subject: [Wikipedia-l] Imposing rules.

body:
On Sat, 2002-09-07 at 10:36, Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen wrote:

> * The IP banning is more a signal than an actual enforcement, and we've been
> lucky that these people seem to have accepted that signal.
>
> Believe me, IP bans will only last so long. The "wiki miracle" could easily
> collapse - just looke at some of the IRC networks.

This is an important point that needs to be addressed. There *is no
effective way* to ban someone from wikipedia, given the way it currently
runs. Changing your IP address is trivial, happens all the time to most
users, and can be done manually even for those on a fixed link (just use
any of the hundreds of available web proxies). The only way to have a
remotely effective ban system would be with a much stricter login
system, and even that is dubious because of authentication (the standard
way to deal with login systems is to tie login to email address, but
then it's hardly difficult to obtain as many email addresses as you
like). So unless we sign up for Micro$oft Passport or something of the
sort (*watches ball of dust fly across deserted marketplace*), we
*can't* ban any sufficiently determined troll / vandal / kook from
Wikipedia. And trying to do so when it's not effective could just make
the problem worse.

A simple question to those who demand Helga should be banned...how? What
do we ban? Her username? She posts without one. Her IP address? It
changes the next time her internet connection drops, almost certainly.
Her entire domain? This catches a bunch of innocent potential Wikipedia
contributors, and she can merely relay a connection through a proxy, by
which time she's really annoyed with the continual attempts to ban (my
guess is that "ban" in the minds of some bannees would become "censor")
her and ever more determined to post her opinions. This issue needs to
be thought out more...
--
adamw


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Karen AKA Kajikit

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Kooks and trolls: Rant about losing great contributors

body:
I agree!

The aim of the wikipedia project is NOT to let every total lunatic have
their say freely... it's to write an encyclopedia with useful,
comprehensive, intersting articles. It's not meant to be a soapbox, but
some people just don't seem to understand that. Since I joined, only one
active contributor has been banned, and even that was seen as
'over-reacting' by most people even though it was totally deserved. ANY
community has rules and they have to be enforced or there'll be total
chaos.

Also, as a subpoint, we want the wikipedia to be reputable, and there's
discusion about how to get 'experts' involved... letting Little Johnny
stand up and state repeatedly that black is really white and there's an
official conspiracy that's conned the entire rest of the world into
believing it is NOT the way to do either.

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

And on the seventh day, God said 'What my world needs is a creature
that will truly appreciate it in all its facets' -
and so He made the kitten.

Come and visit my part of the web:
Kajikit's Corner: http://Kajikit.netfirms.com/
Aussie Support Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AussieSupport
Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/

Love and huggles to all!


from_name: Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Imposing rules.

body:
On 7 Sep 2002, Adam Williamson wrote:

> A simple question to those who demand Helga should be banned...how? What
> do we ban? Her username? She posts without one. Her IP address? It
> changes the next time her internet connection drops, almost certainly.
> Her entire domain? This catches a bunch of innocent potential Wikipedia
> contributors, and she can merely relay a connection through a proxy, by
> which time she's really annoyed with the continual attempts to ban (my
> guess is that "ban" in the minds of some bannees would become "censor")
> her and ever more determined to post her opinions. This issue needs to
> be thought out more...

I think you're coming at this from the wrong angle. If we ban her, we ban her,
and that means both the IP and probalby immediate retraction of stuff she posts
from other IPs, if it's obviously her work.

I'm sure Helga will understand the message and console herself with Wikipedia
continuing to be (in her opinion) a hopelessly biased project that does not
deserve her attention.

The problem is not figuring out how to effectively ban someone - that just
can't be done. The problem is finguring ot how let someone know they're not
wanted on Wikipedia anymore without turning them into enemies. The problem is
also that this might very well not be possible - which might in turn settle the
entire debate as to whether kooks or "good contributers" are wanted. We might
have no choice.

-- Daniel


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Time zone discrepancy

body:
Whould it be too Germany-centristic to have the time field set to +2
(and +1 in Winter) by default (only in the de.wikipedia of course)? And
also for not logged-in users?

I guess more than 90% of the German language Wikipedia contributors are
from Germany, Austria or Swiss.

Kurt


from_name: Adam Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Imposing rules.

body:
On Sat, 2002-09-07 at 13:08, Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen wrote:

> > A simple question to those who demand Helga should be banned...how? What
> > do we ban? Her username? She posts without one. Her IP address? It
> > changes the next time her internet connection drops, almost certainly.
> > Her entire domain? This catches a bunch of innocent potential Wikipedia
> > contributors, and she can merely relay a connection through a proxy, by
> > which time she's really annoyed with the continual attempts to ban (my
> > guess is that "ban" in the minds of some bannees would become "censor")
> > her and ever more determined to post her opinions. This issue needs to
> > be thought out more...
>
> I think you're coming at this from the wrong angle. If we ban her, we ban her,
> and that means both the IP and probalby immediate retraction of stuff she posts
> from other IPs, if it's obviously her work.
>
> I'm sure Helga will understand the message and console herself with Wikipedia
> continuing to be (in her opinion) a hopelessly biased project that does not
> deserve her attention.
>
> The problem is not figuring out how to effectively ban someone - that just
> can't be done. The problem is finguring ot how let someone know they're not
> wanted on Wikipedia anymore without turning them into enemies. The problem is
> also that this might very well not be possible - which might in turn settle the
> entire debate as to whether kooks or "good contributers" are wanted. We might
> have no choice.

That's actually more or less what I meant :). Since a ban can't actually
really be a ban, it's more a measure of censure. Which means it should
be compared to other measures of censure open to us in terms of
effectiveness and likely negative consequences. It just seemed lots of
people were posting things like "Helga has to go", which implies that
they really think this is a state of affairs that's possible...
--
adamw


from_name: Rosa Williams

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A related ban issue

body:
What with the recent discussion of banning "problem" users, I thought I'd
bring this up for discussion/re-discussion.

Our policy on banning people for vandalism is (as I interpret what I've
read) that we restrict it to "repeated and sustained" non-useful alterations
of articles.

However, it's September, the high school and college students are back with
their free school accounts, and inevitably the amount of drive-by vandalism
seems to be on the increase. Several of us constantly check new edits by
unknown contributors, and even then, we're missing vandalism that only turns
up later when paging through via "Random Page" or otherwise coming across an
article. As the number of articles goes up, the chance of locating such
vandalism goes down.

I've tried a few approaches to ameliorating this.   I regularly check "this
user's contributions" for vandals, and even sometimes for unfamiliar IP's
(*thank* you folks for adding that code feature!) I do keyword searches for
common obscenities, et cetera.  (No, Cunctator, I don't remove them if
they're obviously part of the article.)  And, of course, I haunt the "Recent
Changes" page. But I think it's getting harder to keep up.

I would like to suggest we add "obviously malicious vandalism" to reasons
for an immediate (if temporary) IP ban: a single "Ths page is stupid"
should be, in my opinion, enough to ban the address. This saves us from
having to spend time on the next five instances of vandalism from that
contributor, which could be better spent searching for other graffiti or
*gasp* actually adding content.

Sure, one person's vandalism is another person's newbie goof.  I would agree
that if there's any reasonable possibility that a change was just a newbie
goof or something similar, we should err on the side of caution and not ban.
But in the really obvious cases - "PHREAK WUZ HERE!!"  "Louis IV  was a
dirty frog"  "f*ck you all", and similar - I honestly think we should go
ahead and administer a slapdown in the form of a temporary IP ban.  If they'
re just drive-by vandals, they'll lose interest that much faster; if it is a
serious vandal, they'll at least have to go to the trouble of getting a new
IP# for each new instance of vandalism.

Yes, there's the possibility that someone may be too quick on the gun and
ban someone who might, in the fullness of time, have become a useful
contributor. But me, I think... do we really *want* a contributor who is
starting off on the level of adding "This is so gay" to a page?  The time
just bringing them up to speed hardly seems worth it. If they're really
*serious* about becoming a real contributor, they'll just have to wait for
the ban to expire or appeal to the list.

My two cents (approx. $0.03 Canadian).
-- April


from_name: Michael R. Irwin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Ban warning to GrahamN

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
> On Friday 06 September 2002 06:16 pm,  The Cunctator wrote:
> > But it isn't. Rather, merciless editing and ignoring personality has
> > worked every time so far.
>
> If you consider the fact that Michael Tinkler and JHK leaving the project due
> to kook fatigue as "working" then I would have to agree with you.
>
> > We already have sufficient policies in place for banning people. The
> > harm in expanding them would outweigh the benefits.
>
> I don't think anybody is talking about expanding any current polices. What is
> needed is some enforcement of policies that we already have.

Prior to commencing enforcement, if that is decided somehow, the
policies and introductory material should be edited to reflect
the proposed new regime.  The ratification process to be used
to select community preferences should be published prominently
on the main page and perhaps peoples talk pages.

An orderly process that is widely perceived as fair could avoid
a lot of damage in the transition.

Regards,
Mike Irwin


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

body:
Even if everyone agreed that someone should be
permanently removed, we have no way of doing. It has
already been pointed out that the IP ban serves only
as a temporary roadblock and a social blackmark.

Stephen Gilbert

--- Gareth Owen <wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> "Steve Callaway" <sjc at easynet.co.uk> writes:
>
> > Which would I rather have working on a project to
> ensure its accurate and
> > timely execution: Julie Kemp or  Helga Hechts?
> >
> > The answer I think is patently apparent. The
> amount of rework that Helga
> > causes seems more than  sufficient justification
> for me to advocate her
> > permanent removal. If we are not careful and
> persistent "Helgas" are not
> > either a) educated into the program or b) politely
> but requested to desist,
> > the damage to the project will be considerable.
>
> Hear, hear.  I couldn't agree more.
> --
> Gareth Owen
> "Wikipedia does rock.  By the count on the
> "brilliant prose" page, there
>  are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12
> Jan 2001)
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go
> here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


from_name: Gareth Owen

body:
The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> writes:

> But it isn't. Rather, merciless editing and ignoring personality has
> worked every time so far.

No, it hasn't.  The load of merciless editing has already driven away the
valued and reasonable Julie Hoffman Kemp, and yet many of the German and
French history pages she looked to save are still full of petty nationalists.
Kooks 1, Wikipedia 0.
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock.  By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
 are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)


body:
"Steve Callaway" <sjc at easynet.co.uk> writes:

> Which would I rather have working on a project to ensure its accurate and
> timely execution: Julie Kemp or  Helga Hechts?
>
> The answer I think is patently apparent. The amount of rework that Helga
> causes seems more than  sufficient justification for me to advocate her
> permanent removal. If we are not careful and persistent "Helgas" are not
> either a) educated into the program or b) politely but requested to desist,
> the damage to the project will be considerable.

Hear, hear.  I couldn't agree more.
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock.  By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
 are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Stephen Gilbert message of Sep 3

body:
--- Helga Hecht <helgah at email.com> wrote:
> Hello Stephen,
>
> What I claim, which was taken out from [[Berlin]],
> that after the March Declaration of War on Germany
> by worldwide Judea...

The point is that this one newspaper with this one
headline:
a) cannot declare war on anyone,
b) cannot speak for all the Jews of the world, and
c) was call was for a boycott of German goods by Jews
because of perscution that was already happening, not
armed resistance

> You say , it was not "hidden", that such a headline
> was printed.
>
> My quote of it was taken out of the Berlin wiki
> subject page along with the Leonard Bernstein
> Concert. A reference to the war declaration was
> taken out of the Neturei Karta subject page.
>
> Please let me know some reputable books, that show
> this newspaper article at the same time when they
> show the events leading up to WW II.

I doubt you'll find it in any reputable source, since
a newspaper headline would could hardly be considered
a major event leading up to World War II. Like you, I
am not an expert historian, so I can't tell you for
certain. Sadly, all of our professional historians
have left the project in frustration.

> None of the books in America have showed me this. I
> did not find out about it until I saw it on
> internet.

I've known about it for many years before coming to
the Wikipedia project, so it can't be too much of a
secret. However, I repeat: it's not a major event. It
is a newspaper headline, printed by one newspaper.

Stephen Gilbert

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


body:
To be fair, merciless editing has driven away numerous
kooks, most of whom were anonymous. Wikipedia's score
should be quite a bit higher.

Stephen Gilbert

--- koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> Gareth wrote:
> >
> >No, it hasn't.  The load of merciless editing has
> already driven away the
> >valued and reasonable Julie Hoffman Kemp, and yet
> many of the German and
> >French history pages she looked to save are still
> full of petty nationalists.
> >Kooks 1, Wikipedia 0.
>
> And Michael Tinkler.  Kooks 2, Wikipedia 0.
>
> kq
>
>
>
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go
> here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] A related ban issue

body:
--- Rosa Williams <aprilrosanina at charter.net> wrote:
> Yes, there's the possibility that someone may be too
> quick on the gun and
> ban someone who might, in the fullness of time, have
> become a useful
> contributor. But me, I think... do we really *want*
> a contributor who is
> starting off on the level of adding "This is so gay"
> to a page?  The time
> just bringing them up to speed hardly seems worth
> it. If they're really
> *serious* about becoming a real contributor, they'll
> just have to wait for
> the ban to expire or appeal to the list.

I should point out the case of Jzcool, who started off
making "This is gay" edits, and then made many useful
contributions. Was it worth it to put up with some
nonsense while a few Wikipedians showed him how to be
constructive? I say yes.

Stephen Gilbert

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] A related ban issue

body:
Rosa Williams wrote:
>
> What with the recent discussion of banning "problem" users, I thought I'd
> bring this up for discussion/re-discussion.
>
> Our policy on banning people for vandalism is (as I interpret what I've
> read) that we restrict it to "repeated and sustained" non-useful alterations
> of articles.
>
> However, it's September, the high school and college students are back with
> their free school accounts, and inevitably the amount of drive-by vandalism
> seems to be on the increase. Several of us constantly check new edits by
> unknown contributors, and even then, we're missing vandalism that only turns
> up later when paging through via "Random Page" or otherwise coming across an
> article. As the number of articles goes up, the chance of locating such
> vandalism goes down.
>
> I've tried a few approaches to ameliorating this.   I regularly check "this
> user's contributions" for vandals, and even sometimes for unfamiliar IP's
> (*thank* you folks for adding that code feature!) I do keyword searches for
> common obscenities, et cetera.  (No, Cunctator, I don't remove them if
> they're obviously part of the article.)  And, of course, I haunt the "Recent
> Changes" page. But I think it's getting harder to keep up.
>
> I would like to suggest we add "obviously malicious vandalism" to reasons
> for an immediate (if temporary) IP ban: a single "Ths page is stupid"
> should be, in my opinion, enough to ban the address. This saves us from
> having to spend time on the next five instances of vandalism from that
> contributor, which could be better spent searching for other graffiti or
> *gasp* actually adding content.

My understanding of how ip banning and common use of reassignment
of IP numbers leads me to this concern:

If too many casual or hit and run type vandals are banned that we
are likely banning the next users, not the vandal.  This could be
counterproductive if it occurs in conjunction with recruiting efforts
or methods under discussion in other threads.

For high school or college users to begin relying on the Wikipedia
as a resource timely access is required due to homework deadlines,
typically on the order of days or hours, not weeks.   Encountering
frequent blocks due to local vandals on the same pool of IP addresses
is likely to encourage the view that Wikipedia is unreliable, not
that inappropriate local use is causing the problem.  If the user
becomes aware that he/she is being punished for another's misdeeds
this could form an even worse impression.

>
> Sure, one person's vandalism is another person's newbie goof.  I would agree
> that if there's any reasonable possibility that a change was just a newbie
> goof or something similar, we should err on the side of caution and not ban.
> But in the really obvious cases - "PHREAK WUZ HERE!!"  "Louis IV  was a
> dirty frog"  "f*ck you all", and similar - I honestly think we should go
> ahead and administer a slapdown in the form of a temporary IP ban.  If they'
> re just drive-by vandals, they'll lose interest that much faster; if it is a
> serious vandal, they'll at least have to go to the trouble of getting a new
> IP# for each new instance of vandalism.

What period of time for routine banning would you (anyone) suggest
as an estimate of the initial proper tradeoff between potential
denial of service to legitimate users and the attention span of
casual or hit and run type vandalism?

Are you aware that denial of service is often the goal of
low level crackers or "script kiddies"?

This type of banning could actually become an incentive
or invitation to certain types of vandal mentalities if
structured and managed carefully.

>
> Yes, there's the possibility that someone may be too quick on the gun and
> ban someone who might, in the fullness of time, have become a useful
> contributor. But me, I think... do we really *want* a contributor who is
> starting off on the level of adding "This is so gay" to a page?

Yes.  If they (some threshold percentage to be determined later
with empirical data) become productive contributers we should
eventually show a profit.

I agree it is a long term investment.  I agree it is possible to
be losing more initially than we are gaining until more effective
methods are found.

If the decision (for now) is to stick with quick, known, short
term returns then I propose we plan to periodically reassess the
policy.   We should document the periodic review process so that
interested members of the community know when, where, how to
appropriately express their current views.

>The time
> just bringing them up to speed hardly seems worth it.

It seems worth it to me.  If there is sufficient interest in
mutual self education then this can be left to those who choose
to volunteer for it.   If we decide that we have no time for
this in the stacks then perhaps an alternate medium for
"remedial" students and volunteer contributors can be established.

Directing newcomer's to an NPOV editing tutorial for practice
if interested may be more effective that directing them to the
current draft of the policy which is only lightly endorsed by
members of the community and is at least subtle for many people
if not actually "obviously" confusing.

Elsewhere I have proposed an ECP (engineering change proposal)
or code walkthrough type of approach that would require three
"vandals" to agree with each other that the "vandalism" is
an appropriate change.   This should slow down and break up
vandalism, without potential denial of service, in several ways.

1.  More effort is required to create the fake accounts and
engage in the vandalism.  It may be easier to delete 3 accounts
and revert the damage than it is for the creator of the vandalism.
Perhaps a delay on account creation with an appropriate explanation
would slow down vandals while not discouraging new dropings unduly.

2.  Any "vandals" editing in good faith are likley to encounter
resistance from cohorts.  They can spend some time bickering
among themselves on the talk page or elsewhere determining
what is or is not appropriate.   Any defectors to our published
guidelines should be welcomed.

Perhaps an appropriate modification of my proposed approached
could be combined with the page freezing proposed elsewhere
for occasional testing.   When a freeze is invoked, changes
could only proceed once the requirements of the ECP process
are met.  The parties to the controversy now have an incentive
to agree or move on, not all Wiki authority has been stripped
away for excessive controversiality.  Only unilateral editing
of the controversial subject page undergoing excessive flip
flop editing or "edit war".

>If they're really
> *serious* about becoming a real contributor, they'll just have to wait for
> the ban to expire or appeal to the list.

It is my impression that we get more casual contributors that
become serious with increasing contribution and recognition
of the long term value, than that people who show up intending
initially to be seriously committed long term contributors.

In other words, we have a buy in process that works if
people do not face too high a bar to begin contributing or do
not suffer burn out attempting to do too much work themselves.

Regards,
Mike Irwin


body:
Gareth Owen wrote:
>
> "Steve Callaway" <sjc at easynet.co.uk> writes:
>

>If we are not careful and persistent "Helgas" are not
> > either a) educated into the program or b) politely but requested to desist,
> > the damage to the project will be considerable.

I have been on the other end of this stick a couple
of times.

Regarding a.)  The educational materials available have
improved recently due to April's rewrite efforts.

Regarding b.) In my view, the politeness could use
some work.  Not that I am blameless, but I found the
many initial interactions often needlessly rude.  Nor did
even partial attempts to comply with abrubt demands in
ways that seemed consistent with stated policies seem
to appease some "regulars".

A further fact, in my view, that there are no hard policy
guidelines articulated consistently and ratified by any
community process beyond discussion and periodic lynching.
Dr. Kemp refered to running off uncooperative contributors
as the only that has been successful to date.  Yet it was
not successful enough to guarantee her continued continuous
participation.   Some feel this indicates that insufficent
banning is occuring too late,  this does not account for
the past perceived success in running off people percieved
to be causing problems.

Several on the list have now indicated that they are
tired of discussing some issues.   Some have announced
that they will filter certain topics.  Others seem to
think that discussion should proceed at a pace appropriate
to allow them to personally keep up with all topics.

Mob rule or civilized consensus building may suffice
for a fairly large project.  Clearly it has sufficed
for much progress on the Wikipedia to date.

An appropriate question is whether it will suffice
for massive participation and how soon we would like
to be ready for effective massive participation.

I think someone else on the list proposed 5,000
regular contributors as massive and useful in completing
the Wikipedia in a reasonable period of time.   We currently
estimate that we have 200.   If the current volume
of this mailing is too controversial in discussing
meta issues, picture it with 25 times the current volume.

If we are to have a massive project team then even
valued contributors must learn to pace themselves or
work within the current limitations of our processes
effectively to avoid "burn out".

I am leery of a trolls or us type of process for
several reasons:

1.  I have already been attacked as a troll, so
this policy clearly threatens me.

2.  What happens when the controversy is between
several valued contributors?  If this is our ultimate
controversy resolution then we inevitably lose someone
valued in this scenario.

3.  As much of the local controversy seems to arise
from the meta issue of how to go about resolving
controversy as from the original controversy itself.

4.  It seems a common community viewpoint that the
contributing regulars views must take precedence
over newcomers.   This is inherently defective.

I shall attempt to support this conclusion as follows:

When or after how much contribution do I become
a "regular"?   If the answer is a support network
of fellow contributors, so shut up and take notes,
then we are merely trading present meta discussions
within small groups for larger meta discussions with
larger groups in the future.

In my view, prototyping is best done early and
often as possible.   This is a bias from engineering
training.  Nevertheless, if it is the community
consensus to wait, then I am quite capable of that.

I will seriously entertain any public requests to limit
my posts to the list to a specific quantitative rate.
I will voluntarily comply for a specified test period
with guideline specified if the current community at large
will commit (by consensus) to the same limiting rate for
all individuals.

This gives a seniority bias to those went before
and helped articulate the current customs such that
they are in accordance with their personal worldviews
and moral frameworks but I am willing to wait and build
seniority, if that is an equitably distributed requirement
from here on.

Regards,
Mike Irwin


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Buitach apple

body:
Can anyone figure out what a "Buitach apple" is? I've seen it only on pages
about [[candiru]], none of which specify what kind of plant it is.

phma


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A related ban issue -- IP probation

body:
On Saturday 07 September 2002 07:51 pm, April wrote:
> I would like to suggest we add "obviously malicious vandalism" to reasons
> for an immediate (if temporary) IP ban: a single "Ths page is stupid"
> should be, in my opinion, enough to ban the address. This saves us from
> having to spend time on the next five instances of vandalism from that
> contributor, which could be better spent searching for other graffiti or
> *gasp* actually adding content.

Hum, you just made me realize that the closest thing I'm aware of that is a
policy on when to lable something as vandalism is at:
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/VANDALISM_IN_PROGRESS

Which states in part: "However, please do not lable isolated instances of
text deletions, replacements or odd additions as VANDALISM unless they are
overtly lewd or offensive." and continues; "More often than not, this is just
a visitor to the site experimenting with how to use it -- labeling them as a
VANDAL is a sure way of ensuring they will not become contributors."

I would say that abusive cursing or displaying the oh so clever image at
www.goatse.cx would be an objective case of "overtly lewd or offensive" but
the gray area starts with things like; "This is so gay", or "this is stupid"
added to or replacing articles.  I generally don't consider these non-overtly
lewd statements worthy of a ban (block is a better word) unless there is a
systematic posting of these idiotic statements on several pages.

As the previous most active vandal stalker, it is my experience that IPs who
are responsible for these single "gray area" acts do their thing and just
leave never to return. In fact for a few months I was tracking these types of
isolated "gray area" additions/replacements and found the majority of them to
/remain/ isolated -- the IPs didn't return in the majority of cases (and some
that did return actually contributed positively to articles). However, most
of the idiots that did return came back with slightly different IPs -- thus a
block would have been useless anyway.

Instead of blocking I would much prefer an IP watchlist -- whereby a warned
IP is watched for a specified period (perhaps by bolding their IP address in
Recent Changes and having a log of IPs on probation). This is in the spirit
of the page I created at:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IP_probation_watchlist

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

body:
On Saturday 07 September 2002 06:05 am, you wrote:
> I didn't know that certain policy pages were frozen.
> What was the reasoning behind it?
>
> Stephen Gilbert

Because policy cannot be changed without some kind of consensus first.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Giskart

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A related ban issue

body:
Rosa Williams wrote:

>[cut]
>
>I've tried a few approaches to ameliorating this.   I regularly check "this
>user's contributions" for vandals, and even sometimes for unfamiliar IP's
>(*thank* you folks for adding that code feature!) I do keyword searches for
>common obscenities, et cetera.  (No, Cunctator, I don't remove them if
>they're obviously part of the article.)  And, of course, I haunt the "Recent
>Changes" page. But I think it's getting harder to keep up.
>[cut]
>

For easy spotting of vandalism a special page whit suspicious changes
can mayby be of some use. A rule system that  gives points to actions
and if it gets a  certain value its gets listed. Somthing like
spamassassin (http://spamassassin.org )  Offcource to suggest somthing
or to make it work is somthing else.  -- giskart


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

body:
On Sun, 2002-09-08 at 00:58, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> On Saturday 07 September 2002 06:05 am, you wrote:
> > I didn't know that certain policy pages were frozen.
> > What was the reasoning behind it?
> >
> > Stephen Gilbert
>
> Because policy cannot be changed without some kind of consensus first.

Or to put it cynically, so that the policy cannot be changed (in the
WikiWay).

A fuller explanation of the reasoning has to do with the history of the
creation of the Meta site, and the development of contentious policy
pages such as those on entry deletion and the definition of Wikipedia
vandalism, during LMS's reign.

--tc


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Saturday 07 September 2002 06:05 am, you wrote:
> > I didn't know that certain policy pages were
> frozen.
> > What was the reasoning behind it?
> >
> > Stephen Gilbert
>
> Because policy cannot be changed without some kind
> of consensus first.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

Yes, but that doesn't explain why a sysop has to be
the person who makes any agreed upon changes. Also,
freezing these pages bars people from copyediting and
linking.

Stephen Gilbert

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

body:
--- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
> A fuller explanation of the reasoning has to do with
> the history of the
> creation of the Meta site, and the development of
> contentious policy
> pages such as those on entry deletion and the
> definition of Wikipedia
> vandalism, during LMS's reign.

Yes, I'm aware of the history; I simply don't recall
any discussion on freezing those pages. Obviously I
missed it. For the record, I think it's a bad idea.

Stephen Gilbert

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


from_name: Helga Hecht

body:
Hello Stephen,

I am just now reading through your message in answer to my previous message and want to thank you for your detailed answers.

I would like to clear up a point with you on the text taken from the talk page of Neturei Karta

> For example : There was a Daily Express Newspaper
> declaration March 1933: Judea  declares War on
> Germany. This militant Zionist group has in 1997
> been verified by other religious Jewish groups
> http://www.jewsnotzionists.org/ and
> http://www.netureikarta.org/ (wikipedia
article:
> Neturei Karta) as cause of WW II.
>
> One has to wonder why any of this is being hidden ?

"It's not "hidden" that such a headline was printed.
What is being disputed is your claim that this was a
cause of WWII." (That was your answer)

This is not my claim,that this was a cause of WWII, the Neturei Karta stated that.

What I claim, which was taken out from [[Berlin]],
that after the March Declaration of War on Germany by worldwide Judea, Hitler forbade, called a boycott not to buy in Jewish stores. Jews in Germany wrote a letter against the Jews of the World Judea Declaration of War on Germany. This however did not save them from the wrath of the dictator. (I am writing from memory, not looking up the exact wording, but I re-entered the text taken out by someone on Berlin/talk).

You say , it was not "hidden", that such a headline was printed.

My quote of it was taken out of the Berlin wiki subject page along with the Leonard Bernstein Concert. A reference to the war declaration was taken out of the Neturei Karta subject page.

Please let me know some reputable books, that show this newspaper article at the same time when they show the events leading up to WW II.

None of the books in America have showed me this. I did not find out about it until I saw it on internet.

Thank you for sharing your information.
H. Jonat

--
__________________________________________________________
Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Mail.com
http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Buitach apple

body:
Pierre Abbat wrote:

>Can anyone figure out what a "Buitach apple" is? I've seen it only on pages
>about [[candiru]], none of which specify what kind of plant it is.
>
Interesting problem.  Most of the search engine results seem to use the
term in an identical phrase.  That suggests a lot of uncritical copying.
 I'm inclined to think that the name Buitach is the corruption of
something else.  IMHO the candidate for this is the genus Bowdichia
(Common name Sucupira).  This is a tropical hardwood tree, whose seeds
and bark are reported to have medicinal qualities.  It's range fits in
with what is said about Candiru.

One of our new members, Henriette, is a herbalist, and may be able to
help with this subject.

Eclecticology


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Time zone discrepancy

body:
On Sat, Sep 07, 2002 at 03:22:56PM +0200, Kurt Jansson wrote:
> Whould it be too Germany-centristic to have the time field set to +2
> (and +1 in Winter) by default (only in the de.wikipedia of course)? And
> also for not logged-in users?
>
> I guess more than 90% of the German language Wikipedia contributors are
> from Germany, Austria or Swiss.

Could you also do it for Polish Wikipedia ? (the same timezone)


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A related ban issue

body:
At 04:32 PM 9/7/02 -0400, you wrote:
>...a single "Ths page is stupid"
>should be, in my opinion, enough to ban the address.
>-- April

No, We cannot ban Larry.

Fred

Banning the sites of vandals (especially high school students with free
accounts) presents some problems. Such sites are are natural customers.
Since a person will probably come through from different computers with
different IPs the individual cannot be banned, only the site.

Fred


from_name: Tesla Coil

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The "Casio Effect"

body:
On 4 Sep 2002, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
> There was a notion of teaming up groups of Wikipedians around
> some areas of Wikipedia content - operating systems, unix, punk
> rock or the Roman Empire.
>
> They should have some infrastructure (namespace ? mailing list ?)
> to rely on in order to coordinate, review and discuss. Not to
> mention do some planning and quality assurance.

What happened to this idea?  Against this suggestion, so much
talk of "experts" appears a wish that collective intelligence
will arrive as embodied by individuals and spare the problem
of acheiving better organization of it in social form.

I believe, however, that it would be more practical for SIGs
to be formed around wider topic areas than those cited above,
for example, "History" rather than "the Roman Empire."


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

body:
--- Karen AKA Kajikit <kaji at labyrinth.net.au> wrote:
> Stephen Gilbert wrote:
> > Yes, but that doesn't explain why a sysop has to
> be
> > the person who makes any agreed upon changes.
> Also,
> > freezing these pages bars people from copyediting
> and
> > linking.
>
> The OBVIOUS reason behind it is that these are basic
> help-type pages
> that a newbie has no reason to need or want to
> change.

Grammar corrections, typos and linking are three
reasons that someone might want to change the pages.

> If they have
> something to say they can do it on the related talk
> page. It just
> simplifies things a bit to have them protected...
> and it's not like
> there are any shortage of sysops around to make any
> necessary changes,
> especially since anyone who REALLY wants to be one
> just has to ask and
> they can be a sysop too.

I don't recall ever having a problem with people
changing policies unilaterally, so I guess I don't see
any good reason to have these pages frozen. I do,
however, see some problems with it.

Stephen Gilbert

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

body:
I don't remember coming to an agreement they should be protected, either (though I've recently had a blow to the head).  ;-)  I've seen them vandalized a few times, then reverted.  One issue I have with their protection is that it seems to imply that the policies are etched in stone, when in fact one of the "rules" of wikipedia is to ignore all rules if rules make you uncomfortable.

Yet the policy pages are protected.  I think they call that [[cognitive dissonance]].  I'm tempted to ignore an unwritten rule now.

kq

Stephen wrote:
>I don't recall ever having a problem with people
>changing policies unilaterally, so I guess I don't see
>any good reason to have these pages frozen. I do,
>however, see some problems with it.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Buitach apple

body:
On Sunday 08 September 2002 05:23, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Interesting problem.  Most of the search engine results seem to use the
> term in an identical phrase.  That suggests a lot of uncritical copying.
>  I'm inclined to think that the name Buitach is the corruption of
> something else.  IMHO the candidate for this is the genus Bowdichia
> (Common name Sucupira).  This is a tropical hardwood tree, whose seeds
> and bark are reported to have medicinal qualities.  It's range fits in
> with what is said about Candiru.

Bowdichia is in Fabaceae, and I have a hard time imagining someone describing
the fruit of any Fabacea as an "apple". gg:bowdichia candiru turned up
nothing; gg:sucupira candiru turned up very little, mostly wordlists.

phma


subject: [Wikipedia-l] A related ban issue

body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:

>[cut]
>
>My understanding of how ip banning and common use of reassignment
>of IP numbers leads me to this concern:
>
>If too many casual or hit and run type vandals are banned that we
>are likely banning the next users, not the vandal.  This could be
>counterproductive if it occurs in conjunction with recruiting efforts
>or methods under discussion in other threads.
>
>For high school or college users to begin relying on the Wikipedia
>as a resource timely access is required due to homework deadlines,
>typically on the order of days or hours, not weeks.   Encountering
>frequent blocks due to local vandals on the same pool of IP addresses
>is likely to encourage the view that Wikipedia is unreliable, not
>that inappropriate local use is causing the problem.  If the user
>becomes aware that he/she is being punished for another's misdeeds
>this could form an even worse impression.
>
>
[cut]

I have not (yet) been banned so i do not realy know but the language
configurationfile says "

"blockiptext" => "Use the form below to block write access from a
specific IP address. This should be done only only to prevent
valndalism, and in accordance with [[Wikipedia:Policy|Wikipedia
policy]]. Fill in a specific reason below (for example, citing
particular pages that were vandalized)."

So your not realy blocking a user from accesing Wikipedia. He can still
read all the articels. He can only not change them. For making has
homework he does not need to change content.  -- giskart


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Our officially anonymous software

body:
Fellow Wikipedians, I want to say that I am thoroughly
pleased with the current Wikipedia software. It is
stable, speedy and useful. I think it's time we gave
it a name other than "the Phase III software".

Back in the mists of Wikipedia history, two names were
proposed for the new Phase II software:

1. Larry Sanger suggested the name "Encyclode", which
stood for "Encyclopedia Code". Mr. Sanger himself
admitted this was a very lame attempt.

2. Jimbo Wales favoured "PediaWiki", so he could say
"Wikipedia runs on PediaWiki".

I sumbit these two for your consideration, but I hope
you don't consider them for very long. ;-)

I like the name "PhaseIII Wiki". It is in keeping with
Wikipedia history, and people won't have to get used
to a completely new name.

Any other suggestions?

Stephen Gilbert

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The "Casio Effect"

body:
Tesla Coil wrote:
> On 4 Sep 2002, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
>>There was a notion of teaming up groups of Wikipedians around
>>some areas of Wikipedia content - operating systems, unix, punk
>>rock or the Roman Empire.
>>
>>They should have some infrastructure (namespace ? mailing list ?)
>>to rely on in order to coordinate, review and discuss. Not to
>>mention do some planning and quality assurance.
>
> What happened to this idea?  Against this suggestion, so much
> talk of "experts" appears a wish that collective intelligence
> will arrive as embodied by individuals and spare the problem
> of acheiving better organization of it in social form.

This sounds like a natural extension of the WikiProjects that are
already floating around.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

body:
On Sunday 08 September 2002 12:01 pm, you wrote:
> I don't recall ever having a problem with people
> changing policies unilaterally, so I guess I don't see
> any good reason to have these pages frozen. I do,
> however, see some problems with it.
>
> Stephen Gilbert

Yes there has been a problem with this in the past (albeit relatively minor -
but that was back when we had 1/3 the edit volume). Off the top of my head;
an anonymous IP tried to add a new naming convention unilaterally without
discussion;
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Naming_conventions&diff=68608&oldid=59909

24's additions to rules to consider (admittedly not a policy page but very
similar);
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Rules_to_consider&diff=52895&oldid=52894

And there are probably others that could be found by digging a bit more.

Then there is
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License
which for legal reasons can't be edited by anybody and also
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights

As Karen said anybody who has been around for a while can be a sysop and we
can't have just any anonymous IP changing policy pages.

If you have noticed when I refactored the naming conventions page I spun-off
the majority of the text in sub-articles which /are not/ protected - just
watched by little old me. I think something similar should be done with NPOV
which has become a monster. That way the amount of protected text is at a
bare minimum and anybody can copyedit the majority of the text yet the short
policy statements on the protected page are not changed.

In fact all of our policy pages should be as short as possible with separate
but linked unprotected pages which go into in-depth discussion and
explanation. See http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions

We might want to have some type of boilerplate block at the top of each
policy page stating something to the effect;

"[[Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines|Wikipedia policy]] has evolved over time
and continues to evolve as the project matures. Policy changes must be agreed
to by consensus however. If you want to help us refine our policies please
add to this page's talk, join the [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia-L|mailing list]]
and/or ask to become a [[Wikipedia:Administrators|Wikipedia administrator]]
(which is granted to any logged-in user who is generally known and trusted by
the community)."

It has been stated before that we can't trust any anonymous yahoo with meta
functions (and changing policy is one of these functions).

PS I've heard several people chim in that "Ignore all rules" is a policy.
That's plain wrong; it is just a rule to consider. See:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Buitach apple

body:
For what it's worth, none of the the words "buitach," "xaqua," or
"xagua" appear in the Oxford English Dictionary.  "Candiru," however,
yields

A tiny, bloodsucking catfish, Vandellia cirrhosa, of the family
Pygidiid?, found in the Amazon river, where it attacks other animals,
including man.

  1841 R. H. SCHOMBURGK in Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. VI. 395, I was
frequently warned by the inhabitants to be cautious while bathing of a
small fish called Cancliru [sic].
  1897 J. BACH in Proc. Zool. Soc. 901 The 'Candyr?', as the fish is
called, is much dreaded by the natives of the Jurua.
  1930 E. W. GUDGER Candir? p. vii, 'Candir?' is the collective name
given to certain small catfishes of the Amazon River and its tributaries
to which are attributed the evil habit of entering the urethra of men
and the vulva of women bathers.
  1962 K. F. LAGLER et al. Ichthyol. xiv. 438 One fish that can perhaps
be regarded as a true parasite is the small candiru, a South American
catfish.

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com
[mailto:wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com]On Behalf Of Pierre Abbat
Sent: Sunday, September 08, 2002 06:13
To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Buitach apple

On Sunday 08 September 2002 05:23, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Interesting problem.  Most of the search engine results seem to use
the
> term in an identical phrase.  That suggests a lot of uncritical
copying.
>  I'm inclined to think that the name Buitach is the corruption of
> something else.  IMHO the candidate for this is the genus Bowdichia
> (Common name Sucupira).  This is a tropical hardwood tree, whose seeds
> and bark are reported to have medicinal qualities.  It's range fits in
> with what is said about Candiru.

Bowdichia is in Fabaceae, and I have a hard time imagining someone
describing
the fruit of any Fabacea as an "apple". gg:bowdichia candiru turned up
nothing; gg:sucupira candiru turned up very little, mostly wordlists.

phma
[Wikipedia-l]
To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Un-blocking some old blocks

body:
Unless somebody objects, I would like to unblock some old blocks I made some
time back (the first 6 at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Ipblocklist
).

These IPs probably are not being used by the vandal anymore (a probation
tracking system would be nice in these cases though - as I stated in a
previous post).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

body:
Mav wrote:
>"[[Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines|Wikipedia policy]] has evolved over time
>and continues to evolve as the project matures. Policy changes must be agreed
>to by consensus however.
...
>PS I've heard several people chim in that "Ignore all rules" is a policy.
>That's plain wrong; it is just a rule to consider. See:
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines

I disagree entirely.  My understanding of it was as follows: NPOV is a policy.  Everything else is a suggestion, though some of them are more firmly suggested than others, and many of them have quite solid reasoning behind them.

kq


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

body:
Stephen Gilbert wrote:
>
> --- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
> > A fuller explanation of the reasoning has to do with
> > the history of the
> > creation of the Meta site, and the development of
> > contentious policy
> > pages such as those on entry deletion and the
> > definition of Wikipedia
> > vandalism, during LMS's reign.
>
> Yes, I'm aware of the history; I simply don't recall
> any discussion on freezing those pages. Obviously I
> missed it. For the record, I think it's a bad idea.
>
> Stephen Gilbert

Several new approaches, some sweeping and some
more incremental, have been proposed to help
slow down or cool off controversy that appears
to have gotten too heated.

Perhaps new approaches could be tested on these
few policy pages to see if they are helpful in
allowing the community at large (occasional contributors
as well as mailing list regulars) to reach a broad
consensus on incremental policy or presentation changes.

Regards,
Mike Irwin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] A related ban issue

body:
Giskart wrote:
>
> Michael R. Irwin wrote:
>
> >[cut]
> >
> >My understanding of how ip banning and common use of reassignment
> >of IP numbers leads me to this concern:
> >
> >If too many casual or hit and run type vandals are banned that we
> >are likely banning the next users, not the vandal.  This could be
> >counterproductive if it occurs in conjunction with recruiting efforts
> >or methods under discussion in other threads.
> >
> >For high school or college users to begin relying on the Wikipedia
> >as a resource timely access is required due to homework deadlines,
> >typically on the order of days or hours, not weeks.   Encountering
> >frequent blocks due to local vandals on the same pool of IP addresses
> >is likely to encourage the view that Wikipedia is unreliable, not
> >that inappropriate local use is causing the problem.  If the user
> >becomes aware that he/she is being punished for another's misdeeds
> >this could form an even worse impression.
> >
> >
> [cut]
>
> I have not (yet) been banned so i do not realy know but the language
> configurationfile says "
>
> "blockiptext" => "Use the form below to block write access from a
> specific IP address. This should be done only only to prevent
> valndalism, and in accordance with [[Wikipedia:Policy|Wikipedia
> policy]]. Fill in a specific reason below (for example, citing
> particular pages that were vandalized)."
>
> So your not realy blocking a user from accesing Wikipedia. He can still
> read all the articels. He can only not change them. For making has
> homework he does not need to change content.  -- giskart

I believe you are correct.  Others have corrected this
type of poor wording/thinking for me before.  This obviously
relieves the primary focus of my concern above.

A related smaller concern.   I find that much of my contribution
is in the form of making small updates when researching or doing
some background reading in support of personal projects.

I think getting the students used to contributing tidbits,
questions (on associated talk pages) or routine corrections in
the course of their routine work as appropriate will be quite
useful.   This may ultimately be the major form of contribution
by most people, as our material gets more detailed and broad.
Occasional write block interference or aliasing would disrupt
this form of contribution.  If persisent from certain sites
it be highly disruptive in attracting contributors from that
site.

To me this appears to be a smaller short term impact than the
scenario I devised above around faulty assumptions.  Longer term
is harder to estimate.   If we wish to encourage a participatory
trend this may be a negative.   If the trend to begin contributing
as (it is feasible and convenient) turns out to be quite strong
among casual users, then I think it is probably negligable.

If vandals find denial of Wikipedia write access to
local populations sharing a common IP address pool
amusing, it may increase our attractiveness as a target.

Thanks for correcting my error.

Regards,
Mike Irwin


body:
Stephen Gilbert wrote:
>
> Fellow Wikipedians, I want to say that I am thoroughly
> pleased with the current Wikipedia software. It is
> stable, speedy and useful. I think it's time we gave
> it a name other than "the Phase III software".
>
> Back in the mists of Wikipedia history, two names were
> proposed for the new Phase II software:
>
> 1. Larry Sanger suggested the name "Encyclode", which
> stood for "Encyclopedia Code". Mr. Sanger himself
> admitted this was a very lame attempt.
>
> 2. Jimbo Wales favoured "PediaWiki", so he could say
> "Wikipedia runs on PediaWiki".
>
> I sumbit these two for your consideration, but I hope
> you don't consider them for very long. ;-)
>
> I like the name "PhaseIII Wiki". It is in keeping with
> Wikipedia history, and people won't have to get used
> to a completely new name.
>
> Any other suggestions?
>

How about Wiki Accountable or Wiki Archive, WA for short.
It could be codenamed for another world known revolutionary.

Washington, who helped found and lead a rather minor backwater
country with a view towards future potential.   Subsequent
versions or translations to other languages could be named
for other recognized visionaries around the world.

This would obviously state our projections of great things
to come for the current "washington" code and other derivatives
as they arrive.

Alternatively, we could start with Caesar or Gandhi.

Regards,
Mike Irwin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Call for Boycott, Judea Declares War onGermany

body:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
>
> At 03:54 AM 9/9/02 +0800, Hekga wrote:
> >On wiki [[Berlin]] page I added  "text". Vicki, you objected.
> >
> >Around 1933, some 160,000 Jews were living in Berlin, a third of all
> >German Jews. They constituted four percent of the population. A third of
> >them were poor immigrants from Eastern Europe, who lived mainly in
> >Scheunenviertel near Alexanderplatz?. The Jews were persecuted from the
> >beginning of the Nazi regime. In March all Jewish doctors had to leave the
> >Charit? hospital. "As apparent counter-measure a worldwide Jewish boycott
> >was called on March 24, 1933 with a Daily Express, London newspaper
> >article stating: Judea Declares War On Germany (complete text:[[2]]). The
> >many economic boycott actions were answered in the first week of April,
> >when Nazi officials ordered the German population not to buy at Jewish shops."
> >--
> >[[2]] = Shofar Nizcor website.
> >--
> >Vicki, would you object if I changed the last sentence to read:
> >
> >"In the first week of April, Nazi officials ordered the German population
> >not to buy at Jewish shops".
> >
> >instead of:
> >
> >"The many economic boycott actions were answered in the first week of
> >April, when Nazi officials ordered the German population not to buy at
> >Jewish shops".
>
> Yes, I would. It puts far too much emphasis on a newspaper article that (a)
> almost certainly
> had no effect on future events, (b) was not published in Berlin, and (c)
> was not about Berlin.
>
> --
> Vicki Rosenzweig
> vr at redbird.org
> http://www.redbird.org

Ms. Rosenzweig has captured some of my initial concern when
I read the proposed change as well.

The proposed sentence appears to me such that it would be an
excellent NPOV compliant factual summary of a paragraph, phase
or article regarding the rising tensions in the period if a list
of typical boycott actions or announcements (perhaps including
the specific article headline in question) were to precede it.

Particularly useful, in my view, would be whether other parties
were pursuing these economic actions as well.   Did the German
government eventually respond to most or everyone or only
selectively: first to some of the Jewish activity, later to
other opposing interests as targets of opportunity.

Divide and conquer is an old strategy that the German
government seemed (to me) to abandon later in the War.
Were they employing it initially in the economic arena of
the pre War era?

Were others (besides some Jewish interests) likewise engaged
against German interests?   Perhaps we can usefully expand
"The many economic boycott actions" in the article above
the proposed new sentence.  This might help provide the reader
with sufficient information to ask themselves useful questions
for further reading or research.

Regards,
Mike Irwin


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Call for Boycott, Judea Declares War on
  Germany

body:
At 03:54 AM 9/9/02 +0800, Hekga wrote:
>On wiki [[Berlin]] page I added  "text". Vicki, you objected.
>
>Around 1933, some 160,000 Jews were living in Berlin, a third of all
>German Jews. They constituted four percent of the population. A third of
>them were poor immigrants from Eastern Europe, who lived mainly in
>Scheunenviertel near Alexanderplatz?. The Jews were persecuted from the
>beginning of the Nazi regime. In March all Jewish doctors had to leave the
>Charit? hospital. "As apparent counter-measure a worldwide Jewish boycott
>was called on March 24, 1933 with a Daily Express, London newspaper
>article stating: Judea Declares War On Germany (complete text:[[2]]). The
>many economic boycott actions were answered in the first week of April,
>when Nazi officials ordered the German population not to buy at Jewish shops."
>--
>[[2]] = Shofar Nizcor website.
>--
>Vicki, would you object if I changed the last sentence to read:
>
>"In the first week of April, Nazi officials ordered the German population
>not to buy at Jewish shops".
>
>instead of:
>
>"The many economic boycott actions were answered in the first week of
>April, when Nazi officials ordered the German population not to buy at
>Jewish shops".

Yes, I would. It puts far too much emphasis on a newspaper article that (a)
almost certainly
had no effect on future events, (b) was not published in Berlin, and (c)
was not about Berlin.

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Article meta information proposal

body:
<anotherReallyGreatIdea>

I have noticed that the LanguageLinks, while working great, start
looking a little odd in the articles; they are also hard to manage once
the need arises, and it will, as soon as more wikipedias are switched to
the new software. LanguageLinks should then be cross-checked and
maintained (semi-)automatically; otherwise, they might drift into utter
chaos.

Now, if anyone read my recent mail on wikipedia-l ("And now for
something completely different"), I actually argued for *even more*
links like that, for "technical categories" so to speak, like
"biography" etc.

So, why not add a new field to the database, for each article, where
LanguageLinks and the like can be "collected"? Just another text field
on the edit page, it could be parsed on each Save into a more
machine-readable style, and be "regenerated" into text for editing. Such
a field could well hold "This article is based on..." information as
well. And it could store tags like "stub", if we want to.

</anotherReallyGreatIdea>

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Yes there has been a problem with this in the past
> (albeit relatively minor -
> but that was back when we had 1/3 the edit volume).
> Off the top of my head;
> an anonymous IP tried to add a new naming convention
> unilaterally without
> discussion;
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Naming_conventions&diff=68608&oldid=59909

This addition about variants of names is a convention
that we mostly follow; it just isn't written down.
Still, it should have been at least mentioned on the
Talk page first.

>
> 24's additions to rules to consider (admittedly not
> a policy page but very
> similar);
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Rules_to_consider&diff=52895&oldid=52894

That was the intented function of Rules to Consider.
It's been around since the beginning of the project so
that people could suggest rules and discuss them. It
is not a policy listing. Whatever the consenus about
polcy pages, this page should be unlocked.

> And there are probably others that could be found by
> digging a bit more.
>
> Then there is
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License
>
> which for legal reasons can't be edited by anybody
> and also
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights

Yes, I agree with those two.

> As Karen said anybody who has been around for a
> while can be a sysop and we
> can't have just any anonymous IP changing policy
> pages.

We can do what we do with every silly change: change
it back.

> It has been stated before that we can't trust any
> anonymous yahoo with meta
> functions (and changing policy is one of these
> functions).

I don't recall that ever being agreed upon. What was
generally agreed is that total deletion and banning
was not something that any random passerby should be
able to do. Also moving pages was not open to everyone
because it didn't move article histories; now that it
is not dangerous, everyone can do it.

I don't mean to come across as contentious, although I
probably am. :) Let me state my position here.

There are only two iron-clad, unbreakable Wikipedia
laws: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and it should be
written following the principle of the neutral point
of view. Any policies that we develop are in the
service of these two laws. Such policies are not
unbreakable; they are suggestions and conventions,
although as KQ pointed out, many of them are very
*strong* suggestions.

The issue I'm concerned about is not whether or not
people should be allowed to make random changes on the
policy pages; we are in agreement that policy should
be reached through group discussion and agreement. My
two concerns are:

1. Freezing the policy pages is a policy I don't
recall discussing. If there was a discussion and I
just missed it, then I apologize, and this concern is
moot. I'd appreciate a link to it.

2. Frozen policy pages do more harm than good. For the
minor convienence of not having to do the occassional
reversion, we have the implication that policies are
unchangable except by the "old timers"; newbies need
not apply. This is not the case, as all of our
policies have evolved naturally through all
Wikipedians participation. Also, changing the policy
is not the only reason for changing a policy page.
I've already mentioned copyediting and linking, but
there is also rewording to make the policy clearer
without changing the actual message. A person
shouldn't have to seek out a sysop to make these minor
changes on a wiki.

That being said, we both agree that policy should be
discussed on an appropriate talk page and possibily
the mailing list (although I'd rather people just
dropped a link to an appropriate talk page instead of
conducting the entire discussion on the list). I like
your idea of a policy page boiler plate. I would like
to unprotect those pages and add such a notice, asking
people not to change policies without discussing the
changes first. That would allow people to make
non-policy changes, and eliminate the sense of being
able to change the way things are done.

Stephen Gilbert

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


from_name: Karen AKA Kajikit

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

body:
Stephen Gilbert wrote:
>
> --- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > On Saturday 07 September 2002 06:05 am, you wrote:
> > > I didn't know that certain policy pages were
> > frozen.
> > > What was the reasoning behind it?
> > >
> > > Stephen Gilbert
> >
> > Because policy cannot be changed without some kind
> > of consensus first.
> >
> > -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>
> Yes, but that doesn't explain why a sysop has to be
> the person who makes any agreed upon changes. Also,
> freezing these pages bars people from copyediting and
> linking.

The OBVIOUS reason behind it is that these are basic help-type pages
that a newbie has no reason to need or want to change. If they have
something to say they can do it on the related talk page. It just
simplifies things a bit to have them protected... and it's not like
there are any shortage of sysops around to make any necessary changes,
especially since anyone who REALLY wants to be one just has to ask and
they can be a sysop too.

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

And on the seventh day, God said 'What my world needs is a creature
that will truly appreciate it in all its facets' -
and so He made the kitten.

Come and visit my part of the web:
Kajikit's Corner: http://Kajikit.netfirms.com/
Aussie Support Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AussieSupport
Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/

Love and huggles to all!


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Honr. B. Carroll Reece, Tennessee

body:
>
>> The short wiki page on American Communists was changed to Communist
>>Party of the United States,
>> where I added a link to : Should Communists teach in American Colleges?
>>and a link to Hoover
>> Institute 1999 Guilty as charged.
>> H. Jonat
>
>Everyone else - is there a Wikipedia policy on balance in external
>links?
>--
>adamw

Neutral Point of View covers that. On their face the two links look ok.
Back on list of political parties there is a link to what purports to be
the Communist Party website, that could be included in the article

I am by the way, the one who deleted Helga's material on infiltration of
the Truman administration. It is not apparent because after deletion I
redirected the article to [[Communist Party]], then someone else deleted
the page Helga had made. Now apparently you (adamw) have created a page
with the correct contemporay title. I believe removal of the specific
material I removed was justified, although I am open to inclusion of all
well researched material on activities of the Communist Party.

I have no plans to work extensively on articles about the Communist Party,
but as it is a minor interest of mine I could, and certainly will if my
imput looks needed. I would encourage anyone, "qualified" or not to jump
in; it's an interesting subject, and any serious error can be corrected
eventually.

Fred Bauder


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

body:
On Sunday 08 September 2002 07:01 pm, you wrote:
> I disagree entirely. ?My understanding of it was as follows: NPOV is a
> policy. ?Everything else is a suggestion, though some of them are more
> firmly suggested than others, and many of them have quite solid reasoning
> behind them.
>
> kq

Interesting opinion. You might want to actually take a look at
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines
and read under the heading of "Generally accepted policies". NPOV is just one
of those listed.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

body:
>> I disagree entirely.  My understanding of it was as follows:
>> NPOV is a policy.  Everything else is a suggestion, though
>> some of them are more firmly suggested than others, and many
>> of them have quite solid reasoning behind them.

> Interesting opinion. You might want to actually take a look at
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines
> and read under the heading of "Generally accepted policies". NPOV
> is just one of those listed.

I wrote that section, but I think KQ has it right, and perhaps it
should be rewitten.  NPOV is official, enforceable, policy; and
will become even moreso when the non-profit is formed, because you
can't get non-profit status while supporting political advocacy.
Everything else is consensus-based and generally accepted, but
always open to revision.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

body:
On Sunday 08 September 2002 07:01 pm, you wrote:
> I like your idea of a policy page boiler plate. I would like
> to unprotect those pages and add such a notice, asking
> people not to change policies without discussing the
> changes first. That would allow people to make
> non-policy changes, and eliminate the sense of being
> able to change the way things are done.
>
> Stephen Gilbert

So long as a boilerplate stating what both you and I said is at the top of
each main policy page listed under the heading "Generally accepted policies"
at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines (not rules
to consider) AND so long as we can get at least several old hands to watch
each of these pages then this should work. We can alway re-protect later if
need be.

I just don't have time to formulate a finalized boilerplate and apply it
myself. But you are more than welcome to do so without further protest from
me. List consensus on this should first be obtained though.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>On Mon, 2002-09-09 at 00:41, Helga Hecht wrote:
>
>>To Adam Williamson,
>>
>>Thank you for your answer....
>>H. Jonat
>>--
>>
>Please keep article-related discussions off the list. Or, to put it
>another way, please keep article-related discussions on Wikipedia.
>
>This list is only for issues about Wikipedia, not issues of content.
>
For some time there was a concerted effort to get Helga on the list.
 This sounds too much like slamming the door in a visitor's face as
she's coming in.  A wide latitude would be more appropriate.
Eclecticology


body:
>> H. Jonat

>Please keep article-related discussions off the list. Or, to put it
>another way, please keep article-related discussions on Wikipedia.
>
>This list is only for issues about Wikipedia, not issues of content.

Helga's initial post was "Wasn't there an article about...at
one time?  I don't see it now." or something to that effect.
That sounds pretty meta to me; she wasn't asking about content,
but about something that might have happened to the database or
a possibly unjusitified user action.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

body:
>> you can't get non-profit status while supporting political
>> advocacy.

>You mean federal tax-exempt status.

Yes, of course. Many businesses these days are achieving
non-profit status involutarily...


from_name: Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen

body:
On Sun, 8 Sep 2002, Michael R. Irwin wrote:

> Washington, who helped found and lead a rather minor backwater
> country with a view towards future potential.   Subsequent
> versions or translations to other languages could be named
> for other recognized visionaries around the world.
>
> Alternatively, we could start with Caesar or Gandhi.

Or Che Guevara.

-- Daniel


from_name: Imran Ghory

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The "Casio Effect"

body:
On 4 Sep 2002, at 9:45, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
> There was a notion of teaming up groups of Wikipedians
> around some areas of Wikipedia content - operating
> systems, unix, punk rock or the Roman Empire.
>
> They should have some infrastructure (namespace ? mailing list ?) to
> rely on in order to coordinate, review and discuss. Not to mention do
> some planning and quality assurance.

Another useful side-effect of having such a system could be that
these groups could combine together a collection of articles on that
topic, put an introduction in and release it as an ebook.

So we could get a series of "The Wikipedia guide to XXXX" ebooks,
which we could distribute around to the various ebook sites as well
as sites which deal with related topics, that way the wikipedia
articles would get a much wider audience and attract people to the
wikipedia project.

Imran


body:
On Mon, 2002-09-09 at 00:41, Helga Hecht wrote:
> To Adam Williamson,
>
> Thank you for your answer....
> H. Jonat
> --
Please keep article-related discussions off the list. Or, to put it
another way, please keep article-related discussions on Wikipedia.

This list is only for issues about Wikipedia, not issues of content.

--tc


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

body:
On Mon, 2002-09-09 at 01:00, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
> you
> can't get non-profit status while supporting political advocacy.

You mean federal tax-exempt status.


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
I was away from the computer all weekend, and now I'm reading this
thoughtful discussion carefully.

Bryan Derksen wrote:
> But what I'm objecting to is a reluctance to use banning _after_
> those other strategies have failed, which means that disruptive
> people who are immune to those other strategies (the merciless
> editing and ignoring you mention below) _do_ "get away with
> everything" because there's nothing else we can do to stop them.

I think this argument has merit.

I am opposed, politically speaking, to the death penalty.  My reasons
don't have much to do with the morality of doing away with some people
-- I think it's perfectly moral in some cases.  My reasons have to do
more with the rather alarming rate of erroneous convictions.

But I do support the death penalty in a handful of unique sorts of
cases.  If someone is already in prison for life, then there's not
much in the way of possible deterrent unless the death penalty is an
option.  And the odds of error are very low in such a case.

I say this only by way of loose analogy and support for the idea that
banning _is_ a serious penalty, to be entered into only after much
effort is put into other means.  But it cannot be ruled out entirely,
or there is ultimately no "stick" behind other things.

Someday we will meet someone with perl skills and no interest at all
in working with the group.  This person will set a cron job to insert
their nonsense into some subject pages, on a regular basis.  We
_could_, of course, always just revert their changes every time.  And
they can just increase the frequency of the cron job from weekly to
daily to hourly to every 5 minutes.

We don't have to put up with that.  Banning, pagelocks, etc., are
valuable tools for dealing with a situation like that.

The instant case is relevant, too.  We have a contributor (Helga) who
has been unable, so far, to improve her contributions.  So far, in
discussions here, she has been purely defensive and repeats her
allegations (while simultaneously denying them!) that people are
trying to censor.

At some point, the cost in terms of loss of diversity is much much
lower than the cost in terms of lost time on the part of others.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] A related ban issue

in_reply_to: <3D7AB017.B1A065CD@surfbest.net>; from mri_icboise@surfbest.net on Sat, Sep 07, 2002 at 07:04:07PM -0700

body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> If too many casual or hit and run type vandals are banned that we
> are likely banning the next users, not the vandal.

That's true, but I think it just shows that we should clear the
banlist from time to time.

> For high school or college users to begin relying on the Wikipedia
> as a resource timely access is required due to homework deadlines,
> typically on the order of days or hours, not weeks.

Banning only affects editing, not reading.

> What period of time for routine banning would you (anyone) suggest
> as an estimate of the initial proper tradeoff between potential
> denial of service to legitimate users and the attention span of
> casual or hit and run type vandalism?

It probably depends on the context, the time of year, etc.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Call for Boycott, Judea Declares War on Germany

body:
On wiki [[Berlin]] page I added  "text". Vicki, you objected.

Around 1933, some 160,000 Jews were living in Berlin, a third of all German Jews. They constituted four percent of the population. A third of them were poor immigrants from Eastern Europe, who lived mainly in Scheunenviertel near Alexanderplatz?. The Jews were persecuted from the beginning of the Nazi regime. In March all Jewish doctors had to leave the Charit? hospital. "As apparent counter-measure a worldwide Jewish boycott was called on March 24, 1933 with a Daily Express, London newspaper article stating: Judea Declares War On Germany (complete text:[[2]]). The many economic boycott actions were answered in the first week of April, when Nazi officials ordered the German population not to buy at Jewish shops."
--
[[2]] = Shofar Nizcor website.
--
Vicki, would you object if I changed the last sentence to read:

"In the first week of April, Nazi officials ordered the German population not to buy at Jewish shops".

instead of:

"The many economic boycott actions were answered in the first week of April, when Nazi officials ordered the German population not to buy at Jewish shops".

Please let me know here.
Thank you
H. Jonat

--
__________________________________________________________
Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Mail.com
http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Imposing rules.

body:
Adam Williamson wrote:
> A simple question to those who demand Helga should be banned...how? What
> do we ban? Her username? She posts without one. Her IP address? It
> changes the next time her internet connection drops, almost certainly.

Actually, she appears to post from a fixed IP.

You are right, of course, that as a technical matter, an anonymous
open system like wiki is always vulnerable to attack from someone
sufficiently determined.  The question is: is it possible to raise the
threshold cost for the attacker sufficiently high to deter them,
without also raising the threshold cost by enough to deter other,
legitimate contributors.

--Jimbo


body:
Jan Hidders wrote:

>Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>>So, why not add a new field to the database, for each article, where
>>LanguageLinks and the like can be "collected"?
>>
>Please put the language links in a separate table, otherwise you are
>violating the first normal form of database design theory. Any introductory
>text on database design will tell you why that is bad.
>
I doubt that many of us have such a text in their libraries.  OTOH
Wikipedia is a real database rather than a theoretical one so the rules
for theoretical databases shouldn't apply. :-)

Eclecticology


from_name: Tim Marklew

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Policies and guidelines

body:
>There are only two iron-clad, unbreakable Wikipedia
>laws: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and it should be
>written following the principle of the neutral point
>of view.

I would add to those two:
*Don't infringe copyrights
*No personal attacks, which Jimbo indicated could be grounds for a ban.

I agree that all other rules, such as naming conventions etc, shouldn't be
regarded as unbreakable.  I would suggest calling the above 4 rules
'policies' and the rest 'guidelines' to make the difference clearer.

Tim (Enchanter)

_________________________________________________________________
Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Policies and guidelines

body:
Julie Hofmann Kemp wrote:
> Yeah, because personal attacks (or at least unfounded ones from relative
> strangers)  don't do any harm to the project.  NOT!

Right.  I say "no personal attacks" is a baseline rule for any
rational endeavor.  There are often (too often, in email!) borderline
cases and so forth, but even so, personal attacks are just not ever
the right thing to do on Wikipedia.

--Jimbo


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

body:
I would be happy to draft a general header for the
policy pages, and then unprotect those pages. I'll
also keep them all on my watch list. Opinions and
comments, anyone?

Stephen Gilbert

--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Sunday 08 September 2002 07:01 pm, you wrote:
> > I like your idea of a policy page boiler plate. I
> would like
> > to unprotect those pages and add such a notice,
> asking
> > people not to change policies without discussing
> the
> > changes first. That would allow people to make
> > non-policy changes, and eliminate the sense of
> being
> > able to change the way things are done.
> >
> > Stephen Gilbert
>
> So long as a boilerplate stating what both you and I
> said is at the top of
> each main policy page listed under the heading
> "Generally accepted policies"
> at
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines
> (not rules
> to consider) AND so long as we can get at least
> several old hands to watch
> each of these pages then this should work. We can
> alway re-protect later if
> need be.
>
> I just don't have time to formulate a finalized
> boilerplate and apply it
> myself. But you are more than welcome to do so
> without further protest from
> me. List consensus on this should first be obtained
> though.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go
> here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Policies and guidelines

body:
--- Tim Marklew <tmarklew at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >There are only two iron-clad, unbreakable Wikipedia
> >laws: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and it should
> be
> >written following the principle of the neutral
> point
> >of view.
>
> I would add to those two:
> *Don't infringe copyrights

Agreed.

> *No personal attacks, which Jimbo indicated could be
> grounds for a ban.

I think it's more accurate to say personal threats, as
opposed to personal insults.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga banned

body:
After much deliberation, and after due consideration for all of the
arguments and discussions here, and taking into account what appears
to me to be a general consensus, I have chosen to ban Helga for a
period of 3 months.

After that time, she can reapply to me personally for re-instatement.

I know that not everyone will be happy with this decision, although
the vast majority will be.  Such is the nature of consensus.  I can't
wait for unanimity, or we will wait forever.

I am fully aware of the dangers of precedent, which is why I have
waited so long to take action in this case.  Banning should always be
a "last resort".  After more than a year of trying to work with Helga,
and after losing more than one highly valued contributor because of
her, we are now at a last resort stage.

To my mind, the difficulty with Helga is not her idiosyncratic views
on history, but her inability or refusal to work co-operatively to
resolve differences.  Even here, on the mailing list, where I invited
her to discuss these issues, she prefers to ignore discussions about
her posting style in order to re-iterate accusations of censorship and
to repeat her strange historical claims.

In order to contribute to a restoration of the peace, I will be mostly
avoiding further public comment, although everyone who likes is more
than invited to write to me privately to support or decry this
decision.

Helga, in particular, is welcome to write to me to discuss this, but
there is really no appeal possible at this point.  The ban is not
permanent, and with good behavior, she can come back and try again in
3 months time.

--Jimbo


from_name: Jan Hidders

in_reply_to: <3D7B77C8.3080607@epost.de>; from Magnus.Manske@t-online.de on Sun, Sep 08, 2002 at 06:16:08PM +0200

body:
On Sun, Sep 08, 2002 at 06:16:08PM +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:
>
> So, why not add a new field to the database, for each article, where
> LanguageLinks and the like can be "collected"?

Please put the language links in a separate table, otherwise you are
violating the first normal form of database design theory. Any introductory
text on database design will tell you why that is bad.

I like the idea of links for categories ('biography', 'country',
'mathematical theorem', 'book', 'movie', ...) by the way.

-- Jan Hidders


body:
>> So, why not add a new field to the database, for each
>> article, where LanguageLinks and the like can be "collected"?

> Please put the language links in a separate table, otherwise
> you are violating the first normal form of database design
> theory. Any introductory text on database design will tell you
> why that is bad.

The Wikipedia database layout is already pretty far from
normalized (mainly because MySQL is too slow on joins), but if
I did add this feature I would make it a proper one-to-one
mapping table.  I'm not yet convinced that it would be worth
the effort, though.  I'm more inclined to think that the
international wikis should be more independent and encapsulated.

>I like the idea of links for categories ('biography', 'country',
>'mathematical theorem', 'book', 'movie', ...) by the way.

We discussed tings like that early on, and initially rejcted it
as an attempt to categorize articles in a non-wiki way; we wanted
different organization schemes to evolve out of normal wiki
editing and linking, rather than imposing order from the outside.

But it might be time to revisit the idea, because at 2,500 edits
a day and growing, it's just no longer possible for one person to
keep track of edits to articles he's interested in, and subject
is the only filter that really makes sense for reducing that data
to a manageable level.  I'd still like to see if we couldn't
build those subjects automatically in some way based on links in
the database.


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Leornard Bernstein, for Helga

body:
The [[Leonard Bernstein]] article says,

"Especially unforgettable is Leonard Bernstein's last production with Unitel. On Christmas Day, December 25, 1989 Bernstein featured Beethoven's Symphony No. 9? at the Berlin Celebration Concert in order to celebrate with Berlin and the world the Fall of the Wall. Over 100 million people shared this unique experience by watching Leonard Bernstein's Berlin Concert performance, broadcast by live Television in more than 20 countries. For this occasion Bernstein had reworded Friedrich Schiller's text of Ode to Joy, substituting the word "freedom" (Freiheit) for "joy" (Freude). "I'm sure that Beethoven would have given us his blessing", said Bernstein."

And I added the following to the [[Berlin Wall]] article:

"On Christmas Day, December 25, 1989 Leonard Bernstein did a concert in Berlin celebrating the the Fall of the Wall."

Why? Although I am Jewish, I do not hate Germans. I love German and Austrian composers.

Ed Poor


body:
> Everyone else - is there a Wikipedia policy on balance
> in external links?

I don't think there's one written; my own perference would
be that on a page covering a general subject, external links
should either point to reasonably balanced articles, or else
have a balanced number of links to articles from different
points of view.  On articles specifically about a certain
point of view, one would expect links to biased articles to
be the norm, though a rebuttal article or two wouldn't be out
of place either.


from_name: Julie Hofmann Kemp

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Policies and guidelines

body:
Yeah, because personal attacks (or at least unfounded ones from relative
strangers)  don't do any harm to the project.  NOT!

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com
[mailto:wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com] On Behalf Of Stephen Gilbert
Sent: Monday, September 09, 2002 9:57 AM
To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Policies and guidelines

--- Tim Marklew <tmarklew at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >There are only two iron-clad, unbreakable Wikipedia
> >laws: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and it should
> be
> >written following the principle of the neutral
> point
> >of view.
>
> I would add to those two:
> *Don't infringe copyrights

Agreed.

> *No personal attacks, which Jimbo indicated could be
> grounds for a ban.

I think it's more accurate to say personal threats, as
opposed to personal insults.

Stephen G.

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from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>
>> I'm not yet convinced that it would be worth
>> the effort, though.  I'm more inclined to think that the
>> international wikis should be more independent and encapsulated.
>>
> If someone made a link from de: to en:, I (and many other Germans, I'm
> sure) would very much like for a link from en: to de: to be added
> automatically, if there isn't one already.

The automatic linking would seem to have one big problem:  translation.
 Depending on the machine translation of article title could give
frighteningly unpredictable results.  At the English word "law" my
English/German dictionary gives "Gesetz". "Recht", "Jura", and
"Jurisprudenz" as possible translations.  A native German speaking human
may have no problem sorting this out, but a machine has only a 25%
chance of getting it right.

A possible solution might be have the source language term as an article
title in the target language Wikipedia, perhaps titled in the form
[[Topic (source language)]] to avoid inadvertant ambiguation.  The
source language titled article would be nothing more than a redirect to
the correctly titled article in the target language, or (in the absence
of such an article to a single article perhaps named [[Articles to be
translated from (source language)]]. where all of these would be listed.

All this of course depends on whether the idea is technically
implementable in the first place.

Eclecticology

>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] A related ban issue

body:
>> If too many casual or hit and run type vandals are banned that
>> we are likely banning the next users, not the vandal.

> That's true, but I think it just shows that we should clear
> the banlist from time to time.

I'd like to point out an anecdote you might not have known
about: a few days ago, a logged-in user started vandalizing
several pages relating to Australia.  I got his IP from the
logs and blocked it, and repaired the damage.  A few days
later, I got personal e-mail from that domain saying that the
IP address was a student terminal, the user in question had
been disciplined, and requested that I unblock the IP (which
I did, of course).

So I'd just like to say that even blocked users/IP do have
recourse.  We're all very reachable here.


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
>Is it OK to have links to external pages in the main text of articles? I
>was under the impression they had to be contained in a separate External
>Links section, as is done on this page.

>adamw

In that context where an attempt was made to find a link to the official
page of each political party, it seems appropriate.

Fred


body:
>> Please put the language links in a separate table, otherwise
>> you are violating the first normal form of database design
>> theory. Any introductory text on database design will tell you
>> why that is bad.

> I doubt that many of us have such a text in their libraries.
> OTOH Wikipedia is a real database rather than a theoretical one
> so the rules for theoretical databases shouldn't apply. :-)

I don't have Jan's experience, but I do have Date's book on my
shelf, and a few others, and I do take database design seriously.
Unfortuneately, history and performance sometimes force decisions
that one might not have otherwise made for data integrity reasons.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Policies, guidelines, etc.

body:
> Right. I say "no personal attacks" is a baseline rule for any
> rational endeavor. There are often (too often, in email!)
> borderline cases and so forth, but even so, personal attacks
> are just not ever the right thing to do on Wikipedia.

The trouble with having this as policy is that it is very
subjective.  Things like "I don't think you're qualified to
comment on X" or "No one in this field takes Z seriously."
or even "I think you're too emotionally attached to this
subject to be objective" are perfectly valid arguments, but
are likely to be seen as personal insults.  We also can't
ignore the fact that there simply are human beings here likely
to erupt now and then, but who are useful contributors most
of the time, and so we would naturally be percieved as "unfair"
if we applied the policy laxly to those folks and more readily
to those we didn't think were useful contributors.

I think we should be careful to make it clear up front that
any policy on abusive language is, by design, subjective and
applied only in extreme cases and only when human judgment
deems it necessary.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

body:
Stephen Gilbert wrote:

>I would be happy to draft a general header for the
>policy pages, and then unprotect those pages. I'll
>also keep them all on my watch list. Opinions and
>comments, anyone?
>
In considering this there could be another class of protected pages:
 templates.

The purpose here is more to prevent accidental damage than intentional
changes.  Protected and unprotected templates could live side by side,
and we could have [[Tree of life/protected templates]] and [[Tree of
life/unprotected templates]].  A technically challenged contributor
could use the protected version with some degree of confidence that it
will work without causing damage no matter how he treats.  The
unprotected version could still be used by contributors who aren't
worried about such risks, or who simply disagree with a detail on the
protected version.  An explanation of why this is being done would be
required.

There are still many people in the general public who are highly skilled
in their own areas, but who are genuinely fearful of doing anything
"different" with their computers.  They often believe that simply
touching a wrong key will hang the whole system, or worse.   Instilling
the confidence that there is some idiot-proofing in the system could
bring us contributions that we might not otherwise receive.

Eclecticology


from_name: Adam Williamson

body:
On Mon, 2002-09-09 at 05:41, Helga Hecht wrote:
> To Adam Williamson,
>
> Thank you for your answer. The Communist influence went pretty deep and is indeed a complicated story.

This is an academically debated point. Not to say you're wrong, it's
just not agreed upon. I'll expand this page at some point, but I can
only really cover the McCarthy era - does anyone have DETAILED knowledge
of pre-1945 and post-1960 or thereabouts?

> The short wiki page on American Communists was changed to Communist Party of the United States,
> where I added a link to : Should Communists teach in American Colleges? and a link to Hoover
> Institute 1999 Guilty as charged.
> H. Jonat

Everyone else - is there a Wikipedia policy on balance in external
links?
--
adamw


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga banned

body:
Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
> Decision hard to take and uneasy one but the right one IMO.
>
> Is she also banned from the German Wikipedia ?

Not physically, but in principle, yes.  If someone with sysop status there
wants to do that for me, I'll be glad of it.  If no one there cares enough to
do it, then there's no need.  :-)