from_name: Keith Old

subject: [WikiEN-l] the GNAA thing

body:
Craig,

Yes, I am very concerned about the attacks on blogs on Wikipedia given that
the blogs under attack are clearly notable having received coverage in the
mainstream media and with high levels

I am working on updating WP:WEB to cover blogs. Hopefully, I will have draft
criteria in place. Like it or not, blogs are becoming increasingly important
in the media and we should ensure that we have decent coverage. If it is
inspired by a two-bit organisation like GNAA that makes it even worse.

I would welcome your input on the criteria and the information about the
specific articles they have nominated. Members of the push would also be
welcome.

Regards

Keith Old

On 11/17/05, Craig Schiller <craigbear at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Okay, clearly I need to be more specific.
>
> Am I the only one who's bothered that there's a concerted disruption
> campaign going on by a self-admitted bunch of trolls to remove blog
> articles, *not* on the grounds of whether they're notable or not, but
> on "blogs must be deleted on principle just for being blogs" grounds?
>
> Am I the only one who's bothered that now that I've taken to flagging
> GNAA sockpuppets on some of them, the GNAA sockpuppets are in turn
> flagging *real* votes as sockpuppets?
>
> Am I the only one who's bothered that the whole thing impairs the
> possibility of determining what the real consensus of legitimate users
> *is*?
>
> Am I the only one who actually finds the idea of letting the GNAA
> disrupt Wikipedia for fun to be a *fundamentally* problematic thing
> *regardless* of the merits or lack thereof of the articles?
>
> I'm not saying we should keep all blog articles; I'm saying that
> what's going on isn't providing a legitimate consensus on the
> notability or non-notability of any of the blogs under debate. There's
> even one AFD on their hit list which has been voted on *exclusively*
> by GNAA socks; not a single legitimate user has even said a *word*.
> What if it's then closed by an admin who doesn't know what's going on?
> Will that somehow be considered a genuine consensus on the article's
> non-notability?
>
> The only consensus it's establishing that Wikipedia permits trolls to
> *dictate* Wikipedia content -- and I find it *exceedingly* hard to
> believe that I'm the only person who thinks that's not a consensus we
> should be encouraging.
>
> Craig
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Tom Cadden

subject:
[WikiEN-l] need to work out clear policies on MANDATORY and
	OPTIONAL rules on WP

body:
I've been looking at some pages and noticed that there is a haphazard application of rules on WP, specifically a failure to distinguish between mandatory and optional rules.

 (a). The APPLICATION of 'mandatory' rules in INDIVIDUAL PAGES should never be a subject for a vote.

 (b). The ADOPTION of a 'mandatory' rule for Wikipedia en block should be on POLICY PAGES.

 3. The APPLICATION  and ADOPTION of 'optional' rules in INDIVIDUAL CASES and on POLICY PAGES should be capable of being voted on.

 I've come across a couple of pages tonight where notes decided that in some articles mandatory rules shouldn't be applied (usually on naming). So you find that 99 articles may follow one naming system, and one doesn't even though the MoS says it has to, because users on a page decided not to.

 WP needs to spell out clearly the difference in weighing between different types of rules, and so let everyone know what is a 'must' and what is a 'may'.

 A classic example is one vote where over twenty users have voted to put a page at the location that is contrary to MoS policy. Arguments ranged from

 * well I like that name
 * well I always use it
 * I personally haven't heard any other name used
 * the Government wants it
 * it will eventually become widespread
 * I hope it eventually becomes widespread
 * I think it will eventually become widespread
 * we should be encourging it to become widespread
 * I think the old name is colonial
 and a lot of others.

 None of those are criteria recognised in the Manual of Style, which sets the simple criteria 'the most common name used in English', not 'the most common name likely to be used in the future', 'the name we would like to use', or 'the name the government tells us to use' but simply the most common name in use as of now.

 Yet by using criteria that clash with a mandatory rule, a page is put in a different location to hundreds of thousands of others.

 One second issue: if we require 'most commonly used name in English' (or in whatever language in another Wikipedia) we need to be able to define an independent, verifiable, objective methodology for establishing what is the most commonly used name in English. A whole host of pages tonight had debates based on the 'well that's how I know him/her/it as' with no form of verification. Straight google searches are worthless because they link to accurate sites and inaccurate ones and other language sites still crop up in English searches if linked to English sites. (An example: last year someone put a dummy page on WP. I deleted it. It was complete fiction. But by then that page had been copied under licence. Now there are over eighty sites on the net that refer to a fact that someone completely made up on WP. The topic is an area i know a lot about. One read of it showed that it was a joke, not real, done obviously by someone who knew a lot about the topic and wanted to see if they could
 'create' a 'fact' that didn't exist.)

 We need a clearly defined criteria for sources for establishing 'most common name':

 Media is key to finding 'most common name' because as they need to communicate to millions they will tend to use terminology they know their listeners/viewers will understand.

 Obvious sources are
 * media usage in the large English-speaking countries on EACH continent
 * Broadcast usage and print usage
 * academic usage
 * hardcopy published usage
 * informal governmental usage

 In terms of media, for example, that would mean checking BBC, New York Times, The Australian, Reuters, APTV, ITN (the real one, not ours!), South African television and print usage, Canadian tv and print usage, Indian TV and print usage, informal governmental usage in speeches, etc.

 Formal-legal and diplomatic terminology in contrast is not guaranteed to be mass used (indeed rarely is. How many people say French Republic for France or Poblacht na h?ireann for Ireland in real life?) and so may not help us find 'most common name'.

 If we don't sort out the mandatory from optional rules, and restrict votes to decision making on the latter, and Wikipedia-wide policy making on the former, then it will cause all sorts of problems as Wikipedia becomes larger. In every encyclop?dia for practical organisational purposes the Manual of Style is a mandatory requirement which no editor can breach. (If they try they get the sack.) It is bad enough finding a handful of pages that are the odd ones out and are in effect 'Manual of Style'-free zones. But the more there are, the more people can then say 'well if THEY can ignore the MoS on THEIR page, why can't WE? A professional credible encyclop?dia cannot be organised on the basis of everyone on each page making up their own rules. We created the Manual of Style and put enormous work into creating Naming Conventions directly to avoid such confusion and ensure maximum cross-article standards of clarity and comparibility.

 Thom

---------------------------------
  Win a Yahoo! Vespa NEW - Yahoo! Cars has 3 Vespa LX125s to be won Enter Now!


list: foundation-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Incubator Wiki for New Wikimedia Projects

body:
--- Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> Which brings back to the original point.  Should Wikibooks be the
> Wikimedia incubator project instead?

No. It should be what it was founded to be: A place to develop non-fiction
books such as textbooks or manuals that have an instructional intent and are
meant to be read cover to cover or at least in some similar sequence.

>

> Wikijunior is a clear example of how Wikibooks is being used as
> an incubator for new project ideas.

Wikijunior is a set of books that fit the above criteria I laid out. It is
special in regards to its name, funding behind it, and the fact that approved
snapshots will be placed at wikijunior.org. But development-wise it is just
another wiki book (with its own set of contributors who work to make the whole
thing consistent - just like any other wiki book).

>  Wikibooks is available right now and has that internal support to deal
> with projects like Wikijunior, and frankly almost everything else on the
> new project proposal page with just a few exceptions.

Only those projects that can be presented as coherent books. A set of articles,
dictionary definitions, or quote pages, does not a coherent book make.
Wikibooks is the place to create instructional books that are intended to be
read cover to cover or in some similar sequence. A good Wikibook should be much
more than a collection of pages on related topics (yep - many current Wikibooks
are just that, but those are not completed books).

-- mav

__________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - Make it your home page!
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
>> I brought that up earlier, and I'm really not sure what to make of it,
>>
>> because Wikipedia certainly shouldn't be made a part of Wikibooks.  I
>> can think of two possible reasons:
>>
>> 1) Wikibooks is for textbooks, and this should be narrowly construed
>> to mean classical textbooks, not to include any learning resources
>> such as encyclopedias.
>>
>> 2) Wikipedia is too big for Wikibooks (combined perhaps with the fact
>> that Mediawiki is not sophisticated enough to handle both of them
>> under a single project).
>
> Having Wikibooks absorb Wikipedia sounds like some kind of reverse
> takeover.  It doesn't make sense.
>
> Ec

I'm sorry I brought it up in the first place.  I was trying to be a
little bit humorus about the fact that if Wikipedia didn't exist yet,
that it would be a part of Wikibooks.  I am not advocating that
Wikibooks take over Wikipedia at all.  I was also trying to point out
that just because Wikijunior happens to be a part of Wikibooks at the
moment because it is a book doesn't mean that it belongs there because
it meets the strict criteria for being there, and that you could point
to other projects like Wikipedia that could technically belong except
for the fact that it is a very healthy project on its own and doesn't
need the resources to belong there.

Which brings back to the original point.  Should Wikibooks be the
Wikimedia incubator project instead?  I know I've hammered this point to
the nth degree, but it seems like that is where the discussion always
seems to return.  The Wikibooks community doesn't necessarily mind the
responsibility, but it seems as though many people elsewhere in the
Wikimedia community don't want that to happen.  Wikijunior is a clear
example of how Wikibooks is being used as an incubator for new project
ideas.  The incubator project as it has been discussed so far doesn't
exist and would need to organize admins and policies to get started.
 Wikibooks is available right now and has that internal support to deal
with projects like Wikijunior, and frankly almost everything else on the
new project proposal page with just a few exceptions.

If concensus is to not use Wikibooks as the incubator project, fine,
let's get rid of things like Wikiversity and Wikijunior from Wikibooks.
 I'm just saying that we need to be consistant here on overall policies.
 I don't understand why this is such a difficult concept to explain.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] AfD suggestions

body:
On 11/17/05, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mark Gallagher wrote:
> >
> > Indeed.  There's a very real risk something like this could bring in the
> >  "automated script" idea through the back door.

Moreover, it would send much of the process behind the scenes (forms
need processing somwehere), requiring it to be embedded in MediaWiki,
which would increase complexity and reduce transparency. The more
control that ordinary users have over the process, the better.

I don't think listing something on AfD is necessarily that complex
anyway. And if the first suggestion above (24 hour wait before voting)
were to be implemented, then users could simply tag an article {afd},
much like they would tag it {db}, and the complicated part could be
finished off by an admin at the end of the 24 hours.

> >
> > WE'RE IN THE WORLD CUP FINALS!
>
> HELL YEAH! IT'S AUSSIE TIME!

BUT WE'RE STILL NOT GOING TO CALL IT FOOTBALL!

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
There already is such a distinction. Policy is non-negotiable (while
it can be changed by site-wide community debate), guidelines are
"optional", but often still a good idea to follow.

Mgm

On 11/17/05, Tom Cadden <thomcadden at yahoo.ie> wrote:
> I've been looking at some pages and noticed that there is a haphazard application of rules on WP, specifically a failure to distinguish between mandatory and optional rules.
>
>  (a). The APPLICATION of 'mandatory' rules in INDIVIDUAL PAGES should never be a subject for a vote.
>
>  (b). The ADOPTION of a 'mandatory' rule for Wikipedia en block should be on POLICY PAGES.
>
>  3. The APPLICATION  and ADOPTION of 'optional' rules in INDIVIDUAL CASES and on POLICY PAGES should be capable of being voted on.
>
>  I've come across a couple of pages tonight where notes decided that in some articles mandatory rules shouldn't be applied (usually on naming). So you find that 99 articles may follow one naming system, and one doesn't even though the MoS says it has to, because users on a page decided not to.
>
>  WP needs to spell out clearly the difference in weighing between different types of rules, and so let everyone know what is a 'must' and what is a 'may'.
>
>  A classic example is one vote where over twenty users have voted to put a page at the location that is contrary to MoS policy. Arguments ranged from
>
>  * well I like that name
>  * well I always use it
>  * I personally haven't heard any other name used
>  * the Government wants it
>  * it will eventually become widespread
>  * I hope it eventually becomes widespread
>  * I think it will eventually become widespread
>  * we should be encourging it to become widespread
>  * I think the old name is colonial
>  and a lot of others.
>
>  None of those are criteria recognised in the Manual of Style, which sets the simple criteria 'the most common name used in English', not 'the most common name likely to be used in the future', 'the name we would like to use', or 'the name the government tells us to use' but simply the most common name in use as of now.
>
>  Yet by using criteria that clash with a mandatory rule, a page is put in a different location to hundreds of thousands of others.
>
>  One second issue: if we require 'most commonly used name in English' (or in whatever language in another Wikipedia) we need to be able to define an independent, verifiable, objective methodology for establishing what is the most commonly used name in English. A whole host of pages tonight had debates based on the 'well that's how I know him/her/it as' with no form of verification. Straight google searches are worthless because they link to accurate sites and inaccurate ones and other language sites still crop up in English searches if linked to English sites. (An example: last year someone put a dummy page on WP. I deleted it. It was complete fiction. But by then that page had been copied under licence. Now there are over eighty sites on the net that refer to a fact that someone completely made up on WP. The topic is an area i know a lot about. One read of it showed that it was a joke, not real, done obviously by someone who knew a lot about the topic and wanted to see if th
>  ey could
>  'create' a 'fact' that didn't exist.)
>
>  We need a clearly defined criteria for sources for establishing 'most common name':
>
>  Media is key to finding 'most common name' because as they need to communicate to millions they will tend to use terminology they know their listeners/viewers will understand.
>
>  Obvious sources are
>  * media usage in the large English-speaking countries on EACH continent
>  * Broadcast usage and print usage
>  * academic usage
>  * hardcopy published usage
>  * informal governmental usage
>
>  In terms of media, for example, that would mean checking BBC, New York Times, The Australian, Reuters, APTV, ITN (the real one, not ours!), South African television and print usage, Canadian tv and print usage, Indian TV and print usage, informal governmental usage in speeches, etc.
>
>  Formal-legal and diplomatic terminology in contrast is not guaranteed to be mass used (indeed rarely is. How many people say French Republic for France or Poblacht na h?ireann for Ireland in real life?) and so may not help us find 'most common name'.
>
>  If we don't sort out the mandatory from optional rules, and restrict votes to decision making on the latter, and Wikipedia-wide policy making on the former, then it will cause all sorts of problems as Wikipedia becomes larger. In every encyclop?dia for practical organisational purposes the Manual of Style is a mandatory requirement which no editor can breach. (If they try they get the sack.) It is bad enough finding a handful of pages that are the odd ones out and are in effect 'Manual of Style'-free zones. But the more there are, the more people can then say 'well if THEY can ignore the MoS on THEIR page, why can't WE? A professional credible encyclop?dia cannot be organised on the basis of everyone on each page making up their own rules. We created the Manual of Style and put enormous work into creating Naming Conventions directly to avoid such confusion and ensure maximum cross-article standards of clarity and comparibility.
>
>  Thom
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
>  Win a Yahoo! Vespa NEW - Yahoo! Cars has 3 Vespa LX125s to be won Enter Now!
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] re: Billboard charts

body:
On 11/17/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> Someone could just delete the citation though.
>
> Also who would sign off on it on wikimedias side?

Since the use of this data seems to be fair use, it's not likely we'd
have to sign anything. However, Jimmy has said on the legal mailing
list ([[m:juriwiki]]), where this was also being discussed, that he
intends to contact VNU Media about this.

Angela.


from_name: steve v

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration Committee members granted checkuser
	tool

body:
On 11/14/05, Jack Lynch  wrote:
 > I rather pay someone who is willing to be accountable and who we can
> therefore expect to be responsible.
>
> Jack (Sam Spade)

 Sam Korn wrote:
I rather pay for servers so we get an encyclopaedia that works.

Sam

 Besides, money doesnt bring about accountability. OTOH accountability and 'accounting' are quite related -- proper accounts and counting are the outward and visible signs of inward accountability.

 SV

---------------------------------
 Yahoo! FareChase - Search multiple travel sites in one click.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias (was
	How	didthis happen (comixpedia??))

body:
geni wrote:

>On 11/15/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>geni wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Does "the entire world does not have broadband" mean anything to you?
>>>Ok so 32 is probably a little low for an article size limit but 40+
>>>and popular culture/trivia are second on my list of things to kill
>>>
>>>
>>You mentioned the Arb Com as someone to deal with this sort of thing.
>>I suggest you check the case of Robert the Bruce, where systematic
>>removal of verifiable information from articles was considered the
>>most heinous of his offences.
>>
>>What on Earth do you think you're doing? Spin it out to a separate
>>article if its presence offends your sense of order so grievously.
>>
>>
>If popular culture/Trivia are so important why does [[Hurricane
>Katrina]] (to chose a random example) not include either word?
>
>Lets consdir the situation:
>
>The problem: This article is to big and there is no obvious split
>Solution. Remove stuff while doing the minium posible damage to the article.
>
>That tends to result in the popular culture/trivia section being the
>first to go.
>
>
I have always agreed that an article that exceeds 32k in length should
be a candidate for revision, and that it is sometimes difficult to find
an obvious place to split the article.  Another good way of reducing an
article is to tighten up the language.  Many writing styles are far too
verbose, and a friendly fire casualty of multiple editors is often the
prose style.  This kind of work can even be done by someone with little
or no knowledge of the subject.  Unfortunately, this kind of clean-up
takes a lot of hard work, and I can see that hard work would not sit
comfortably with those who prefer the convenience of snipping out entire
paragraphs.

I would not consider myself a big fan of popular culture, but I respect
the interest of others in it.  I certainly do not support the credo that
it somehow impugns the dignity of Wikipedia.  People love trivia.
Trivia is the meat and potatoes of the party conversation that begins
with, "Did you know that ..."  The staged photo of a small group of US
troops in Iraq with an enormous and dangerous desert crab became the
inspiration of many conversations.  Sometimes the most memorable
information in an otherwise completely tedious article is the trivia.

Ec


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: Getting Unblocked at Wikipedia]

body:
Brian, I'm forwarding your email to the wikien-l group, and someone will
be able to help you promptly.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Getting Unblocked at Wikipedia
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 14:22:09 -0800
From: Brian C <brianwc at ocf.berkeley.edu>
Reply-To: or-talk at freehaven.net
To: or-talk at freehaven.net

Hi,

I like to occasionally contribute to the Wikipedia. I also run a tor
server. I do not want a Wikipedia username, and so I always just
contribute anonymously.

During the recent fracas about tor and Wikipedia, my static IP address
from which I run my tor server was blocked for an "infinite" time
period. I have since decided that until I get more than one static IP, I
will only run my tor server in "middle-man" mode, so it is not presently
possible that defacement of Wikipedia (or Slashdot, or the Gentoo
Forums, etc.) is exiting from my IP address.

I was able to email Slashdot and can login there again, and I don't
presently contribute to the Gentoo Forums often enough to worry about
it. However, I am finding it impossible to correct the Wikipedia block,
because without a username the only way to contact an admin is to edit
their "talk" page, but I am forbidden from editing any page because of
the block. A vicious cycle.

Does anyone have any experience with this such that they could direct me
to an actual email address of a Wikipedia admin who could remove the
block or otherwise advise me on how to proceed? Thanks.

Brian


from_name: SJ

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimentary: great news, updates

body:
Dear all,

The Wikimentary project, which started as the kernel of an idea at
Wikimania when the Globalvision documentary team was moved to see what
the community would do with their raw footage, is taking off.  Rory
O'Connor at Globalvision has really been pushing to make this happen;
through some heroic efforts on his part we now have low-res copies of
all 25 tapes they shot, a high-res copy of one tape (#8), and a 'rough
cut' he edited together that PBS will be airing in January -- all
available via archive.org at the moment.

You can see a guest blog-post about this on the Frontline/World blog here :
  http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/blog/2005/11/its_a_wiki_wiki.html

The rough cut (be the first to write a review ;-):
  http://www.archive.org/details/WIKIMANIA-ROUGH_CUT.mov

Transcripts:
  http://www.archive.org/details/WIKIMANIA_TRANSCRIPTS

NEXT STEPS:
If you'd like to take part in the project, or work on your own short
wikimentary using this content, you can help in a few ways.
 1.  Download the transcripts (all of which are rough, have some
mistakes, and are currently Word files) and one of the low-res
'screener' files; listen to the screener while editing the transcript.
 Upload the fixed transcript, as something other than a Word file, to
Wikisource :-)

 2. Help others learn how to edit their own video.  Add ot the
[[m:Video]] guide on meta; learn more about various editing platforms
(iMovie might work well as an interim step), help set up a
qt/wmv/other --> theora conversion tool (if there isn't already a good
service online).   Some existing editing guides:
   http://current.tv/studio/survivalguide/   (for tv-quality video production)

 3. Update [[m:Wikimentary]] with notes and links.  Discuss the
project on [[m:Talk:Wikimentary]].

 4. Edit your own video from the raw footage!  Right now only Tape #8
is available via archive.org in high-res, but for a test project you
could edit something together from the screeners.

More to come.  Andy Carvin, a notorious podcaster and vlogger, is
interested in helping teach people to start editing their own video;
he's worked on a related project recently with some elementary shool
students in Atlantic City.  And the resulting video is adorably
amazing:
   http://www.starw.org/acrc/2005/11/witches-aliens-and-school-board.html

Rory's latest update is included below.

++SJ

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rory O'Connor <Roc at globalvision.org>
Date: Nov 16, 2005 11:45 PM
Subject: Re: Wikimentary latest

All,

I'm pleased to announce that files containing the following are all now
accessible at the URL below:

1. 'screeners' of all media shot by Globalvision at WikiMania;

2. transcripts in MS word of all screeners

3. a 'screener 'of the rough cut;

4. An 'editable' larger file of the rough cut;

5. a MS word file of the script for the rough cut

6. One 'editable' large file of one tape (008) of the media shot by
Globalvision in Frankfurt.

To see and download any or all, go to:
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=wikimedia

EXPLANATORY NOTE: What we are calling 'screeners' are smaller, lower quality
files suitable for downloading and meant to be looked at in conjunction with
the word files of the matching transcription. In other words, 'screener 008'
is the low quality media version of the eighth tape we shot. It should be
matched by a MSW file of the transcription of tape 008. When looked at in
conjunction, one should be ready to them correct the extant transcription
and wiki-ize it to make it a perfect match.

In most cases the current transcripts are close--but few if any are perfect.
So there is initial work to be done just looking at the tapes and fixing the
transcripts.

One can also download the 'screener' of my rough cut, which should match
perfectly with the MSW script file of same. If it doesn't, please amend it.

The 'editable' file of the rough cut is also available for anyone who wants
to begin tearing it apart and improving it.

We continue to upload the larger 'editable' files of the other media as
well, and are working out several kinks and issues associated with that.
Thus far, only tape 008 is available in this form.

Also, for video newbies, here's a link to a fairly comprehensive video
production primer available online -- the VC2 Survival Guide -- courtesy of
Current.tv:

http://current.tv/studio/survivalguide/

Finally, if you haven't seen it yet, here's the URL for the 'Dispatch' I
recently posted about WikiMania and the wikimentary project at the web site
of the PBS program 'Frontline World"

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/blog/2005/11/its_a_wiki_wiki.html

I still need to see and sign and maybe post some sort of license for all the
above; a wiki to discuss if not work on this would be a good idea, if anyone
is so moved; and it might be nice if there were a mechanism to let everyone
who attended the conference to know about all this, no?

Hope to hear from some of you soon...

-Rory

On 11/5/05 4:50 PM, "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> SJ wrote:
>> An easy way to get people involved is to have them finish up the
>> missing transcriptions; once we have the files in a suitable place
>> online.
>
> This is a very fine idea.  I can help with this.  In my previous email,
> I said that I don't know how to edit video, and that still holds true.
> I suppose I do know how to make or correct a transcript.  I just
> download a video clip, I watch it, and while I'm watching it I type or
> else I edit/correct what someone else has typed.
>
>> Absolutely !   For the purposes of transcription, which seems the
>> fastest way to get people collaborating on the content, it would be
>> great to have audio streams separate from the video.  Is there a
>> simple way to do this at the source?  That content, at least, could be
>> uploaded to Wikimedia servers and played with immediately.
>
> Yes, absolutely.  Getting the audio up somewhere quickly would be
> totally fine. :-)
>

--
++SJ


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimentary: great news, updates


from_name: charles matthews

body:
I've replied offline.

Charles


body:
Sam Korn wrote:

>On 11/15/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>If popular culture/Trivia are so important why does [[Hurricane
>>Katrina]] (to chose a random example) not include either word?
>>
>>Lets consdir the situation:
>>
>>The problem: This article is to big and there is no obvious split
>>Solution. Remove stuff while doing the minium posible damage to the article.
>>
>>That tends to result in the popular culture/trivia section being the
>>first to go.
>>
>>
>Trivia sections should not exist for their own sake.  If there is no
>way to work the facts into the text of the article, it is likely
>enough the writer showing off that they knew something or a newbie
>thinking this is a fan site.  The details are usually irrelevant (cf.
>edit war over mention of Abraham Lincoln in [[Charles Darwin]]), and
>it improves the quality of the articles to take them out.
>
There's certainly nothing wrong with mentioning the birthday
co-incidence in the article, but then there's no shortage of anal idiots
who have no appreciation for the lighter side of things.

Ec


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 11/17/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> If concensus is to not use Wikibooks as the incubator project, fine,
> let's get rid of things like Wikiversity and Wikijunior from Wikibooks.
>  I'm just saying that we need to be consistant here on overall policies.
>  I don't understand why this is such a difficult concept to explain.

That's not really the way consensus works.  You don't just get rid of
something just because there's no consensus to keep it.

Anyway, I think there is a difference between Wikibooks being used as
an incubator project accidently and Wikibooks being used that way
intentionally.  Wikiversity and Wikijunior are really examples of the
former.

Of course, Wikipedia policy on new project creation is so twisted that
you can have something that nearly everyone wants to keep somewhere,
most people want to keep as a separate project, and yet no one is
willing to actually create the separate project.

Anthony


body:
Sam Korn wrote:

>On 11/16/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Many times, the trivia belongs elsewhere - not deleted.  Though often
>>some rigorous editing will get such a section reading much better.
>>
>>
>Quite.  The point is that trivia sections in themselves (rather than
>the facts they contain) are fairly worthless.
>
What's your basis for saying that they are worthless?  Putting them in a
separate "fun stuff" section makes it clear that these are not the most
"important" facts about the subject.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia up and down

body:
Seems to have been slow for many people in tha past day.

The good news: WP reach at Alexa says now 1.8%, a new record.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Totally unscientific investigation...

body:
Keith Old wrote:

>Indeed, it should never be forgotten that the target audience for
>encyclopedias is skewed towards younger people. Encyclopaedias have
>traditionally been marketed as an investment in your childs future.
>
>Articles on Pokemon and suchlike may be of much more interest to teenagers
>than to many on this forum but it should never be forgotten that these
>things are of interest to many people.
>
The audience for Pok?mon is probably pre-teen.  My 15-year old son went
on to more complicated things a few years ago.

Getting kids to read is important.  If our Pok?mon articles accomplish
that they are worth the effort of having them.  Education statistics
tell us that reading is a bigger problem for boys than for girls.  A
most significant factor in reducing that reading gap is to provide
material that the boys will find interesting.

Ec


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: FW: Billboard chart data licensing

body:
At first this seemed like a pretty straightforward thing to me.
Copying Billboard's rankings verbatim is clearly not fair use (and
their arrangement is certainly copyrightable, because their formulas
are probably somewhat complex). Using little quotes like "This album
reached #5 on the Billboard charts in 1983" is clearly fair use (very
small part of their total content; does not impact their future
profits in the slightest).

But there seems to be a lot in between, when I look at the actual
articles. I can't tell what is verbatim and what is user-derived when
I look at some of these pages (in particular,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Hot_100), though that might
just be my ignorance of the subject matter. I don't know where the
arrangement-of-an-arrangement line puts the copyright situation -- if
we make a list of the top #1 Billboard albums of all time (something
like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_No._1_R%26B_hits_%28United_States%29)
, is that sufficiently re-arranged to preclude their copyright? Or
does the fact that our arrangement is clearly not based on any
formulas or complicated decisions mean that we add absolutely nothing
in terms of "creativity"?

FF


from_name: Jim Trodel

subject:
Family Circumstances was [WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration Committee
	members granted checkuser tool

body:
On 11/14/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> So, here I am. I am 37 years old. I am a volunteer just like you. I have
> two kids. I lost a baby in spring. I will have a fourth kid, hopefully
> early 2006. I am losing my job this week. And I am glad to be
> participating to Wikipedia (even if sometimes, it is a burden...). It is
> a good life overall :-)

 Anthere

 You have my deepest sympathies re losing your baby. My wife and I lost our
first child - she would have been 12 next week, and I have been thinking
often about here this past week since we were able to go back to where she
is buried for a visit (we live in a different state now about 1800 miles
away), and then I came across your note. Although we now have 4 living
children, I sometimes feel the loss acutely, but I have hope for the future
as I am sure you do also. I am sure you have a great support group that
helped you through it all; feel free to drop me a line if you ever need to
talk. I offer because sometimes people just don't understand that
months/years later you may just need to rehash stuff again.
 I also wanted to thank you for your dedicated service and leadership on the
wikipedia - especially considering the totality of the circumstances you
describe above.
 Jim

--
Jim (trodel at gmail.com)
"Our love may not always be reciprocated, or
even appreciated, but love is never wasted"
- Neal A Maxwell


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia down

body:
I can't reach IRC right now (I'm on the wrong machine), but can
someone tell me if the Amsterdam servers are down or if it's just my
computer playing causing my inability to reach Wikipedia?

It happened at exactly the same articles I was looking at yesterday...


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] People editing their own Wikipedia articles.

body:
I don't think we should discourage good writers, who accept NPOV and
adhere to it, from editing their own articles. I encouraged free
software pioneer Richard Stallman to edit [[Richard Stallman]], after
painstakingly confirming his identity by phone and e-mail. He hasn't
gotten involved in edit wars or tried to censor negative POVs about
himself, has he?

I spent many hours of my time, helping controversial physicist Jack
Sarfatti to learn our ways. After a false start or two, he has managed
to avoid being banned again and has even stayed out of edit wars.

There is no reason to make notable people write autobiography
anonymously, provided (as Fred suggests) they DON'T "begin intensive
editing in order to remove negative information or add positive
information". When you look at the history or the diff, you'll see that
Stallman wrote "in Java" - meaning that he developed software while on
the Island of Java in Indonesia! And why shouldn't the source for this
bit of programming trivia be Stallman himself?

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] AfD

body:
I'[m guessing the 5-day waiting period for that AFD isn't over yet.
Action is rarely taken earlier.

I tend to only userfy materiaal when a user has contributed more than
just their vanity to Wikipedia to avoid them using Wikipedia as a free
webhost. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOT

--Mgm

On 11/17/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
> On 17 Nov 2005, at 01:49, geni wrote:
>
> > On 11/17/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> >> I cannot understand the arguments. There is something referred to
> >> as "userfied" which appears to be some agreement that if a user puts
> >> something on their user page it is verifiable or something. I cant
> >> work out what the people are saying. Inclined to vote for keep
> >> myself even though I nominated it as vanity (which I think it is).
> >
> > userfied means moved to user namespace. We tend not to worry too much
> > what is there.
>
> Oh well in that case I misunderstood it. The article is still in
> article space. I still dont understand what the comment about
> userfied means then. Can some people write some stuff on the afd
> that I can actually understand? Apart from the one reasonable comment
> that it was borderline WP:MUSIC which was great.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [HelpDesk-l] permission

body:
On 11/16/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> This is all still only one of the four factors in fair use.  If we use a
> fair use image our obligation to the downstream user is to let him know
> that we are invoking fair use.  That forwarns him of possible problems.
> A for-profit downstream user has a responsibility to do his own due
> dilligence.  It would be completely irresponsible for him to say in
> court that he used because Wikipedia said it was fair use.

I think you're missing my point, which is that the "possible problems"
warning is basically something which says, "If you use this file in
any way which is not educational/not-for-profit/encyclopedic, you
might be committing a copyright violation." It's a very strong
limitation on re-use. And it only applies in the USA, but that's
another question alltogether.

*We're* not imposing that restriction, of course. It's built into the
law, which favors our sort of usage over most others. However, if we
use a considerable amount of content under that clause, we end up
creating not an encyclopedic built on free content, but one based on
educational-only content, even if it is not any particular license
which says that. It is a de-facto limitation. The use of "fair use"
media will mean that we are never truly creating a truly "free"
encyclopedia -- we're creating one that will have to be filtered
through carefully if is ported to for-profit contexts.

My argument isn't one about people getting sued in court -- it's one
about people not being able ot use our content. It's about someone
looking at it and saying, "Gee, I guess I can't use this photograph,
since I'm not using it in an educational context." Which was a usage
situation which I thought was more restrictive than we wanted to
impose (even if we are imposing it implicitly rather than explicitly).

FF


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Extensions that return non-wikitext

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,

my graph extension (see http://bloodgate.com/perl/graph) returns either
HTML, or SVG. However, mediawiki treats the returned text as wikitext,
e.g. it parses it, attempts transform it into HTML and the sanitizes it.

The latter step should be done for security reasons - after all, my
extension processes user input and I wouldn't trust it completely to
always return well-formed HTML.

However, I would like to somehow annouce that my extension already returns
HTML. At the moment the returned text cannot contain leading spaces or
empty line because these will be turned into "
" or "
", completely
destroying the output.

- From the comment in the example extension (where I based mine on) I read
that the extension should return HTML, but it seems the returned text
will be treated as wikitext and not just HTML. Is it possible to change
this?

(I have the feeling that I already asked that, but couldn't find it
again :)

Another, related problem is SVG output, this too is treated first as
wikitext, then as HTML, and in this process the output is destroyed. Now
it would be possible to handle SVG output like <math> does, e.g.
producing an external file and the referencing it. However, I would
prefer to generate inline SVG. For this to work the output must be passed
unaltered, because the HTML sanitizer seems to not like SVG at all (not
surprise :)

Has anybody done something in this regard?

The code for my extension is inlined below, you can find the complete
package at my site mentioned above.

If this isn't the right place to ask this question, please kindly redirect
me.

Best wishes,

Tels

<?php
# Graph WikiMedia extension

# (c) by Tels http://bloodgate.com 2004-2005

# Takes text between <graph> </graph> tags, and runs it through the
# external script "graphcnv", which generates an ASCII, HTML or SVG
# graph from it.

$wgExtensionFunctions[] = "wfGraphExtension";

function wfGraphExtension() {
    global $wgParser;

    # register the extension with the WikiText parser
    # the second parameter is the callback function for processing the
text between the tags

    $wgParser->setHook( "graph", "renderGraph" );
}

# for Special::Version:

$wgExtensionCredits[parserhook][] = array(
        'name' => 'graph extension',
        'author' => 'Tels',
        'url' => 'http://wwww.bloodgate.com/perl/graph/',
        'version' => 'v0.13 using Graph::Easy v' . `perl -MGraph::Easy -e
'print $Graph::Easy::VERSION'`,
);

# The callback function for converting the input text to HTML output
function renderGraph( $input ) {
    global $wgInputEncoding;

    if( !is_executable( "graph/graphcnv" ) ) {
        return "graph/graphcnv is not
executable";
    }

    $cmd = "graph/graphcnv ".
                 escapeshellarg($input)." ".
                 escapeshellarg($wgInputEncoding);
    $output = `$cmd`;

    if (strlen($output) == 0) {
        return "Couldn't execute
graph/graphcnv";
    }

    return $output;
}
?>

- --
 Signed on Thu Nov 17 11:52:40 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Some spammers have this warped idea that their freedom of speech is
 guaranteed all the way into my hard drive, but it is my firm belief that
 their rights end at my firewall." -- Nigel Featherston

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iQEVAwUBQ3xjQncLPEOTuEwVAQEu1Qf8CbyBzGmmQBsKnlIyLhZ6XGbYved014TE
DgRJSuIO7zP04q1W7wu7WuzPuTeH2kB6fcYoANEoV4YzEL4vpWA9tpscvBcAYViO
WtKi/+f3KSoPJLmFqQckuiRWz4jHa5SBRJKzcwX8XchrXVXojxZ7xrbEZaOl896g
ehBUANxeBL/wcByBTJY1gShZ2f6N6GlFW/3/ERLbhRsC8qvKe0fkbDFs6w9C8KWN
4/VStDOTQ3hu0dMt6q6s82psKi+jtRb7asNAaxmGsie3w6tX6Q1jEwMo8fdsfv5X
0ASy2sol+zFWaR19BbgXM3cS6nOa75u0GMEsfmXRrTqmD9GjnJwbzA==
=dBzA
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>I absolutely do think that acquisition of huge numbers of additional
>stubs on increasingly narrow topics ought not to be a priority, and
>certainly ought not to be allowed to get in the way of quality
>improvement on existing articles.
>
I agree with this, but it is still a big leap to go from discouraging
these stubs to a policy of systematically deleting them.  Often more
energy goes into the deletion process than was ever put into creating
the stub, more energy that might have been better spent in improving
existing articles.

People write best about what they know best.  If that happens to be
about Pok?mon, World of Warcraft or a local school so be it.  We do not
encourage these people to become better editors of more significant
subjects by emphasizing the triviality of what they write.  A little
kindly mentoring would be more productive.  Students will improve if we
begin by recognizing their personal reality, and patiently working with
them to bring about improvements.

Think back to your own school days and how a teacher's approach to a
subject could have a life-long effect on how you would relate to that
subject matter.  As experienced Wikipedians we are in a position to be
the teachers and mentors.  Do we need to repeat the errors of those
teachers whom we ourselves found least tolerable?

Ec


body:
David Gerard wrote:

>That's absolutely and incredibly not true. They write a verifiable
>article about something they know, get abusive comments on AFD (for
>some reason, civility and assume good faith don't work there ... the
>reason AFD is so damn poisonous to the community is that it blatantly
>encourages participants to assume *bad* faith) and *leave*.
>
>They're volunteers, not employees. They will write about what they
>want to write about, not what someone else wants them to write about.
>You can drive them away very easily (does anyone on AFD actually want
>to do this? I'd hope not), but I would say this is not a good thing.
>
>
That poisonous atmosphere is perhaps the most damaging thing that is
currently happening on Wikipedia.  Those who are spreading that poison
appear completely oblivious to the effect that they are having on the
social fabric.

Ec


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 17/11/05, Tom Cadden <thomcadden at yahoo.ie> wrote:

>  A classic example is one vote where over twenty users have voted to put a page at the location that is contrary to MoS policy. Arguments ranged from
>
>  * well I like that name
>  * well I always use it
>  * I personally haven't heard any other name used
>  * the Government wants it
>  * it will eventually become widespread
>  * I hope it eventually becomes widespread
>  * I think it will eventually become widespread
>  * we should be encourging it to become widespread
>  * I think the old name is colonial
>  and a lot of others.
>
>  None of those are criteria recognised in the Manual of Style, which
> sets the simple criteria 'the most common name used in English',
> not 'the most common name likely to be used in the future', 'the
> name we would like to use', or 'the name the government tells us
> to use' but simply the most common name in use as of now.

Of course, there's also a significant number that are opposing based
on the fact that they consider the other name to be the most commonly
used in English. Repeatedly waving the strawman that people are voting
to ignore the MoS, or that they all somehow are incapable of
understanding what a manual of style is, doesn't help in the least.

Again, please assume *some* good faith on the part of people who
disagree with you. It costs nothing and saves on everyone's blood
pressure.

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


from_name: uninvited at nerstrand.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arb elections poll

body:
We have a comparatively new user to thank for [[Wikipedia:Arbitration
Committee Elections December 2005/Straw poll]].

I think the presence of this poll as well as the level of support it has
garnered are both troubling.

Wikipedians appear to be viewing the AC as some sort of generalized
means of governance, which it isn't.

uc


subject:
[WikiEN-l] need to work out clear policies onMANDATORYandOPTIONAL
	rules on WP

body:
> > > The article should be put at the policy-determined place (which
> > > happens to be "Ivory Coast")
> >
> > In your opinion.  ;=)
> >
> > Sam
>
> No really. Any halfway objective examination of the evidence
> shows that "ivory coast" is used more widly. Anyone who
> thinks otherwise is ignorant of the evidence or acting illogicaly .
>
>
> --
> geni

My point is not that "Ivory Coast" is the proper name of the country.
Nor is it that I insist on making "Ivory Coast" the title of the
article.

1. What I *AM* saying is that the English-name POLICY has already passed
consensus: country articles are given the title of the most commonly
used English-langugae name of the country. (Like "Germany" or "Italy")

This is a procedural question: shall we set aside the policy and make an
exception here? And by voting on it, or what?

Policy should be the default, and an exception should be made only if
there is consensus for an exception.

What some people are trying to do is call the status quo the default
(lots of people ganging up to thwart policy by using the French name)
and requiring a supermajority vote to PERMIT ENFORCEMENT of the policy.

2. I am *ALSO* saying that letting a government tell Wikipedia what to
do is a dangerous erosion of our editorial independence. We can simply
say in the article that Ivory Coast's government "forbids" anyone -
inside or outside their jurisdiction - to translate the country's name
(if this is really so). But since our servers are in Florida, I think we
can safely assume we are outside their jurisdiction.

If "Ivory Coast" ever lose currency - as it no doubt will in years to
come - then of course we'll reflect this.

3. People seem to think that the TITLE of the article makes a statement
about the "true name" of the country. This is ridiculous. The article
itself even says so - or would, if partisans didn't keep removing this
statement.

The article keeps saying that the offical name of the country is Cote
d'Ivoire, and that the government has gotten other governments to use
the French name. That should be enough.

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] re: Billboard charts

body:
On 11/17/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/16/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 11/16/05, Brandon Cordy <b.touch at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Actually, I kept talking to the Billboard rep, and he says he's willing to
> > > work out a cashless deal if we can send them traffic (which, as far as I
> > > know, we already do through the external links). We may not have to delete
> > > anything at all.
> >
> > Such a license would be unacceptable to Wikipedia.
>
> What if it were simply an agreement that Billboard would not sue so
> long as they were cited as a source?  That isn't a content licence,
> just an agreement to cite sources.
>
> Which we do anyway.
>
> This seems like more of Billboard's way of saving face than what could
> be considered a licence agreement.
>
> Naturally, as normal, IANAL.  Thank goodness.
>

We don't need any agreement. We just need to use the content in ways
that are not violating copyright. If we say "this song reached X on
the Billboard Hot 100 chart [link]" then there's no way that their
copyright is being infringed.

What we can't do is have large segments of a chart. Unless Billboard
is willing to release large segments under the GFDL, then we can't use
it, and there's no point making any agreement.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia up and down

body:
charles matthews wrote:
> Seems to have been slow for many people in tha past day.
>
> The good news: WP reach at Alexa says now 1.8%, a new record.
>
> Charles
>
>
Yes: overall reach continues to follow the steady exponential rising
trend which has been visible for the last two years.

Page view rates have been stuck on a plateau for about a month and a
half, presumably due to server capacity saturation, which, given the
continued rise in reach, can only get worse in the short term.

A graph of the Alexa data for reach can be seen at
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=2y&size=large&url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page#top

Does anyone know if there are any more servers on order?

-- Neil
>
>
>


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 11/17/05, Tom Cadden <thomcadden at yahoo.ie> wrote:
> The Manual of Style is mandatory but is being overturned in once off cases as though it was purely a matter for local decision, not Wikipedia-wide policy.

>From [[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/jguk 2]]:

2.2) The Manual of Style is a set of guidelines governing appropriate
editing on Wikipedia. Editors are expected to follow the Manual of
Style, although it is not policy and editors may deviate from it with
good reason.

I think you misrepresent the import of the Manual of Style.

Kelly


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject:
[Foundation-l] Cleaning up Wikibooks (was Re: Incubator Wiki for
	New Wikimedia Projects)

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
>> 1) Wikibooks is for textbooks, and this should be narrowly construed
>> to mean classical textbooks, not to include any learning resources
>> such as encyclopedias.
>
> I tend to interpret the role of Wikibooks very broadly, certainly to
> go beyond the idea of the classical textbook.  In some ways the
> classical textbook is antithetical to good education because it tends
> to mould its users into the same series of learning experiences.  A
> single Wikibook should begin with a subject that can be included in
> Wikipedia but which requires expansion into a book that in theory
> could be published as a stand alone entity.  The Cookbook was a good
> example of this.  There was a great debate at one time about the
> inclusion of recipes in Wikipedia.  Some were accepted as proper to
> Wikipedia, but the bulk ended up in Wikibooks where NPOV could also be
> approached with a more relaxed interpretation.
>
> Ec

A huge issue that has recently erupted on Wikibooks is resulting from a
thread started by of all people Jimbo in the Staff Lounge:

"In the next 24 to 48 hours, I will delete a variety of pages from
Wikibooks which are a clear and simple violation of our charter.
Jokebook <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Jokebook>, Getting a date
<http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Getting_a_date>, Naturism
<http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Naturism&action=edit> are all
not textbooks and need to be moved to another site. There may be
more.--Jimbo Wales <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales>
17:27, 13 November 2005 (UTC)"

While I may agree with him in regards to those particular Wikibooks,
this has resulted in a huge examination of the overall philosophy of
Wikibooks and what should and should not be there.  In particular, Jimbo
also changed the wording of an official policy from:

"As a general rule, any book you might expect to find in the non-fiction
section of your local library or bookshop is acceptable."

to become instead:

"As a general rule, most books you might expect to find in the
non-fiction section of your local library or bookshop are not
acceptable. This is for textbooks."

This is Jimbo's website, so I guess he can make arbitrary changes like
this whenever he wants to.  Still, as a Wikibook admin I am scratching
my head to understand the full impact of this official policy change.
 In particular, it means that non-textbooks like the Cookbook may have
to go, at least if we have a consistant textbook-only policy.  A large
number of items are also being trans-wikied from Wikipedia to Wikibooks,
so it is important as well to Wikpedia users to understand what the
implications of this policy change is going to be.  And this is a policy
change, as much as Jimbo wants to hide from that fact.

There is a general tolerance of new content that goes onto Wikibooks, in
part because it is a smaller project and we are trying to attract and
keep contributors even if they add content that perhaps should be there.
 Writing a book is harder, and in some ways much harder than even an
encyclopedia entry.  Driving away new contributors just because they do
something against policy is especially harmful.  Jimbo's comment that
followed was especially harsh:

"I'm happy to give more time, but these books are already candidates for
speedy deletion. The point is that, to give on example which was
thankfully already deleted, a racist white-power book is not a textbook,
never will be a textbook, and should have been deleted on site and the
creator banned for vandalism on site. --Jimbo Wales
<http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales> 21:03, 13 November 2005
(UTC)"

The user that added this white power book has otherwise done Wikibooks
quite a bit of good, and banning him would only make an enemy rather
than a useful contributor.  I prefer to follow the model of trying to
mentor and encourage proper behavior where possible, and this user was
not showing signs of traditional vandalism, nor would I want to drive
this user to go in that direction.  We did delete the white-power book
after a surprisingly short period of time on the Wikibooks VfD page.

I think this issue needs to be brought to the attention of the larger
Wikimedia community, and to be aware that there is a huge struggle going
on to try an interpret Jimbo's actions here.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore MoS, NCs for language
	reasons.

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>On 13/11/05, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Tony Sidaway wrote
>>
>>
>>>Consensus cannot be gauged only by voting; the
>>>
>>>
>>external sources comprehensively refute the votes for the French name.
>>
>>That's simplistic here.  I wouldn't be surprised to hear 'Ivory Coast' on
>>BBC radio, because it is much easier to grok.  But I don't imagine the BBC
>>thinks that's the real name of the country.  Diplomats are supposed to be
>>able to hack French pronunciation.  Let's face it, most anglophones can't.
>>However WP is a written medium.
>>
>>
>
>My dissertation went for C?te d'Ivoire, and I do hope it counts as an
>English-language source...
>
>We also have [[S?o Tom? and Pr?ncipe]], not "Sao Tome and Principe",
>though that is by far the most common form of the name in English
>
...and certainly not St. Thomas and Principe, but we do keep the English
"and".

We also have Suriname instead of Surinam.

Ec


body:
Tom Cadden wrote:

>--- geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>The nameing conventions say  "article
>>naming should give
>>priority to what the majority of English speakers
>>would most easily
>>recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity,
>>while at the same
>>time making linking to those articles easy and
>>second nature."
>>
>>
>
>Correct. Indeed what is going on that debate is
>symtomatic of just how many people don't know the MoS
>and the naming conventions, and take offence if
>someone points them out.
>
(snip)

>The fact that Wikipedia has a set of strict rules for
>naming pages doesn't seem to matter to most of the
>'keep the French name' voters. It does seem suspicious
>that a group of French speakers can vote to ensure
>that a less well known French name is given priority
>over a far more widely name, internationally used,
>English version, on English Wikipedia, no matter what
>the factual evidence is, what the name conventions
>state or what the manual of style requires.
>
>
There is nothing strict or absolute about "should give priority".  The
kind of "rule" stated here should remain a flexible guideline rather
than a tool for POV pushing.  The unfounded allegation that the "C?te
d'Ivoire" is being spearheaded by a group of French speakers has
absolutely no basis in fact, and seems indicative only of an anti-French
prejudice.

Ec


body:
Tom Cadden wrote:

>--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>>Unlike many
>>other French-speaking
>>countries the official name for English purposes is
>>the French one.  See
>>the member list for the United Nations at
>>http://www.un.org/Overview/unmember.html  This does
>>not mean that other
>>French speaking countries follow the same practice.
>>The Central African
>>Republic does not appear as R?publique
>>Centraficaine.
>>
>>
>That is irrelevant. The official name of the Republic
>of Ireland is Poblacht na h?ireann. We do not use it.
>
Nor is the Irish language name a part of the English language list of UN
members.  (I can't remember for sure if "Eire" was ever on that list,
but if it were that would be a valid argument for changing our entry.)

>>Maybe the US State Department is just following the
>>UN lead on this.
>>The proportion of newspapers and websites using the
>>English name is
>>irrelevant.  The position of official Ivoirian sites
>>is more influential.
>>
>>
>The position of Ivoirian sites is irrelevant. This is
>not an Ivoirian encyclop?dia but an English language
>one that does not write its articles to suit
>governments and official sites.
>
I didn't say simply "Ivoirian sites" but "official Ivoirian sites" such
as the English language materials from their embassies.

>>Determining the official name of a country is not a
>>matter for voting.
>>That is a sure way of having facts overwhelmed by
>>ignorance.
>>
>>
>I'm surprised you don't know that WP policy IS to
>decide the location of an article by voting. It is
>done through requesting moves and voting on them. It
>is a standard procedure used throughout WP.
>
>
That only proves the point about voting being evil.  With enough
flunkies behind it any POV can prevail.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Upgrade steps from 1.4.10 to 1.5.x

body:
J S escribi?:

>Hi,
>
>    Does anyone have the steps to upgrade from mediwiki 1.4.10 to
>1.5.x. Details would be appreciated.
>
>Thanks in advance,
>~John
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>
Here is, http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Upgrading_MediaWiki.

Feel free to add your own experience.

Good Luck.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia up and down

body:
"Neil Harris"

> Page view rates have been stuck on a plateau for about a month and a half,
> presumably due to server capacity saturation, which, given the continued
> rise in reach, can only get worse in the short term.

Agree.  OTOH WP is a reference site.  There will be many people who come to
WP with the aim of looking up some one thing.  This gives a natural pattern
of short visits, not surfing around.  The overall reach shows the users who
arrive knowing they want to look something up, plus the input from search
engines.  We shouldn't get too hung up about the number of page views.  If
people find what they want on the first page they view, so much the better.

Charles


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>On 11/14/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I have no doubt that a sizable proportion of people on
>>both sides of those disputes knew for a fact that they were right
>>about their preferred usage being vastly more common, and quoted
>>specific searches to prove it.
>>
>>
>Yep.  The world will not be a worse place, nor Wikipedia a worse
>encyclopedia, if it happens to have the article on Zurich at Z?rich
>and the article on Ivory Coast at Cote d'Ivoire.  While such choices
>seem utterly bizarre they are certainly not matters of great moment.
>
>I do sometimes wonder where the process of abandonment of English
>proper names of places will lead us, but no doubt in time we would all
>become accustomed to referring to Cymru, Alba, Euskal Herria,
>Deutschland, Espa?a, Confoederatio Helvetica, ?sterreich, and all the
>rest--and some of us may even understand which country we're talking
>about.
>
I don't hear much complaining about the change away from the established
English names of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras.  When the news of last
year's tsunami broke I had to pause to determine what this major
affected city of Chennai was.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Status of article rating feature?

body:
Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:Just in case, I have started an extension for an "import-only wiki",
where peer reviewers can import a specific version of an article from
Wikipedia, but *not* edit is (so it doesn't become a fork).

"extensions" module, "staticwiki.php". Not finished by far, not even
working currently. Could be soon, though.
 I think this is besides the point. Back to the issue at hand -- we need to see the Article validation feature tested on a real project before it can be implemented on en.

 Again, why not use simple.wikipedia? Does it share the same database with other small wikis?  Why not sandbox it on a test wiki : duplicate the simple DB on a separate server and redirect the nameservers to that while the experiment is going on. Halt editing on simple for a while, and advertise on en.wiki the need for help editing simple.

 I wasnt exactly impressed with what I saw of it on the test.leuksman wiki, but then Im not yet clear how that data will be handled, etc. Will catch up now.

 SV

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body:
geni wrote:

>On 11/15/05, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>"Hello Ivory Coast government person, what's the name of your country in
>>English?"
>>
>>"C?te d'Ivoire."
>>
>>*click*
>>
>>
>India has a population of over 1 billion. English is quite widespread.
>As a result thier view of what the english language is quite
>significant.  Ivory Coast has a population of ~17,300,000 and is
>francophone. As a result what they think doesn't matter much in terms
>of figureing out what name is most commmonly used for the country in
>english.
>
So are you suggesting that a bunch of backwards Africans should have no
say in what happens in the world.  The superior developed nations
decided this already, and should not need to go over these debates
again.  If they weren't countries then, too bad!  That sounds a lot like
what passes as Wikipedia rule making.

Ec


body:
Peter Mackay wrote:

>Much to my bemusement, I see on the discussion page for the article that
>this dispute has been running for over a year, and the article retains its
>French name. Has anything changed recently to upset what is presumably
>enough of a consensus to see stability for twelve months or so?
>
>
The stability has been there for more than *three* years.  At least it
was in 2002 that I first remarked on it.  All it takes is for one person
to mount a determined campaign for a change, and the community is
effectively up in arms.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: "Mandatory"

body:
This is exactly the problem of government: For any society with goals, how best to reach those goals?
In the general social sense, the term used is
 "coersion," ie. use of violence (acted or implied) to gain influence. The authoritarian concept of "rule of law" is largely about shifting violence from the acted form to its implied form.

 On a free, principled and entirely volunteer project, coersive methods are out of reasonable bounds, and IMHO the term "guidance" is preferable. On Wikipedia there has only been one accepted authority (Jimbo) and his continued defacto authority rests more on his egalitarian philosophy and organization capability than on any self-appointed titles etc. Otherwise people would just say "fork him" - ;-)

 But now there seems to be a leadership gap on en.wikipedia -- where pencil rules written by ad-hoc concensus are generally unreviewable even by the Arbcom. In that context, yes, the notion of 'making people do stuff' seems rather rude and lacks any meaning. Even when there is community or committee consensus, if its consensus without responsiveness or rationality, then (not unlike our recent 'page views' rank on Alexa) a case of 'one step forward two steps back.'

 SV

dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote: If something is mandatory on Wikipedia, that means that if you want people to
follow it you need to _convince_ them that a) it is mandatory, b) they should
follow things that are mandatory.

Just like absolutely everything else on Wikipedia.

How can you "enforce" anything like that except by jawboning?

A "mandate," the dictionary says, is "An authoritative command or
instruction." But what, exactly, does "authoritative" mean on Wikipedia?

Who's going to enforce these "mandates?" Is Jimbo Wales is personally going
to micromanage discussions on talk pages? Are we going to restrict the "move"
button to Bureaucrats?

To riff on Mark Twain (or perhaps it was Oscar Wilde, or Dorothy Parker):

How many mandatory policies do we have if we call the Manual of Style
mandatory?

Answer: We have none, because calling a policy mandatory doesn't make it one.

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from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia up and down

body:
Charles Matthews wrote:

>Agree.  OTOH WP is a reference site.  There will be many people who come to
>WP with the aim of looking up some one thing.  This gives a natural pattern
>of short visits, not surfing around.  The overall reach shows the users who
>arrive knowing they want to look something up, plus the input from search
>engines.  We shouldn't get too hung up about the number of page views.  If
>people find what they want on the first page they view, so much the better.

For me, page views are working about 2/3 of the time and edits are
working not very often. So I wouldn't be so blase about the numbers
... Do we have any numbers about requests made vs requests served? I
assume the devs are *painfully* aware.

- d.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore MoS,
	NCs for languagereasons.

body:
Peter Mackay wrote:

>Putting your balls on the line over the spelling of the name of a country
>that couldn't field a decent baseball team strikes me as caring a bit too
>much.
>
It's hard to imagine what Aussie rules baseball would look like. :-)

Ec


list: textbook-l

from_name: pikola Thierry

subject:
[Textbook-l] Commonsproject:Drawing pictures for language learning
	wikibooks

body:
== Language learning wikibooks are in need of good
drawings: would someone help? ==
A very efficient tool for learning language are
pictures related to expressions. I have seen that many
language learning wikibooks could be highly improved
with drawings. I have many ideas of how this drawings
could be, but I lack the creative skill to draw them.
Is somebody willing to help? We could create a
wikiproject in Commons which would be fruitful for any
language learning wikibook in any wikibooks project.
--[[User:Javier Carro|Javier Carro]] 13:01, 17
November 2005 (UTC)

___________________________________________________________________________
Appel audio GRATUIT partout dans le monde avec le nouveau Yahoo! Messenger
T?l?chargez cette version sur http://fr.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Fwd: Getting Unblocked at Wikipedia]

body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at ...> writes:

> it. However, I am finding it impossible to correct the Wikipedia block,
> because without a username the only way to contact an admin is to edit
> their "talk" page, but I am forbidden from editing any page because of
> the block. A vicious cycle.

The dutch language Wikipedia has solved this problem several years ago as
follows;

Put somewhere an external contact form online that you can use to send an email
to your Wikipedia. The OTRS-contact email address can be used. For EN is that
info-nl at wikimedia.org And link from the page that the blocked users see to that
contact form. This way users who are blocked can easy request for an unblock.

This system works very well since the end of 2002 for the Dutch wikipedia. We
also put the sysop who has done the block in CC if we grant the unblock request
so that sysop knows why you have done the unblock.

Greetings,
[[w:w:gebruiker:Walter]]


from_name: steve v

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arb elections poll

body:
Well, I would say "preach on brother," but youve got to give us some specifics. Which Arbcom members - what issues. Dont generalize.

 Personally, I dislike the fact that Jimbo made those arbitrary appointments of relatively conservative members. But he justified them at the time that the Arbcom was shrinking, a "thankless job" and needed some membership -- who am I to argue with the founder's wisdom? I could say that in a wiki world, he could have called for a special election and had newly elected temporary members in a week. But again, who am I to argue?

 SV

Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote: I am before the current ArbCom, and while I felt comfortable w every
other ArbCom we have had, Jimbo's recent appointees make me feel
unsafe, and dubious of justice, despite the overwhelming evidence
against my accuser. Something must be done, the status quo cannot
continue. No justice, no peace.

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 11/17/05, geni  wrote:
> On 11/17/05, uninvited at nerstrand.net  wrote:
> > We have a comparatively new user to thank for [[Wikipedia:Arbitration
> > Committee Elections December 2005/Straw poll]].
> >
> > I think the presence of this poll as well as the level of support it has
> > garnered are both troubling.
> >
> > Wikipedians appear to be viewing the AC as some sort of generalized
> > means of governance, which it isn't.
> >
> > uc
>
> Arbcom rulings have been cited in policy debates. Arbcom is the single
> most powerful group on wikipedia. For obvius reasons people want a say
> in who is in it.
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
_______________________________________________
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WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] World Technology Awards, Wikinews review

body:
This week, the Wikimedia Foundation was honored by a World Technology
Award in communication, joining the ranks of other World Technology
Network members[1].   If you made it to part of the WTN summit and
ceremonies, please link to photos and other records of the event.   (
http://www.wtn.net/2005/summit/ )

And Daniel Terdiman turned out another fine article on wikinews,
calling it "one of the most effective uses" of wiki technology :
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5953168.html

--SJ

[1] Other corporate members:
ARM Holdings Ltd.
Auto-ID Center
eBay Inc.
Electronic Frontier Foundation
EZchip Technologies
Fraunhofer Institut
Hewlett Packard
Lucent Technologies
Nokia
NTT DoCoMo, Inc.
QUALCOMM, Inc.
SimbaNet (T) Ltd.
Skype
Vodafone plc.
Vonage

--
++SJ


from_name: Sabine Cretella

body:
This would be a great thing - also for wiktionary - many pictures can be
associated to words as well.

What about contacting arts students/specialised scools?

I am not able to draw myself, but even over here I have more or less the
same problems - of course: for certain stuff also photos that are
already present in commons can be used.

Ciao, Sabine

pikola Thierry wrote:

>== Language learning wikibooks are in need of good
>drawings: would someone help? ==
>A very efficient tool for learning language are
>pictures related to expressions. I have seen that many
>language learning wikibooks could be highly improved
>with drawings. I have many ideas of how this drawings
>could be, but I lack the creative skill to draw them.
>Is somebody willing to help? We could create a
>wikiproject in Commons which would be fruitful for any
>language learning wikibook in any wikibooks project.
>--[[User:Javier Carro|Javier Carro]] 13:01, 17
>November 2005 (UTC)
>
>

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Usability

body:
Peter Shaw wrote:

>On Monday 14 November 2005 05:39, ABCD wrote:
>
>
>>Looking through the Helpdesk-l mailing list, it seems that some people
>>are having a hard time finding the edit link at the top of the page,
>>although they can find the edit links for the sections.  Should
>>something be done about this?
>>
>>
>A solution I can think of, is that wikipedia leaves a cookie that says ?this
>person is not a competely and utter noob?. If such a cookie does not exist
>yet, a big fat, blinking (ok, maybe not blinking) box is displayed which
>tells you how to stop being very lost. It would also contain a link to never
>ever display this box again. A smart implementation would be to use this only
>for Windows/Mac users coming on the page with either IE, Firefox or <Standard
>Mac Browser>
>
The trigger to turn off the annoying feature would be to edit anything. :-)

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias

body:
Bob Mellish wrote:

>It's funny, but I quite often create "expert" articles on subjects I'd bet
>that few wikipedians know about, or have even heard of (e.g.:<
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauchy%27s_equation>). But I've yet to have one
>listed on AFD because they are ignorant of the subject, and I'm in no danger
>of being driven off. Perhaps there's more to the problem than just the
>"proud ignorance" of AFDers.
>
Incomprehension works in several ways.  Mathematics is widely believed
to be a serious subject, and that may be sufficient to put them in awe
of mathematicians. :-)  I doubt that they understand any of it.

Ec


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration Committee members granted checkuser
	tool

body:
It is difficult to simply predict the outcome of either alternative.
But democratic centralism is not being proposed.

Fred

On Nov 17, 2005, at 8:29 AM, Jack Lynch wrote:

> I don't. What your describing is a social experiment, and the sort of
> one I find violently objectionable. See [[communism]].
>
> Jack (Sam Spade)
>
> On 11/17/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

>> The dynamics in an organization can easily change when it has paid
>> staff.    I very much prefer an environment where everyone is working
>> for the love of what they believe rather than the love of money.
>>
>> Ec
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] need to work out clear policies on
	MANDATORYandOPTIONAL rules on WP

body:
> From: Tom Cadden [mailto:thomcadden at yahoo.ie]

> As has been pointed out repeatedly, the MoS does not say 'do
> what Brittanica does' Brittanica is a business-orientated
> hardcopy encyclop?dia which follows governmental usage to
> avoid offending native populations because it needs them to
> buy their product. It is called sometimes 'Strategic Naming'.
>
>  They follow their own MoS. We follow ours. Ours is not
> business based but based exclusively on the most common name
> principle. Objective evidence shows that the most common name
> of that state, as evidenced by surveys of communication
> vehicles worldwide, is 'Ivory Coast' by a ratio of 85:15 over
> Cote d'Ivoire.
>
>  They have to follow their MoS which follows 'Strategic
> Naming'. We have to follow ours, which follows 'Most Common
> Name'. Under our MoS the name we are obliged to place the
> name at is Ivory Coast. Their MoS, following their criteria,
> produces a result that is irrelevant to us.

I don't actually care about this particular "country name", as much as I care about the larger issue. If we allow people to go against policy, and then require a majority vote (or supermajority vote) to choose to FOLLOW policy, then Wikipedia will quickly be over-run by abusers.

The article should be put at the policy-determined place (which happens to be "Ivory Coast") and then - IF a consensus developes that this particular country article should be an exception to policy, THEN move it to the French name.

The idea that article names should be dictated to us, by whoever the article happens to be about is NOT GOOD POLICY. It will only lead to balkanization of the 'pedia. We picked "most common usage English" specifically to head off this sort of thing.

Ed Poor


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>
>If "Ivory Coast" ever lose currency - as it no doubt will in years to
>come - then of course we'll reflect this.
>
I think it's already happened - as several people on the talk page
have mentioned, it's been a long time since they've heard "Ivory
Coast". Most organizations that deal with international names have
MoSes that require use of current official names; WP is somewhat
unusual in specifying "most common", which works well with names
familiar to the general public, but breaks down for the less-known.
The handful of people who even know about the country are also the
ones most likely to respect the country's official stance, and to
change their personal usage. "Ivory Coast" will live on in online
documents (and skew Google results) long after it has passed out
of current speech.

Along the same lines, just a couple weeks ago, I was talking to a
waiter who said "I'm from Bombay", to which I said "not Mumbai?",
and he snorted that that was just what the politicians called it.
But I see our article is under Mumbai anyway...

On some less-controversial article titles, I've taken the position
that if "most common" is at all unclear, to pick the official name.
The samples of usage from Google, print pubs, etc, have huge
margins of error.

Stan


subject:
[Textbook-l] Commonsproject:Drawing pictures for language
	learning wikibooks

body:
I have already searched in Commons for good thematic
pictures. I organized them here:
http://es.wikibooks.org/wiki/Vocabulario_(es)

But many times, in one picture lots of objects could
appear, for example: a kitchen, a workshop,...

We could also go to
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_requests
describing the kind of drawings we would need,...

Javier.

--- Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> a ?crit
:

> This would be a great thing - also for wiktionary -
> many pictures can be
> associated to words as well.
>
> What about contacting arts students/specialised
> scools?
>
> I am not able to draw myself, but even over here I
> have more or less the
> same problems - of course: for certain stuff also
> photos that are
> already present in commons can be used.
>
> Ciao, Sabine
>
> pikola Thierry wrote:
>
> >== Language learning wikibooks are in need of good
> >drawings: would someone help? ==
> >A very efficient tool for learning language are
> >pictures related to expressions. I have seen that
> many
> >language learning wikibooks could be highly
> improved
> >with drawings. I have many ideas of how this
> drawings
> >could be, but I lack the creative skill to draw
> them.
> >Is somebody willing to help? We could create a
> >wikiproject in Commons which would be fruitful for
> any
> >language learning wikibook in any wikibooks
> project.
> >--[[User:Javier Carro|Javier Carro]] 13:01, 17
> >November 2005 (UTC)
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
> Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da
> 10MB
> http://mail.yahoo.it
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
>

___________________________________________________________________________
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body:
Sorry, the link I gave previously was wrong. Here is
the right one:
http://es.wikibooks.org/wiki/Vocabulario_%28es%29
--- pikola Thierry <pikola24 at yahoo.fr> a ?crit :

> I have already searched in Commons for good thematic
> pictures. I organized them here:
> http://es.wikibooks.org/wiki/Vocabulario_(es)
>
> But many times, in one picture lots of objects could
> appear, for example: a kitchen, a workshop,...
>
> We could also go to
>
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_requests
> describing the kind of drawings we would need,...
>
> Javier.
>
>
> --- Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> a
> ?crit
> :
>
> > This would be a great thing - also for wiktionary
> -
> > many pictures can be
> > associated to words as well.
> >
> > What about contacting arts students/specialised
> > scools?
> >
> > I am not able to draw myself, but even over here I
> > have more or less the
> > same problems - of course: for certain stuff also
> > photos that are
> > already present in commons can be used.
> >
> > Ciao, Sabine
> >
> > pikola Thierry wrote:
> >
> > >== Language learning wikibooks are in need of
> good
> > >drawings: would someone help? ==
> > >A very efficient tool for learning language are
> > >pictures related to expressions. I have seen that
> > many
> > >language learning wikibooks could be highly
> > improved
> > >with drawings. I have many ideas of how this
> > drawings
> > >could be, but I lack the creative skill to draw
> > them.
> > >Is somebody willing to help? We could create a
> > >wikiproject in Commons which would be fruitful
> for
> > any
> > >language learning wikibook in any wikibooks
> > project.
> > >--[[User:Javier Carro|Javier Carro]] 13:01, 17
> > >November 2005 (UTC)
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ___________________________________
> > Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati
> da
> > 10MB
> > http://mail.yahoo.it
> > _______________________________________________
> > Textbook-l mailing list
> > Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
> >
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
___________________________________________________________________________
>
> Appel audio GRATUIT partout dans le monde avec le
> nouveau Yahoo! Messenger
> T?l?chargez cette version sur
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>

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T?l?chargez cette version sur http://fr.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia up and down

body:
"David Gerard" wrote

>So I wouldn't be so blase about the numbers

I wasn't suggesting complacency about the service being provided right now.
My point was about modes of using web sites.  If people do hit-and-run
access to WP, then that's a different pattern to some other sites, and that
comes up if you do comparisons at Alexa with other sites with similar reach.

Charles


from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Totally unscientific investigation...

body:
>From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
>
>David Gerard wrote:
>
><snip>
>>the
>>reason AFD is so damn poisonous to the community is that it blatantly
>>encourages participants to assume *bad* faith) and *leave*.
>><snip>
>
>That poisonous atmosphere is perhaps the most damaging thing that is
>currently happening on Wikipedia.  Those who are spreading that poison
>appear completely oblivious to the effect that they are having on the
>social fabric.

I will simply re-iterate that there are far more seriously damaging and
"poisonous" things happening on Wikipedia, and they are related to extremely
weak dispute resolution mechanisms.

Jay.


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia up and down

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Charles Matthews wrote:
>
>
>
>>Agree.  OTOH WP is a reference site.  There will be many people who come to
>>WP with the aim of looking up some one thing.  This gives a natural pattern
>>of short visits, not surfing around.  The overall reach shows the users who
>>arrive knowing they want to look something up, plus the input from search
>>engines.  We shouldn't get too hung up about the number of page views.  If
>>people find what they want on the first page they view, so much the better.
>>
>>
>
>
>For me, page views are working about 2/3 of the time and edits are
>working not very often. So I wouldn't be so blase about the numbers
>... Do we have any numbers about requests made vs requests served? I
>assume the devs are *painfully* aware.
>
>
>
I have mostly working but slow views right now, but when I look at the
source they're all served in less than 0.5sec, which means there is a
"slow spot" on the way. Usually I'd say it's here (university net), but
if many people experience it, it might be closer to the colo...

Magnus


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: "Mandatory"

body:
If something is mandatory on Wikipedia, that means that if you want people to
follow it you need to _convince_ them that a) it is mandatory, b) they should
follow things that are mandatory.

Just like absolutely everything else on Wikipedia.

How can you "enforce" anything like that except by jawboning?

A "mandate," the dictionary says, is "An authoritative command or
instruction." But what, exactly, does "authoritative" mean on Wikipedia?

Who's going to enforce these "mandates?" Is Jimbo Wales is personally going
to micromanage discussions on talk pages? Are we going to restrict the "move"
button to Bureaucrats?

To riff on Mark Twain (or perhaps it was Oscar Wilde, or Dorothy Parker):

How many mandatory policies do we have if we call the Manual of Style
mandatory?

Answer: We have none, because calling a policy mandatory doesn't make it one.


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikimentary: great news, updates

body:
"SJ" <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote in message
news:742dfd060511170130o171ebbb0j4f0fcc85b2f03bc at mail.gmail.com...
[snip]
> The rough cut (be the first to write a review ;-):
>   http://www.archive.org/details/WIKIMANIA-ROUGH_CUT.mov

Before I risk electronic indigestion, how big is this file?
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


subject:
[WikiEN-l] need to work out clear policies on MANDATORY
	and	OPTIONAL rules on WP

body:
Tom Cadden wrote:

>
> It is one of the clearest open and shut cases imaginable. Put in ordinary language, the ordinary English speaker on the planet uses Ivory Coast not Cote d'Ivoire. Those that use the latter are aware of the former. Those that use the former are rarely aware of the latter. Under MoS criteria the only place the article can be placed at is Ivory Coast. But as the vote shows, most users aren't using MoS criteria but deciding on personal whims such as 'I like it', 'that's what I hear',  'it is what will become popular', and the even more POV 'we should help encourage its usage'. None of that fits the criteria of the MoS and means that that one article is in a different location to 99% of other such articles on WP, which follow most common usage, not personal agendas.
>
Stating your case more forcefully doesn't qualify as evidence. Since
you don't describe your sources of information, it's impossible to tell
whether you are talking about current usage or past usage - use of old
documents will by definition skew results to an old name, and we would
then be required to still use "Zaire", "Upper Volta", etc until the pile
of new documents outweighed the pile of old ones.

Stan


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Extensions that return non-wikitext

body:
Tels wrote:
> my graph extension (see http://bloodgate.com/perl/graph) returns either
> HTML, or SVG. However, mediawiki treats the returned text as wikitext,
> e.g. it parses it, attempts transform it into HTML and the sanitizes it.

That would be very unusual if true; extensions' HTML output is
reinserted into final output in a very late stage of parsing, at
blocklevels iirc.

Avoid extra whitespace and blank lines in your output.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: geni

subject:
[WikiEN-l] need to work out clear policies on MANDATORY and
	OPTIONAL rules on WP

body:
On 11/17/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> Of course, there's also a significant number that are opposing based
> on the fact that they consider the other name to be the most commonly
> used in English. Repeatedly waving the strawman that people are voting
> to ignore the MoS, or that they all somehow are incapable of
> understanding what a manual of style is, doesn't help in the least.
>

Yes but looking at the evidence show that position is not logicaly suportable

> Again, please assume *some* good faith on the part of people who
> disagree with you. It costs nothing and saves on everyone's blood
> pressure.

No reason to assume that thier argument are remotely valid though.

--
geni


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Help with wiktionary

body:
Sergey Samoylov wrote:
> Hi there...
>
> I've just downloaded wiktionary dump. And wikimedia 4.12.

4.12? I thought Wikimedia was still in beta! It still has that ad-hoc
management structure, I think I filed a bug report about that a while back.

-- Tim Starling


body:
On 11/17/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't. What your describing is a social experiment, and the sort of
> one I find violently objectionable. See [[communism]].
>
> Jack (Sam Spade)
>

No we cheacked what wikipedia is not and that appears not to be the case.

Ok if we have paid admins it would be logical for us to recruite the
most qualified and experenced candidates. Who just happen to be the
most senior part of our admins team. So no change but wikimedia ends
up out of pocket.
--
geni


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: http://www.splammer.com/ a real-time proxy?

body:
Jamie Bliss wrote:
> Also, some sites using the same server [207.210.218.170]:
> * thecorporatepage.com
> * collectibleboats.com
> * thelegalpage.com
> * collectiblehomes.com
> * freedomsailing.com
> * thelegalreport.com

Blocked IP.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Jack Lynch

body:
I don't. What your describing is a social experiment, and the sort of
one I find violently objectionable. See [[communism]].

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 11/17/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Jack Lynch wrote:
>
> >Assumably from advertised applications, like any other paid position?
> >
> >As far as the past, I would have preferred if Larry Sanger had stayed
> >on, and in general that wikipedia had kept up w paid staffing. I saw
> >from the recent budget that this idea is being returned to. Thats a
> >good thing. Successful charities have paid staff.
> >
> >Jack (Sam Spade)
> >
> >On 11/13/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>On 11/13/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>I personally am perfectly willing to pay a fee for expert adminship.
> >>>Have you seen the recent fund-drives? I've never donated money (just
> >>>time) to the wikipedia, but I would for paid admins I could trust.
> >>>
> >>>Jack (Sam Spade)
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>Our past history on that front has been less than ideal. Anyway where
> >>are you going to get these expert admins from?
> >>
> >>
> The dynamics in an organization can easily change when it has paid
> staff.    I very much prefer an environment where everyone is working
> for the love of what they believe rather than the love of money.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore MoS, NCs for language
	reasons.

body:
Tom Cadden wrote:

>
> For years the town of Kells in Ireland
>
Oh look at that, the article is at "Republic of Ireland" instead of
just "Ireland", even though very few English speakers would ever
rattle off the whole mouthful, and in fact would be far more likely
to say "Irish Republic" if they were trying to distinguish the state.
The article itself even says that "Republic of Ireland" is the
less-commonly-used form. So by naming rules strictly applied, and
keeping in mind the ambiguity with the island, it should be
"Ireland (republic)" instead, the parenthesized appendage being
the standard way to disambiguate.

There are simply some situations where mechanical rule application
produces ridiculous results, and we need to be more intelligent
about it.

Stan