comment on a hypothetically. My position stands so long
as the input was good. I've now read into the matter some,  and I see
nothing counter my initial impression.

> > Although it may be true that in practice we may apply a weaker NPOV
> > requirement to image, the idea that you must find some explicit
> > requirement in policy is ludicrous, and it is offensive to hear that
> > an arbcom member would make such a claim.
>
> It is even more offensive for you to make such a claim without
> actually knowing what is going on.  I haven't argued for any "weaker
> NPOV requirement" for the image; rather, the image is perfectly NPOV
> as it stands, as it make *no* claims as to its true meaning.

So, I'm guessing you'd think it would be perfectly NPOV to add a
picture of you to [[Psychopathy]]?    If not, then explain why.


body:
On 8/24/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/24/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > As the article Talk: page has made quite clear, some people look at
> > the image and think it is a clear example of anti-Semitism, others
> > look at it and think it's anti-Zionism.
>
> No orignal research Jay, I could care less what you and other random
> spectators think of the image.

Exactly. Nor do I care. Nor should those opinions be included to taint
the caption with OR.

> You are making a value judgement about the image by putting it on the article.

As Jkelly has explained, we don't need a secondary source claiming
that a picture of a tree is a picture of tree before we can insert it
in an article.

> > The article discusses at
> > length the debate over whether some (or all) anti-Zionism is
> > anti-Semitism - indeed, to a degree, that is what the whole article is
> > about.
>
> And hopefully the claims in the article are sourced and are not
> original research.

Of course they are, with literally hundreds of high quality footnotes.
Again, why would you comment about something that you had not actually
looked into?

> > Thus, again, as has been explained, the arguably ambiguous
> > nature of the image is a perfect example of the topic of the article
> > itself.
>
> If it's explained, it's only explained through original research. To
> resolve this problem we attribute the claim to it's source, who makes
> a good effort to back it up.

See Jkelly's earlier e-mail in the thread, and the statement above.

>
> > Something about this image bothers Netscott, and he has tried to
> > modify, explain, remove, etc. this image on various grounds. He keeps
> > claiming it violates policy; yet when asked to explain what policy he
> > thinks it violates, he keeps making vague (and changing) references to
> > various policies, but refuses to actually quote the specific section
> > of policy he thinks this violates.
>
> On the talk page of the image he quite clearly argues that he believes
> our description of the image as Anti-Semitic is original research. I
> am inclined to agree.

But we *haven't* described the image as anti-Semitic, so how can it
possibly be "Original research"? It is Netscott who keeps insisting it
must be described as anti-Semitic,  I'm arguing against that!

> His editing history on the article has
> attempted to attribute the claim to the source of the image, along
> with a link to their argument. I am inclined to agree that doing so ls
> likely the best resolution of this absolutely idiotic edit war.

What "claim" are you talking about? We make no claim that the picture
is anti-Semitic.

> >If there's any wikilawyering going
> > on, it's Netscott's claim that something violated policy, but refusal
> > to actually quote the policy.
>
> It's inappropriate to respond to simple criticisms backed by easily
> understandable arguments with a demand to cite chapter and verse of
> the policy.

However, baffling and constantly changing arguments, that appear to
have nothing whatever to do with policy, need some actual quotation of
policy so that people can pin down exactly what the person is talking
about.

Anyway, I'm done responding on this thread. If you want to talk about
this, take it to the Talk: page.

Jay.


body:
On 8/24/06, Scott Stevenson <wikinetscott at gmail.com> wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell's last edit on this article goes some way to at least
> establishing the relevance of the image to the article but still the source
> for the claim should be included in the caption as it is indeed arguable
> what the image shows.

"A writer at Zombietime argues[3] that this poster, seen at a February
16, 2003 anti-war rally in San Francisco, is an example of modern
anti-Semitism."

I provided a link to the source, but I couldn't tell what the writers
name was from the page. I would have said "an anonymous writer" but
I'm unsure if the authors name is given at some other part of the site
that I was deeplinked past.


body:
On 24/08/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/24/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > "Good contributions always welcome" ?

> Sounds more like a PR attempt to emphasize quality  than a captivating
> slogan expressing a powerful idea. It might be better than "anyone can
> edit",

Er, yes. Hmmmm.

> but it would probably be best to collect ideas on the wiki.
> Feel free to edit:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Eloquence/Slogans
> or to post more ideas and I'll collect them there.

Good one!

- d.


body:
On 8/24/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Exactly. Nor do I care. Nor should those opinions be included to taint
> the caption with OR.

As you pointed out, it's clear that the intention of this poster is
arguable... if somewhat obvious to most.  The mere inclusion of it on
the article without attribution to the claim of it's meaning is
orignal research.

> > You are making a value judgement about the image by putting it on the article.
>
> As Jkelly has explained, we don't need a secondary source claiming
> that a picture of a tree is a picture of tree before we can insert it
> in an article.

and we would likely not need a secondary source to place this image on
an article about protest posters.

A picture of a tree (primary source material) on an article about
trees would usually be straight forward enough to remain undisputed
and not require a secondary source.

> > > The article discusses at
> > > length the debate over whether some (or all) anti-Zionism is
> > > anti-Semitism - indeed, to a degree, that is what the whole article is
> > > about.
> >
> > And hopefully the claims in the article are sourced and are not
> > original research.
>
> Of course they are, with literally hundreds of high quality footnotes.
> Again, why would you comment about something that you had not actually
> looked into?

I had by that point, and I didn't claim there was a problem.  My point
was that we've cited the text to avoid it being orignal research. The
image is no different.

> But we *haven't* described the image as anti-Semitic, so how can it
> possibly be "Original research"? It is Netscott who keeps insisting it
> must be described as anti-Semitic,  I'm arguing against that!
> What "claim" are you talking about? We make no claim that the picture
> is anti-Semitic.

Don't insult our intelligence Jay.
We have put the image at the very top of an article titled [[New
anti-Semitism]].
If we aren't describing the image as an example of anti-semitism then
it should be removed.


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
On 8/24/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> The uploaded file itself is not the only source of a potential security
> problem here.

Is that BEANS I can smell?:)

Steve


body:
> On 8/24/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The image cutline shouldn't say anything beyond the basic description
> > of where and when taken.

No one is fretting about the cutlines on any of the other images on
that page, which also don't say who's claiming they are or aren't
examples of anti-Semitism. Dozens of other images are used on
Wikipedia in the same way.

This image http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:ColoredDrinking.jpg
used in [[Racism]] doesn't have a cutline saying "this is regarded as
an example of racism by X."  This image,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Races_and_skulls.png used as an
example of scientific racism, doesn't say "according to X." This image
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1900sc_Postcard-Watermelon_04.jpg
is called a "racist postcard"; we don't say "according to X." This
image http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:OctopusNAS1.jpg is labeled
anti-Semitic without saying who says so. Must this image
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:LeedsUniversityNAS.jpg now have a
cutline saying "anti-Semitic according to the Community Security
Trust"? Does this image
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Yankee_go_home_Liverpool.jpg  used
to illustrate anti-Americanism, have to say it's anti-American only
according to X? This
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bomb_iran_thong.jpg is used to
illustrate anti-Iranianism without attribution. This
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tokio_Kid_Say.gif is used to show
anti-Japanese sentiment, with no attribution, as is this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Poster_Japan_flag_stabbed.jpg

Some others, all making a stated or implied claim, with no attribution:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hands_of_victory.JPG alleged to
show anti-Persianism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Golliwogg2.jpg  for Afrophobia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Francisco_de_Goya_y_Lucientes_023.jpg
 Francophobia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Antiruss.jpg Russophobia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Merridien_Web.png  ditto
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:YellowTerror.jpg  Sinophobia

And there are many more. So the question is, of all these images
allegedly depicting prejudices of various kinds, why is this one image
being singled out for different treatment?

Sarah


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject:
[Wikitech-l] How bad is a category with 21,
 008 pages for the servers?

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

> So what *do* our subcategories mean?

Take one more step back and ask: What do our categories mean?

In the paper "Analyzing and Visualizing the Semantic Coverage of
Wikipedia and Its Authors", http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.IR/0512085
from December 2005, the authors make an analysis of the English
Wikipedia's categories, but the largest categories (table 2, page
10) are hardly "semantic" subject headings, but a technical tool
for identifying various quality problems:

   1. Disambiguation                 40,062 articles
   2. 1911_Britannica                10,450
   3. Film_stubs                     4,867
   4. Musician_stubs                 4,575
   5. American_actors                4,551
   6. American_people_stubs          4,401
   7. Film_actors                    4,023
   8. Musical_group_stubs            3,873
   9. Album_stubs                    3,859
  10. Television_actors              3,207
  11. Politician_stubs               3,021
  12. Articles_to_be_merged          2,899
  13. British_people_stubs           2,706
  14. American_politician_stubs      2,694
  15. Television_stubs               2,540
  16. American_actor_stubs           2,492
  17. Cleanup_from_October_2005      2,466
  18. Incomplete_lists               2,362
  19. Football_(soccer)_biography_stubs 2,298
  20. Medicine_stubs                 2,297

Today's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Mostlinkedcategories
isn't much different.

Perhaps it does make some sense to study which users contributed
most to the category "cleanup from October 2005", but rather for
finding dilettantes than for finding experts on a subject.

When the authors write that "category assignments were introduced
in May 2004 and 78,977 unique categories have come into existence
since then" I cannot help but laugh and remember Larry Sanger's
initial reaction when this was discussed in January 2002,
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-January/018685.html

(Here, "May 2004" refers to new functionality in MediaWiki 1.3.)

Today "categories" is a technical tool that can be used for many
purposes.  Organizing and structuring the contents of Wikipedia
according to subject headings is only one of them.  Compare this
to another technical tool, "templates", which can be used for
cleanup messages, for navigation, for infoboxes, for userboxes,
for external link syntax, etc.

The pages describing these features in the Help: and Wikipedia:
namespaces are confusing these issues all the time.  I think we
should aim to separate the issues 1. what do you want to
accomplish, and 2. what technical tools are available at this
time.  For example, if I want to create an infobox, I could use
raw HTML tables, wikitext table syntax, templates with numeric
parameters or templates with named parameters.  I could also use a
robot to put these infoboxes in a number of articles. Next year,
another version of MediaWiki will provide more tools, but my
purpose is still to create an infobox.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


body:
On 8/24/06, Scott Stevenson <wikinetscott at gmail.com> wrote:
> You can be sure I'll be getting to the other images soon.

You'll be getting to which other images soon? All the images I listed
on all the other pages? Or are you going to continue to concentrate on
trying to have illustrations of anti-Semitism removed?

Sarah


from_name: Martin Peeks

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Good writers always welcome (was A tidy way
	of	handling "popular culture" references) (first post)

body:
I feel that "Good writers always welcome" may deter some people who perhaps
would feel that their contributions wouldn't be good enough - or worse still
make people think that there is a selection process for editors.  It sounds
like a job advertisement, or an advert for membership to an exclusive club,
where all that you say and do will be closely scrutinised - now if that's
what Wikipedia has become, then it's a very sad thing - which we definitely
should not be telling prospective editors - we need to encourage them to
make that first contrib. - and give them helpful feedback where they make
mistakes - not discourage them at the first hurdle.

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org]
On Behalf Of Gregory Maxwell
Sent: 24 August 2006 17:41
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Good writers always welcome (was A tidy way of
handling "popular culture" references)

On 8/24/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> Feel free to edit:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Eloquence/Slogans
> or to post more ideas and I'll collect them there.

I don't know about anyone else, but my interest in this thread is greatly
diminished by your apparent effort to step in and take credit
for it.   If you as so supportive of this idea why was your an initial
post a dismissive reference to an older post of yours?

In any case, I think the discussion was working just fine prior to you
stepping it and directing people.
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
On 8/24/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> When the authors write that "category assignments were introduced
> in May 2004 and 78,977 unique categories have come into existence
> since then" I cannot help but laugh and remember Larry Sanger's
> initial reaction when this was discussed in January 2002,
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-January/018685.html

Heh, nice. Interestingly the original syntax proposed was "{{CATEGORY
A category,Another category}}"  - ok, the comma was ugly, but who
talked him out of {{}} and into [[ ]] notation?

> The pages describing these features in the Help: and Wikipedia:
> namespaces are confusing these issues all the time.  I think we
> should aim to separate the issues 1. what do you want to
> accomplish, and 2. what technical tools are available at this

Good questions. Just based on observation, we apparently have these needs:
- Automatically producing lists of pages sharing some property, for maintenance
- Browsing related pages
- Structuring pages to make working with large numbers of pages more
tractable (especially for WikiProjects)

What else?

Steve


body:
On 8/24/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/24/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We have put the image at the very top of an article titled [[New
> > anti-Semitism]].
> > If we aren't describing the image as an example of anti-semitism then
> > it should be removed.
>
> The image cutline shouldn't say anything beyond the basic description
> of where and when taken.
> It is very clearly a photograph of something
> that is *arguably* anti-Semitic,

Generally our articles do not have lead images of things which are
merely 'arguably' related to the subject of the article.

> but there are people who think it
> isn't. Similarly, we show anti-Semitic photographs taken by the
> Community Security Trust (part of the body that represents the Jewish
> community in England), and we show those without comment, saying only
> where and when taken. There is no need to labor the point, and
> sometimes it's important not to.

NPOV does not tell us to simply express views as truths without
commentary.  We achieve neutrality by buffering disputed points with
attribution. This action converts a debatable matter ("the image
demonstrates anti-semitism") into a universally agreed fact ("this
page argues that the image is anti-semitic").

Were the image completely self explanatory and not under dispute, you
could argue that the comment need not say anything. But that clearly
isn't the case here.

Frankly, I think it's unfortunate to use an image so open to
interpretation and debate as a lead image no matter what the caption
says, but I don't have something better to replace it with.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Weird block message

references:
<ef99a4ac0608231410r4db1432et435968f96f9808b7@mail.gmail.com>
	<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKOEOMILAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<eckia3$q0o$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 8/24/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> As long as such pageview mix-up is extremely rare, there is next to no
> chance for anyone to exploit it maliciously, but it *is* possible, and
> it becomes more possible is this happens more frequently.

Ok, brainstorming, I guess someone could constantly attempt to
pageview a page that required administrative privileges (like
unblocking themselves), and hope by sheer chance that an admin ended
up getting their pageview? Interestingly there aren't really any
privacy implications that I'm aware of, as there are almost no pages
for which *read* access is restricted to certain users.

Steve


body:
On 8/24/06, Scott Stevenson <wikinetscott at gmail.com> wrote:
> No, not illustrations of anti-Semitism removed but the editing out of fair
> use violations so that they are left to the articles where they qualify.
> Fair use on Wikipedia has become a new area of editing interest for me.

In order to show your good faith, please begin exploring your new
editing interest by challenging images other than those depicting
anti-Semitism.

Sarah


subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
On 8/24/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a problem why, provided the server is careful about what it
> does with the response?  It could potentially be used for, e.g.,
> flooding a third party's server, but it wouldn't be hard to restrict
> the harm that could do (by throttling), and no one could do much more
> damage that way than they could do without the WMF's help.  An
> overwhelming number of massive, reputable sites are willing to execute
> arbitrary GET requests -- it's necessary for spidering, to begin with.
>
> Given that this feature is *not* currently implemented, I see no
> reason not to discuss its possible implications openly.

I was trying to think of reasons too, and couldn't come up with much.
Maybe since the GET operation is not exactly the same as the HTTP
upload operation (again I don't know what I'm talking about), there
would be a way of forcing MediaWiki to download something harmful to
itself, such as an executable, or a file that would cause a buffer
overrun? What if you set up a dodgy server that said it was going to
download you a nice little .gif file, and instead sent you 10 gig of
executable?

There are certainly lots of good uses for this feature, like slurping
images from public domain repositories. Security aside, we shouldn't
let the poor self-restraint of pokemon fans dictate what we can and
can't do...

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Weird block message

references:
<ef99a4ac0608231410r4db1432et435968f96f9808b7@mail.gmail.com>
	<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKOEOMILAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<eckia3$q0o$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<f1c3529e0608240907w483fed5enc39f13f32f1d16cb@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 24/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ok, brainstorming, I guess someone could constantly attempt to
> pageview a page that required administrative privileges (like
> unblocking themselves), and hope by sheer chance that an admin ended
> up getting their pageview? Interestingly there aren't really any
> privacy implications that I'm aware of, as there are almost no pages
> for which *read* access is restricted to certain users.

Depending upon your point of view, being able to nip into someone
else's preferences and read their email address might be considered an
exposure of private data.

Even if the problem *was* that other user's page views were being
served up (as far as I'm aware, it's a credentials problem, right?)
then the token mechanism we have in place should protect against that,
theoretically.

Rob Church


body:
On 8/24/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> "We have a history of being welcoming to _everyone_, and to then
> examine their track record, to assist them in improving their
> contributions, or to remove them from the project."
>
> And I was no longer sure of how you felt about anyone can edit, since
> you did not clarify your position in the linked post.

"Anyone can edit" is a poor, reductionist and inaccurate slogan with
negative connotations. I don't think that the idea behind "good
authors are always welcome" can be expressed in a way that doesn't
have the problems that I have enumerated; as long as you're referring
to _people_, rather than their contributions, it will always come
across as condescending and judgmental. Our slogan should not be
engineered as a social filter; it won't work.

Wikipedia: The free encyclopedia that grows on you ;-)

Whatever we end up with should express our desire to build a great
knowledge resource on the basis of openness, love and respect.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


from_name: stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Two Mules from Sister Sarah

body:
--- Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

> You'll be getting to which other images soon? All the images I listed
> on all the other pages? Or are you going to continue to concentrate on
> trying to have illustrations of anti-Semitism removed?

(!)

> In order to show your good faith, please begin exploring your new
> editing interest by challenging images other than those depicting
> anti-Semitism.

(!) Am I reading this right?  Sarah insinuates that Scott may be editing
in an anti-Semitic pattern?  Then she states that he must "show [his]
good faith"?

Im cautiously encouraging people to consider filing an RFC. The one I
has apparently been subject to... administrative oversight.

SV

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body:
On 8/24/06, Scott Stevenson <wikinetscott at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sounding more and
> more like original research to include it on the new anti-Semitism article
> isn't it?
>
There are multiple sources who say this image is an example of
anti-Semitism. There's no need to rely on the photographer, and if you
had done even two minutes of research (literally), you'd know that.
But you haven't, because your interest is not NPOV and Wikipedia and
encyclopedic standards. You object to the image for political reasons,
pure and simple, and you're trying to wikilawyer your way to either
getting it removed or adding a cutline that will lead to edit wars in
the future and instability. You've spent the best part of the day on
this, and now, not satisfied with involving AN/I and wikiEN-l, you're
leaving notes on talk pages trying to involve others too (because
you've already violated 3RR), leaving instructions as to what they
should do. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:AYArktos&diff=prev&oldid=71691926
I think this will be my last response to you.

Sarah


body:
On 8/24/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Good contributions always welcome" ?

Sounds more like a PR attempt to emphasize quality  than a captivating
slogan expressing a powerful idea. It might be better than "anyone can
edit", but it would probably be best to collect ideas on the wiki.
Feel free to edit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Eloquence/Slogans
or to post more ideas and I'll collect them there.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
On 8/24/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Suppose some stupid web programmer programmed a forum where you can
> delete posts with a GET request. If you can fire GET requests to any
> server from Wikimedia's servers, then the forum's servers will only log
> Wikimedia's IPs, and the mass-deletion forum vandal is now untraceable.

1) Most web programmers aren't that stupid.

2) Even if they were that stupid, they wouldn't be stupid enough to
allow an IP address completely unknown to their server to do anything
bad to it.

3) Even if they were *that* stupid (and we're currently talking
serious, serious stupid), they would have


from_name: effe iets anders

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation Website

body:
<snip>
> I would assume that of all the Wikimedia sites under this umbrella of
> projects, the Wikimedia Foundation Website is the one site where the
> Foundation sets the content, tone, message it  communicates to the world.
>
> Jeff
> _______________________________________________
</snip>

What do you mean exacly by that?

Lodewijk


subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
Argh, post got sent too early.

On 8/24/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Suppose some stupid web programmer programmed a forum where you can
> delete posts with a GET request. If you can fire GET requests to any
> server from Wikimedia's servers, then the forum's servers will only log
> Wikimedia's IPs, and the mass-deletion forum vandal is now untraceable.

1) Most web programmers aren't that stupid.

2) Even if they were that stupid, they wouldn't be stupid enough to
allow an IP address completely unknown to their server to do anything
bad to it.

3) Even if they were *that* stupid (and we're currently talking
serious, serious stupid), even if it could cause irreparable harm to
their website, in fact even if following arbitrary GET requests would
bring about the Apocalypse and plunge the Earth into a bath of fire,
it wouldn't matter that we did so, because there are literally tens of
thousands of sites that will do it for you.  Any web spider
*automatically* sends *millions* of arbitrary GET requests, and has to
for the Internet as we know it to function.  There is no way that
sending arbitrary GET requests can hurt *anything*.

> I'm sure there are even more significant cases that I haven't thought of.

See point 3 above.  If there were good reasons for not following
arbitrary GET requests, Google would not exist.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Images and original research (was: [[New anti-Semitism]]
	and...)

body:
  Gregory,

> > As Jkelly has explained, we don't need a secondary source claiming
> > that a picture of a tree is a picture of tree before we can insert it
> > in an article.
Quoting Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>:
> and we would likely not need a secondary source to place this image on
> an article about protest posters.

  I think that there is something smart about making this distinction, which I
failed to do, but I'm not sure that it is one we usually make.  If I state that
my tree picture shows damage from acid rain, do I need a source for that?  What
level of interpretation are we comfortable with?

             Jkelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sourcery (was NAS images:NPOV..)

body:
-- Scott Stevenson <wikinetscott at gmail.com> wrote:
> I see so the article's title is "new anti-Semitism" and of course one would
> expect to glance over and see an image demonstrative of such a concept but
> no they see an image that a few Wikipedia editors are saying (without a
> citation that is) is...

I agree that the apparent selectiveness in the application of CITE
policy is troubling, particularly when its those two.

> all that I've required is that the image's source "Zombie" from
> "Zombietime.com" be cited as saying that the image was demonstrative
> of anti-Semitism.

Seems reasonable, on its surface...

Essentially you are claiming that the source Zombie..whatever is the relevant
issue, rather than what the poster is spinning, and how that spin is spun.

But you are of course clever and understand that the picture's source is
Qdubiously POV and therefore cant be NPOV to use! Particularly upfront. Hence
you seem to be using CITE as a tool for exclusion, which is the essence of
the citenazi argument!

You wont find me a friend to anything nazi-like, and in this case,
(ironically enough) principle finds me in favor of SlimJay and their
argument that the image is sufficiently iconic of the debate. I may
change my mind if I see a better image, but I agree with them in this
particular case. Otherwise the image has to be removed, because it comes
from a POV source.

>> That is normal when bias is ambiguous in articles.

But according to NPOV, bias is supposed to be ambiguous - otherwise it
would be obvious. (!)

- the hundreth monkey/sqrt

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body:
On 8/24/06, Scott Stevenson <wikinetscott at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I always find it strange how folks will argue, "well it's wrong over there
> so it can be wrong over here". Wrongness elsewhere never lessens wrongness
> regarding the given item of discussion.

However, that was, of course, not the argument made. Rather the
argument was the exact opposite.

> Now there are quite a few editors agreeing with what I was saying about NPOV
> and the lead image as the article's edit history shows (even two editors
> going so far as to outright remove the image from the article).

Yes, many people find the picture disturbing, as you did, and will try
to think of almost any imaginable rationale to make it disappear
somehow (again, as you did). Of course, like you, the people actually
removing it can't actually quote any policy that would require its
removal. But it's a very powerful image, and people just *know* they
have to get rid of it somehow.

Jay.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Surname disambiguation urgently needs its own Manual
	page

body:
Delirium wrote

> I agree---I use these all the time.  In some academic disciplines it's
> common to refer to well-known or even moderately well-known people by
> surname only.  If I don't happen to be familiar with the person myself,
> I find out who they are by looking up the surname on Wikipedia, and
> scanning down the list for someone of the right occupation and right era.

Glad to hear it.

I'm hoping to start some work on [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style (human name pages)]]: see on the Talk page of [[WP:MOSDAB]] for some discussion starting.

Charles

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body:
On 8/24/06, Scott Stevenson <wikinetscott at gmail.com> wrote:
> Always nice to see a demonstration of the assumption of good faith there
> Jayjg. What's an ambigous image doing as the lead image for [[new
> anti-Semitism]] anyways?

Um, the whole article is about the disputed and possibly ambiguous
nature of New anti-Semitism. It could hardly illustrate the concept
better, as has been explained multiple times by multiple editors.

> Wikipedia's doing a disservice to it's readers when
> doing this, particularly when the caption of the image doesn't spell out
> what it's source is saying about it.

No, the continual attempts to suppress or reframe this powerful and
illustrative image, without any backing in policy, is what does a
disservice to Wikipedia.

> As others have expressed with an image
> like that as the lead Wikipedia is expressing the POV that it is an example
> of "new anti-Semitism".

What do you mean by "New anti-Semitism"? A new kind of Anti-Semitism?
Modern anti-Semitism? Or an attempt to reframe criticism of Israel as
anti-Semitism? Because arguments are made for all these definitions.

Oh, wait, the picture perfectly illustrates that.

> If the image stays then editros should at least
> ensure that the image's caption is in accord with NPOV

Sorry, again, could you cite the specific words of NPOV that apply to
this image?

Of course not. Because your objection has nothing to do with *actual* policy.

Jay.


from_name: geni

body:
On 8/24/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> There is the digital world and the real world.

no the digital world is part of the real world.

--
geni


list: commons-l

from_name: Florian Straub

subject: [Commons-l] Rethinking [[COM:DEL]]

body:
Hi Brianna,

"Brianna Laugher" <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote on Fri, 25 Aug 2006 02:28:16 +1000:

> Please have a play around with it (you're welcome to create an account
> or edit anonymously - it's my test wiki) and let me know what you
> think.

that thing is great. I tried to extend it a little, so you don't have to copy the stuff into the edit field.

Just an idea ...

Flo
--

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