from_name: Arwel Parry

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Ratings again (was: Oour quality could rival
	Encyclopedia Britannica)

references:
<E506B3FF6BC1254C9AC1B948C380BC280217F858@sm-nyny-xm05.nena.wdpr.disney.com>
	<00bf01c5d8b5$70bf1ba0$7cac0656@NorthParade>
	<435D3F1E.1060008@tonal.clara.co.uk>
	<435D3F1E.1060008-aflbMylNHbUjX+cr6OkN1Vpr/1R2p/CL@public.gmane.org>
	<166eccf30510250938j6f379792v716029ba87efe42c@mail.gmail.com>

body:
In message
<166eccf30510250938j6f379792v716029ba87efe42c at mail.gmail.com>, Stefan
Sittler <kiaparowits-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> writes
>(...)
>> Remember categories? They were really controversial when they were first
>> introduced, but now they are invaluable, and it's hard to remember what
>> MediaWiki was like without them.
>>
>> -- Neil
>
>I have been wondering about this, actually. (I'm newish to WP). Could
>somebody show me how exactly categories are helpful? A link would be
>fine. It's hard for me to see the usefulness. A link or three would be
>fine, maybe an old pertinent discussion. Thanks.

I find [[Category:Football (soccer) clubs]] invaluable - I can drill
down through the subcategories "...an/..ese football clubs" and easily
check each July whether I need to create any new articles for teams
appearing in the qualifying rounds of the [[UEFA Champions League]] or
[[UEFA Cup]] for the first time since Wikipedia started. It's not
difficult to create club stubs and hope someone more knowledgeable will
fill in the details (come on - had you ever heard of [[FC Kairat
Almaty]] before last summer? I hadn't, but we have a fairly informative
article now).

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Christopher Maloney

subject: [WikiEN-l] How do I edit a page from inside China?

body:
As most of you probably know, China has recently blocked (again)
access to Wikipedia.  I've gotten around their Great Firewall by
installing tor, but now, I find that my edit access to pages is
blocked, because I appear to be coming from an open proxy.

I don't understand why my edit access is blocked, even though I'm
logged in as a valid user (Klortho).  I'm sure there's a good reason,
but I don't understand it.  Anyway, is there any way around this?  I
certainly hope so, because it seems ironic to me that Wikipedia, in
effect, puts up an additional barrier to Chinese people wanting to
express themselves (in addition to the censorship by the government,
that is).


from_name: Tom Cadden

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Skyring edit history to date - (formerly Blocked - In
	violation of the Wikipedia blocking policy)

body:
--- geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 10/25/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Good lord, what happened to [[WP:FAITH]]? No
> messages were left on the
> > IP talk page and the conclusion that "Skyring is
> using 213.x.x.x" seems
> > to be based purely on style and/or content over
> the course of 5 edits.
> > Isn't it more likely that a completely different
> person, in Ireland,
> > possibly Irish, made these edits?
> >
> > I refer you to [[Occam's Razor]]; equally, I refer
> you to [[Hanlon's
> > Razor]].
>
> However going by the email it is pretty clear that
> it is skyring so it
> isn't a problem.
>
> --
> geni
>
To give an idea of Skyring's antics since being banned
at the start of September, among the names and IPs
proven to be him, or strongly suspected of being him
are

   1. 144.138.154.241
   2. 139.168.158.170
   3. 139.168.157.152
   4. 139.168.158.161
   5. 139.168.159.1
   6. 139.168.159.95
   7. 143.238.244.146
   8. 143.238.244.181
   9. 143.238.244.30
  10. 143.238.244.52
  11. 143.238.244.73
  12. 144.131.118.150
  13. 144.131.119.225
  14. 203.51.24.117
  15. 203.51.24.233
  16. 203.51.25.203
  17. 203.51.25.229
  18. 203.51.25.90
  19. 203.51.30.105
  20. 203.51.31.100
  21. 203.51.31.98
  22. 203.51.35.13
  23. 203.51.35.78
  24. 62.24.143.171
  25. AULDBITCH LOVES YOU
  26. Aroundtheworld
  27. Blue Moon Cocktail Bar
  28. DataCommander
  29. DoctorGrace
  30. DungareeDoll
  31. IloveParis
  32. MagicSpeller
  33. Notanerd
  34. Onlyapapermoon
  35. Rainrainrain
  36. Rasptongue
  37. Safeground
  38. Statue of limitations
  39. TheOneGirl
  40. Truetoform
  41. WaspFactory
  42. Called Jim
  43. Declared with a grin
  44. Except for the tool
  45. FamousRay
  46. Flatulent
  47. For playing the fool
  48. GuaranteedTrue
  49. Halfinch
  50. He's a good bloke and
  51. HisHoliness
  52. Lackaday-oh
  53. Laughter's no sin!
  54. Mandriver
  55. Mineeyes
  56. Not A Joke Joyce
  57. NudgeNudge
  58. QueenVickie
  59. SayNoMore
  60. Swinglow
  61. TurningHeads
  62. Ubuntu
  63. UncleJo
  64. EZ-SpelChek
  65. What a Friend
  66. WrongAgain

Over 300 edits have been made to well over 100
articles. Only a fraction of the IPs used are listed
above.

He has now begun setting up new names to go onto pages
and pose as neutral observers coming on to defend
Skyring.

In addition he has blitzed various users with spam.

Thom
jtdirl

___________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion again

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>I can't convince the people on afd at least in part because I'm not allowed
>to make comments on afd.

and he also wrote;

>It looks perfectly notable to me, and Snowspinner would have had my vote had
>he not fought so hard to get me banned from voting.

What Anthony is referring to is the Arbitration finding banning him
from editing the Wikipedia: space at all, owing to his long, long
history of being a grossly disruptive net negative there:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Anthony_DiPierro_2

"Anthony is subject to a one revert limitation, prohibited from
creating deleted content that fails to pass a vote for undeletion,
subject to ad hoc blocks for disruption, and banned from editing the
Wikipedia namespace."

Anthony, it wasn't Snowspinner who got you blocked from the Wikipedia
namespace for a year. It wasn't anyone else either. It was you and
no-one else. You wuzn't robbed, you did it to yourself. This is
unlikely to change until you understand that life is not a breaching
experiment.

- d.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] the third apologies

body:
muhammad zaid zainuddin wrote:
> Dear wikitech,
>
> Another thousand apologies. I think I just find out how this whole
> system works. Darn!! I was so..... stupid. You guys can ignore my
> previous message
>
> Thank you,

No, thank you.  I think that your troubles made us more aware that this
business about fonts is not obvious to a lot of people, and I am hopeful
that our pages describing these issues will become better and more
easily accessed.

--Jimbo


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration Committee elections, 2005

body:
On 10/25/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Do you think thare are any unsituble candidates on the list who have a
> chance of being elected?

Again, I have said that I will not publicly discuss the merits of the
candidates.

Kelly


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] In The News - new name needed

body:
I think that pages which are named "News" on the internet are usually
assumed to be news of the site in question, not the "external world"
as it may be.

My only problem with Current Events, besides the fact that there is
already such a page, is that in U.S. education at the
primary/secondary level, "Current Events" is always a tedious session
of children giving reports on news articles to the class (at least it
was throughout my education). As such it rubs me the wrong way, and
might rub others the wrong way. Or maybe it's exactly what we want.
Hmm. Well, anyway, I don't think the name matters much, so long as it
has a different acronym (I certainly don't feel strongly about it,
anyway). I'd almost prefer "Recent News" or even "Recent Events"...
but anyway, it's not a big deal either way.

FF

On 10/25/05, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
> How about just "News"? That's all Britannica uses on their front page.
>
> ~Mark Ryan
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Ben Yates wrote:
> There's no way to keep anonymous proxy users blocked and let logged-in proxy
> users edit?

Some of the worst vandalbots create accounts.

Still, your point is absolutely valid in the broader sense.  What
changes could be make that might allow us to mitigate the problems of
anonymous proxies in a gentler way than wholesale blocking?

Keep in mind that ideas are essentially useless, at least as compared to
simple running code.  So those of us who want to get something done in
this area have a responsibility to either code it, or make sure that our
great heroes the programmers understand that their humble subjects would
be overjoyed to see something good in this area.  :-)

--Jimbo


list: foundation-l

subject:
Our exponentially increasing costs (was Re: [Foundation-l] Re:
	Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to Form New Partnership)

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Anthony makes a good point.  Hardware does break down over time, and has
> to be replaced.  Even more likely is that it will become obsolete before
> it breaks down.
> The projections of increased costs that you talk about are fine as far
> as they go, but this has all been in a period of rapid growth.  Sound
> accounting practice requires that we be prepared for the evebtual plateay.

Yes.  Estimates of what our costs next year vary widely, and in no small
part because it isn't possible for anyone to have a firm estimate of
what our traffic will be like next year.

There will come a time when our traffic will "plateau", but if you look
at overall internet usage figures, traffic trends, trends in media
coverage, trends in name awareness, etc., I take no particular comfort
in pessimism.

I think we can easily forecast at least two more doublings.

I've never even been on Oprah, if you see what I mean.  We've completely
saturated the awareness of the tech early adopters, but there is a huge
huge group of people beyond that who simply haven't heard of Wikipedia.

I was at a children's Halloween party the other day and a woman told me
that she had heard that I do some kind of internet encyclopedia stuff.
She didn't know anything about it.  She was excited (or, polite :-)) at
my description and promised to check it out.

They are still out there, everywhere, billions of people who have never
heard of Wikipedia.

--Jimbo


list: wikimedia-l


body:
> Hmm... I like Current Events better than News Desk
> or Current News.
> [[WP:CN]] should stay for clueless newbies.
>
> Flcelloguy
> >From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.
>
I think News Desk would be the most apt.

Current Events is too ambiguous -

1.'current' includes the potential for covering 'what
is about to happen' as whereas the page needs to be
defined to cover what has happened.

2. It overlaps with an already existing page name.

3. It lacks a unique angle in the name.

4. It breaks the link with the existing template name.

5. Because of its ambiguity it may be difficult to get
consensus on a rename.

6. Because of its similarity with an existing page
name people may well opt to use the existing ITN
acronym informally.

News Desk is far stronger as a name.

1. It is unique, with strengthens the ability to
create name recognition.

2. It keeps a degree continuity with the same template
name, meaning that it is more likely to get a
consensus behind it.

3. It would lend itself to the creation of a template.

4. In using 'news desk' it carries a clear recognition
factor: 'news desk' is a widely used term when
covering news. All newspapers use the term, so again
its meaning in clear. It says what it is and says by
implication what it isn't.

Thom

___________________________________________________________
To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 25/10/05, Fl Celloguy <flcelloguy at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Hmm... I like Current Events better than News Desk or Current News.
> [[WP:CN]] should stay for clueless newbies.

Yes, this seems a better idea. [[WP:CE]], [[Wikipedia:Current
Events]]. ([[Wikipedia:News Desk]] sounds more appropriate for
something handling Wikipedia in the media...)

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


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> When that becomes a significant issue, then the model will need to be updated.
> I've been told that, so far, pretty much all the hardware we've ever bought is
> still in use.

That's exactly right.

It might at some point pay to look at selling some of the older servers
to buy newer ones.  This would have two benefits:

1. we are now exclusively buying dual-opterons for apache webserving,
these are significantly more powerful _in the same physical space_ than
our single-pentiums -- therefore, we can save a lot of rack space at the
colo by replacing.  (This space is not especially expensive, though, in
the grand scheme of things.)

2.  In addition to saving physical space, there is a fair amount of dev
time which goes into working with 124 servers (the current count, I
believe, except not all of them are installed just now) which could be
reduced if we were running on half the number of servers.  Wikipedia
traffic is growing faster than Moore's Law, but even so, Moore's Law
should make it possible for us to do more with fewer boxes.

The first benefit can be quantified, the second cannot.  (How much money
should we be willing to spend to save the developers some time?  My
answer is: a LOT.  Developer time is not free to us, it is infinitely
expensive.  What I mean by that is that it is a lot more cost effective
to have volunteer devs working in a well-funded and exciting environment
where they can play with cutting-edge technology, than it is to
eventually be forced to hire devs to work with boring and annoying old
hardware.)

----

My suspicion is that by the time we are seriously ready to get rid of
some old machines, they will have minimal market value.   Dunno.

--Jimbo


from_name: Jtkiefer

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Skyring edit history to date - (formerly Blocked -
	In	violation of the Wikipedia blocking policy)

body:
Han Dao wrote:

>I wonder why Skyring took the trouble of annoying us. What is his agenda?
>What is his motive?
>
>
If we knew that our jobs would be soooo much easier.

-Jtkiefer


body:
On 25/10/05, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> While I respect Jimbo's opinion I'm not quite sure if this way is the right
> way to go.
>
> The 'old boys' club' is one of my concerns. The other one (which is slightly
> related) is that some highly-qualified candidates which could do very well
> might not be on Jimbo's (and the arbCom's) radar, so how would that work?

I would assume that, some time beforehand, a call for interested
parties is put out - those considered for ArbCom are politely prodded
to see if they're interested, and anyone else wanting to put their
name forward (poss. with some supporting evidence) does so. Mull over
that lot for a while, then give a list of possibles and let the
community tear them apart.

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


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 10/25/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> We have suggested choosing Arbitrators by loading Recent Changes at a
> random unannounced time and appointing the first 12 names to appear
> there. While I think this would be resoundingly unsatisfactory to
> most members of the community, it would eliminate most claims of bias.
> :)
>
> Kelly

Can't be much worse than the current system. I've come to find that the best
way to deal with the arb com is to ignore them. I can't think of a single
good thing that has come out of the arb com, save those things that only
needed to be resolved because the arb com existed in the first place. I
don't think it matters very much who's on the arb com. The position itself
is fundamentally flawed.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Crappy prose isn't the main "quality" problem.

body:
That's not true. They both allow for attributed POV and analysis.

"Respected scholar John Doe has said that the impact of Pepys on
future literature is incalcuable, and at least 20 books per decade are
published on him."

..and so forth would be perfectly in line with NPOV and NOR. What
would not be appropriate are unattributed, "universalized" statements
of value, but there's nothing in NPOV or NOR which says that all value
statements whatsoever should be stripped out of articles.

And if the hypothetical statement above is only half of the story, it
is easy enough to add a line of "Though some other scholars, such as
Jane Doe, think that he is often overrated, pointing to his lack of
intersubjective hyperbolity in his later work" or whatever the case
may be.

We can push viewpoints, if we identify whose viewpoint it is and we
give them and other relevant viewpoints their own representation in a
neutral and attributed way. We just can't push *our own* viewpoints.

FF

On 10/25/05, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> Does NPOV or NOR allow analysis at all? Not in the slightest.
>
> While it is meant to discourage pushing a viewpoint and putting uncited
> research up on Wikipedia, what would happen if someone were to analyze a
> point in an article?
>
> In some cases it would seem to be pushing a point of view (even if the
> opposite POV is expressed) and sometimes would cause an edit war
>
> In other cases it would be seen as original research (oh no! You can't say
> that without citing it!)
>
> Maybe I'm just not understanding correctly what you mean by analyzing.
>
> On 10/25/05, Koltwills at aol.com <Koltwills at aol.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > In a message dated 10/25/2005 5:28:50 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
> > ilyanep at gmail.com writes:
> >
> > Agreed...and it could be argued that some of our policies prohibit such an
> > article from being created.
> >
> > ~Ilya N. (User:Ilyanep)
> >
> >
> > *applauding Daniel Smith's analysis of the comments in the Guardian
> > article"
> >
> > Policies such as?
> >
> > dcv
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> ~Ilya N.
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Surrogate pair hack

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>>MySQL 5.0 does not reject the surrogate characters between U+D800 and
>>U+DFFF. This means we can store characters above the BMP either by setting
>>the character set to UTF-8 and inserting CESU-8, or by setting the character
>>set to UCS-2 and inserting UTF-16.
>
>
> Sorry, I didn't realise that this subject has already been discussed on this
> list:

But it sounds much more plausible when you say it. ;)

In all seriousness, if we do have to go that route we actually have most
of the plumbing already in place it looks like. For Oracle and
PostgreSQL we're already adding special treatment for the binary data
fields, which with some tweaking could distinguish 'text - for
conversion' and 'data - leave as is' on SQL generation. If result sets
come with the proper type information then doing the conversion back
should be easy and transparent.

"In theory." :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Foundation-l] To write a encyclopedia or to host a encyclopedia

body:
The core mission of Wikipedia is so far I know to write a free
encyclopaedia.

The number of visitors to Wikipedia is exploding. Are all of these
people writing articles? That seems not likely. I do not know how many
of all traffic is done by editors but I assume it must be relative small
compared to the total traffic.

So Wikipedia now is not only a project to write a encyclopaedia but also
a website where people come to read the encyclopaedia.

Why? Is it so important to be one of the most visited websites in the
world? (and have to pay for it)

Outsource the reading of the encyclopaedia. Keep Wikipedia out of the
results of the search engines. Reduce drastically the traffic to
Wikipedia. Keep Wikipedia only as the project to write the encyclopaedia.

Assist company's to set-up mirrors and sync whit the real wikipedia.
Those mirrors can be the entry points to the real wikipedia for users
who like to edit.

This way the cost of operating wikipedia can be reused. Wikipedia.org
will disappear from the alexa stats. And Wikipedia can focus on writing
a free encyclopaedia. The result of this can be a slowing down of the
grow of the encyclopedia. But Wikipedia is now +/- 5 years old. There is
time. Better a slower growed then a exposing and then failier because of
to fast growed.

--
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be


from_name: Koltwills at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Repeated blocks -- collateral damage

body:
In a message dated 10/25/2005 8:48:00 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
chris at starglade.org writes:

Koltwills at aol.com wrote:
> Well, I suppose I have another reason  to go to  Mozilla!
>
> AOL just sux.

I believe  Geni means AOL the ISP, rather than AOL the  browser.

Chris

Yeah, I got that -- after I hit "send."  (Long night.)

dcv


from_name: Michael Turley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposed overhaul of elections and arbitration process

body:
On 10/26/05, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Also posted on the wiki at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2005
> Please direct comments there.
>
> Several people have indicated that they dislike Jimbo's recent
> intervention in the Arbitration Committee election process. Although the
> alternative plan has not fully taken shape, I share some of the
> concerns. For example, I don't think a situation where Jimbo appoints
> the Arbitration Committee, and the election is simply to ratify these
> appointments, is a good solution. However, I understand the concerns
> about the community's ability to handle this on its own, based in part
> on the last election. I think we need to find a reasonable compromise
> position.
>
> Meanwhile, the arbitration system itself continues to struggle. Too many
> cases are going at once; the arbitrators cannot give them adequate
> attention; the process moves too slowly. There are a number of other
> problems, including arbitrator activity and burnout. I have a plan that
> can address many of these issues. Here's my proposal.
>
> Add a group of users called magistrates as a body below the Arbitration
> Committee. The disputes that currently go into arbitration get handled
> by smaller groups of magistrates and/or arbitrators, instead of going
> before the full body. I would suggest that we keep the four votes to
> accept a case rule, and simply make those four people the panel for that
> case. The full Arbitration Committee can review specific cases when
> appropriate, as a "court of appeal".
>
> Magistrates are appointed directly by Jimbo. Since there is no fixed
> number, the Arbitration Committee (or anyone else) can suggest names,
> and people can volunteer directly to him.
>
> While we get the magistrate system up and running, extend the
> appointments of the arbitrators whose terms expire in December. Hold an
> election in February (shortly after the next fundraising drive, which
> should come in January) to fill these seats instead. The newly elected
> arbitrators begin on March 1, which gives us time to observe the
> magistrates in action, since I imagine a few of them would run for the
> Arbitration Committee.
>
> Arbitrators can be elected from the community at large, not just the
> pool of magistrates. However, many of the best candidates will likely
> have gained experience and proven their ability as magistrates beforehand.
>
> Benefits of this system:
> *The community gets to decide which of its members are on the main body,
> which is in most cases the final port of call.
> *New magistrates can be added at any time, without having to wait for an
> election cycle.
> *Magistrates are not chosen based on unsuitable criteria, such as
> RfA-style "popularity contests".
> *Elections to the Arbitration Committee should favor candidates who have
> demonstrated ability (as well as approval from Jimbo).
> *Magistrates who "lose" an election for arbitrator can still continue to
> serve.
> *Larger pool of people available for any given case.
> *Number of magistrates can be scaled upward as community grows. (I think
> we could start with around 20.)
> *Decreases the workload for any individual arbitrator/magistrate.
> *Reduce burnout accordingly.
> *A panel can focus more attention on its specific case.
> *Less overworked arbitrators/magistrates may also be able to resolve
> cases more quickly.
> *Since not everyone participates in a case, magistrates can voluntarily
> avoid cases in which even a perception might exist that they have a
> personal interest.
> *In small panels, reaching any decision requires substantial agreement
> (three out of four).
> *Nevertheless, the Arbitration Committee can modify or reverse
> problematic decisions from small panels.
> *In cases before the full Arbitration Committee, members of the smaller
> panel can organize and explain the often unwieldy evidence based on
> their previous review.
> *For all cases, the pool of magistrates not participating directly is
> still available to handle housekeeping issues that are often neglected
> currently.
>
> For all these reasons and more, I hope we can move forward with this
> proposal. I think this is the best way to balance Jimbo's input with the
> need to develop responsible self-government by the community.

What I still don't understand is why you propose a very large pool of
magistrates instead of a very large pool of arbitrators.

Expanding the arbitrator pool solves the problems, quickly and simply.
 From the large pool, the arbitrators self-identify as "available" or
"unavailable".  Where X is an agreed upon odd number, and Y is an
agreed upon even number, appeals go to a random bank of X+Y available
arbitrators, from whom, after recusals and a random selection of
alternates to monitor the case but sit out the ruling, X arbitrators
determine the case.  If there's case overload, we add more arbitrators
to the pool.  If there's burnout, we add more arbitrators to the pool.

Choosing any two trusted Wikipedia members, I have yet to see any
trusted pair of Wikipedia members where one is so much more qualified
than another at dispute resolution that they should serve in an appeal
body over the other.  If we trust members enough to issue rulings in
arbitration matters, that should be the end of it.  We've already
found that the current arbitration committee is human, and that they
learn from their own mistakes as well.

In your vision of things, what's to stop every single arbitration case
from being appealed to the "upper" body?  Why even have an appeal to
anyone other than those who've already become familiar with the issue?
 What possible grounds for appeal would there be?  Why should any user
even be given a right to appeal, especially considering that the
mission is not to duplicate a court system, but to create an
encyclopedia?  Why allow arguments to prolong upward in importance,
rather than just getting on with getting them behind us?

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


from_name: Jack Lynch

body:
I think its pretty obvious most people disagree w Jimbo's decision.
Allowing current arbiters to be involved in selecting new arbiters
strikes me as a particularly ill omen. Additionally, people like
myself with almost no contact w Jimbo directly have little or no
chance. How does having Jimbo know who you are make one a better
arbiter?

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

Jack (Sam Spade)


body:
In a message dated 10/25/2005 9:18:24 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
ilyanep at gmail.com writes:

Does  NPOV or NOR allow analysis at all? Not in the slightest.

While it is  meant to discourage pushing a viewpoint and putting uncited
research up on  Wikipedia, what would happen if someone were to analyze a
point in an  article?

In some cases it would seem to be pushing a point of view  (even if the
opposite POV is expressed) and sometimes would cause an edit  war

In other cases it would be seen as original research (oh no! You  can't say
that without citing it!)

Maybe I'm just not understanding  correctly what you mean by analyzing.

On 10/25/05, Koltwills at aol.com  <Koltwills at aol.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> In a  message dated 10/25/2005 5:28:50 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
>  ilyanep at gmail.com writes:
>
> Agreed...and it could be argued that  some of our policies prohibit such an
> article from being  created.
>
> ~Ilya N. (User:Ilyanep)
>
>
>  *applauding Daniel Smith's analysis of the comments in the Guardian
>  article"
>
> Policies such as?
>
>  dcv
>

Yes, POV pushing is a concern, but I agree that reasoned, fair and balanced
analysis is important.  Unfortunately, those with a more limited
interpretation of Wikipedia policy often tend to see any analysis as  POV.  I've
encountered this problem with "Afrocentrism" -- with, of course,  the objections coming
from mostly whiners who lodge vague complaints because the  article advances
information about which they've already formed opinions  without, IMO, an
adequate (or erroneous) "knowledge" base.  In  short, some of their misconceptions
and biases are being challenged not  only about certain aspects of history,
but about the fundamental nature of  Afrocentrism itself.

And with "Melanin," there were those who simply flat-out objected to
substantive mention of race/color bias in the article, claiming the piece should
treat only the obvious scientific aspects of the subject matter -- sparking an
edit war.  How much of that was due to stalking and whining about my
"fixation" on such issues or a desire to avoid mention of such matters  altogether, or
due to people who honestly believed such a "connect the  dots" treatment of
the subject inappropriate (addressing the Guardian complaint  that pieces are
sometimes  superficial/shallow in their treatment of  subject matter) is hard to
gauge.

I could say the same thing about "Cool (African aesthetic)," because I
suspect some of the same issues are at play there.  However, the piece  itself is
far too sketchy at this point to be a clear example.

This is where admins come in.  Some are crappy/biased themselves, but  others
are fair/open-minded.  I think it's important that  administrators make it a
point to intervene in such disputes and uphold the  validity of analyzing
facts in a straightforward, principled, adequately  referenced fashion -- even
when the line of thinking/issues analyzed may be  unfamiliar to them or at odds
with previously held assumptions/take them out of  their intellectual comfort
zone.

Of course, the more off the beaten path certain notions/subject matter is,
the more contentious the debate tends to be, and this can be problematic when
dealing with immature contributors who are either incapable of being, or
unwilling to be, rational and analytical and simply are determined to be
obtuse/obstructionist/antagonistic.  Again, that's when savvy  administrators can be
helpful, reminding others that Wikipedia should be more  than a glorified
message board where articles should be more than series of  facts strung together
under a handful of subheads.

In "Blackface," NPOV/POV issues (and others) were less of a problem than
some anticipated -- perhaps because, while dealing with a somewhat sensitive
issue, the subject matter was not really fundamentally controversial.   At any
rate, at least from my own personal vantage point, it's an instance where
analysis (connecting blackface to darky iconography and also discussing the
far-reaching cultural implications of the phenomenon) works.  And I'm not  tooting
my own horn here; there were lots of contributors to the piece.   It's just
simply something I'm familiar with and an instance where, I think,  Wikipedia's
collaborative give-and-take produced something of quality.

Didn't someone, somewhere say: "Be bold!"?

dcv


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] New Ideas for AfD

body:
On 10/26/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> I think that if a few regular editors want to keep it should be kept.
> Their opinion should veto any number of delete votes. I don't mean to
> include anyone who blindly votes keep however.
>
> Fred
>

A few would have a near veto anyway. If a few is 4 then 8 delete votes
would be needed to remove it.

--
geni


body:
On 10/25/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would assume that, some time beforehand, a call for interested
> parties is put out - those considered for ArbCom are politely prodded
> to see if they're interested, and anyone else wanting to put their
> name forward (poss. with some supporting evidence) does so. Mull over
> that lot for a while, then give a list of possibles and let the
> community tear them apart.
>

Why bother with jimbo at all? We are quite caperble of mulling over
the candidates on our own.

--
geni


body:
On 10/26/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> I suggest you submit names to Jimbo with a basis for why you think
> they would be a good arbitrator. That is basically all we do. If we
> all agree on one person (remember we often disagree) he is likely to
> seriously consider the person. If a person is making a lot of trouble
> already we are not likely to think they are good candidates, but
> personally I am a little concerned that what makes a good arbitrator
> is not all that predictable.
>

So what is the point of involveing Jimbo? Why should he be able to
make a better descission than people like me who spend far more time
on en.

If you look at [[Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2005/Proposed_modifications_to_rules#Proposal_1]]
the one attempt to limit who could run was rejected

--
geni


body:
On 10/26/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/25/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think its pretty obvious most people disagree w Jimbo's decision.
> > Allowing current arbiters to be involved in selecting new arbiters
> > strikes me as a particularly ill omen. Additionally, people like
> > myself with almost no contact w Jimbo directly have little or no
> > chance. How does having Jimbo know who you are make one a better
> > arbiter?
>
> Jimbo is remarkably easy to talk to and is pretty accessible.  If you
> want to be an Arbitrator, it really does make sense for you to make
> the minimal effort to make contact with Jimbo.
>
> Anyone who doesn't realize that there are influence structures in
> Wikipedia isn't paying attention.  If you want to move up in
> influence, it helps to be known, and known well, to those who already
> have it.  This is true whether people with influence are selected by
> appointment or by election.
>

Not it is not. If they are selected by election it means that have
influence/ the trust of the wider comuity. If they are apointed they
have  influence with / the trust of a much smaller group.

So much for TINC.

> We have suggested choosing Arbitrators by loading Recent Changes at a
> random unannounced time and appointing the first 12 names to appear
> there.  While I think this would be resoundingly unsatisfactory to
> most members of the community, it would eliminate most claims of bias.
> :)
>

Not true. You would get a comitte biased in favour of whatever the
relivant time zone was. You would also be likely to end up with a far
from ideal comitte.

Wikipedia should be run by the comunity as much as posible. We know it
is posible to hold elections so there is no reason not to.
--
geni


body:
Screw that, what kind of reward are we talking about? I'm assuming my
past cases don't count?

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 10/26/05, Jtkiefer <jtkiefer at wordzen.net> wrote:
> Fred Bauder wrote:
> > By the way, anyone who thinks they can contribute to arbitration is
> > welcome to make proposal on the /Workshop page of any arbitration
> > case. I know I'll be looking for talent there. Rumor has it that
> > there might be a small reward for any of the Wikipedia advocates
> > should any of their work on /Workshop be used in a decision by the
> > Arbitration Committee.
> >
> > Fred
> >
> >
> I don't think people should expect a reward for helping out other than
> knowing that they've helped out and possibly earned the thanks of the
> arbcom, that being said rewards are always welcome :).
>
> -Jtkiefer


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.5.1 released

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

MediaWiki 1.5.1 is a bugfix and security maintenance release, and is a
recommended upgrade for all installations.

This release includes further corrections to the inline CSS style
sanitation which works around a JavaScript "feature" on Microsoft
Internet Explorer. Users of Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows may
be vulnerable to XSS injections on prior versions; users of
standards-compliant browsers are not vulnerable.

Major fixes include:
* Image pages work again with resizing disabled
* Works in MySQL 5.0 strict mode

There is experimental support in this release for explicitly declaring
the UTF-8 charset in the database; this has been tested with MySQL
5.0.15 but should work on 4.1 as well.

IMPORTANT: Changing this setting on an existing wiki may produce
interesting data corruption, depending on server configuration. Page
contents should, usually, be unaffected, but page titles and other items
may be. Limitations in MySQL's Unicode support mean that characters
outside the BMP cannot be used in page titles or various other fields
when using this mode.

Table definitions are in maintenance/mysql5/tables.sql, and the runtime
option to send 'SET NAMES utf8' is set by $wgDBmysql5 = true.

(MySQL 3.23.x and 4.0.x do not support character set declarations; on
these versions MediaWiki simply works with UTF-8 data and MySQL is
blissfully unaware of it.)

Release notes:
http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=366110

Download:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.5.1.tar.gz?download

MD5 checksum: f2030d3302a899f4e4f2e6d9f3842067
SHA-1 checksum: ff4c843f132ca54ef85b2a15fb42498a54f0ae33

Before asking for help, try the FAQ:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_FAQ

Low-traffic release announcements mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce

Wiki admin help mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

Bug report system:
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/

Play "stump the developers" live on IRC:
#mediawiki on irc.freenode.net

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
On 10/26/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> We're going to end up with a far-from-ideal committee if we have
> unrestricted elections, too, because the voting blocks that have
> already formed in Wikipedia will throw weight around to attempt to
> manipulate the result.

Prove it. I haven't seen any of these voteing blocks. Certianly non of
the candidates appear to be running on either thier deletionist or
inclusionist credentials (and due to the way the voteing is done they
would be stupid to do so)

>Jimbo's proposal basically ensures that we're
> not asked to waste our time voting down clearly inappropriate
> candidates and avoids the risk of an inappropriate candidate with
> substantial influence from being elected despite our best efforts.
>
> Kelly

You've seen the list of candidates so far. Which inappropriate ones do
you think have a chance? Remeber due to the voteing system we use you
can vote for every good candidate. In fact the voteing system tends
towards selecting the least least popular candidates makeing unsitible
candiates unlikely to win.

--
geni


body:
On 10/26/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Then you're not watching.  The existence of voting blocks is quite
> evident in RfA.
>

Which uses first past the post voteing and has a comparitivly small
number of votes. Due to the voteing system trying to gain the votes of
one block is likely to lose you so many votes elsewhere that it would
be a terminaly poor stratergy.

> I've repeatedly stated that I will not take a public stance on any
> candidate.  I am talking privately with people who I think would be
> good candidates, and I will be sharing my thoughts on appropriate
> candidates with Jimbo at the appropriate time.  Once Jimbo has
> announced the candidates, I may or may not endorse specific
> candidates, although I rather doubt it.
>
> Kelly

We have no process for endourseing caditates this year. There are 3
who I would really be worried by if they got got elected plus another
two who I'm strongly opposed to. I can't see any of the 3 getting
elected.

Do you think thare are any unsituble candidates on the list who have a
chance of being elected?

--
geni


body:
On 10/26/05, Han Dao <wikipediankiba at gmail.com> wrote:
> I wonder why Skyring took the trouble of annoying us. What is his agenda?
> What is his motive?
>

You are presumeing a rational individual.

However I suspect it is a desire not to lose face. He has to make us
appear stupid in order to make it appear that his banning was stupid.

--
geni


body:
On 10/26/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> Can't be much worse than the current system. I've come to find that the best
> way to deal with the arb com is to ignore them. I can't think of a single
> good thing that has come out of the arb com, save those things that only
> needed to be resolved because the arb com existed in the first place. I
> don't think it matters very much who's on the arb com. The position itself
> is fundamentally flawed.

It deals with problem users who admins don't have the authority to deal with.

--
geni


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> It might at some point pay to look at selling some of the older servers
> to buy newer ones.  This would have two benefits:
>
> 1. we are now exclusively buying dual-opterons for apache webserving,
> these are significantly more powerful _in the same physical space_ than
> our single-pentiums -- therefore, we can save a lot of rack space at the
> colo by replacing.  (This space is not especially expensive, though, in
> the grand scheme of things.)
>
> 2.  In addition to saving physical space, there is a fair amount of dev
> time which goes into working with 124 servers (the current count, I
> believe, except not all of them are installed just now) which could be
> reduced if we were running on half the number of servers.  Wikipedia
> traffic is growing faster than Moore's Law, but even so, Moore's Law
> should make it possible for us to do more with fewer boxes.
>
> The first benefit can be quantified, the second cannot.  (How much money
> should we be willing to spend to save the developers some time?  My
> answer is: a LOT.  Developer time is not free to us, it is infinitely
> expensive.  What I mean by that is that it is a lot more cost effective
> to have volunteer devs working in a well-funded and exciting environment
> where they can play with cutting-edge technology, than it is to
> eventually be forced to hire devs to work with boring and annoying old
> hardware.)
>
> ----
>
> My suspicion is that by the time we are seriously ready to get rid of
> some old machines, they will have minimal market value.   Dunno.

If that is the case, then we could donate the machines to other free
content/software projects that are still much, much smaller than us.

-- mav

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com


subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Our exponentially increasing costs (was Re:
	Re: Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to Form New Partnership)

body:
--- Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 10/26/05, Jtkiefer <jtkiefer at wordzen.net> wrote:
>
> > I thought it was generally agreed upon though that rising costs on
> > hardware could be compensated for, since users are more than willing to
> > donate for hardware costs.  Correct me if I'm wrong but couldn't
> > wikimedia just adjust their donation goals to cover that and thus cover
> > the cost of new hardware/repairs/upgrades, etc...?

So far, that is pretty much all we have been doing (although the foundation
also wants to do much, much more than that). But buying more hardware and
serving lots more people also increases overhead/administrative costs. So while
the percentage that overhead takes from the budget has been in the 20-30%
range, the total amount has grown in proportion to hardware and hosting costs.

> Daniel made it clear, the curve for donations won't follow the curve
> for costs. Since our costs are growing so fast (I won't go back to all
> the explanations given here and elsewhere), I don't think that
> fundraising drives will be near enough to cover those costs.

Actually, I just said my gut feeling was that the donation curve would not
follow the cost curve forever. What is needed is a statistical assessment of
the two. However, looking *only* at two fund drive data points and two traffic
data points gives some reason to be optimistic.

Q3 2004 Fund Drive grand total:                       $44,863.95 USD
September 2004 unique visitors to wikipedia.org: 3.2 million

Q4 2005 Fund Drive grand total:                         $243,930 USD
September 2005 unique visitors to wikipedia.org: 12.8 million

So, there has been a 533% increase in donations for a 400% increase in traffic.
Throw in Moore?s Law and things look even better. However, the traffic numbers
are only for wikipedia.org and this only tracks unique visitors; those visitors
likely use Wikipedia more often today than they did last year. The other
projects, esp Commons, Wiktionary and Wikinews are starting to become popular
as well. So I?ll tend to be pessimistic until I?m able to analyze some hard
data for every one of our domains (data with consistent standards - esp for the
non-wikipedia.org domains - has been difficult to come by).

> Small donations originated by fundraising drives are something we
> should *count* on, but not something we should *rely* on. We're not
> the only ones out there asking for money, and I believe that it is
> also our job to be looking elsewhere for hard cash.

Well, we kinda do have to rely on small donations. Small donations, not big
ones or grants, make up the vast majority of our income. Relying too much on
any one or select few big donors, grants or income from partnership agreements
puts us in jeopardy if any one or several of them pull their funding. But the
answer to that is to have *lots* of big donors, grants, and income streams from
partnerships. However, I think your point was that we should not simply rely on
donations in general as our sole income stream. Yep - I agree with that 100%.
We also need to diversity our income in general - we can?t be too reliant any
one source

> In our case, I would say that all editors, by spending the time they
> spend providing content and making Wikimedia projects what they are,
> are already donating. I would not blame anyone who'd argue that they
> "don't have cash, but already give some time and knowledge". Except
> that time and knowledge, although they are indispensable, don't buy
> servers or cover operating costs.

I get several emails in the ORTS donation queue each week from people who
either don?t have cash or who want to donate in a currency that we don?t
accept. I tell each that their donation of time in either contributing content
or telling people about Wikipedia is just as important as giving money. That
Wikipedia would not exist without volunteer effort.

-- mav

__________________________________
Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.
http://farechase.yahoo.com


body:
On 10/26/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:

> Again, I have said that I will not publicly discuss the merits of the
> candidates.
>
> Kelly

I'm not asking you to do that. I'm just asking if you honest think
there are currently people on the nominations list who could get
elected but are unsutible. Yes or no. I'm not asking for statements
about individual candidates.

--
geni


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
There may be a small reward should any proposal which a members
advocate makes on an arbitration /Workshop page is adopted by the
arbitration committee as part of a decision. This has not happened yet.

Fred

On Oct 25, 2005, at 7:55 PM, Jack Lynch wrote:

> Screw that, what kind of reward are we talking about? I'm assuming my
> past cases don't count?
>
> Jack (Sam Spade)
>
> On 10/26/05, Jtkiefer <jtkiefer at wordzen.net> wrote:
>
>> Fred Bauder wrote:
>>
>>> By the way, anyone who thinks they can contribute to arbitration is
>>> welcome to make proposal on the /Workshop page of any arbitration
>>> case. I know I'll be looking for talent there. Rumor has it that
>>> there might be a small reward for any of the Wikipedia advocates
>>> should any of their work on /Workshop be used in a decision by the
>>> Arbitration Committee.
>>>
>>> Fred
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> I don't think people should expect a reward for helping out other
>> than
>> knowing that they've helped out and possibly earned the thanks of the
>> arbcom, that being said rewards are always welcome :).
>>
>> -Jtkiefer
>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
This is part of the problem. If we can't candidly discuss the
candidates for arbitrator (too disruptive) how can we have much of an
election?

Fred

On Oct 25, 2005, at 10:12 PM, Kelly Martin wrote:

> On 10/25/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Do you think thare are any unsituble candidates on the list who
>> have a
>> chance of being elected?
>>
>
> Again, I have said that I will not publicly discuss the merits of the
> candidates.
>
> Kelly
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
In a message dated 10/26/2005 6:11:55 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
dgerard at gmail.com writes:

Koltwills wrote:

>You have attempted to edit a page,  either by clicking the "edit this  page"
>tab or by following  a red link.
>Your user name or IP address has been  _blocked_
>(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy)    by _David
Gerard_
>(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard)  .
>The reason given is:
>Autoblocked because your IP address  has  been recently used  by
>"_Ugabogaimasuuuukpoopit@!_
>(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Ugabogaimasuuuukpoopit@!&acti
on=edit)
".   >The reason given for Ugabogaimasuuuukpoopit@!'s
>block is:  "massive  sockpuppetry (A1sdf sockpuppet)".

Yeah. I  blocked a sokpuppeteering vandal. Unfortunately, they were
using a  pile of AOL IPs, so I spent yesterday answering email (and
trying to  get some people to just cut'n'paste the error message so I
know which  username to look for!) and undoing blocks on the  IPs.

>This hasn't happened for a couple of weeks, but it  happens frequently
enough
>-- often three and four times a  week:  I get blocked as the  result of
>someone else's  conduct.  When I try to edit, I get the  "User is
blocked"  message --
>but the I.P. address is never my  own.
>How  does this happen?

AOL runs what is effectively a massive  internal anonymising proxy. Any
individual *page view* might come  from a different IP.

A page explaining it technically  is:

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

Someone's  called it "super-dynamic proxying", which is a pretty good
way to put  it.

>How does this happen?  Is there something I or  someone else can  do to
>prevent it from occurring  again?

Excluding AOL ranges from the autoblocker might be an  idea, or setting
the duration to be very short for those  IPs.

In the meantime, I apologise profusely for the trouble, even  though it
will probably happen again and again and again and  ...

- d.

Hi, David. *waving*

Thanks.

I've asked the question of "how" repeatedly in the past, but this is  the
first time I've gotten a real explanation.

Now, what about the selective blocking.  How does THAT  happen -- being able
to edit one page and not another, when the  article I can't edit is open for
editing?

I've been told that such a thing is "impossible," but it's happened  to me
many times.

Does anyone have an explanation?

dcv


body:
But that will be the next question... No thanks!

Let's just say all candidates who have announced are valued members
of the community and let it go at that.

Fred

On Oct 25, 2005, at 10:36 PM, geni wrote:

> On 10/26/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> Again, I have said that I will not publicly discuss the merits of the
>> candidates.
>>
>> Kelly
>>
>
> I'm not asking you to do that. I'm just asking if you honest think
> there are currently people on the nominations list who could get
> elected but are unsutible. Yes or no. I'm not asking for statements
> about individual candidates.
>
>
> --
> 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
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Infinite Block by
	AbusiveAdmin/Extortion/Harassment/Fraudulent use of Wikipedia
	Abuse Emails

body:
Hopefully you and Jimmy Wales and the Wikimedia Foundation can come
to an agreement; please continue negotiations. That said, it is a
difficult situation when you become involved in the editing of your
own article, as what can be used is not your own view of yourself or
others but what has been published in a reliable source. A synopsis
of what has been published can be a very strange, fractured.
transmogrified mishmash with little relationship to how you see
yourself.

Fred

On Oct 25, 2005, at 5:30 PM, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

>
> Hi Fred,
>
> Unfortunately, I have obligations under the law as a litigant to
> enforce the Courts orders since the Court retained jurisdiction.
> At present, internet stalkers from SCOX have posted the terms of a
> sealed document to this site.  The best solution is total removal
> of the page about me, or a minumum, rollback to the approved
> content Wales and I agreed to and permanent locking of the page.
> Anything else is going to result in these people coming back to the
> site, posting the content again, and an edit war ensuing.  I won;t
> stand by and be libled or used as a whipping boy for Linux
> propaganda.  I will sign written agreement, provided the page is
> locked with approved content or removed entirely.  As it stands I
> just had Wales served with an order and I notifed Judge Kimball the
> content is on this site, I have no other choice, I have an
> obligation to enforce this order.  The way to remove this
> obligation from me relative to this site is to remove the page or
> better even still, lock it to prevent these folks from posting
> sealed materials in the future.  As it stands, I would expect the
> Federal Court will serve a Praecipe from the Sheriff on Wales and
> have it taken down in any event, whether anyone here agrees or
> not.  I wanted to avoid all that, so I tried as best I could to
> provide sound advice on how to sidestep this problem.  I wish the
> folks on the site had listened.  As you have as an attorney, so
> have I lived in a constant cloud of litigation for the past ten
> years.  I really would like for that to change.
> Sincerely,
>
> Jeff V. Merkey
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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] copyright question: concerning the use of scientific
	articles

body:
Exactly. Ideas cannot be copyrighted; verbatim language is, by
statute, copyrighted. Occasionally a brief quote might be necessary
and considered fair use. For, example, you might in discussing
Einstein's work need to use the sentence, "E equals mc squared."
However, even if you don't copy a source, credit it. To not credit
the source would be plagiarism.

Fred

On Oct 26, 2005, at 5:41 AM, Uwe Brauer wrote:

> could I avoid that problem in simply not copying even a
> single sentence verbatim?


body:
On 10/25/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/26/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Can't be much worse than the current system. I've come to find that the
> best
> > way to deal with the arb com is to ignore them. I can't think of a
> single
> > good thing that has come out of the arb com, save those things that only
> > needed to be resolved because the arb com existed in the first place. I
> > don't think it matters very much who's on the arb com. The position
> itself
> > is fundamentally flawed.
>
> It deals with problem users who admins don't have the authority to deal
> with.

Which is exactly what I mean by "those things that only need to be resolved
because the arb com exists in the first place."


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How do I edit a page from inside China?

body:
Christopher Maloney wrote:
> As most of you probably know, China has recently blocked (again)
> access to Wikipedia.  I've gotten around their Great Firewall by
> installing tor, but now, I find that my edit access to pages is
> blocked, because I appear to be coming from an open proxy.
>
> I don't understand why my edit access is blocked, even though I'm
> logged in as a valid user (Klortho).  I'm sure there's a good reason,
> but I don't understand it.  Anyway, is there any way around this?  I
> certainly hope so, because it seems ironic to me that Wikipedia, in
> effect, puts up an additional barrier to Chinese people wanting to
> express themselves (in addition to the censorship by the government,
> that is).

I just created [[Wikipedia:Advice to Tor users in China]] to answer this
question:

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

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] cancelling unicode for buginese

body:
Installing the font is easy, on my system it was:

$ wget http://home.att.net/~jameskass/CODE2000.ZIP
$ unzip CODE2000 -x CODE2000.HTM
$ mv CODE2000.TTF ~/.fonts/
$ fc-cache


body:
On 10/25/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> Ben Yates wrote:
> > There's no way to keep anonymous proxy users blocked and let logged-in
> proxy
> > users edit?
>
> Some of the worst vandalbots create accounts.
>
> Still, your point is absolutely valid in the broader sense. What
> changes could be make that might allow us to mitigate the problems of
> anonymous proxies in a gentler way than wholesale blocking?
>
> Keep in mind that ideas are essentially useless, at least as compared to
> simple running code. So those of us who want to get something done in
> this area have a responsibility to either code it, or make sure that our
> great heroes the programmers understand that their humble subjects would
> be overjoyed to see something good in this area. :-)
>
> --Jimbo

Yes, code is better than ideas, but it is my understanding that people at
Tor offered to help code up a plugin that would allow any admin to block all
Tor exit nodes for 30 minutes. Also, some users have already been working on
code to block all Tor exit nodes permanently, citing a policy against open
proxies and then listing *your name* as the person to contact. It's even
been run for a while (that's why about half the exit nodes are blocked), but
it was stopped because so many complaints were received). If I recall
correctly, you declared on this list that all open proxies should be blocked
(implying if not saying that they should be blocked permanently). Is this
how you feel about Tor?

If people are working on the code to block these proxies anyway, you're not
seriously suggesting that the people working on the code have the sole right
to determine how long the blocks should last, are you?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion again

body:
On 10/26/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> >>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Anthony_DiPierro_2
> >> "Anthony is subject to a one revert limitation, prohibited from
> >> creating deleted content that fails to pass a vote for undeletion,
> >> subject to ad hoc blocks for disruption, and banned from editing the
> >> Wikipedia namespace."
> >> Anthony, it wasn't Snowspinner who got you blocked from the Wikipedia
> >> namespace for a year. It wasn't anyone else either. It was you and
> >> no-one else. You wuzn't robbed, you did it to yourself. This is
> >> unlikely to change until you understand that life is not a breaching
> >> experiment.
>
> >False accusations with no facts to back them up. Sounds like a repeat of
> the
> >arb ruling itself.
>
>
> What amazes me is that you can straightfacedly say that while quoting
> the URL documenting otherwise.

Apparently you haven't read my comments on the ruling, which I made on the
talk pages. The findings of fact give no basis for such a block, and what
little explanation they do give is for the most part wrong.

For those wondering at the veracity of my statements above, I offer
> the above URL, its related detailed ruling and evidence pages:
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Anthony_DiPierro_2/Proposed_decision
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Anthony_DiPierro_2/Evidence
>
> And the previous arbitration case concerning Anthony:
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Anthony_DiPierro

Yes, please, look at them both. The first one was over the fact that I made
a lot of arguments and votes to keep articles on VFD. It occured around two
years ago. The second one was because I got into an edit war on a subpage of
my own user page regarding an issue the arb com agreed I was in the right
about on the first place.

I should also note that it was a small minority of the arbitrators who voted
to impose that ban. 4 people chose to implement the ban over unsubstantiated
accusations *that weren't even in the finding of facts*. The deliberation
for this was done almost exclusively behind the scenes. Even those who voted
for the ban agreed to review it after 3 months, which they flatly refused to
do when the 3 months came around. The whole thing was a complete travesty of
justice, perhaps due in part to my handling of the case in which I made
little attempt to prove a negative and instead trusted that the arb com
would realize that the parties against me were making baseless accusations
without backing them up with any evidence.

>Not sure what you mean about it not being likely to change. I'll be allowed
> >to edit in the Wikipedia namespace again in a few months.
>
>
> Then please note from the proposed decision in your second case: "I
> would warn Anthony that should Anthony 3 be necessary any hesitations
> we have about imposing a substantial remedy may not apply. Fred Bauder
> 10:23, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)"
>
> The last cases of an editor waiting out their bans and coming back to
> continue where they left off (Plautus Satire, Irate) resulted in a
> rapid ejection from the wiki. Anthony, I ACTUALLY DON'T WANT THIS TO
> HAPPEN and I really don't think anyone does. Your dedication to and
> love for Wikipedia is unquestionable, and it'd be a damn shame.

I don't know enough about those cases to really comment on this comparison,
but I know about my case. It was a case which was almost entirely about
punishment for past acts, most of which occurred over a year before the
ruling (nearly two years ago), and almost entirely not about a current
ongoing problem.

In my opinion the slate will be completely swept clean after the year is up.
I really can't say what specifically is going to happen, but I really doubt
I'm going to ever care enough to make very many contributions to the wiki.
The arb com had its chance to reconcile itself with me during the three
month review, and it refused. What I probably *should* do is stop caring
about wiki politics completely. It's something I had accomplished for the
first 6 months or so, but now I find myself getting interested in them all
over again.

I really don't know what's going to happen after the ban is lifted.

> Can't be much worse than the current system. I've come to find that the
> best
> > way to deal with the arb com is to ignore them. I can't think of a
> single
> > good thing that has come out of the arb com, save those things that only
> > needed to be resolved because the arb com existed in the first place. I
> > don't think it matters very much who's on the arb com. The position
> itself
> > is fundamentally flawed.
>
>
> You really, really need some self-insight and to admit the possibility
> that you may be at least somewhat the author of your own misfortunes,
> not everyone else.

I'm clearly part of the reason that the arb com banned me. I just happen to
think that for the most part I was in the right. I do admit that some things
I did were inappropriate, mostly occurring in the earlier periods of the 2-3
years I've been involved with Wikipedia.

I think most importantly, the arb com has solidified in my mind as a fact,
sort of like taxes or speed limits or drug laws. If I get pulled over for
speeding I'm not going to argue with the cop that it's a stupid law. And
it's unarguably true that the *reason* I got pulled over had a whole lot to
do with me. The same arguments apply to the arb com, who basically act as a
rubber stamp for mob rule. Mob rule is harder to deal with than laws,
because the mob doesn't write its rules down, but you can usually figure out
what they are before it becomes too big of a problem.

Anthony


body:
You probably don't need to copy that many sentences verbatim --
articles on far more complicated/tenacious subjects are possible
without that sort of copying. Use of attributed paraphrasing in this
case is a better approach. Take a look at other articles of this sort
for examples of this (i.e. [[Gold foil experiment]], which was
recently cleaned up and made into a pretty nice little article).

Anyway. You can't use *any* sentences from another publication unless
they are *quotes*, and quotes should only be an insubstantial amount
of the original text anyway so they qualify as "fair use".

It should be noted, however, that "scientific facts" themselves are
*not* copyrightable (that is, you don't have to ask permission to
print the speed of light, even if a new number for it came out
yesterday). But in this instance I'm not sure that caveate applies.

My suggestion: write the article, using quotes from the original
article. Then submit it to peer review and say, "I want to cut down
some of the direct quotation used, but I'm not sure ofthe best way to
do it. Can you help?" My bet is that somebody will be able to refactor
it in a nice way.

FF

On 10/26/05, Uwe Brauer <oub at mat.ucm.es> wrote:
>
>
> Hello
>
>
> Sorry if this article gets posted twice, but I presume my subscription
> was not complete when I sent the following article.
>
>
> I am not sure whether this is the right list to ask, if not could
> somebody please point out to me the appropriate one.
>
> I want to write an article which relies heavily on scientific
> publications. (I will of course cite the relevant articles at the end
> of `my' wikipedia article). What I have in mind is a summary of their
> work, maybe one of ten sentences copied literally. Do I need the
> permissions of the authors of these article (one author is already
> dead) or could I avoid that problem in simply not copying even a
> single sentence verbatim?
>
>
> Or without their explicit permission I simply could not write about
> the subject?
>
>
> Thanks and regards
>
> Uwe Brauer
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Mark Ryan

body:
How about just "News"? That's all Britannica uses on their front page.

~Mark Ryan


subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Our exponentially increasing costs (was Re: Re:
 Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to Form New Partnership)

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
>> --- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Anthony makes a good point.  Hardware does break down over time, and has
>>> to be replaced.  Even more likely is that it will become obsolete before
>>> it breaks down.
>>
>>
>> When that becomes a significant issue, then the model will need to be
>> updated.
>> I've been told that, so far, pretty much all the hardware we've ever
>> bought is
>> still in use.
>
>
> I should point out that it hasn't been that long; we started the Florida
> cluster in early 2004 following the Great Double Server Crash of
> Christmas 2003.
>
> The oldest machine we have in service is Larousse, an 866-MHz Pentium
> III which does some specialized and backup services, and used to be our
> secondary web server in the old California location.
>
> Everything else is less than two years old, with the oldest generation
> being 2.6GHz Pentium IVs. Not quite obsolete yet!
>
> A number of machines have had to go out for repair or replacement over
> time (usually faulty memory, sometimes failed disks), but most are still
> chugging away.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Moore's Law isn't what it used to be. Processor speeds have virtually been
standing still for the past two years. In October 2003, Intel's fastest
32-bit processor was 3.2 GHz. Today, two years on, it is 3.8 GHz, an
increase of 19%. That's a far cry from the doubling predicted by Moore's law.

Don't think that Moore's law is inevitable, and that some new discovery on
the horizon will see processor speeds resume the trend as if nothing
happened. It shouldn't be suprising that performance increases are becoming
more difficult, as the technology approaches physical limits. I wouldn't be
suprised if the speeds of our present processors remined quite acceptable
for several years to come.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] New Ideas for AfD

body:
On 10/26/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>
> >I don't care about the number of votes. If an expert can assert it
> >meets notability criteria it should be kept. We should try to get such
> >criteria for as many types of articles as possible.
>
> Tell the people on AFD. (And I dare you to quote actual policy.) They
> seriously argue that a consensus of the admittedly ignorant on a
> subject beats a dissenting actual no-foolin' expert.

If an actual no-foolin' expert dissents, then there isn't consensus in the
first place.


from_name: Delirium

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>I've never even been on Oprah, if you see what I mean.  We've completely
>saturated the awareness of the tech early adopters, but there is a huge
>huge group of people beyond that who simply haven't heard of Wikipedia.
>
>
That's true, but many of those people are using Wikipedia anyway,
because it now comes near the top of the google hits for a lot of topics
people frequently search for.  (Of course, not everyone yet uses google
to search for information, but a pretty large proportion of internet
users do.)

-Mark


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Expert weight on AfD

body:
>From: David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>
>MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>>I don't care about the number of votes. If an expert can assert it
>>meets notability criteria it should be kept. We should try to get such
>>criteria for as many types of articles as possible.

>Tell the people on AFD. (And I dare you to quote actual policy.) They
>seriously argue that a consensus of the admittedly ignorant on a
>subject beats a dissenting actual no-foolin' expert.

Simple self-assertion of expertise carries very little weight in AfD. This is
true whether arguing for exclusion OR inclusion.

If, however, one has actual knowledge of a topic it is quite possible to
influence an AfD _strongly,_ not by asserting knowledgeability but by _using_
one's knowledge to locate and cite convincing evidence weighing on the topic.

One of the characteristics of Wikipedia is that the only authority one has is
one's ability to convince other Wikipedians. This is sometimes a strength and
sometimes a weakness.

The problem with saying that "If an expert asserts that an article meets
notability criteria it should be kept" (or the reverse) is that on Wikipedia,
there are no accepted credentials for expertise.

In any situation, Wikipedians credit you with the exact amount of expertise
you actually demonstrate immediately, on the spot, in their presense.


from_name: Amruta Lonkar

subject: [Wikitech-l] Whihc php file called

body:
Hi,

I am trying to find whihc function is called when user hits the save button on
edit page and in whihc file the button click for save is checked.

Any help appreciated.

Thanks,
--
Amruta


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Expertise "counting" in AfD

body:
>>I don't care about the number of votes. If an expert can assert it
>>meets notability criteria it should be kept. We should try to get such
>>criteria for as many types of articles as possible.

>Tell the people on AFD. (And I dare you to quote actual policy.) They
>seriously argue that a consensus of the admittedly ignorant on a
>subject beats a dissenting actual no-foolin' expert.

Simple self-assertion of expertise carries very little weight in AfD. This is
true whether arguing for exclusion OR inclusion.

If, however, one has actual knowledge of a topic it is quite possible to
influence an AfD _strongly,_ not by asserting knowledgeability but by _using_
one's knowledge to locate and cite convincing evidence weighing on the topic.
One of the characteristics of Wikipedia is that the only authority one has is
one's ability to convince other Wikipedians. This is sometimes a strength and
sometimes a weakness.

The problem with saying that "If an actual no-foolin' expert asserts that an
article meets notability criteria it should be kept" (or the reverse) is that
on Wikipedia, there are no accepted credentials for actual no-foolin'
expertise.

The current culture is that Wikipedians credit you with the exact amount of
expertise you actually demonstrate _right now_ on the spot, in their
presence.


from_name: Gerrit Holl

body:
Walter Vermeir wrote:
> Outsource the reading of the encyclopaedia. Keep Wikipedia out of the
> results of the search engines. Reduce drastically the traffic to
> Wikipedia. Keep Wikipedia only as the project to write the encyclopaedia.

I don't think you can seperate those. Doing minor edits is something I
do when I read an article. I go to Wikipedia both to read *and* to
write; seperating those would be disastrous. I think the number of minor
edits, and therefore the growth of quality, would plunge dramatically.

Gerrit.

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-10-26 09:59:57   -2.6 degrees Celsius ( 27.3F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Help needed for helpdesk-l

body:
"Timwi" <timwi at gmx.net> wrote in message
news:djlp2a$anh$1 at sea.gmane.org...
>
>> Since the helpdesk-l address was made more instantly visible, there
>> has been a surge of questions to the list - of a wide range of
>> queries/problems/issues. Your help would be appreciated. You can
>> subscribe at http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/helpdesk-l
>
> I'm glad to hear my help would be appreciated, but I'm unwilling to help
> if there is no newsgroup (preferrably Gmane) mirroring the mailing list.
> I've asked for one before and just got a "no"; I've also applied directly
> at Gmane and not received a response. Under these circumstances, I cannot
> offer my help.

Try:
gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.helpdesk

Seems to be working for me OK.

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


from_name: Delphine Ménard

body:
On 10/26/05, Jtkiefer <jtkiefer at wordzen.net> wrote:

> I thought it was generally agreed upon though that rising costs on
> hardware could be compensated for, since users are more than willing to
> donate for hardware costs.  Correct me if I'm wrong but couldn't
> wikimedia just adjust their donation goals to cover that and thus cover
> the cost of new hardware/repairs/upgrades, etc...?

We can, and we will, to an extent. The difficulty of this lies
elsewhere. Fundraising drives so far have been huge successes, fine.
But let's try to see it differently. I receive every week dozens of
sollicitations, through the post, on websites, whatever. I can only
give *so much* a week/month/year. So can you, probably. Although our
traffic is growing, and our readership (ie. people who are willing to
help us with donations) is growing, I doubt we can appeal to them for
specific fundraising drives everyday. There comes a time when people
will say "Well, I have given for the year" and won't give anymore.
Daniel made it clear, the curve for donations won't follow the curve
for costs. Since our costs are growing so fast (I won't go back to all
the explanations given here and elsewhere), I don't think that
fundraising drives will be near enough to cover those costs.

Small donations originated by fundraising drives are something we
should *count* on, but not something we should *rely* on. We're not
the only ones out there asking for money, and I believe that it is
also our job to be looking elsewhere for hard cash.

In our case, I would say that all editors, by spending the time they
spend providing content and making Wikimedia projects what they are,
are already donating. I would not blame anyone who'd argue that they
"don't have cash, but already give some time and knowledge". Except
that time and knowledge, although they are indispensable, don't buy
servers or cover operating costs.

Cheers,

Delphine
--
~notafish


from_name: Andrew Venier

subject: [WikiEN-l] Webcomics/Deletion again

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>>Why should we have articles on every single Pokemon if they are totally
>>unknown outside of the Pokemon community?
>>
>
>*What have I forgotten on this list?
>
>(I should probably put the list above somewhere on the wiki. Suggestions?)
>
>
One point that may be overlooked -- the sheer size and number of
articles is not so much of a burden for Wikimedia -- which has ample
resources -- but it might be an issue for any potential downstream users
of the content.

 From a recent e-mail from Jimmy Wales to foundation-l:
"Frankly, and let me be blunt, Wikipedia as a readable product is not
for us.  It's for them.  It's for that girl in Africa who can save the
lives of hundreds of thousands of people around her, but only if she's
empowered with the knowledge to do so."
(
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-October/004545.html )


body:
David Gerard wrote:

>One of the things the AC has been doing this year, to fill gaps as
>they come up, is to actively look around the wiki for sufficiently
>clueful people to recruit to the AC. This is harder than you might
>think, because a lot of the best prospects for the job fairly sensibly
>run screaming from the idea. But we have ways and means to convince
>them ;-)
>
>
Yes, I think this is the major thing that needs to be done.  There are
issues with the selection process, but by and large the biggest one is
with the lack of qualified and interested candidates.  Even a lot of
initially interested people burn out pretty quickly: I think more than
half the arbitrators we've ever had have resigned before the end of
their terms.  I know I fairly quickly (probably 5-6 months in) started
realizing that I would rather put in the time writing new articles.

-Mark


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories, lists and series boxes (was Ratings again)

body:
Delirium wrote:
>Stefan Sittler wrote:

>>I have been wondering about this, actually. (I'm newish to WP). Could
>>somebody show me how exactly categories are helpful? A link would be
>>fine. It's hard for me to see the usefulness. A link or three would be
>>fine, maybe an old pertinent discussion. Thanks.

>I see them as fulfilling a lot of the functions that would otherwise
>have to be fulfilled with lists, but in a more maintainable way, since
>they're maintained incrementally on the article side, not centrally on
>the list side (the "list" is then automatically generated).  They don't
>completely replace lists, but they automate a lot of the more tedious
>sorts of lists that would otherwise have to be constructed and maintained.

[[WP:CSL]] is a guideline discussing the use of categories, article
series templates and list articles. The three are complementary.
WP:CSL mentions some advantages and disadvantages of each.

(Originally written by Snowspinner, heavily revised by me, now merrily
instruction-creeping at the hands of the community. I didn't manage to
get my passionate contempt and loathing for article series boxes in
general made into a guideline, but have managed to point out the sort
of problems that will get a series box sent to WP:TFD in short order
;-)

- d.


body:
Koltwills wrote:

>You have attempted to edit a page, either by clicking the "edit this  page"
>tab or by following a red link.
>Your user name or IP address has been _blocked_
>(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy)   by _David  Gerard_
>(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard) .
>The reason given is:
>Autoblocked because your IP address has  been recently used by
>"_Ugabogaimasuuuukpoopit@!_
>(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Ugabogaimasuuuukpoopit@!&action=edit)
".  >The reason given for Ugabogaimasuuuukpoopit@!'s
>block is: "massive  sockpuppetry (A1sdf sockpuppet)".

Yeah. I blocked a sokpuppeteering vandal. Unfortunately, they were
using a pile of AOL IPs, so I spent yesterday answering email (and
trying to get some people to just cut'n'paste the error message so I
know which username to look for!) and undoing blocks on the IPs.

>This hasn't happened for a couple of weeks, but it happens frequently  enough
>-- often three and four times a week:  I get blocked as the  result of
>someone else's conduct.  When I try to edit, I get the  "User is
blocked" message --
>but the I.P. address is never my  own.
>How does this happen?

AOL runs what is effectively a massive internal anonymising proxy. Any
individual *page view* might come from a different IP.

A page explaining it technically is:

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

Someone's called it "super-dynamic proxying", which is a pretty good
way to put it.

>How does this happen?  Is there something I or someone else can  do to
>prevent it from occurring again?

Excluding AOL ranges from the autoblocker might be an idea, or setting
the duration to be very short for those IPs.

In the meantime, I apologise profusely for the trouble, even though it
will probably happen again and again and again and ...

- d.


from_name: steven l. rubenstein

subject: [WikiEN-l] Previews

body:
Half the time I click on "Save Page" the next screen is a "Preview" (and my
edits are not yet saved).  I have been careful about this, and am
definitely clicking on "Save Page," not "Show Preview."  And this is
happening a lot.

Is this happening to anyone else, or is it just me?

Does anyone have any idea why it is happening?

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701


subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration Committee elections, 2005

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>I suggest you submit names to Jimbo with a basis for why you think
>they would be a good arbitrator. That is basically all we do. If we
>all agree on one person (remember we often disagree) he is likely to
>seriously consider the person. If a person is making a lot of trouble
>already we are not likely to think they are good candidates, but
>personally I am a little concerned that what makes a good arbitrator
>is not all that predictable.
>By the way, anyone who thinks they can contribute to arbitration is
>welcome to make proposal on the /Workshop page of any arbitration
>case. I know I'll be looking for talent there. Rumor has it that
>there might be a small reward for any of the Wikipedia advocates
>should any of their work on /Workshop be used in a decision by the
>Arbitration Committee.

:-)

One of the things the AC has been doing this year, to fill gaps as
they come up, is to actively look around the wiki for sufficiently
clueful people to recruit to the AC. This is harder than you might
think, because a lot of the best prospects for the job fairly sensibly
run screaming from the idea. But we have ways and means to convince
them ;-)

Job requirements, off the top of my head ...

* Analytical skill
* Empathy
* The synergy of the two (which is a different thing from either individually)
* An excellent feel for the community; knowing how to deal with
expectations, which are much more hazardous to break than mere policy
* Consistent free time to put into important but often tedious and
depressing work
* Enough political skill on the wiki to convince people you have enough clue

What else?

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion again

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Anthony_DiPierro_2
>> "Anthony is subject to a one revert limitation, prohibited from
>> creating deleted content that fails to pass a vote for undeletion,
>> subject to ad hoc blocks for disruption, and banned from editing the
>> Wikipedia namespace."
>> Anthony, it wasn't Snowspinner who got you blocked from the Wikipedia
>> namespace for a year. It wasn't anyone else either. It was you and
>> no-one else. You wuzn't robbed, you did it to yourself. This is
>> unlikely to change until you understand that life is not a breaching
>> experiment.

>False accusations with no facts to back them up. Sounds like a repeat of the
>arb ruling itself.

What amazes me is that you can straightfacedly say that while quoting
the URL documenting otherwise.

For those wondering at the veracity of my statements above, I offer
the above URL, its related detailed ruling and evidence pages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Anthony_DiPierro_2/Proposed_decision
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Anthony_DiPierro_2/Evidence

And the previous arbitration case concerning Anthony:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Anthony_DiPierro

>Not sure what you mean about it not being likely to change. I'll be allowed
>to edit in the Wikipedia namespace again in a few months.

Then please note from the proposed decision in your second case: "I
would warn Anthony that should Anthony 3 be necessary any hesitations
we have about imposing a substantial remedy may not apply. Fred Bauder
10:23, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)"

The last cases of an editor waiting out their bans and coming back to
continue where they left off (Plautus Satire, Irate) resulted in a
rapid ejection from the wiki. Anthony, I ACTUALLY DON'T WANT THIS TO
HAPPEN and I really don't think anyone does. Your dedication to and
love for Wikipedia is unquestionable, and it'd be a damn shame.

> Can't be much worse than the current system. I've come to find that the best
> way to deal with the arb com is to ignore them. I can't think of a single
> good thing that has come out of the arb com, save those things that only
> needed to be resolved because the arb com existed in the first place. I
> don't think it matters very much who's on the arb com. The position itself
> is fundamentally flawed.

You really, really need some self-insight and to admit the possibility
that you may be at least somewhat the author of your own misfortunes,
not everyone else.

- d.


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
>
>
>
> --- Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On 10/26/05, Jtkiefer <jtkiefer at wordzen.net> wrote:
> >
> > > I thought it was generally agreed upon though that rising costs on
> > > hardware could be compensated for, since users are more than willing
> to
> > > donate for hardware costs. Correct me if I'm wrong but couldn't
> > > wikimedia just adjust their donation goals to cover that and thus
> cover
> > > the cost of new hardware/repairs/upgrades, etc...?
>
> So far, that is pretty much all we have been doing (although the
> foundation
> also wants to do much, much more than that). But buying more hardware and
> serving lots more people also increases overhead/administrative costs. So
> while
> the percentage that overhead takes from the budget has been in the 20-30%
> range, the total amount has grown in proportion to hardware and hosting
> costs.
>
> > Daniel made it clear, the curve for donations won't follow the curve
> > for costs. Since our costs are growing so fast (I won't go back to all
> > the explanations given here and elsewhere), I don't think that
> > fundraising drives will be near enough to cover those costs.
>
> Actually, I just said my gut feeling was that the donation curve would not
>
> follow the cost curve forever. What is needed is a statistical assessment
> of
> the two. However, looking *only* at two fund drive data points and two
> traffic
> data points gives some reason to be optimistic.
>
> Q3 2004 Fund Drive grand total: $44,863.95 USD
> September 2004 unique visitors to wikipedia.org <http://wikipedia.org/>:
> 3.2 million
>
> Q4 2005 Fund Drive grand total: $243,930 USD
> September 2005 unique visitors to wikipedia.org <http://wikipedia.org/>:
> 12.8 million
>
> So, there has been a 533% increase in donations for a 400% increase in
> traffic.

I know you've mentioned that this is only two data points, but let me point
out an important one that's missing. How many of the people who donated in
Q3 2004 also donated in Q4 2005? Are donations primarily a one-time thing
for new users, or are they an ongoing thing? If the former, the biggest
problems might not come until the growth slows down. Of course, at that
point the need for new servers won't be as severe, but hosting costs will
continue to steadily suck money out of the community.

I guess even without the growth slowing down, it's likely going to move
toward people with less means to contribute. That'd be another interesting
statistic, though it'd have to be approximate (we know what countries the
visitors are coming from, and could look at the changing distribution by
country factoring in the median income).

> Throw in Moore's Law and things look even better. However, the traffic
> numbers
> are only for wikipedia.org <http://wikipedia.org/> and this only tracks
> unique visitors; those visitors
> likely use Wikipedia more often today than they did last year. The other
> projects, esp Commons, Wiktionary and Wikinews are starting to become
> popular
> as well. So I'll tend to be pessimistic until I'm able to analyze some
> hard
> data for every one of our domains (data with consistent standards - esp
> for the
> non-wikipedia.org <http://non-wikipedia.org/> domains - has been difficult
> to come by).
>
> > Small donations originated by fundraising drives are something we
> > should *count* on, but not something we should *rely* on. We're not
> > the only ones out there asking for money, and I believe that it is
> > also our job to be looking elsewhere for hard cash.
>
> Well, we kinda do have to rely on small donations. Small donations, not
> big
> ones or grants, make up the vast majority of our income. Relying too much
> on
> any one or select few big donors, grants or income from partnership
> agreements
> puts us in jeopardy if any one or several of them pull their funding. But
> the
> answer to that is to have *lots* of big donors, grants, and income streams
> from
> partnerships. However, I think your point was that we should not simply
> rely on
> donations in general as our sole income stream. Yep - I agree with that
> 100%.
> We also need to diversity our income in general - we can't be too reliant
> any
> one source

Not just practically, but legally. The difference between a public charity
and a private foundation is whether the revenues come from a broad base of
people or just a select few. Creative Commons just recently started its
first fund drive, not just because they needed the money, but so that they
could meet the IRS "public support test". See
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5661 and
http://creativecommons.org/support . I'm not sure if advertising would count
as public support or not. I initially thought it would (under section
509(a)(2), if you care) but I've read some IRS rulings recently which have
made me reconsider.

> In our case, I would say that all editors, by spending the time they
> > spend providing content and making Wikimedia projects what they are,
> > are already donating. I would not blame anyone who'd argue that they
> > "don't have cash, but already give some time and knowledge". Except
> > that time and knowledge, although they are indispensable, don't buy
> > servers or cover operating costs.
>
> I get several emails in the ORTS donation queue each week from people who
> either don't have cash or who want to donate in a currency that we don't
> accept. I tell each that their donation of time in either contributing
> content
> or telling people about Wikipedia is just as important as giving money.
> That
> Wikipedia would not exist without volunteer effort.
>
> -- mav

This is the reason I think a more P2P based network would be such a great
solution for the long-term. People wouldn't need to donate cash to cover
operating "costs".

Anthony