from_name: Jon Awbrey

subject: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

body:
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

post 4.

incorporating responses to:

SB = Sean Barrett

SB: Perhaps we can get straight to the point:

SB: What do you hope to accomplish by repeating
the standard Mk.1 Disgruntled User Rant, modified
only by the Gratuitous Use of Fatuous Initialisms (GUFI)?

the purpose of an exit interview, as some organizations make use of them,
is is to acquire from departing members an order of feedback information
that for all sorts of humanly understandable reasons members are usually
reluctant to share, or even proscribed from sharing, while still members
of the group.  a bit more directness, a bit more risk-taking, a lot less
dancing around the bush, a lot less mincing of words, and in the case of
WP, we can all drop that constant mental strain of trying to assume good
faith of folk who behave like brown shirts, or brown sock-puppets in the
current fashion.

the frank exchange of views so far allows me to extend my classification:

1.  accurate reporters (AR's)
2.  responsible scholars (RS's)
3.  disgrunted users (DU's)
4.  infantile vandals (IV's)
5.  expert disrupters (ED's)

in order to learn from the welter of disressing phenomena
that we are bound to encounter in any complex environment,
and especially any system that involves large masses of
interacting human beings, it helps to stand back a bit
from the fray and try to guess what sorts of dynamics
are driving the developments in question.  lately,
i have found myself spending a lot more time
standing aback and a lot less time writing
articles, and so i might as well share
a few of my more persistent findings,
plus a few more speculative guesses
as to what the hell may be going on.

to be continued ...

jon awbrey

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Jon_Awbrey
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o


list: textbook-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Michael R. Irwin

subject: [Textbook-l] Wikiversity and Wikibooks

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

>One of the suggestions I have made is that when the time comes for
>Wikiversity to be "seperated" from Wikibooks, that Wikiversity simply
>duplicate the Wikibooks database and let the editors on Wikiversity have
>a fun time culling the Wikibooks-only content, with of course moving the
>"Wikiversity" page to "Main Page" and some other minor housecleaning
>items.  It might even be worth while to simply copy the user database as
>well in this situation, and have a steward simply desysop and sysop the
>new admins/bureaucrats for Wikibooks.
>
>

I think the above is a fairly brilliant suggestion that will make
everyone much more productive than trying to "transwiki" page by page
and fix all links.  It embodies the inherent wisdom of the like it, lump
it, or fork it of the typical volunteer driven open/free content
project.   Proponents can all do as they please and see what works on
their project or task.  Opponents can be encouraged to go back to their
personal proponent space.    If naysayers are brilliant enough in their
analysis, presentation, and real politicking they can be embraced and
extended into local proponents or encouraged to duplicate enough effort
such that it is clear how participants wish to vote with their feet.

regards,
lazyquasar


subject: [Textbook-l] Rewrite of Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

>John Pozniak wrote:
>
>
>
>>I have for a long time espoused the idea that once a book reaches a certain size, it should be given more and more autonomy. This includes creating its own policies, its own manual of style, its own naming conventions, and even overall control on its own content.
>>
>>John (gentgeen)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>I generally agree with this sentiment, and have been particularly
>annoyed when a VfD was posted about a particular module, such as recipes
>from the Cookbook or the "What is gravity" module of Wikijunior Solar
>System.  I have never seen these modules properly resolved in the VfD
>forum, and instead is mainly is a place to roll the fight out and aire
>dirty laundry.  More akin to a barroom brawl that runs onto the street
>and into neighboring businesses.  It is never pretty, and the feelings
>are usually so charged and divided by the time it gets to the VfD page
>that the issue doesn't really get resolved.  A plea for a neutral
>moderator to come into the discussion might be in order from time to
>time, but in that case a direct plea to an admin would be more
>reasonable, or a quick note on the Staff Lounge.
>
>
>
As an outsider with a limited exposure and understanding of the
community and what it needs to successfully create numerous (every
subject known to man) and high quality (best presentation possible in
all of the myriad layouts and forms such that a parallel information
economy is trending towards superior not inferior to previous methods of
production such as socialism, communism, capitalism, divine inspiration,
cave painting, etc.) this reminds me of the early debate at Wikipedia
over dribbles of information and excellent articles only.

The excellent articles only crowd viewed a good inspiring public
presentation as the only possible way to gain adequate participation to
succeed with continued high quality generation of articles.

The stubs are valuable framework and encourage people to start
participating by leaving a tiny improvements or questions on the
discussion page of some kind crowd insisted that these dribbles and
stubs not be routinely and automatically reverted by roving bands of
vandalism fighters or automated reversion tools.

Personally I see Wikiversity as a valuable workspace for all the other
projects where sloppy messy creative unfinished stuff can be stashed and
the tweakers can be encouraged to polish their skills or information
content.  When lightening strikes; a group product or a group is ready
for the bigtime; it can be relocated or merged with great fanfare and
celebration over to the other projects which have shifted slightly in
focus; a little more towards stewardship of excellent product and higher
level producers of excellent product; a little less required attention
towards upgrading or integrating dribbles of less than perfect
information product created by beginners.

Notice that I do not advocate any project (that wishes to survive
longterm) screaming at its neophytes and customers that this place is
for high quality producers only, go get some useful skills at
Wikiversity before wasting our time at WikiX.

Also, I do not agree with any project being able to inform Wikiversity
student groups or organizations enough is enough you are killing us with
these superior products that belong on WikiX.   I think an effective
project leadership or participant should be able to show our successful
Wikiversity producers (any who wish to continue thriving inside the
effective zones carved out in the midst of the hordes of undisciplined
free participants rather than relocate to a outside project percieved as
hostile and a failure prone place of over zealous disciplinarians) how
they can derive benefits to their microproject or task from the proposed
new location with just adequate conformance with necessary project X
policy and procedures.

If nobody can agree then the materials can be forked and the random
chaotic Wikiversity people can continue to apple polish while helping
newcomer's study; while the better focused more mature projects can
support serving to the huge internet accessible (and possible published
CD) crowds looking for specific high quality work.   Periodic cross
integration of tiny evolving improvements can be an excellent beginner's
task for both environments.

We really should not be attempting to avoid duplication of effort,
rather encouraging sufficient participation that the production of free
knowledge is percieved by our entire species as a useful beneficial
thing to do for individuals and for all of posterity.

regards,
lazyquasar


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Data dump changes

body:
Two minor changes in the process for the data dumps I started earlier today:

* The intermediate "stub" XML dumps are now available for download instead of
vanishing into a temporary directory. These contain all the article and revision
metadata but not the revision text.

* The .7z version of the full-history dump is now built after the .bz2 completes
instead of both at the same time; this should make the .bz2 versions of the big
wikis available for download sooner as it won't have to wait on the slower 7-zip
compressor. (It's still using the slow single-threaded bzip2 for the moment,
though.)

The stub dumps are the same format as the full XML dumps, with the exception
that the <text> element is empty. It has an id attribute (not listed in the XML
Schema file, so don't enforce schema validation in your parser) indicating the
internal storage node which contains that revision's text.

This node number isn't really useful unless you're on our servers as the raw
storage tables are not accessible from outside, but if you want to do statistics
dealing with the rest of the metadata fields it's going to be a lot faster to
deal with these lighter-weight files than the version with full text embedded.

These are compressed with gzip for speed; the stub dump for English Wikipedia
full history runs about 2 gigabytes compressed.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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list: foundation-l

from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] the easy way or the less easy way

references:
<e7157g$kf4$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNAEIODBAA.erikzachte@infodisiac.com>
	<e73fd3$vpj$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<b80736c80606180810p91f3d07u637daa766dc68524@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 6/19/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> As regards your statement that a temporary Board appointment may be
> imminent, is there a particular reason why it needs to be an
> appointment, rather than an election?

It would be an interim measure between the time of the appointment and
the next election (hopefully September if the Board can make the
effort to vote on the pending resolution between now and then).

> For what period of time would such an appointment be?

The one Anthere is talking about would be 3 months. Others could be
longer (hopefully not permanent).

Angela.


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikien-l

from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

body:
Dabljuh wrote:

>Obviously, this is just a disruptive user disappointed he could
>not get Wikipedia to work the way he wanted.
>
>Oh, 6000 mainspace edits. That of course changes everything.
>Obviously, this is a responsible editor and we must investigate
>why he is disappointed with working in Wikipedia.
>
>And that's right after I point out (and get ad hominem'd for it)
>that social networking is more important than having a high
>edit count, and that having a high edit count is more important
>than being a responsible journalist / scholar observing policy,
>when it comes to being successful inside Wikipedia. I.e. being
>able to contribute to the "Encyclopedia" without being harassed
>or even forcefully removed by powerful factions that happen to
>share a different POV.
>
>To the "upper management" of Wikipedia:
>Please, take these problems serious and act. Not doing so will
>simply make Wikipedia lose more and more good editors.
>
>
Huh? How is accepting that those with high edit counts (and thus more
experience editing) are more likely to know what they're talking about
than someone who just arrived yesterday making "social networking" more
important than writing the encyclopaedia? Believe me, if someone had
6000 edits in userspace and nothing else, nobody would respect him or
her, but if the 6000 edits are well-distributed, it's a likely indicator
that the fellow either knows what he/she is talking about. (It's never
an infallible one, however; some of our worst POV warriors, and of
course edit warriors, will have high edit counts.)

And do define "responsible journalist / scholar". If you arrive at
Wikipedia with preconceptions of how things should be done from past
experience, and don't adjust these preconceptions, then you will of
course have a difficult time fitting in, especially when our editorial
norms are established for good reasons.

John


from_name: Gunter

subject: [WikiEN-l] MS Word to Wiki markup converter

body:
Hello,

I think it is time to inform the community about the Word2MediaWikiPlus
converter I wrote:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Word2MediaWikiPlus

Download macro and installer directly:
http://www.beadsoft.de/files/Word2MediaWikiPlus.zip

To improve the acceptance of the wiki software in our company I needed a
user friendly converter.

This converter comes with an installation routine, has comfortably
dialog boxes and works with the english and german office versions.

If you have MS Photo Editor installed, it will extract and upload images
from the document, too.

It converts most things found in normal documents, like

- text formatting and colors
- headings
- lists
- tables, also nested
- images
- footnotes
- page headers and footers
- text boxes
- framed paragraphs

By now I find it easier to write in Word and convert, especially tables.
This macro can be used as an image extractor of the document, without
any wiki usage.

It has been extensivly tested and can be considered as a stable beta
release.

Since the macro can be localized, I would like contact to users, who use
a non german and non english Microsoft office.

Enjoy,
Gunter


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Greetings, Wikimedians

body:
James Hare wrote:

>Alternatively, we could create a new level of users that would be capable of
>editing the main space: they could receive this status if they have a good
>history of editing. This set of users wouldn't even have to make their own
>edits on the drafts; they could simply edit the main space version (but once
>they mess up, they'd better be ready to fix it and apologize). The benefit
>of this middle-point between administrators and regular users is that if
>they're trusted to make useful edits, but not necessarily trusted with admin
>tools, they can receive this status.
>
>To answer your question, Lord Voldemort, the accuracy on the wiki (that is,
>the main space, as opposed to the drafts) depends on how dedicated the
>administrator is. Or the slightly-elevated user, if we implement that
>system. If we wisely appoint these people, we won't be disappointed. I'm
>sure we have people motivated to work on such a daring endeavor. I know I
>am.
>
You have an idealised view of how a volunteer organization works.  Fact
checking is detailed, time-consuming and tedious work.  Volunteers like
to work on projects of their own, and no amount of appointing will
result in what you expect unless you are willing to pay these people.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Greetings, Wikimedians


subject: [Foundation-l] Greetings, Wikimedians

body:
James Hare wrote:

>That's what's so hard.
>
>My plan has been to have a protected mainspace and editable drafts that
>weren't obvious to the public eye, but that was denounced as unwiki. Having
>a freely-editable website, however, introduces us to extreme liability and
>would make Jimmy Wales's head explode if it were to happen.
>
>What we need is a middle ground -- one that's not awfully anti-wiki but
>should keep us pretty safe.
>
Your proposal would likely increase our exposure to liability, not
decrease it.  As long as the public is _clearly_ informed that the
information in a medical article is not necessarily the product of
professionals we are probably better off than if we gave people a false
sense of security about the reliability of the articles.  Remember too,
how people interpret such written material often has no relation to what
was actually written or what the author intended.  Do not underestimate
people's capacity to misread information, and use that as a basis for
starting a lawsuit.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Greetings, Wikimedians


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Conservative notice board

body:
I have closed the deletion review of the "Conservative notice board"
under the so-called "Snowball" clause.  This was a wikiproject created
in bad faith by a person who spammed the talk pages of 52 other
editors saying that they had identified themselves as conservatives
and inviting them to join.

How this ever got to the stage of deletion review I have no idea.
There was never a chance that this bad faith project could be
accepted.  I have therefore closed the review, endorsing the deletion,
which was unquestionably correct.  By discussing the *possibility*
that it could ever exist on Wikipedia, we were giving the wrong
impression about the purpose for which Wikipedia exists, and saying
that we don't care about our core policies.


from_name: SJ

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia : protection, death, transubstantiation

body:
I just saw this reply by Guy...

On 6/3/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 31 May 2006 10:27:16 +0200, you wrote:
>
> >I like the idea of letting vandals make changes to any
> >page - but simply not publishing them.
>
> H2G2 has a peer-review process prior to publishing in the edited
> guide.  The bureaucratic nature of this process, specifically updating
> existing content, is what caused me to give up editing H2G2 (I did
> have a large number of articles in the edited guide)

The process needn't/shouldn't be bureaucratic.   I meant that I like
the idea of most changes by most users being be passed through without
any trouble...  Changes by unknown users should show up to them but
not necessarily to everyone; those that seem like vandalism shouldn't
show up to almost anyone (save those actively patrolling for same).

SJ


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Username blocks on companies

body:
I don't know how common this is:

# 01:30, June 19, 2006 RadioKirk blocked "Shout magazine (contribs)"
with an expiry time of indefinite (username, existing company)
# 01:02, June 19, 2006 RadioKirk blocked "Shi star entertainment
(contribs)" with an expiry time of indefinite (username, existing
company)
# 21:04, June 18, 2006 RadioKirk blocked "ParsInternet (contribs)"
with an expiry time of indefinite (Username (name of existing
company))
# 00:59, June 19, 2006 RadioKirk blocked "Hammond Publishing
(contribs)" with an expiry time of indefinite (username, existing
company)

Given that we probably want people to identify who they work for,
especially when editing articles where this is relevant, is it a good
idea to block company accounts without any edits on sight? If so,
perhaps we should at least modify the talk plage template to indicate
to the user how they can put the company information on their user
page? See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Hammond_Publishing
for an example of the current template.

Erik


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Image uploads now undeletable

body:
On 6/19/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We haven't reached consensus on exactly what software design we're going to
> > use, but I believe we're largely in agreement that more amane-type machines
> > would be useful. I've asked for another one or two depending on budget; I'm
> > not sure what the status of that proposed order is.
> >
> > -- Tim Starling

> Pardon my cluelessness, but what is an "amane-type machine"? Checking
> [[Amane]] shows anime characters, but no sort of clustering scheme...

You're looking for [[Nishi Amane]]. Actually, you're looking for
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers
which lists the current Wikimedia servers. Amane is simply the name
given to one of them, which has the following specifications,
according to the table:

amane 	11/2005 	NFS storage server 	Fedora Core 	3U, 2x Xeon 3.4GHz,
8GB RAM, 16 x 400GB SATA disk

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Conservative notice board

body:
On 6/19/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have closed the deletion review of the "Conservative notice board"
> under the so-called "Snowball" clause.  This was a wikiproject created
> in bad faith by a person who spammed the talk pages of 52 other
> editors saying that they had identified themselves as conservatives
> and inviting them to join.

I agree with and support the deletion, and the closure of DRV, in
principle. Controversy seems to be only about whether other pages of a
similar nature should also be deleted, and some wikilawyering about
the deletion process.

I believe it would have been wise to move some of the discussion to a
separate page, to encourage a debate about which kind of noticeboards
(LGBT, Politics etc.) are acceptable.

Erik


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject:
[Wikitech-l] double apostrophes in titles (was: Categories on
 nap.wikipedia.org don't work)

body:
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
>
> On Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 08:26:12AM -0600, Andrew Dunbar wrote:
>> > And there's at least one more possibility: today I happened to
>> > notice that there's also a Unicode double apostrophe character,
>> > U+02EE.  I'm not sure, but it might be tailor-made for Neopolitan.
>> Again, there are multiple Unicode double apostrophe characters,
>> but this one is also not punctuation but a letter: "modifier letter
>> double
>> apostrophe".
> Which, if I correctly followed all the earlier conversation, means
> that yes, it's exactly what the Neapolitan people want.
>
Like this you mean?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Phil_Boswell/Sandbox/Double_apostrophe

HTH HAND
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Categories-on-nap.wikipedia.org-don%27t-work-t1691057.html#a4934444
Sent from the Wikipedia Developers forum at Nabble.com.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Username blocks on companies

body:
On 6/19/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes. Firstly, it's an unacceptable username;

Wikipedia:Username only speaks of usernames explicitly advertising a company:

  Accounts with usernames that advertise a particular website, company,
  etc. (e.g. "visit [name of url]" ) are discouraged and may be blocked.

> secondly, it could be seen as a "group account";

True. This would be a reason to use a username like "Some Guy (Some Company)".

>  thirdly, it could be being used for impersonation.

That can be said about virtually any name. I suspect we probably have
a few undetected cases of users impersonating people they don't like,
ex-girlfriends, etc. Normally we assume good faith until impersonation
is brought to our attention.

> People identifying the company they work for shouldn't be editing the
> article on that company

I would make an exception for obvious errors. They also have every
right to comment on the talk page.

I'm not saying these user accounts shouldn't be blocked -- I think
they just may warrant a slightly more refined treatment than a
commented version of the same template that we use for people who call
themselves "YOU ARE ALL DICKHEADS11!!" A friendly notice how companies
are allowed to contribute to Wikipedia would work better, I think.

It would also be nice to be able to turn off the IP autoblocker in those cases.

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Username blocks on companies

body:
On 6/19/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> Also, we have no way to know if that person is indeed from that company

As I responded to Alphax, the same can be said about virtually any
identity that occurs somewhere else in the real world or on the
Internet. And don't you think that if the user makes edits that harm
this company's reputation, it will become obvious pretty quickly?

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Username blocks on companies

body:
On 6/19/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> A friendly notice how companies
> are allowed to contribute to Wikipedia would work better, I think.

Here's an example what such a notice could look like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:UsernameBlockedCompany

Feedback welcome.

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Username blocks on companies

body:
On 6/19/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > That can be said about virtually any name. I suspect we probably have
> > a few undetected cases of users impersonating people they don't like,
> > ex-girlfriends, etc. Normally we assume good faith until impersonation
> > is brought to our attention.

> For "public figures" we generally don't take the chance. A company
> counts as a "public figure".

What do you think about the compromise of suggesting to them that they
identify their company affiliation on their user page, as in the block
template I just posted?

Erik


subject: [Textbook-l] Literate Programs wiki

body:
A very interesting wiki I just discovered:
http://en.literateprograms.org/LiteratePrograms:Welcome

They allow you to post source code of any computer program in any
language, comment it, etc. They have a very neat extension which
allows you to download a tarball of all the programs documented on a
particular page. The code can be broken up into pieces so that
individual sections of a program can be discussed in more detail. The
pieces on a page can then be associated with files using an internal
transclusion.

The extension pieces the stuff together again. It also does syntax
highlighting for a lot of languages.

I'm posting this to textbook-l and wikipedia-l because I know there
are a lot of computer programming related pages on both wikis that
could make use of this resource. Given the URL, the project also seems
to be aiming for multilinguality. I actually think it would make a
nice addition to the Wikimedia project family, if a bit specialized.

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Literate Programs wiki


subject: [WikiEN-l] Username blocks on companies

body:
Ryan Delaney wrote:
>
> Uhh. If someone wants volunteer to identify their POV in their username,
> that doesn't bother me one whit.
>
[[User:Ryan Delaney is a <expletive deleted>]] would normally be blocked on
sight, but if you want to make an exception, I'm sure there's somewhere you
can record your name as a legitimate target for such attacks...

HTH HAND
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Username-blocks-on-companies-t1808780.html#a4935464
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 6/19/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > I could not find an official Oregon state site via google which is
> > rather irritating and disappointing.   How the hell can we be a nation
> > of laws if the laws are secret, unknown, or published in an expensive
> > proprietary format nobody wishes to invest in?
>
> I found http://www.leg.state.or.us/ors/ by typing in "oregon statutes"
> and hitting "I'm feeling lucky".

It is generally well-known that one can get the government of any
state by going to www.state.xx.us, where xx is the state's postal
code.  Oregon's website can therefore be found at www.state.or.us.
This redirects to oregon.gov, which is the state's official website.

Kelly


from_name: Jon

body:
----- Original Message ----
From: Robert Scott Horning wrote:
<snip>

Jon wrote:

>I would still appreciate more comments on:
>
>http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Inclusion_criteria/Proposal
>
>Some bits have changed since originally proposed, and these
>amendments can be seen here:
>
>http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Wikibooks%3AInclusion_criteria%2FProposal&diff=492850&oldid=488465
>
>I am looking to see it replace the current wording at WB:WIW
>in around a month, provided the text can be agreed. (It isn't
>really meant to be a fundamental change to what we do in
>practice, even though it is a fundamentally different way of
>expressing it.)
>
That, especially for Wikibooks, is an incredibly short period of time,
particularly since you havn't mentioned this on the Staff Lounge either.
You are talking about a major overhaul of a fundimental policy for the
entire project, and expecting that there will be little opposition to
even the idea of doing the overhaul?  The "What is Wikibooks?" and its
predecessor "What Wikibooks is not." came from painful discussions (in
terms of arguments and verbal language) that have developed over the
courses of years, not months or even days.  This is not something that
should be done quickly, and is something that should be very widely
advertised in terms of seeking input.  Something like a global
announcement that is site-wide and displayed on every Wikibook page in
terms of user input, lasting at least six weeks for the comment period
alone.  I am saying this due to my own experience with Wikibooks users,
and I would strongly object to a major overhaul of a policy page like
this (even if it is warrented) if it was changed and I never knew about it.

It is a good first step, but substantially more user comments should be
sought before it replaces a policy page like [[WB:WIW]].

>I would add that I would expect the inclusion criteria to be
>read permissively rather than restrictively. Like every policy,
>this is intended to be an aid to us developing Wikibooks
>productively going forward, not a tight straitjacket - so the
>phrase "worthy of study" is meant to mean that some people
>consider a subject to be "worthy of study", not that the
>whole world considers it to be so.
>
>Kind regards
>
>Jon
>
>
>
I want to add here that I think this is a good approach to go.  Just
that we may have to be going a little slower than you are used to with
Wikipedia.

--
Robert Scott Horning

My response is as follows:

Just a note to say that I fully appreciate that how long it takes depends
on what comments/opposition there is to the rewrite. Few comments
and little opposition will see the page taken on board relatively quickly,
lots of comments and issues to iron out will, of course, mean that the
process is longer.

I'd also like to stress that I have every intention of giving this page
wider publicity before letting it go live - it's just that I am publicising it
slowly at present. This is because it is far better to have one person
saying constructively - "you haven't thought about this" or "we should
amend it like this" rather than six saying "oppose, because this isn't
dealt with well". I have noted it now both here on the mailing list and
on WB:WIW (including now the talk page of the "unstable" version).
I will leave it a while to allow for further constructive comments - and
then publicise it further.

Kind regards

Jon


list: commons-l

subject:
[Commons-l] An interactive copyright tutorial as a requirement
	for uploading?

body:
On 6/19/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> <snip>
>
> Just FYI, there's still my Tasks extension waiting in the wings, eh,
> SVN. Among several other functions, it could easily be adapted to add a
> "review" task to each uploaded file. Tasks can be automatiically listed
> by date, oldest first. They can (depending on their type) be displayed
> in the sidebar and/or as a prominent text of the pages they are assigned to.
>
> For clarification, this is /not/ a {{{template tag}}. The tasks have
> their own separate database table, and do not alter page texts. It is
> possible to set the "review" task type so it can be removed by admins only.

We've been begging for this on enwiki for months now, but the devs
refuse to implement for performance reasons IIRC.

Kelly


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 6/19/06, Michael R. Irwin <michael_irwin at verizon.net> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> >  IIRC, oregon is usually recognized for very liberal
> >non-profit corporate laws.
> >
> >
> I doubt they are all that much different to justify a relocation.
>
If they allow members to not make their address public I'd say that
justifies a relocation.

> A stand out local feature is there is no state sales tax.   Which means
> by current U.S. Federal law governing transactions over the Internet.

That doesn't really apply to non-profits.  The specific feature I was
thinking about was the ability to have as few as one director.  But as
it turns out this was Nevada anyway.  Nevada allows bearer
certificates for its for-profit corporations.

Here we go.  Nevada statutes 82.181(1): "A corporation shall keep a
copy of the following records at its registered office:" (c) "If the
corporation has members, a members' ledger or a duplicate members'
ledger, revised annually, containing the names, alphabetically
arranged, of all persons who are members of the corporation, showing
their places of residence, if known and the class of membership held
by each"  So "places of residence" are only required "if known".

Yes, in order to be a member of the organization you have to give your
name.  That part seems reasonable to me.  Even if you want to
contribute to Wikipedia (for instance) pseudonymously you can still do
that.  There's no requirement that your real name be tied to your
username.  For the purposes of meeting the activity requirements you
might want to tie at least one pseudonym to your real name without
making this information public, though.  Hopefully one day Wikipedia
will make it possible to contribute without making even your pseudonym
public.

I'm sure Nevada isn't the only jurisdiction which has this feature.
Jimbo presumably chose Florida because it's where he lives, and for no
other particular reason.

> I could not find an official Oregon state site via google which is
> rather irritating and disappointing.   How the hell can we be a nation
> of laws if the laws are secret, unknown, or published in an expensive
> proprietary format nobody wishes to invest in?

I found http://www.leg.state.or.us/ors/ by typing in "oregon statutes"
and hitting "I'm feeling lucky".

Anthony


subject: [Wikitech-l] double apostrophes in titles

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> * Is the name of the category "actually" foo''bar and it just
> happens to display as foo''bar ?

No.

> * Is the name of the category "actually" foo''bar, and we put a page
> in that category with the hackish wikimarkup [[Category:foo''bar]]

Yes.

> Actually, on the MediaWiki question, it *would* theoretically be
> possible to just ignore all attempted formatting within [[Article]] or
> [[Category:]] links wouldn't it? Since we don't support formatting in
> page names (and are unlikely to with that syntax anytime soon), it
> seems conceivable that [[Category:Foo''bar]] should take that name
> literally and not attempt to interpret it as italics, which wouldn't
> work anyway...

Theoretically, but links and bold/italics are handled on separate parser passes.
Things get ugly... :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Nathaniel Sheetz

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD just does not work

body:
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Guide_to_writing_better_articles#Check_your_fiction
.
I seem to recall a similar guideline on its own page, but I can't find it at
the moment.

Nathaniel

On 6/19/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/19/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> > Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> > >
> > > Articles on fictional subjects should include as
> > > much detail about the real-world aspects as possible, and make a clear
> > > distinction between fact and fiction.
> >
> > Well said!  If those specific words aren't already in some guideline
> > somewhere, would anyone here oppose their inclusion?
>
> '''Support''' ~~~~
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Nathaniel C. Sheetz
http://www.personal.psu.edu/ncs124


subject: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

body:
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

post 5.

incorporating responses to:

RL = Roger Luethi

RL: I haven't run into this editor before and cannot make authoritative
statements, but a quick search shows that he made over 6000 main space
edits in half a year, notabene in areas that we _want_ to cover and where
we need experts to help out.

RL: He does seem to be involved in disputes on quite a few pages, it's hard to
see through the mess. One (apparently retracted) 3RR block on June 12.

RL: Based on my quick research I can't rule out that Jon Awbrey's problems
are worth investigating.

thank you for your considerate attention.
i will try to make constructive use of it,
no matter how difficult the issues involved.

enough has been said about the ordinary uses of exit interviews.
indeed, just before my sense of futility became terminal, i had
entertained the notion of starting a wikiproject to routinely
collect the last wills and feedbacks of the dearly or direly
departed membership in this conflagration, but i didn't yet
know the ropes well enough to do that, and it doesn't look
like i ever will.  i believe a lot of useful information
could be garnered that way, however easy it might be in
some quarters to dismiss it all as the parting shots
of disgruntled usurers and the socially net-warped.
still, i think it might be a good idea, if there
is anybody who is up to the challenge.

i started thinking about this idea when i happened across a page
that was soliciting ideas for recruiting new members to wikipedia.
from the experiences of people i know who are involved in college
recruitment, i know that one of the issues that develops over time
is that sometimes too much attention gets devoted to recruitment
at the expense of due attention being paid to retention, and
it looks to me like a similar problem may be affecting WP.
for sure, your rolls are no doubt padded with with many,
many registered users, but how many of them are still
actually participating in any significant way?

it's something to think about.

jon awbrey

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Jon_Awbrey
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o


from_name: Steve Summit

body:
Phil Boswell wrote:
> Like this you mean?
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Phil_Boswell/Sandbox/Double_apostrophe

Exactly.

(If it was me, though, I'd use U+200C Zero Width Non-Joiner or
maybe U+200B Zero Width Space.  I believe the intent of U+200D
Zero Width Joiner is that it tries to force ligatures, especially
in scripts like Arabic that have lots of ligated characters, and
fancy rules for when or when not to ligate them automatically.
Clearly the double apostrophe isn't a ligature; it's just
something you didn't want joined, in this case by the wiki markup
parser.)


from_name: Guettarda

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Pruning "dead" accounts (was Re: New York Times
	article)

body:
On 6/19/06, Kat Walsh <mindspillage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> However, I don't think we can prune dead accounts until after single
> user login is implemented... some "dead" usernames were registered by
> people from other languages to prevent impersonation.

Don't forget the accounts which exist to prevent impersonation in one's main
language - names with capital I's to mimic L's and Cyrillic characters.
Deleting these would just open things up for abuse again.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Pruning "dead" accounts (was Re: New York Times
 article)

body:
Steve Bennett-8 wrote:
>
> On 6/19/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Don't forget the accounts which exist to prevent impersonation in one's
>> main
>> language - names with capital I's to mimic L's and Cyrillic characters.
>> Deleting these would just open things up for abuse again.
> This sounds like a hack. Can't we just add them to a "do not create"
> list of usernames?
>
That would *be* the hack: simply creating the account and blocking it uses
the current facilities to perform the task; in fact blocking is optional if
the person creating it is the one who might be spoofed since they would hold
the password.

HTH HAND
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Pruning-%22dead%22-accounts-%28was-Re%3A-New-York-Times-article%29-t1811547.html#a4939601
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: Jeremy Cushman

subject: [WikiEN-l] More quotes from AfD

body:
Maybe it's just me, but I think that this current system is fine because as
of now, (for most articles) we get enough votes either for '''Keep''' or
'''Delete''' and it is not a hassle for users to vote.

--Mets501

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org]
On Behalf Of geni
Sent: Monday, June 19, 2006 9:10 AM
To: m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au; English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] More quotes from AfD

On 6/19/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
> AfD is doomed: it doesn't, and can't, scale.

People have been saying this for over a year. Doesn't appear to have
fallen apart yet.

--
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


from_name: Jon Awbrey

subject: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

body:
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

post 6.

JL = John Lee
SB = Steve Bennett

SB: What is an accurate reporter?

JL: And do define "responsible journalist / scholar".  If you arrive at
    Wikipedia with preconceptions of how things should be done from past
    experience, and don't adjust these preconceptions, then you will of
    course have a difficult time fitting in, especially when our editorial
    norms are established for good reasons.

some people just seem driven to get the facts straight,
no matter what they might have believed beforehand.
that's my intuitive sense of what makes someone
an accurate reporter or a reponsible scholar.
i think that most AR's and RS's that come
to WP find that the 3 content policies
embody fantastically well what they
have already been born or trained
to do, since the basic ideas of
grounded and sourced research
were hardly invented locally,
but derived from standards
and practices, indeed,
from norms of conduct
that have goverened
the life of inquiry
for as long as it
has been alive.

so the "preconceptions" of this ethos are in pre-established harmony
with the principles set forth in the 3 content-governing regulations
of WP, namely, the policies of NOR, NPOV, and VER, and most folks
who have been living by these rules in the grounded research
portion of their intellectual lives feel themselves to be,
at least, at first, very much at home.

and what some of them, i'd never say all,
get disgruntled about is precisely the
extent to which the WP community as
a real body fails to live up to
what it espouses as its ideals.

if the perceptions of these disgruntled masses
are nevertheless saccurate and responsible,
then it's important information for the
long-term health and viability of WP.

jon awbrey

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Jon_Awbrey
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o


from_name: Kat Walsh

subject: [WikiEN-l] Pruning "dead" accounts (was Re: New York Times article)

body:
On 6/19/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/19/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > ... the *940* admins, and a million registered users, and who knows how
> > many anonymous contributors. And that's just for the English Wikipedia!
> > What about on de:, fr:, ja: and the rest?
>
> See why I think we should prune all the dead registered users? Only a
> fraction of those claimed "million registered users" have ever even
> logged in and made a couple of useful edits. A tiny fraction are still
> logging in and making useful edits.

The last numbers I saw had roughly 2/3 of registered accounts on en:
having no non-deleted edits; some might have created pages that later
got deleted. (Note: user creation jumped after the restrictions on
anon users creating articles were put in place.)

However, I don't think we can prune dead accounts until after single
user login is implemented... some "dead" usernames were registered by
people from other languages to prevent impersonation. Even then, many
people have accounts solely for reading, in order to set user
preferences, or to avoid getting a constant stream of "new messages"
from vandalism warnings for shared IPs -- and we encourage them to do
this.

-Kat

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage  |  G/AIM:LucidWaking
mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone
The good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving
-- Lao-Tzu        Wikia: creating communities - http://www.wikia.com


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject:
[Commons-l] An interactive copyright tutorial as a requirement
 for uploading?

body:
<snip>

Just FYI, there's still my Tasks extension waiting in the wings, eh,
SVN. Among several other functions, it could easily be adapted to add a
"review" task to each uploaded file. Tasks can be automatiically listed
by date, oldest first. They can (depending on their type) be displayed
in the sidebar and/or as a prominent text of the pages they are assigned to.

For clarification, this is /not/ a {{{template tag}}. The tasks have
their own separate database table, and do not alter page texts. It is
possible to set the "review" task type so it can be removed by admins only.

This would IMHO help organizing the checking efforts, as
* Images are clearly and automatically labeled as "in need of review"
* No messing with categories and templates
* No duplicated effort - if you review an image, and think it is OK,
just close the task, and it will disappear from the list

There are lots of "neat" things associated with the task extension; each
task gets its own talk page, if needed; tasks can be assigned to a
specific person, and assigned tasks can be hidden from the "to do" list;
task lists can also be filtered by categories of their pages (this
includes subcategories); etc.

I originally wrote this to lessen the mess on Wikipedia, and to ease the
creation of articles by anons (everyone may add a "create" task for a
non-existing topic; the task would be closed automatically when the
article is created). Likewise, "deletion" tasks would have their own
talk page (less mess), and be closed automatically once the article is
deleted.

Maybe that extension could find a new home at commons. Just a thought.

Magnus

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from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] [WikiEN-l] newbie culture

references:
<44928F0E.1090600@student.canberra.edu.au>
	<eecbb0630606161826l7f4aae77v2a4954f50b62cd8d@mail.gmail.com>
	<eecbb0630606161828q2d38fecfo68a4cf8fb64206f6@mail.gmail.com>
	<eecbb0630606161828q2d38fecfo68a4cf8fb64206f6-JsoAwUIsXosN+BqQ9rBEUg@public.gmane.org>
	<4493629A.5020100@student.canberra.edu.au>
	<zzHEssBsG9kEFwfW@cartref.demon.co.uk>
	<b8ceeef70606170351h48451bbdj8ab52e0b88ca9e5f@mail.gmail.com>
	<4493E1AC.8050600@gawab.com> <44965645.4060708@vyznev.net>

body:
On 6/19/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> The technical side could actually be handled rather easily: all we need
> is a way to tag a specific revision as the visible one.  If the visible
> version isn't the latest, and someone tries to edit it, they get the
> same (or similar) warning as when editing an old revision in general.
>
> "You are editing the stable version of this page. If you save it, any
> unreviewed changes made since this version will be removed."

Hmm, not bad. A bit more info, like "There are 3 unconfirmed edits, by
vandal1, vandal2 and niceguy3". Click here to review these, or click
here to discard them and continue editing.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] New York Times article

body:
On 6/19/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> ... the *940* admins, and a million registered users, and who knows how
> many anonymous contributors. And that's just for the English Wikipedia!
> What about on de:, fr:, ja: and the rest?

See why I think we should prune all the dead registered users? Only a
fraction of those claimed "million registered users" have ever even
logged in and made a couple of useful edits. A tiny fraction are still
logging in and making useful edits.

Steve


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] More quotes from AfD

body:
On 6/19/06, Cobb <sealclubbingfun at googlemail.com> wrote:
> The problem is, I think, that lots of people who comment here don't actually
> take part in AFD.
> They don't see the  day-to-day crap... they just see a system that keeps
> struggling along
> despite being hopelessly broken and unscalable. AFD is such a demented
> system that
> it's very often less hassle to just ignore rubbish than even try to get it
> deleted. No doubt
> certain inclusionist factions on Wikipedia rather like things that way, and
> claim it is a
> self-regulating mechanism rather than a system that cannot cope and which
> people
> avoid.

I greatly disagree.  Though I've not been very active in the last few
weeks, AFD in the time I've been on Wikipedia (last year, roughly) has
made the right decision most of the time, and looking at the various
nominations, the vast majority are pretty uncontroversial.

AFD is fine for dealing with noncontroversial deletions.  So is Prod,
but any lone individual can de-Prod legitimately, so AFD is a fair
fallback for that.

AFD is a clunky mechanism for dealing with contentious deletions.  But
even in those cases, it seems to largely work out ok in the end.

Contentious deletions would be helped, in my opinion, if the
nominators had gone through the policy steps of marking bad articles
for cleanup, attempting to get them cleaned up, etc prior to AFDing
them.  People argue less about things which were listed for cleanup
for a month or two and nobody bothered to salvage.

--
-george william herbert
gherbert at retro.com / george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [WikiEN-l] newbie culture

body:
John Lee wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>>It would be good if we could put users on probation. Occasionally I've
>>taken the effort to track a vandal, watching and reverting their
>>edits. But it would be nice to be able to say "this user's next edit
>>is 90% likely to be vandalism, hence, let's screen it *before* it goes
>>live". All the edits of probationary users could appear on one screen,
>>and people watching that list could pick out the occasional good ones
>>to let through, much like moderating a mailing list.
>
> This is something of a perennial proposal. The main problem I see with
> it is the potential for edit conflicts - if a valid edit goes through
> between when the probationary edit is made, and when it is approved,
> there might be trouble merging the two edits together.

The technical side could actually be handled rather easily: all we need
is a way to tag a specific revision as the visible one.  If the visible
version isn't the latest, and someone tries to edit it, they get the
same (or similar) warning as when editing an old revision in general.

"You are editing the stable version of this page. If you save it, any
unreviewed changes made since this version will be removed."

(In fact, it might be possible to use the existing page_latest column
for this, though I haven't really checked.)

--
Ilmari Karonen


subject: [Wikitech-l] [WikiEN-l] newbie culture


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Per-page popularity?

body:
Eric Astor wrote:
> I've been investigating this for a while... I understand that per-page
> popularity data has been disabled. However, I'm trying to make some
> statistical investigations of Wikipedia, in an attempt to provide some
> utilities for the selection of articles for the One Encyclopedia Per Child
> (OEPC) project.
>
> To the point, then. For the English and Simple English Wikipedias - is there
> any way it could be possible to get per-page popularity data, or a stripped
> log file from some Squid proxy that this information could be extracted
> from? I already have a simple Perl utility that could be used to strip a
> Squid log file down to the information I need (the URL).

Sorry, we do not keep such logs due to the significant overhead it would place
on the squids (we handle over half a billion requests per day).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Username blocks on companies

body:
On 6/19/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> Given that we probably want people to identify who they work for,
> especially when editing articles where this is relevant, is it a good
> idea to block company accounts without any edits on sight? If so,

That sounds like the opposite of what we want. Considering that it's
so hard to identify sneaky editors, those that come forth and declare
their POV ought to be encouraged. Also, contrary to some ideas
expressed in this thread, we do not discourage companies from editing
articles about themselves - we just want to supervise the process, and
steer it where necessary.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD just does not work

body:
On 6/19/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> >
> > Articles on fictional subjects should include as
> > much detail about the real-world aspects as possible, and make a clear
> > distinction between fact and fiction.
>
> Well said!  If those specific words aren't already in some guideline
> somewhere, would anyone here oppose their inclusion?

'''Support''' ~~~~

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] More quotes from AfD

body:
On 6/19/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> "And yes, anything that can be deleted, probably should be deleted,
> because we must have articles only on truly worthy topics so to continue
> to be highly regarded by the reading public."

Something is a bit wrong when debates about the goals of Wikipedia are
taking place in the midst of an AfD discussion for a specific article.

Steve


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 6/19/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>>> * Is the name of the category "actually" foo''bar, and we put a page
>>> in that category with the hackish wikimarkup [[Category:foo''bar]]
>> Yes.
>
> Ok, so presuming it's not a category, will page moves to/from ''
> notation work correctly?

Maybe, maybe not.

Since titles containing "''" cannot be reliably round-tripped, they need to be
made invalid. Unfortunately somebody's pulled out a language that claims to need
it, so we may be stuck with such breakage.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD just does not work

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>
> Articles on fictional subjects should include as
> much detail about the real-world aspects as possible, and make a clear
> distinction between fact and fiction.

Well said!  If those specific words aren't already in some guideline
somewhere, would anyone here oppose their inclusion?

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Death Phoenix

subject: [WikiEN-l] newbie culture

body:
On 6/19/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/17/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
> >
> > I agree that admins block users too fast, and should use *warnings* more
> > than they do.
>
> I never cease to be surprised (and pleased) how many casual vandals
> stop editing when I give them a warning message. They're mostly just
> kids who've been caught with their hands in the biscuit tin (or
> "cookie jar", for all you septics).
>
> I worry there may be a few too many people who've got far too cynical
> dealing with vandalism all day, and need to relax a bit.
>

Yes, on a few occasions when I patrol [[WP:AIV]], a lot of the vandals
simply stopped vandalising after getting the test3 or test4 and do not need
to be blocked.


subject: [WikiEN-l] newbie culture

body:
On 6/19/06, Death Phoenix <originaldeathphoenix at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/19/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 6/17/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > I agree that admins block users too fast, and should use *warnings*
> > more
> > > than they do.
> >
> > I never cease to be surprised (and pleased) how many casual vandals
> > stop editing when I give them a warning message. They're mostly just
> > kids who've been caught with their hands in the biscuit tin (or
> > "cookie jar", for all you septics).
> >
> > I worry there may be a few too many people who've got far too cynical
> > dealing with vandalism all day, and need to relax a bit.
> >
>
> Yes, on a few occasions when I patrol [[WP:AIV]], a lot of the vandals
> simply stopped vandalising after getting the test3 or test4 and do not need
> to be blocked.
>

Well, maybe not a lot, but a fair number nonetheless.


from_name: Brianna Laugher

body:
On 19/06/06, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> Potential problems:
> -Some people just download one bad file and go. Lots of people
> actually. So this only tackles one part of the problem.

Yes... well... I don't think there's anything we can do about that.
Any more than we can get rid of "fly-by-night" vandals from
Wikipedias. We just mark their images as missing source/license, they
don't respond in 7 days, we delete it. It's a bit slower but we still
get rid of it. (BTW I think you mean "upload". :))

> - How do we make sure that files are reviewed within a certain period
> of time (ie. do people on Commons have the time to do this?) so that
> people don't wait around for ever to get their reviewed satus waived?

Well, at the moment we have a WelcomeBot who automatically welcomes
all new accounts with at least one edit or upload. It keeps a log of
these welcomes at [[User:Orgullobot/Welcome log]]. Admins & others
(all volunteers) check the contribs of these users and tag/delete
their images & warn/advise the users as appropriate, then remove their
name from the list.

>From my perception, of 20 users, more than 10 are uploading obvious
copyvios and/or images without any source information. Around another
5 are uploading their own work but not categorising it. Maybe 2 out of
20 need no correction at all.

(5 seconds to upload, 5 minutes to delete... if you're lucky.)

It is actually a great approach that is working really well, because
we are catching people right at the start when they're more likely to
be around, and can fix misconceptions *before* they upload 50 images
under the same flawed reasoning. But we unfortunately don't have
enough people volunteering to help (there is <10 at the moment), so
already there is a backlog of about a week.

> - If it can be implemented at all, can it be accessed from local
> wikipedias (ie. there are people who can review the stuff better in
> their own language and who are not commons users).

Well, if we don't have a Commons admin in X language, I really really
encourage a person interested in Commons/images/helping people in
their language to step forward and volunteer to be an admin. Even
given the recent lifting of standards we still have the easiest admin
requirements I've ever seen on Wikimedia.

cheers,
Brianna


subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN committers

body:
Added today:

Rotem Liss (rotem): Hebrew localization updates and misc patches

Karsten Uil (karstenuil): WiktionaryZ work

Markus Kr?tzsch (mkroetzsch),
Denny Vrandecic (vrandezo), and
S Page (skierpage): Semantic wiki stuff

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] More quotes from AfD

body:
"And yes, anything that can be deleted, probably should be deleted,
because we must have articles only on truly worthy topics so to continue
to be highly regarded by the reading public."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Resonance_%28MIT%29

(I disagree, obviously.  Other than that, I'll let the article and the
debate on it speak for themselves.)

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Username blocks on companies

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> I don't know how common this is:
>
> # 01:30, June 19, 2006 RadioKirk blocked "Shout magazine (contribs)"
> with an expiry time of indefinite (username, existing company)
> # 01:02, June 19, 2006 RadioKirk blocked "Shi star entertainment
> (contribs)" with an expiry time of indefinite (username, existing
> company)
> # 21:04, June 18, 2006 RadioKirk blocked "ParsInternet (contribs)"
> with an expiry time of indefinite (Username (name of existing
> company))
> # 00:59, June 19, 2006 RadioKirk blocked "Hammond Publishing
> (contribs)" with an expiry time of indefinite (username, existing
> company)
>
> Given that we probably want people to identify who they work for,
> especially when editing articles where this is relevant, is it a good
> idea to block company accounts without any edits on sight?

Yes. Firstly, it's an unacceptable username; secondly, it could be seen
as a "group account"; thirdly, it could be being used for impersonation.

> If so, perhaps we should at least modify the talk plage template to
> indicate to the user how they can put the company information on
> their user page? See
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Hammond_Publishing for an
> example of the current template.

People identifying the company they work for shouldn't be editing the
article on that company, per [[WP:AUTO]] and [[WP:CORP]].

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] Sitenotice use for Wikimania

body:
On 6/19/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> As a general matter, I don't think such uses need to receive
> clearance on a Foundation level, although I hope that if anyone
> anticipates conflicts with our planned uses, they would let us know so
> we can resolve that.

If I recall correctly, at the previous occasion of this January, the
global sitenotice which had come in English at that time didn't affect
the wiki which has locally used their own sitenotice at that time (Now
I'm thinking jawikinews). Is my remembrance wrong? Or there will be no
similar conflict any more?

> Site notices should not be overused, so I do think silent periods are
> important.

Some projects including En Wikinews or Ja, continue to utilise
sitenotice less or more one year, but on both projects I haven't heard
a major dispute about that. (They  serve visitors only a few of links
to some pages and not so heavily remarkable).

--
Aphaia
aka
Kizu Naoko
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 6/19/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>> Since titles containing "''" cannot be reliably round-tripped, they need to be
>
> You mean in the sense that {{PAGETITLE}} etc would return the
> unescaped name? Could those functions be fixed?

In theory; we'd need to wrap hundreds of calls in some kind of wiki-escaping
function for this to work reliably.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Chris Lüer

body:
At 09:59 AM 6/19/2006, Guettarda wrote:

>Don't forget the accounts which exist to prevent impersonation in one's main
>language - names with capital I's to mimic L's and Cyrillic characters.
>Deleting these would just open things up for abuse again.

Is there are a reason why user names with weird Unicode characters
are even allowed? It would seem sensible to limit user names on each
Wikipedia to the alphabet that is used in that language.

         Chl


from_name: Max Völkel

subject: [Wikitech-l] [CFP] 2nd Workshop on Semantic Wikis: WibKE2006

body:
Apologies for cross-posting
----
               Call for papers for the
          2nd Workshop on Semantic Wikis:
     Wiki-based Knowledge Engineering [WibKE2006]

           http://wibke2006.semwiki.org

    ->  abstract deadline:   in 8 days  <-
    ->  early registration:  * TODAY *  <-
      (register now, pay later or cancel)

co-located with
* the 2nd International Symposium on Wikis (WikiSym2006)
* ACM HyperText 2006

August 21-23, 2006, Odense, [[located in::Denmark]]

== Important Dates ==
*  Abstract deadline:  27th June   2006 (an e-mail to chair at semwiki.org
                                         with an abstract/topic/basic idea
                                         is enough)
* Paper deadline:       9th July   2006 (can not be extended)
* Notification:        31th July   2006
* Camera ready due:    14th August 2006 (can not be extended)
* Workshop:           21-23 August 2006 (one day out of the three)

== Objectives ==
WibKE2006 is the second workshop on Semantic Wikis. It aims to explore
and collect the different ideas and motivations that have lead to the
recent emergence of so-called "Semantic Wiki" systems. Wikis can be
seen as editable information portals. In this workshop, we are mostly
interested in the editing/authoring/articulation of information and
less about the portal aspect.

The main objective of the workshop is to promote and
further develop the idea of employing Wiki design principles and
implementations as enabling technology and development paradigm for
(formally) creating and structuring knowledge in distributed
scenarios. A further aim is to sensitize knowledge engineers in
dealing with vague and changing requirements in distributed, Web-based
settings.

The workshop looks for novel approaches for a seamless integration of
Wiki technologies in knowledge engineering practices, for supporting
concepts and strategies, as well as for tools and use-cases of their
application. Of special interest are ideas and applications using
Wikis for creating, managing and using formally represented knowledge
in the context of the Semantic Web.

== Topics of Interest ==
include, but are not limited to:
* Methods employing the Wiki Way in knowledge engineering,
* Concepts and strategies for integrating domain experts
  and end users into the knowledge engineering process,
* Methods for automatic, Wiki-based knowledge elicitation
  from collaborative environments,
* Methods for supporting the creation of structured
  and (partially) formalised personal knowledge bases
* Policies, authentication and trust within agile
  collaborative knowledge engineering scenarios,
* Strategies and methods joining Web 2.0, Wiki and
  Semantic Web technologies for knowledge management purposes
* Semantic Wiki tools supporting semantic collaboration
* Semantic Wiki tools supporting personal knowledge management
* Wiki-driven applications enabling massively distributed knowledge elicitation,
* Requirements and use-cases for Web-scaled collaborative knowledge engineering
  in relation to Wiki technologies
* Applications of Semantic Wikis, e.g. in Bio-Medicine,
  Business, Software-Engineering
* Experience reports, best practices
  and guidelines in the aforementioned areas

== Workshop Format ==
*  Introduction and overview about current developments with regard to
   the application of Wikis in knowledge engineering and knowledge management
   tasks
* Paper presentation
** Position (5 pages) and full papers (10 pages) will be peer-reviewed by three independent reviewers.
** Workshop proceedings will appear at CEUR Workshop Proceedings, ISSN 1613-0073
** Panel discussion

== Prospective Audience ==
* Researchers and practitioners developing or interested
  in Wiki-based methods and tools for knowledge engineering,
* Knowledge engineers, and domain experts interested in the
  development of collaborative evolving content repositories,
* Participants from industry interested in employing Wikis
  for organizational knowledge engineering,
* Wiki community activists.

== Organising Committee==
* Max V?lkel, Universit?t Karlsruhe (TH) / FZI, Germany
* Sebastian Schaffert, Salzburg Research, Austria
* Elena Paslaru Bontas, Freie Universit?t Berlin, Germany
* S?ren Auer, Universit?t Leipzig, Germany & University of Pennsylvania, USA

== Program Committee (to be completed)==
* Adam Souzis (Liminal Systems)
* Bertin Klein (DFKI Kaiserslautern, Germany)
* Bj?rn Decker (Fraunhofer IESE, Germany)
* Chris Bizer (Free University of Berlin, Germany)
* Denny Vrandecic (AIFB Karlsruhe, Germany)
* George A. Vouros (University of the Aegean, Greece)
* Giovanni Tummarello (Universita' Politecnica delle Marche, Italy)
* Jean Rohmer (Thales Communications, France)
* Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski (Fraunhofer ISST, Germany)
* Libby Miller (asemantics, US)
* Malte Kiesel (DFKI Kaiserslautern, Germany)
* Martin Hepp (DERI Innsbruck, Austria)
* Natasha Noy (Stanford University, US)
* Peter Haase (AIFB Karlsruhe, Germany)
* Peter Mika (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, NL)
* Rupert Westenthaler (Salzburg Research, Austria)
* Valentina Presutti (LOA-CNR, Italy)

== Related Work ==
Authors are encouraged to look at the proceedings of [[SemWiki2006]] and WikiSym 2005.
See http://wiki.ontoworld.org/wiki/SemWiki2006

Please ask questions to wibke2006 at semwiki.org

---

Kind regards,

  Max V?lkel
--
Dipl.-Inform. Max V?lkel, Universit?t Karlsruhe / FZI / http://xam.de


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD just does not work

body:
maru dubshinki wrote:
> On 6/16/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> It is a legit subject. The article can be cleaned up with the liberal
>> use of machete editing. It would be nice to have something explaining
>> why the fighting styles are mostly rather stupid but I can live
>> without that.
>>
>> --
>> geni
>
> Well, there used to be an interview with [[Nick Gillard]] (the
> choreographer for the prequels) which was quoted in the article, in
> which he pointed out that the martial arts was quite deliberately
> flashy and totally impractical. That the sort of thing you were
> thinking of?
>
>

That and [[Dalek]]. Articles on fictional subjects should include as
much detail about the real-world aspects as possible, and make a clear
distinction between fact and fiction.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject: [WikiEN-l] New York Times article

body:
Anthere wrote:
<snip>
>
> I also like the following comment
>
> "Mr. Wales shares the work of running Wikipedia with the administrators
> and four paid employees of the foundation. "
>

... the *940* admins, and a million registered users, and who knows how
many anonymous contributors. And that's just for the English Wikipedia!
What about on de:, fr:, ja: and the rest?

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Thumbnail params, Was:  Image uploads now undeletable

body:
On 6/18/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> When the primary file storage is migrated to the hash-based filestore, that will
> decouple physical filenames from logical filenames and make that feasible.
>
> I do want to make sure it's done before the end of the year, but it's not a top
> priority (and we want to be damn sure migration will work correctly when it
> happens; we'll have near half a terabyte of data to migrate when the time
> comes!) so it won't be tomorrow.

Brion,

When you work on the hash store for primary storage you'll have to
address thumbnails.
When you do this, please keep in mind the ability to create thumbs
with multiple parameters beyond size, I'm not suggesting that such
extensions need be implemented today, I just want us to avoid a
redesign should we decide to implement them in the future.

Here are three examples where additional parameters would be very useful:
1) Cropping. Right now there are cases where people will upload
multiple cropped versions of an image to place parts at reasonable
sizes throughout the article. This complicates tagging and copyright
matters, is generally wasteful, and can not be fluidly edited. A
syntax such as [[Image:foo.jpg|crop:100x100+20+80|50px]] would solve
this. Cropping should be possible without loading the entire image in
memory, but imagemagick doesn't currently do this as far as I can
tell.
2) Sharpening. Many images lose too much [[accutance]] when
downsampled with quality filtering, and appear blurry as a result.
This has caused some cases of people uploading thumbed and sharpened
images rather than using mediawiki syntax. Syntax would be something
like [[Image:foo.jpg|thumb|sharpen_high]].  Sharpening should be
possible without completely loading the image in memory, but
imagemagick doesn't do this as far as I can tell.
3) SVG parameters. For translations and other applications it would be
useful to do basic variable replacement in SVGs, for example
[[Image:heart.svg|250px|options=title:The human heart,la:Left
auricular,rv:Right ventricle]]. Perhaps positioning issues will make
that non-useful without a full XSLT engine (which can be done in bound
memory and cpu...) but that would be a much larger issue.

I hope you can see from these examples that it is possible that
someday we will decide that having more options offsets the additional
storage and missrate of having more thumbnail flavors.

It's also possible that some would like to provide a jpeg quality
switch, because our current setting create visible artifacts on some
images... but I think this would be better solved by increasing our
jpeg quality setting globally.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Username blocks on companies

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 6/19/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Yes. Firstly, it's an unacceptable username;
>
> Wikipedia:Username only speaks of usernames explicitly advertising a company:
>
>   Accounts with usernames that advertise a particular website, company,
>   etc. (e.g. "visit [name of url]" ) are discouraged and may be blocked.
>

I don't see how "company" or "[name of url]" are any different.

<snip>
>>  thirdly, it could be being used for impersonation.
>
> That can be said about virtually any name. I suspect we probably have
> a few undetected cases of users impersonating people they don't like,
> ex-girlfriends, etc. Normally we assume good faith until impersonation
> is brought to our attention.
>

For "public figures" we generally don't take the chance. A company
counts as a "public figure".

>> People identifying the company they work for shouldn't be editing the
>> article on that company
>
> I would make an exception for obvious errors. They also have every
> right to comment on the talk page.
>

Ok.

> I'm not saying these user accounts shouldn't be blocked -- I think
> they just may warrant a slightly more refined treatment than a
> commented version of the same template that we use for people who call
> themselves "YOU ARE ALL DICKHEADS11!!" A friendly notice how companies
> are allowed to contribute to Wikipedia would work better, I think.
>

Yes.

> It would also be nice to be able to turn off the IP autoblocker in those cases.
>

It would be nice to turn off the IP autoblocker in a *lot* of cases.
Unfortunately nobody seems willing to implement any of the propsed fixes
for bug 550.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] Greetings, Wikimedians

body:
Of course we'd have a disclaimer. Quite an apparent disclaimer -- perhaps in
MediaWiki:Sitenotice. I wouldn't allow it any other way, nor would the
wikilawyers. I think having a disclaimer that the information we present is
merely background information, and professional advice is like 350 times
better, would help us be safe (and help them from hurting themselves).

On 6/19/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> James Hare wrote:
>
> >That's what's so hard.
> >
> >My plan has been to have a protected mainspace and editable drafts that
> >weren't obvious to the public eye, but that was denounced as unwiki.
> Having
> >a freely-editable website, however, introduces us to extreme liability
> and
> >would make Jimmy Wales's head explode if it were to happen.
> >
> >What we need is a middle ground -- one that's not awfully anti-wiki but
> >should keep us pretty safe.
> >
> Your proposal would likely increase our exposure to liability, not
> decrease it.  As long as the public is _clearly_ informed that the
> information in a medical article is not necessarily the product of
> professionals we are probably better off than if we gave people a false
> sense of security about the reliability of the articles.  Remember too,
> how people interpret such written material often has no relation to what
> was actually written or what the author intended.  Do not underestimate
> people's capacity to misread information, and use that as a basis for
> starting a lawsuit.
>
> Ec
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Greetings, Wikimedians


from_name: Guettarda

body:
On 6/19/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Steve Bennett-8 wrote:
> >
> > On 6/19/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Don't forget the accounts which exist to prevent impersonation in one's
> >> main
> >> language - names with capital I's to mimic L's and Cyrillic characters.
> >> Deleting these would just open things up for abuse again.
> > This sounds like a hack. Can't we just add them to a "do not create"
> > list of usernames?
> >
> That would *be* the hack: simply creating the account and blocking it uses
> the current facilities to perform the task; in fact blocking is optional
> if
> the person creating it is the one who might be spoofed since they would
> hold
> the password.

 Of course, getting back to Kat's point - there are a lot of reasons you
need a user account just to read Wikipedia - I tried accessing Wikipedia
through AOL (not logged in) just to see what it was like once.  Once and
never again.  It was a horrible experience.  Ever page you clicked on had an
orange bar informing you that you had messages.  Click on it and it takes
you to vandalism warnings.  And, since you have a new IP address with the
new page, yet another orange bar pops up, leading you to a NEW set of
vandalism warnings... Things may have changed since I tried it, but based on
that experience you NEED an account just to read Wikipedia (without too much
annoyance) if you are on AOL.

Ian


subject: [WikiEN-l] Username blocks on companies

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 6/19/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> That can be said about virtually any name. I suspect we probably have
>>> a few undetected cases of users impersonating people they don't like,
>>> ex-girlfriends, etc. Normally we assume good faith until impersonation
>>> is brought to our attention.
>
>> For "public figures" we generally don't take the chance. A company
>> counts as a "public figure".
>
> What do you think about the compromise of suggesting to them that they
> identify their company affiliation on their user page, as in the block
> template I just posted?
>

Yes, that looks like an acceptable solution.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[Foundation-l] Hiring of Interim Executive Director and Legal
 Counsel

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>On 6/14/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>How about a different point of view? Separated in concept, but united
>>in practice.
>>
>>
>
>I see it the other way around. For me, the key concept that has
>enabled the success of Wikipedia is "within our goal (to create an
>encyclopedia), maximize participation, transparency and
>accountability". This means that we accept certain control mechanisms,
>such as page protection and the notion of admins, as necessary to
>protect the encyclopedia, at least until better solutions are found.
>
>I believe Wikimedia would be well served by following the same
>_principle_, using different _practices_ which are appropriate for an
>organization (taking into account, for instance, the legal
>requirements and risks an organization faces; certain tasks require
>certain minimum qualifications, etc.). I also view this, in both
>cases, as a never-ending _process_, rather than a permanent state. If
>either Wikipedia or Wikimedia become static in their practices, it is
>time to think about replacing them.
>
>This same view is applicable to the other projects: what is an
>appropriate practice for Wikipedia is not necessarily so for Wikinews
>or Wiktionary. Again, within each project's defined mission, we should
>seek to optimize the above key variables. This is what I call the
>"wiki philosophy", and it is independent from any particular
>implementation or scenario. This philsophy, I feel, is universal.
>
I substantially agree, and would put a handful of fundamental principles
well above practice or process.  Those principles carry over to other
projects.  The establishment of Wiktionary was a natural evolution from
the semi-fundamental principle that Wikipedia is not a dictionary.  That
established a boundary for the new project without putting into doubt
any of Wikipedia's other principles.

Stasis is a high level violation of the principle of non-ownership.  We
tell would-be editors that their work may be edited mercilessly, and
proceed with such edits.  It's easier to do when there is so little at
stake, as in the case of a single article.  The assets needed to run
Wikimedia are no longer insignificant.  Things have gone well beyond a
single server in San Diego.  With that growth has come the motherly
perception that the assets need to be protected, and that a socio-legal
framework needs to be built in support of that framework. Security begs
for static practices.

Mothers protect their children; they do not own them.   There's a price
paid from the soul when the mother has to stand her neatly cleaned-up
offspring in front of the nice corporation hoping that a little candy
will trickle down.

Democratic communities are about empowerment.  That empowerment comes
from a belief in one's own self.  At a governmental level it does not
happen simply from the actions of an invader who makes pompous promises
about binging democracy.  Belief in oneself is always more difficult in
societies where the citizens are schooled into compliance from an early
age.  I can't think of a single society where that does not happen.

It's hard to identify the tipping point where the participatory
community moves over to become the protected community.

Maybe we just need more forks.  Thus far we have had mirrors, but
imagine if one or more of those mirrors decided that from some point in
time it would no longer copy Wikipedia content, but would allow its
users to edit directly on that site.  The effect on subjects that are
prone to NPOV battles could be interesting.  Probably the combined
result of all such edits might be even more neutral.  Neutralizing the
effects of ownership could be even more wiki.

Ec


from_name: Jimmy Wales

references:
<e6trns$on9$1@sea.gmane.org>	<71cd4dd90606161636k3d6f706fu5c8ab49361266795@mail.gmail.com>	<e7157g$kf4$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<e716hi$nvc$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Anthere wrote:
> The major benefit of "appointed" is there is more chance to get a united
> team with complementary skills.
> The major drawback is to risk similar-thinking people and limit
> diversity of view points.

Hmm, actually I view diversity of viewpoints as one of the strengths of
an appointment method.  It is easy for us to get people who think
exactly as we do, but it could be very interesting I think to find some
major important academic (as an example) to join the board to provide a
different perspective from what we have now.

--
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#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
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from_name: Lord Voldemort

subject: [WikiEN-l] More quotes from AfD

body:
On 6/19/06, Cobb <sealclubbingfun at googlemail.com> wrote:
> The problem is, I think, that lots of people who comment here don't actually
> take part in AFD.
> They don't see the  day-to-day crap... they just see a system that keeps
> struggling along
> despite being hopelessly broken and unscalable. AFD is such a demented
> system that
> it's very often less hassle to just ignore rubbish than even try to get it
> deleted.

So as someone who comments here AND sees the "day-to-day crap", what
specific system do you have in mind to replace AfD that would be
scalable and not so "demented"?  People who criticise the system but
don't use it may be in a weak position, but people who criticise the
system, but don't have a solution are in an equal spot.  --LV


from_name: Sue Reed

body:
I'm sure I could do a google search for Richard Stallman and find out who he is, but as a newer member of the Wikimedia community, I have no clue who he is. The "needs no introduction" assumes that everyone is of a certain level regarding whose who in the world.

I know who Larry Lessig is because of his connection to the John Edwards campaign in 2004, but otherwise I'd be lost as to who he is to.

Sue Annesreed1234 at yahoo.com

----- Original Message ----
From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, June 19, 2006 4:07:40 AM
Subject: [Foundation-l] Opinions/suggestions for "outside" members of the board?

Richard Stallman - needs no introduction


subject:
[Foundation-l] Opinions/suggestions for "outside" members of
	the board?


subject:
[Foundation-l] Opinions/suggestions for "outside" members of the
	board?

body:
To continue the ongoing board development conversation....

The board is considering adding some prominent person from outside the
core Wikipedia community to the board and seeks brainstorming ideas of
what type of person could be good, as well as mentions of names who we
might want to approach.

Larry Lessig - head of Creative Commons

Mitch Kapor - head of Mozilla Foundation (Firefox), founder of EFF, and
extremely passionate about the Wikipedia mission (and he edits
Wikipedia, and he is absolutely fascinated by and supportive of our
community model)

Richard Stallman - needs no introduction

Eben Moglen - main legal mastermind of the FSF

Comments on these names are welcome... as are further ideas of course!

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
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from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
Dear all,

Wikiversity is a proposed Wikimedia project, based specifically around
education and learning - the proposal to set up Wikiversity as a
Wikimedia project is at:
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/Modified_project_proposal>.
This proposal has been an attempt to address the fact that the last
proposal (see: <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity>) was not
approved by the board (the background to this is summarised on the
current proposal's page).

For the last three months or so, the proposal (which was already in
development) has been extended and reworked by the Wikiversity
subcommittee (see:
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity_subcommittee>). The
subcommittee is now pretty much satisfied that we have constructed a
proposal and scope for the project which gives it the flexibility to
develop, but also the clear rationale to exist as a separate project.
I'm now in the process of negotiating this with the Special Projects
Committee, hopefully to get it set up quite soon indeed :-).

In brief, the proposal is to:
*Host multimedia learning materials for all levels (ie not just
university) in all languages
*Develop learning communities around these materials
*Host research - possibly original research (though this will need to
be discussed by its community)

There is more to the proposal and scope and, if you are interested, I
would urge you to read the proposal and its related pages, which you
can find through a navigational template at the top right of
meta:Wikiversity pages. There is also a very basic mock-up of the
front page of Wikiversity, geared towards the current proposal, at:
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/Example>.

One of the things the board last recommended was that the community be
"joyful" about the proposal before setting up Wikiversity. So, this
post is to gauge just how joyful people are about the proposal, what
you think works and what doesn't, what you would change, add, remove,
etc. I would like to use this thread to discuss what the best way
forward for Wikiversity would be, so we can give it the best start we
can.

Yours,

Cormac Lawler (m:User:Cormaggio)
(on behalf of the Wikiversity subcommittee)

PS: Please feel free to post this message (or a modification of it) at
appropriate places - I'm just posting this initially to foundation-l
and textbook-l (even though it slightly duplicates a discussion
already underway at the latter).


subject: [Textbook-l] Wikiversity


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


subject: [Foundation-l] the easy way or the less easy way

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:
> I probably won't make myself more popular with what follows, but I
> favour candidness, while being respectful: I think Jimbo is a great
> guy, with tremendous vision and drive, and a friendly person. But
> with all that Jimbo did for Wikimedia, which is a tremendous amount
> and which may indeed lead him to the Nobel Price some day, it is
> still an undeniable fact that others (read: the community) did
> collectively much more, orders of magnitude more. Jimbo invested huge
> sums of money. Volunteers might have made huge amounts of money had
> they not spent so much of their free time on this project, I'm sure
> again orders of magnitude more than Jimbo has. For me it would be
> great if Jimbo kept his life long membership to the board, as a
> sincere token of appreciation, but I feel it is over the top, if he
> treats the foundation as something he has special rights to forever,
> at least morally.

You make yourself perfectly popular with me, because I could not have
said it better myself.  I think one of the most important things that we
can recognize about this conversation is that I do not expect my own
perspective to be absolutely definitive.  I do not think that the
foundation is something I have special rights to, not forever, and not
even right now.

As it stands right now we have a real board of 5 members, of whom I am
only one.  In our internal board work, everyone has an independent voice
and vote, no problem.

I am an advocate of two basic principles with respect to the longterm
governance of the foundation.  First, the board must carefully defend
the values that have brought us together, including freedom of content,
openness to participation, an atmosphere of human dignity and respect,
and a slow reasoned approach to change.  Second, the board must have a
diversity of mechanisms for participation, and a diversity of membership.

There are great Wikimedians who are willing to go through the trollfest
of an election.  There are great Wikimedians who are not.  There are
amazing people with a passion for our mission who are inside the
community, and there are amazing people with a passion for our mission
who are not.

There are great editors who become famous within Wikipedia and who can
be elected to the board.  There are great business people, great
lawyers, great thinkers who are not editors and not so widely known to
the community.

My view is that a majority of the board should always come from within
the community, some by election, some by appointment.  But my view is
also that a healthy organization should have brilliant people with
specialized knowledge and skills who are also outside the organization,
to give a strong outside perspective, to help prevent the board from
going over a cliff of group-think, etc.

As with most things, I think that a cautious hybrid approach works best.

--Jimbo
--
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#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


from_name: Eric Astor

subject: [Wikitech-l]  Per-page popularity?

body:
I've been investigating this for a while... I understand that per-page
popularity data has been disabled. However, I'm trying to make some
statistical investigations of Wikipedia, in an attempt to provide some
utilities for the selection of articles for the One Encyclopedia Per Child
(OEPC) project.

To the point, then. For the English and Simple English Wikipedias - is there
any way it could be possible to get per-page popularity data, or a stripped
log file from some Squid proxy that this information could be extracted
from? I already have a simple Perl utility that could be used to strip a
Squid log file down to the information I need (the URL).

Thanks!

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