from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Page deletion policy

body:
One of the guidelines on [[Wikipedia:Policy on permanent deletion of pages]]
(currently #6) says for the most part:

  Generally speaking, delete pages that simply will
  never become encyclopedia articles, e.g.,
  with titles that will never be misspellings,
  that represent completely idiosyncratic non-topics, etc.

I've interpreted this differently from most of the other guidelines,
in that it says to delete a page, while most say to *not* delete.
But others have interpreted it to say to *not* delete pages
that have titles that might become the titles of articles.
(For examples, see the listings that The Cunctator has removed
from [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]].)

I think that this needs to be straightened out,
and the language on the page may need to be clarified.
IMO, pages with no content but with reasonable titles
are the worst of all, when they are linked from other articles.
The reader wastes time following links to useless pages;
the writer doesn't write an article that might be sorely needed.
[[Special:Mostwanted]], in particular, becomes skewed.

What is the opinion of the list?

-- Toby Bartels
   <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu>


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jaap van Ganswijk

subject: [Wikitech-l] Internationalization issues

body:
At 2002-08-23 07:43 +0200, Kurt Jansson wrote:
>> As for a special notation for accented characters, I'm not fond
>> of the idea.  Foreign users should have foreign keyboards.
>
>Of course that's not the problem.
>
>> Others
>> should still be able to enter accents by whatever means their OS
>> and browser allow, and I'm not aware of any that don't have some
>> feature for it.
>
>I don't know which feature you mean. Some foreign contributors use html
>entities for umlauts, others type ae for ?, oe for ? and ue fur ?. The
>first one makes the EditBox look ugly, and Links with entities in them
>don't work, and the second one has to be corrected by someone. At the
>moment it's not a big deal, just annoying. But I think it could be
>easily automated, if entities would automaticaly be turned into umlauts
>when the text is saved. An easier way of entering umlauts, like \"o,
>would make foreign contributors even happier, but that should be
>standardized then in all wikipedias that use umlauts, accents, etc.

As far as I can oversee the problem the best way to use accent
letters in this (HTML rendering) environment is to use 'ä'
etc. since every visitor can make sure his browser can render
it correctly. NN and IE can already do it since version 4 or
even earlier.

Every other method will depend on whatever font the editor
of an article is using and that may not be the same as what
the next editor is using or what the Wikipedia web-server
is saying to the visitor it is serving.

Perhaps the Wikipedia software could try to translate ae and
such to the appropriate HTML abreviations like ä but
that would be risky, because it would have to know in what
language each word was written. In Dutch we have the 'oe'
as a valid combination which is not equal to 'ö', so
if Dutch and German were mixed in an article it would cause
problems.

Please also consider that font problems may seem to be solved
for now, but how local is that solution? And how new and
MS-based does the system have to be and how long will it
last? Perhaps someone invents a much better system in ten
years time. Will all texts become worthless then? At least
with the 'ä'-system it's all in ASCII and therefore
human-readible and even understandable with a little effort.

Also consider that a lot of PDA's don't use or only offer
a few standard fonts.

>Could someone please configure this mailinglist the same way as
>wikipedia-l, so that replies go to the list?

I agree. (Add the 'Reply-To:' header, don't change the
'From:' header.)

Greetings,
Jaap


from_name: Kurt Jansson

body:
> As far as I can oversee the problem the best way to use accent
> letters in this (HTML rendering) environment is to use 'ä'
> etc. since every visitor can make sure his browser can render
> it correctly. NN and IE can already do it since version 4 or
> even earlier.

You mean every umlaut should be shown in the EditBox as it's entity?
That would make most German articles very hard readable. It should be
possible to enter entities, but they should be shown as umlauts to the
'normal' user. If foreign contributors don't see umlauts but strange
characters in their EditBox, maybe they could have an option in their
preferences so that they are shown as entities. But I haven't heard of
this problem.

> Perhaps the Wikipedia software could try to translate ae and
> such to the appropriate HTML abreviations like ä but
> that would be risky, because it would have to know in what
> language each word was written. In Dutch we have the 'oe'
> as a valid combination which is not equal to 'ö', so
> if Dutch and German were mixed in an article it would cause
> problems.

I would never suggest this, because 'oe' is also a valid combination in
German (e.g. the musical instrument "Oboe", or a city I lived in,
"Itzehoe"). Same with "ae" and "ue".

Kurt


subject: [Wikitech-l] bugs and missing features in the conversion script of the German WP

body:
There are quite some bug reports in
http://de-beta.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Beobachtete_Fe
hler
now. Most should be easy to fix, some might already be known from the
english WP, but what I think is most important are the bugs in the
conversion script. So I translated these:

* The conversion of article titles didn't work. So many articles are now
in http://de-beta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spezial%3ALonelypages (e.g. [[Brian
De Palma]] should have been converted to [[Brian de Palma]]).

* /Talk-pages should have been converted into the Diskussion:-namespace
(like the /Diskussion-pages). It didn't work, but a "See also: " (should
be: "Siehe auch:") has been inserted.

* I thought all old revisions since beginning of the German WP should
have been integrated into the database. Or is it better to do this
later?

* Not very important: The Link to the Diskussion-namespace should be
[[Diskussion:... instead of [[diskussion:... - easy to fix :-)

The first three have already been mentioned on the old test site on
http://test-de.wikipedia.com/wiki/wikipedia%3ABug+report
Did anybody ever take a look at it?
There has also been some discussion about how to name the German
user-namespace, and we ended up with "Wikipedianer:". "namespaces"
should not be translated to "Namensr?ume", but to "Verwandte Seiten".

Kurt


from_name: Jan Hidders

body:
At 2002-08-23 07:43 +0200, Kurt Jansson wrote:
>
> [...] Some foreign contributors use html entities for umlauts, others type
> ae for ?, oe for ? and ue fur ?. The first one makes the EditBox look
> ugly, and Links with entities in them don't work, and the second one has
> to be corrected by someone. At the moment it's not a big deal, just
> annoying. But I think it could be easily automated, if entities would
> automaticaly be turned into umlauts when the text is saved. An easier way
> of entering umlauts, like \"o, would make foreign contributors even
> happier, but that should be standardized then in all wikipedias that use
> umlauts, accents, etc.

Well, in some sense it is easy, and in some sense it isn't. It would mean
introducing for the first time a difference in functionality depending upon
the language of the concerning Wikipedia because for example the translation
of entities is not the desired behavior on the English Wikipedia at the
moment.

In itself this is not hard to implement by defining certain functions that
are called in the common code and defined in the language-specific part of
the code, but
1. deciding which functions we define and what they should do
   requires some deep architectural thinking, and
2. it would add an extra layer of complexity that makes it a bit harder to for
   example determine what the cause of a certain bug is (it could be
   language specific).

So Lee is probably right if he wants a good justification for such an
addition. If you say that at the moment it is not a big deal (I assume that
only a very small minority of the contributors of the German Wikipedia is
working on a non-German keyboard, and I only saw a few instances where
people had used "ö") then it is probably best to wait until the moment it
does become a big deal.

-- Jan Hidders


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re:  Re: note to the militia

body:
Hum, just a comment...bug report...

The last 2 mails Maverick sent, had date set on the
24th of august 2001. Not 2002.

I checked on the mailing list, and there they were, in
2001.

Is it related to Mav or to Wikip?dia ?

-----

While I am at it, I tried a few days ago to remove
some articles from my watch list. And it aint working
properly.

When I select an article page (in bold), the fact I
watch for it is recognised, and I can stop watching it
When I select a talk page, it is indicated I don't
watch for it. hence I can't remove it for talk pages.
The articles stay in the watch list whatever I do.
This is true whatever the date of the last update (feb
2002, before july and after july)

Did anybody noticed that ? Is there something I missed
?

anthere

--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Saturday 24 August 2002 12:01 pm, Karen wrote:
> > Something I wondered - how do you know who the new
> users to greet them?
> > Do you just look for user names you haven't seen
> before or is there some
> > way to identify them? I'd be happy to do the
> meet-and-greet but I don't
> > know how to do it.
>
> Well - I guess I do it the hard way and scan each
> edit in all Recent Changes
> for a 24 hour period looking for edit link user
> names (a dead give-a-away)
> and for user names I don't remember seeing before.
> This works for me since I
> pretty good reading comprehension and memory.
>
> What would be most useful is a listing of new users
> that can be accessed from
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Listusers.
> That way this job would be
> much easier.
>
> BTW we really /do not/ have 3498 real users -- a
> good many of these "users"
> logged in only to abuse our upload utility or for
> other nefarious or
> non-contributing reasons (I don't greet any user who
> hasn't contributed at
> all). Is there a way to get rid of many of these
> no-longer used user accounts
> Lee (just the ones that have been inactive for
> months and whose user pages
> are still edit links)?
>
> -- 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


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Page deletion policy

body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:

<snip>

> I think that this needs to be straightened out,
> and the language on the page may need to be
> clarified.
> IMO, pages with no content but with reasonable
> titles
> are the worst of all, when they are linked from
> other articles.
> The reader wastes time following links to useless
> pages;
> the writer doesn't write an article that might be
> sorely needed.
> [[Special:Mostwanted]], in particular, becomes
> skewed.

I agree with you. No content pages with good titles
should be deleted.

Stephen G.

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


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject:
[Wikitech-l] bugs and missing features in the conversion script
 of the German WP

body:
Kurt Jansson wrote:
> * The conversion of article titles didn't work. So many articles are now
> in http://de-beta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spezial%3ALonelypages (e.g. [[Brian
> De Palma]] should have been converted to [[Brian de Palma]]).

Whoever did the conversion (Lee? Magnus?), what exactly did you run? For
Usemode-to-phase II conversion there is a *separate* script
(recaseLinks.php) that does the renaming/case correction, which is to be
run after importing the data into MySQL.

> * /Talk-pages should have been converted into the Diskussion:-namespace
> (like the /Diskussion-pages). It didn't work, but a "See also: " (should
> be: "Siehe auch:") has been inserted.
>
> * I thought all old revisions since beginning of the German WP should
> have been integrated into the database. Or is it better to do this
> later?

The usemod wikis are configured to destroy old items in the edit
histories after a few weeks. For some reason, no one's ever paid any
attention whenever I've pointed this out on the mailing lists.

Unless someone has regular backups going back to the beginning and wants
to figure out how to paste them together, they're gone.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] bugs and missing features in the conversion script

body:
>> * The conversion of article titles didn't work. So many
>> articles are now in
>> http://de-beta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spezial%3ALonelypages
>> (e.g. [[Brian De Palma]] should have been converted to
>> [[Brian de Palma]]).

> Whoever did the conversion (Lee? Magnus?), what exactly did
> you run? For  Usemode-to-phase II conversion there is a
> *separate* script (recaseLinks.php) that does the renaming/case
> correction, which is to be run after importing the data into MySQL.

Ah, thanks.  I just ran the wiki-to-SQL script.  Is there anything
else I need to know about converting up to the Phase II stage?

>> * /Talk-pages should have been converted into the
>> Diskussion:-namespace (like the /Diskussion-pages). It didn't
>> work, but a "See also: " (should be: "Siehe auch:") has been
>> inserted.

I'll look into that.


body:
> So Lee is probably right if he wants a good justification for such an
> addition.

Okay, it seems I was a bit naive about how easy this whould be to
implement.

Whould it be easier to make a script that converts every ß to ?,
ö to ?, ü to ? and ä to ? and the same for ?, ?, ? in the
German database?
I could then call it by hand if you tell me how.

If this also is too complicated or dangerous - forget about it :-)

Kurt


body:
Anthere wrote:
> Hum, just a comment...bug report...
>
> The last 2 mails Maverick sent, had date set on the
> 24th of august 2001. Not 2002.
>
> I checked on the mailing list, and there they were, in
> 2001.
>
> Is it related to Mav or to Wikip?dia ?

I suspect Mav is living in the past... :)

> While I am at it, I tried a few days ago to remove
> some articles from my watch list. And it aint working
> properly.
>
> When I select an article page (in bold), the fact I
> watch for it is recognised, and I can stop watching it
> When I select a talk page, it is indicated I don't
> watch for it. hence I can't remove it for talk pages.
> The articles stay in the watch list whatever I do.
> This is true whatever the date of the last update (feb
> 2002, before july and after july)

If you're watching a page, its talk page will automatically show up in
your watchlist (you'll notice it's not in bold, unless you've explicitly
selected to watch it as well).

This is a feature! If you're interested in what happens to an article,
the talk page is something you'll want to keep tabs on as well.

I'm going to have to improve the message that pops up when you add
something to the watch list so it's actually useful and explanitory.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Internationalization issues]

body:
On Sat, Aug 24, 2002 at 02:42:37PM +0200, Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:
>
> Please also consider that font problems may seem to be solved for now, but
> how local is that solution?

Fonts? I assume you mean character encodings. At the moment the script is
ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) oriented. It's widely supported by most browsers and
certainly not MS-based. When it becomes necessary this will be extended to
UTF-8 which at the moment is already quite well supported.


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Page deletion policy

body:
At 02:25 PM 8/24/02 -0700, Toby Bartels wrote:
>One of the guidelines on [[Wikipedia:Policy on permanent deletion of pages]]
>(currently #6) says for the most part:
>
>  Generally speaking, delete pages that simply will
>  never become encyclopedia articles, e.g.,
>  with titles that will never be misspellings,
>  that represent completely idiosyncratic non-topics, etc.
>
>I've interpreted this differently from most of the other guidelines,
>in that it says to delete a page, while most say to *not* delete.
>But others have interpreted it to say to *not* delete pages
>that have titles that might become the titles of articles.
>(For examples, see the listings that The Cunctator has removed
>from [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]].)
>
>I think that this needs to be straightened out,
>and the language on the page may need to be clarified.
>IMO, pages with no content but with reasonable titles
>are the worst of all, when they are linked from other articles.
>The reader wastes time following links to useless pages;
>the writer doesn't write an article that might be sorely needed.
>[[Special:Mostwanted]], in particular, becomes skewed.
>
>What is the opinion of the list?

I would rather the policy was not changed. Most people can see that a short
but important article could be expanded. I think the articles show up on
the stub list anyway for folks to work on. Basically the change means that
other peoples work is to be thrown away.

Fred Bauder


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Page deletion policy

body:
> I would rather the policy was not changed. Most people can see
> that a short but important article could be expanded. I think
> the articles show up on the stub list anyway for folks to work
> on. Basically the change means that other peoples work is to be
> thrown away.

I think you misundertand.  He isn't talking about deleting
stubs.  He's talking about deleting articles with NO content
at all, so there's no "work" to throw away.  And I'm entirely
on Toby's side--no article at all is much better than an article
with no content.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Page deletion policy

body:
At 11:13 PM 8/24/02 -0700, Lee Crocker wrote:
>
>> I would rather the policy was not changed. Most people can see
>> that a short but important article could be expanded. I think
>> the articles show up on the stub list anyway for folks to work
>> on. Basically the change means that other peoples work is to be
>> thrown away.
>
>I think you misundertand.  He isn't talking about deleting
>stubs.  He's talking about deleting articles with NO content
>at all, so there's no "work" to throw away.  And I'm entirely
>on Toby's side--no article at all is much better than an article
>with no content.

No, I don't misunderstand. The suggested policy change is to begin deleting
short articles such as, for example [[Tucson, Arizona]] which unless it has
been expanded is simply "A large city in southern [[Arizona]]. No one would
care about deletion of an empty article; that can be done under the
existing policy.

I should say I am one of the "guilty" parties here since I sometimes make
such stubs, which at least one sysop has complained about.

My thought is that eventually someone will come along and work on say
[[Tucson, Arizona]] and starting what is obviously a good topic is not a
problem, but it no longer shows up in most wanted.

Fred Bauder


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletion of Articles with No Content

body:
Ok, Yes, Toby's suggestion that an article with a good title but no content
should be deleted is good policy.

Fred Bauder


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Page deletion policy

body:
--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> At 11:13 PM 8/24/02 -0700, Lee Crocker wrote:
> >
> >> I would rather the policy was not changed. Most
> people can see
> >> that a short but important article could be
> expanded. I think
> >> the articles show up on the stub list anyway for
> folks to work
> >> on. Basically the change means that other peoples
> work is to be
> >> thrown away.
> >
> >I think you misundertand.  He isn't talking about
> deleting
> >stubs.  He's talking about deleting articles with
> NO content
> >at all, so there's no "work" to throw away.  And
> I'm entirely
> >on Toby's side--no article at all is much better
> than an article
> >with no content.
>
> No, I don't misunderstand. The suggested policy
> change is to begin deleting
> short articles such as, for example [[Tucson,
> Arizona]] which unless it has
> been expanded is simply "A large city in southern
> [[Arizona]]. No one would
> care about deletion of an empty article; that can be
> done under the
> existing policy.

No, you misunderstand. The suggestion that when
someone, usually a vandal, creates a page that says
"safhsakfh", or creates a blank page, that article
should be deleted.

The current policy reflects the opinion that the
content of such a page should be removed, but the
administrative delete is unnecessary if the page would
be a normal article title. The counter-argument is
that such an empty page makes it appear that there is
an article already written when there is one.

No oneis suggesting that stub articles be deleted.

Stephen G.

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


from_name: Larry Sanger

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Page deletion policy

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

> One of the guidelines on [[Wikipedia:Policy on permanent deletion of pages]]
> (currently #6) says for the most part:
>
>   Generally speaking, delete pages that simply will
>   never become encyclopedia articles, e.g.,
>   with titles that will never be misspellings,
>   that represent completely idiosyncratic non-topics, etc.
>
> I've interpreted this differently from most of the other guidelines,
> in that it says to delete a page, while most say to *not* delete.
[...]

Bear in mind that when we settled on the above point (as part of a general
"hands off" deletion policy--*still* a good idea, by the way), it was at a
time when one couldn't delete an article without deleting its history as
well.  Perhaps that's changed.  Occasionally, a "complete" article (but
egregiously biased, or so factually incorrect in so many places it's
non-rescuable)  with a more or less useful history ends up being wiped
clean.  So I think part of the reasoning behind the "don't delete the ones
with plausible titles" rule is simply that the item might have a useful
history.

In cases where that's not so, or generally, if the history could be saved
while links to the article are rendered as "?" if the article has zero
content, then I'd be all in favor of scrapping this rule.

In fact, the last I recall of this issue, I think there were several
people on board the idea of rendering links to contentless articles with
"?", but (I might have this wrong) I think a programmer said that that
would be a system strain somehow.  Would be a good idea to have the issue
re-examined.  That would require the least amount of effort for content
developers.

Larry
<relurk>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Probable public domain material

body:
At 03:13 PM 8/25/02 +0200, you wrote:
>
>Hello all,
>
>Is this repository suitable for Wikipedia ?
>I mean, copyrights. The note on one of the main pages is rather
>elusive. And there are quite a lot resources worth uploading to
>Wikipedia. Phonemes, drawings, planes, tanks, animals, plants etc etc
>
>http://sunsite.tus.ac.jp/multimed/

Doesn't look like public domain as whole.

Fred


body:
Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
> Is this repository suitable for Wikipedia ?
> I mean, copyrights. The note on one of the main pages is rather
> elusive. And there are quite a lot resources worth uploading to
> Wikipedia. Phonemes, drawings, planes, tanks, animals, plants etc etc
>
> http://sunsite.tus.ac.jp/multimed/

Hmm....

   Notice:
   Most of the files / data located here are for *educational* /
   *demonstration* purposes only. Many of these files are 'believed' to
   be in the public domain but it is impossible to check the copyright
   ownership of all these files. Many other files are *copyrighted* and
   placed here under the 'fair use for educational purposes' policy.
   *PLEASE DO NOT* use any of these files for anything other than
   *educational* / *demonstration* uses only. If any one's copyright is
   specifically violated by the placement of any of these files on this
   server - please contact admin at SunSITE.tus.ac.jp.

That's pretty vague. Beware...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletion of "Articles" with No Content?

body:
On Sunday 25 August 2002 08:42 pm, you wrote:
> With this in mind, I think that the timing of a delete is critical. ?If
> someone created an empty article a month ago and nothing has happened
> to it since, we need have no fear of deleting it. ?Whoever made it is
> long gone. ?They don't care about it, or they wouldn't have left it.
> They won't feel that we are undoing their hard work; they aren't coming
> back every week to admire their miniscule efforts.

Technical note: There is /no/ such thing as an "empty article" -- such a
thing is just a page in the article namespace (please see
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_is_an_article). That goes for
the title of this post too (BTW; I think Larry Sanger should take a look at
that page).

Another note is that creating a page is not any effort so the "effort"
argument is not a reason to prevent a sysop from summarily deleting an empty
page as soon as it is created. Several dozen and sometimes more of these
empty pages at one time were filling the database and I deleted these without
posting them on the deletion queue -- no history + no content = no article.

Indexing these no content pages on another page would have been a Herculean
effort and I would not have been able to keep up. Luckily the developers have
since made it a bit more difficult to create no-content pages but several to
a dozen or so still do pop up daily (and those are just the ones I see).

If such a page looks to be just a harmless newbie experiment I will edit the
page and say hi to the newbie then ask them to take a look at the help link
at the top of the page. I then list that page on the deletion queue or place
a stub on the page (depending on the amount of time or knowledge I have on
the subject). But if the blank or gibberish  (aksdjfl;kajeoriu) page doesn't
give me the impression that it was created simply by a curious newbie then I
will summarily delete it (following our policy on this).

So yes it is important to consider the feelings of the person who created the
blank page but that should not prevent good housecleaning (esp. if we are
deluded with these again in the future).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] German anti-free speech law and Helga

body:
On Sunday 25 August 2002 05:33 pm, you wrote:
> Apart from this being utter nonsense (see e.g.
> http://www.nizkor.org/features/qar/qar11.html for a discussion of these
> arguments), this most probably violates
> German Law (Paragraph 130(3) of our penal code, denial of genocide
> performed by the nazis).
>
> It's time to stop her.
>
>
> JeLuF

As a red blooded American I think that law is well intentioned but just ranks
with anti-free speech totalitarian newspeak and probably does more to
encourage Neo-Nazis and their ilk than to discourage them (punishing people
just because they have certain views tends to make other people with similar
views get the "us vs. them" mentality; which just strengthens their resolve
and encourages ideas about "conspiracies" to "get them" that "must be
stopped" = the law inadvertently creates a class of people actively opposed
to the government when there were only various unrelated people with similar
ideas before). We should therefore /not/ even begin to consider banning
anyone just because they are breaking such a law.

However, we are trying to build a fact-based and neutral encyclopedia, so if
we do /temporarily/ block Helga then the /only/ reason why is because she is
a major drain on contributor resources and she is therefore harming the goals
and progress of the project.

BTW, people should be able to say whatever they want in everyday life or
their personal websites but if any of that is to be in a neutral and
fact-based encyclopedia then it must be backed-up with evidence or highly
qualified ("such and such says this, but others say that and yet others say
the first two are wrong because...").

> Oh, I didn't want to suggest to denounce her, I just don't want
> Jimbo to be arrested when occasionally entering Germany ...
>
> ????????Regards,
>
> ????????????????JeLuF

Well intentioned reasoning -- the last thing we need is Jimbo behind bars ;).
Is this at all a possibility in German law? In the US Jimbo is protected by
the fact that he is technically the ISP of wikipedia and therefore has
limited liability on what users of his ISP do (not to mention 1st Amendment
protections that protect both him and users of his ISP). There is also the
German Wikipedia to consider -- I somehow get the feeling that the German
Wikipedia is just filled with her nonsense propaganda (smaller project =
fewer contributors who can successfully confront and debunk her "work" =
Helga has much more power to get her way).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Back to the present

body:
On Sunday 25 August 2002 07:49 am, you wrote:
> Hum, just a comment...bug report...
>
> The last 2 mails Maverick sent, had date set on the
> 24th of august 2001. Not 2002.
>
> I checked on the mailing list, and there they were, in
> 2001.
>
> Is it related to Mav or to Wikip?dia ?

That was a problem on my end -- my partner fried my
processor over a week ago while installing a temperature
monitor and he has since replaced the CPU and
flashed my motherboard's BIOS. The year must have
been reset with the BIOS flash. Hopefully all is well now
(my panel's clock at least shows the right year).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deleting a single revision

body:
On Sunday 25 August 2002 05:33 pm, you wrote:
> What about articles that have copyright violations in their history? I
> recently found the source for two articles that were copied verbatim from
> other websites. [[Miyuki]] can go poof, as far as I'm concerned (it's a
> bead seller's account of a trip to a bead plant, and the article's an
> orphan), but [[Guru Granth Sahib]] is important. Is there a way to remove
> the violation from the sikhuence of versions while keeping the rest?
>
> phma

Yes I have mentioned this as a feature request before -- although I can't
remember if it is on sourceforge or not.

We are still technically violating copyright law by having this material in
the page's history so I say providing an interface for sysops to delete a
revision is a fairly high priority.

BTW, would a database query of "copyright violation" bring back all revisions
and edit summaries that have this string in it?

PS - I'm also beggining to loose track of all the questions and answers of
the various strings on this mailing list. A Slashcode implementation may be
better for the mailing list real soon.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Junk upload alert

body:
On Sunday 25 August 2002 05:33 pm, you wrote:
> Jokerman9001 is repeatedly uploading a file called "Profile1.txt" which is
> in HTML format and contains an unrecognized protocol string and an
> invitation to send him messages. Please block this user.
>
> phma

What is the progress on the ":block user" function developers? I like KQ's
idea of mouse over exposure of IP addresses (only available to sysop's of
course).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Karl Juhnke

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Real logged in users

body:
--- Tim Marklew <tmarklew at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 95% of edits (again counting logged in users only) have been
> made by only around 200 Wikipedians.  The Wikipedia community is
> still quite a small corner of the Internet!

What a hoot!  That puts a different spin on the stat "3509 registered
users, 37 of whom are administrators".  Here I thought 37/3509 = about
one percent of us were administrators, when in fact 37/200 = about one
fifth of us are.

My mother once told me the story of a certain undergraduate educational
institution which surveyed the incoming freshmen, and asked each, among
other things, whether s/he was "more of a leader" or "more of a
follower".   The results were compiled: the class consisted of exactly
one follower and the rest leaders!

Following dilligently,
-Karl

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] bugs and missing features in the conversion scriptof the German WP

body:
> > * I thought all old revisions since beginning of the German WP
should
> > have been integrated into the database. Or is it better to do this
> > later?
>
> The usemod wikis are configured to destroy old items in the edit
> histories after a few weeks. For some reason, no one's ever paid any
> attention whenever I've pointed this out on the mailing lists.
>
> Unless someone has regular backups going back to the beginning and
wants
> to figure out how to paste them together, they're gone.

Aaaaaaargh!!!

That's really sad. I remember that there was a discussion about this
long ago. :-(

Kurt


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Slashcode

body:
On Monday 26 August 2002 01:27 am, you wrote:
> Still, I'm not opposed to the idea of a wikipedia slash or similar, if
> there's a general clamor for it and it sounds like we have a good idea
> of what it's for.
>
> --Jimbo

I think it would be most useful -- separate topics get their own slashcode
pages and talk strings will be easier to follow. We could also use the "vote
for" feature to actually decide things on the list -- as it is topics get
dropped all the time without /any/ closure.

There is also the probable fact that some people are wary of exposing their
email address to strangers and this may be an added barrier for some to join
list discussion.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Median article size - more stats

body:
Tim Marklew wrote:
> N.B.  The February figures were calculated as the median size of pages
> added by 'Conversion script', the dummy user which was used to transfer
> all the articles onto the Phase II database.

FWIW, those are actually from _January_ 25. Human error reset all the
edit dates in the database on February 25, when History began anew.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Page deletion policy

body:
Pierre Abbat wrote:
> What about articles that have copyright violations in their history? I
> recently found the source for two articles that were copied verbatim from
> other websites. [[Miyuki]] can go poof, as far as I'm concerned (it's a bead
> seller's account of a trip to a bead plant, and the article's an orphan), but
> [[Guru Granth Sahib]] is important. Is there a way to remove the violation
> from the sikhuence of versions while keeping the rest?

A particular revision can be dropped from the database. There's no
interface for it, but it can be done manually by one of the developers
if need be (ie, if we cannot legally distribute the material, which we
are doing if it's in the history).

However, there doesn't seem to be anything in that particular article's
history[1] besides the copyright violation, the copyright violation with
a formatting correction, and a message explaining that there used to be
a copyright violation in that place.

It makes perfect sense to me to delete the "article" outright, since
there is no usable content in its history, and let someone add content
to a clean new article of the same name later.

1:
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Guru_Granth_Sahib&action=history

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

body:
Hello all,

Is this repository suitable for Wikipedia ?
I mean, copyrights. The note on one of the main pages is rather
elusive. And there are quite a lot resources worth uploading to
Wikipedia. Phonemes, drawings, planes, tanks, animals, plants etc etc

http://sunsite.tus.ac.jp/multimed/

Regards,
kpjas.


from_name: Giskart

subject: [Wikipedia-l] question about using GNU/FDL for audio

body:
Hy,

I trying to find a answer to my qestions about the use of the

GNU Free Documentation License and how to use it for audio.

I do not fully understand the words of the licence.
And to make no violation of the GNU/FDL license on wikipedia you have to
know what it means.

So far i think to understand this license means for audio;

"A creator of orignal recording can relase a file whit his music under
the GNU/FDL license. But only that file and the copies and conversions
of it are under this licence. A other recording, a master recording is
not under this licence. So the creator has still a recording whithout
any restrictions can still do whaterver he wants. Only the copy and the
offspring of the file relased under GNU/FDL is not under the creators
controll.

Then you are allowed to do whit the relased file;
Modify, changing the music, converting to other filetype and spread it.
This modifyt file must always give credit to the original creator and
the content must be released under GNU FDL. This file must be free to
get. You are not allowed to ask money for the file/content. You are
allowed to ask money for the distribution of the content."

So, this is what i think it means. Is it fiction ?

Giskart


from_name: Tim Marklew

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Real logged in users

body:
mav wrote:
>BTW we really /do not/ have 3498 real users -- a good many of these "users"
>logged in only to abuse our upload utility or for other nefarious or
>non-contributing reasons (I don't greet any user who hasn't contributed at
>all). Is there a way to get rid of many of these no-longer used user
>accounts
>Lee (just the ones that have been inactive for months and whose user pages
>are still edit links)?

The vast majority (over three quarters) of people who have logged in have
never made any edits whatsoever, quite apart from not having a user page.  I
suspect that the majority are just passers by who click on log in out of
curiosity.  It might be a good idea do a clearout of all of these that are
older than a couple of months and have never made any contributions, to free
up the user names.

Out of interest, I produced some stats for the users we have and the number
of contributions since February.  These show that about 800 logged in users
have made at least one contribution, and about 400 have made at least 10
contributions.  95% of edits (again counting logged in users only) have been
made by only around 200 Wikipedians.  The Wikipedia community is still quite
a small corner of the Internet!

Tim (Enchanter)

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos:
http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx


from_name: Michael R. Irwin

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
>
> Ok, Yes, Toby's suggestion that an article with a good title but no content
> should be deleted is good policy.
>

It seems like silly makework to me.

The article will be recreated again anytime anyone
clicks on one of the links leading to it.

If it is a good title then it is an invitation
for anyone who encounters it to add to it.

A poor title seems of no loss.  However, unless
it is replaced with a good title which it previous
links are edited to point at, it seems likely
that it will reoccur quickly.

Somebody had to code the initial link to the poor
title to create the article in the first place.
It seems to me that the only solid way to eliminate
poor titles is  track the links and recode them to
a better title.   If the new title is a new article
then  unless someone undertakes a research project it
will likely be fairly empty or stubby for a while.

I think that having the Wikipedia Guard or Militia
routinely deleting empty good titled articles may
only slow down the growth in bread and depth of
the Wikipedia.   Some people may like organizing
the link structures and establishing good initial titles
and interconnections.   Why should this contribution
be routinely deleted?   How much subsequent work is
then lost from contributors who while browsing may
choose to add an easy paragraph but who will not
undertake an entire stub and the effort required
to link it appropriately into an entire encyclopedia?

Some areas of the Wikipedia already feel pretty
circular and concise.   They have no sloppy or poor titles
hanging out for random fortuitous contributions from
readers.   They have a concise complete feel to them
that screams static encyclopedic overview with no place
for further detail.

To summarize, I am unconvinced that routine pruning
of good article titles is useful to attaining our
goals of depth, breadth, and reliability.  Rather, I think
it may actually be harmful.

regards,
Mike Irwin

P.S.  It might be an interesting experiment to build a
detailed maze of good article titles and stubs in some
underdeveloped subject area of the Wikipedia and toy around
with some twikification techniques.  If a couple of
regulars cooperated in an area of common interest
it might convince newcomers that Wikipedia is truly alive
with sufficient utilization to keep its content dynamic
and growing.  As it is I think the first multi Wikipedian
contact in near realtime of many newcomers may often be in a
negative atmosphere of panic and anger as the mailing list
is attracted to some  poor content locus for deletion sprees.

P.S.2  To address the issue of the most wanted list.  Perhaps
its code could be enhanced to provide a weighted list or
set of lists.   Thus two paragraph stubs referenced 26 times
which have little or no outbound links would get some
attention from people who prefer checking most wanted lists
rather than subject browsing or random inspection for
twikification efforts.  Perhaps we could identify some syntax
factors that make a good Wikipedia article such as
(perhaps):  length, median word size, median sentence length,
average paragraph length, number of commas, number of inbound
links, number of out bound links, editor rating, reader
rating, etc. An advantage of this approach is that eventually
various automated quality scanning tools could help people
target material needing their particular gifts or interests.


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Junk upload alert

body:
Jokerman9001 is repeatedly uploading a file called "Profile1.txt" which is in
HTML format and contains an unrecognized protocol string and an invitation to
send him messages. Please block this user.

phma


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Page deletion policy

body:
Fredbauder wrote regarding:

>>  Generally speaking, delete pages that simply will
>>  never become encyclopedia articles, e.g.,
>>  with titles that will never be misspellings,
>>  that represent completely idiosyncratic non-topics, etc.

>I would rather the policy was not changed. Most people can see that a short
>but important article could be expanded. I think the articles show up on
>the stub list anyway for folks to work on. Basically the change means that
>other peoples work is to be thrown away.

I'd also rather that the policy weren't changed.
But you and I disagree on what it says now!  ^_^.

People also disagree about what I meant, so I should clarify.
There are actual several related issues here;
I wanted to talk about those that were related to
the examples that I cited, the pages delisted
from [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]] by The Cunctator.
Since I can't access Wikipedia now, I'm not sure exactly
what those examples are, so I'll have to mention everything.  ^_^.

# What should we do when we find a page with no usable content?
  This includes pages whose only content is vandalism,
  newbie experiments, and copyright violations, for example.
  If the title is good, then many people will put in a stub.
  Even the comments to the original writer often say to
  please put in a stub, with a link to [[Wikipedia:Find and fix a stub]].
  I'd at least change that link to [[Wikipedia:How to write the perfect stub]]
  (or whatever the title is, I can't access Wikipedia right now).
  I argue that deletion is better than a lousy stub like
  "A large city in southern [[Arizona]].".
  A ''good'' stub is better still than deletion,
  but that takes some work, stub though it may be,
  and people not willing to do work for their stubs
  shouldn't write them, IMO.

# What should we do with a page that has a useless stub?
  I mean a page that gives only a definition and a WWW link, or less.
  This may give some information to some people, to be sure,
  but I think that it does more harm than good not to be linked with "?".
  An example was [[Pluto (god)]], which I voted for deletion
  about a week ago.  (The page is now perfectly fine.)
  This was purely for the sake of being provocative,
  and I don't intend to start deleting such things now.
  I'm undecided about what we should do in these cases;
  perhapse it's sufficient to make sure that they're
  listed on [[Wikipedia:Find and fix a stub]]?
  I'd listen to people that use that page; I don't.
  The only thing that I'm certain about is that they shouldn't be ''started''.
  Every stub writer should read [[Wikipedia:How to write the perfect stub]]
  (or whatever it is); writing good stubs is not the ''easy'' way out.
  And "A large city in southern [[Arizona]]." is not "work".

# What does the policy point quoted above actually mean?
  Does it say to delete certain pages (subject to the other rules),
  or is it like the other rules in ''limiting'' the pages to delete?
  We can make this question moot by answering #4 below.

# What ''should'' the policy point quoted above actually ''say''?
  The current version, whatever it means, isn't clear,
  since different people interpret it differently.
  Even if we shouldn't change it, we should change its phrasing.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Page deletion policy

body:
On Sunday 25 August 2002 11:19, Larry Sanger wrote:
> Bear in mind that when we settled on the above point (as part of a general
> "hands off" deletion policy--*still* a good idea, by the way), it was at a
> time when one couldn't delete an article without deleting its history as
> well.  Perhaps that's changed.  Occasionally, a "complete" article (but
> egregiously biased, or so factually incorrect in so many places it's
> non-rescuable)  with a more or less useful history ends up being wiped
> clean.  So I think part of the reasoning behind the "don't delete the ones
> with plausible titles" rule is simply that the item might have a useful
> history.
>
> In cases where that's not so, or generally, if the history could be saved
> while links to the article are rendered as "?" if the article has zero
> content, then I'd be all in favor of scrapping this rule.
>
> In fact, the last I recall of this issue, I think there were several
> people on board the idea of rendering links to contentless articles with
> "?", but (I might have this wrong) I think a programmer said that that
> would be a system strain somehow.  Would be a good idea to have the issue
> re-examined.  That would require the least amount of effort for content
> developers.

What about articles that have copyright violations in their history? I
recently found the source for two articles that were copied verbatim from
other websites. [[Miyuki]] can go poof, as far as I'm concerned (it's a bead
seller's account of a trip to a bead plant, and the article's an orphan), but
[[Guru Granth Sahib]] is important. Is there a way to remove the violation
from the sikhuence of versions while keeping the rest?

phma


subject: [Wikipedia-l] wikipedia.org

body:
maveric149 wrote:

>giskart wrote:

>>also .info, .net

>>That these are safe is not bad but to buy every possible wikipedia.*
>>seems a waste to me.

>Wouldn't be cheaper and more sensible to trademark the word "wikipedia" in
>order to prevent somebody from actually using wikipedia.info/.org/.ca or
>.whatever? At 30 bucks US a year per TLD that could get expensive.

Agreed.  Registering a trademark in the US is much cheaper
than registering all of the domain suffixes used in the US.

>I think it would be far better to eventually asign each language their own
>.org URL that is their languages' version of the word "wikipedia"
>(Vikipedio.org for Esperanto or Wikipedia.org for English for example).

Ah, but now you are wasting money again.  ^_^

More seriously, I doubt that these will all be unique.
I'm in favour of using en.wikipedia.org, de.wikipedia.org, and so on.
Then we can also use de.wikipedie.org, fr.wikipedie.org, and so on,
if the Germans and/or the French ask for it.
Each language's community can decide what the internal links should be,
but every URL (given the right language code in front) should work.

Unlike giskart, however, I don't think that time is of the essence.
Google has begun to archive http://www.wikipedia.org/w/*; ah well.
Such pages will just have to redirect (through the apache server of course)
to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/*; we can live with that.
So I think that his idea is good but can be done anytime.

-- Toby Bartels
   <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu>


from_name: Tom Parmenter

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Real logged in users

body:
|From: Karl Juhnke <yangfuli at yahoo.com>
|Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2002 13:08:49 -0700 (PDT)
|
|--- Tim Marklew <tmarklew at hotmail.com> wrote:
|> 95% of edits (again counting logged in users only) have been
|> made by only around 200 Wikipedians.  The Wikipedia community is
|> still quite a small corner of the Internet!
|
|What a hoot!  That puts a different spin on the stat "3509 registered
|users, 37 of whom are administrators".  Here I thought 37/3509 = about
|one percent of us were administrators, when in fact 37/200 = about one
|fifth of us are.
|
|My mother once told me the story of a certain undergraduate educational
|institution which surveyed the incoming freshmen, and asked each, among
|other things, whether s/he was "more of a leader" or "more of a
|follower".   The results were compiled: the class consisted of exactly
|one follower and the rest leaders!
|
|Following dilligently,
|-Karl
|

I *knew* I didn't want admin privileges.  Better to keep my street
cred.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga Jonat on [[Berlin]]

body:
|From: Jens Frank <JeLuF at gmx.de>
|Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
|Content-Disposition: inline
|User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.28i
|Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com
|X-BeenThere: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
|X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.4
|Precedence: bulk
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
|List-Help: <mailto:wikipedia-l-request at nupedia.com?subject=help>
|List-Post: <mailto:wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
|List-Subscribe: <http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l>,
|	<mailto:wikipedia-l-request at nupedia.com?subject=subscribe>
|List-Id: An unmoderated discussion of all things Wikipedia <wikipedia-l.nupedia.com>
|List-Unsubscribe: <http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l>,
|	<mailto:wikipedia-l-request at nupedia.com?subject=unsubscribe>
|List-Archive: <http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/>
|Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2002 23:30:02 +0200
|
|Helga Jonat just wrote the following on [[Berlin]]:
|
|	After the Jews of the world in a March 1933 newspaper
|	''Daily Express'' stated, '''Judica declares War on Germany'''
|	the Jews were persecuted from the beginning of the Nazi regime.
|	German Jews opposed the Judica of the world in a letter. But
|	that did not keep them from receiving the wrath of the
|	dictator as well.
|
|This is a typical revisionist argument: The jews started the war, Hitler
|was only defending himself against them.
|
|Apart from this being utter nonsense (see e.g. http://www.nizkor.org/features/qar/qar11.html
|for a discussion of these arguments), this most probably violates
|German Law (Paragraph 130(3) of our penal code, denial of genocide
|performed by the nazis).
|
|It's time to stop her.
|
|
|JeLuF

I've stopped fooling with her stuff since she posted material from a
web site that also had a "satire" on death camps with the premise that
the biggest problem was lack of toilet paper.  Let her go somewhere
else and tell everyone how we oppose and oppress anyone with the
courage to speak the truth.

She is also a waste of time as none of her articles are any good and
everyone is so polite and diligent in opposing her.  She may not be
bright enough to be a holocaust denier, but she might as well be.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88

PS -- I don't think much of that German law and I imagine many
Americans (others too) would probably agree that while holocaust
denial presents a serious problem for the Wikipedia, enforcing that
law would not be the way we'd want to go about getting rid of her.
Let's just leave it at this, "She's had her chance and she's more
trouble than she's worth."


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Bibliography:namespace

body:
maveric149 wrote:

>Most sites simply have a link to their copyrights page and/or to a
>bibliography, that's all we should have (see below). Do we really want to
>have all the source info contained at
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Magnesium in the main part of the article?

Only the first 2 of these 3 sentences needs to go in the credits.
Depending on whose version we take, perhaps none of it does,
since it is all public domain material,
not open source stuff that we're obliged to credit.

I wrote earlier (although it doesn't seem to have appeared;
2 posts got lost in moderator hell when I changed my return address)
that credits should go in [[:]] until we get [[Credits:]].
But I mean only what we're obliged to mention,
like the FOLDOC credits or anything from another GFDL source.
When we get [[Credits:]], OTOH, then lots can go in there.

If we go more broadly, as mev suggests, to [[Bibliography:]],
then we still need to sure to point out what the credits are.
To my mind, the important thing is to give credit when we copy ''words'',
not to mention every source that was used for ''ideas''.
Bibliographies can contain quite a bit more
than the sources for quotations used, if that's what mav is thinking of.

-- Toby Bartels
   <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu>


body:
mirwin wrote:

>Fredbauder wrote:

>>Ok, Yes, Toby's suggestion that an article with a good title but no content
>>should be deleted is good policy.

>It seems like silly makework to me.
>The article will be recreated again anytime anyone
>clicks on one of the links leading to it.

These links will be "?" (or highlighted) if the page is deleted,
so people following them should be intending to write articles.
If they do write content, then that's great!
I don't mind contentless pages being recreated as contentful articles.

>If it is a good title then it is an invitation
>for anyone who encounters it to add to it.

For somebody interested in writeing content (which is what we want),
I think that a link of "?" is more inviting than a non"?" link.
If I know about a subject, then I'll follow "?" links but not non"?" ones.
If the non"?" link is to a contentless page, then this means
that I won't be writing articles that I otherwise would write!

>A poor title seems of no loss.  However, unless
>it is replaced with a good title which it previous
>links are edited to point at, it seems likely
>that it will reoccur quickly.
>Somebody had to code the initial link to the poor
>title to create the article in the first place.
>It seems to me that the only solid way to eliminate
>poor titles is  track the links and recode them to
>a better title.   If the new title is a new article
>then  unless someone undertakes a research project it
>will likely be fairly empty or stubby for a while.

If I understand you correctly, than I feel similarly.
I'm much less concerned about contentless pages
with poor titles that we'll never want in an encyclopaedia.
The way to fix ''these'' is to fix the links to them.
Only once that is done will deleting the page do much good.
So it is the good titles that we disagree on, not the bad ones.

>I think that having the Wikipedia Guard or Militia
>routinely deleting empty good titled articles may
>only slow down the growth in breadth and depth of
>the Wikipedia.   Some people may like organizing
>the link structures and establishing good initial titles
>and interconnections.   Why should this contribution
>be routinely deleted?   How much subsequent work is
>then lost from contributors who while browsing may
>choose to add an easy paragraph but who will not
>undertake an entire stub and the effort required
>to link it appropriately into an entire encyclopedia?

I really have no idea how you think that this will work.
Do you have examples on Wikipedia?
(If I need to look in page histories to see
how this worked in the past, then that's fine too.)

>Some areas of the Wikipedia already feel pretty
>circular and concise.   They have no sloppy or poor titles
>hanging out for random fortuitous contributions from
>readers.   They have a concise complete feel to them
>that screams static encyclopedic overview with no place
>for further detail.

But I think that links to articles with no content ''adds'' to this problem.
When the link doesn't have "?", things look even more complete.
But they are not complete, and "?"s will make things look properly incomplete!
However, I do agree with you that we have this problem in some places.
People don't follow [[Wikipedia:Always leave something undone]] enough
(a sin that I've been guilty of too often in the past).

>To summarize, I am unconvinced that routine pruning
>of good article titles is useful to attaining our
>goals of depth, breadth, and reliability.  Rather, I think
>it may actually be harmful.

>P.S.  It might be an interesting experiment to build a
>detailed maze of good article titles and stubs in some
>underdeveloped subject area of the Wikipedia and toy around
>with some twikification techniques.

If they're ''good'' stubs, then I'd support this experiment.
(The page that I mentioned before is [[Wikipedia:The perfect stub article]],
and point #5 is the one that I hope people consider particularly.)

>If a couple of
>regulars cooperated in an area of common interest
>it might convince newcomers that Wikipedia is truly alive
>with sufficient utilization to keep its content dynamic
>and growing.  As it is I think the first multi Wikipedian
>contact in near realtime of many newcomers may often be in a
>negative atmosphere of panic and anger as the mailing list
>is attracted to some poor content locus for deletion sprees.

I hope that we never go on deletion sprees.
If we delete stubs for being too imperfect,
then every one should go to [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]] first.
I primarily just don't want things to be delisted from that page
without discussion; I'm not saying that they should all just be deleted!

>P.S.2  To address the issue of the most wanted list.  Perhaps
>its code could be enhanced to provide a weighted list or
>set of lists.   Thus two paragraph stubs referenced 26 times
>which have little or no outbound links would get some
>attention from people who prefer checking most wanted lists
>rather than subject browsing or random inspection for
>twikification efforts.  Perhaps we could identify some syntax
>factors that make a good Wikipedia article such as
>(perhaps):  length, median word size, median sentence length,
>average paragraph length, number of commas, number of inbound
>links, number of out bound links, editor rating, reader
>rating, etc. An advantage of this approach is that eventually
>various automated quality scanning tools could help people
>target material needing their particular gifts or interests.

Do you know how to write the software for this?
I think that we need to deal with how [[Special:Mostwanted]]
works now, or can be made to work easily.
I'm not against your idea; it's a longer term project, that's all.

-- Toby


body:
--- "Michael R. Irwin" <mri_icboise at surfbest.net> wrote:
> I think that having the Wikipedia Guard or Militia
> routinely deleting empty good titled articles may
> only slow down the growth in bread and depth of
> the Wikipedia.   Some people may like organizing
> the link structures and establishing good initial titles
> and interconnections.   Why should this contribution
> be routinely deleted?   How much subsequent work is
> then lost from contributors who while browsing may
> choose to add an easy paragraph but who will not
> undertake an entire stub and the effort required
> to link it appropriately into an entire encyclopedia?

It is interesting that the debate about article deletion turns on the
contributing habits of other people, not ourselves.  Do any of us go
around creating poor stubs, content-free articles, or other stuff that
is a candidate for deletion?  It seems not, i.e. it seems that nobody
on the mailing list is suggesting deleting any article created by
anyone else on the mailing list.  Apparently, no matter how varied in
substance and style our contributions may be, we all recognize that we
are all doing useful work.

Therefore article deletion seems to be less a matter of encyclopdia
building, and more a matter of public relations.  How does the
established community interact with newbies?  Do we risk discouraging
contributions, even if they are contributions such as we ourselves
would not make?  When old hands work in a manner congenial to
themselves, does it make a bad impression on newcomers?

I am probably the newbiest (or should that be most newbiest?) on the
list right now.  I still have to fight the temptation to ask for
permission to make changes rather than simply making them.  And I still
remember fairly clearly my pre-Wikipedia notion of how collaboration
might or might not work.  My opinion is only mine, but I present it for
what it is worth.

Far and away the most important impression for new contributors is
whether or not they are part of a vibrant, ongoing interaction.  I
still remember the huge rush it was for me to write my first short
article, and discover a few hours later that someone had corrected my
spelling and added a link.  From that instant I was sold on the
concept, and began preaching to everyone who would listen that
Wikipedia was the Next Big Thing (TM).

By the same token, the worst possible impression newbies can get is
that nobody cares.  I am still smarting from having a change of mine
reversed with no more than a terse comment and no effort at dialogue.
And I remember the disappointment of waiting for days and days to see
what would be done with another contribution of mine, only to slowly
conclude that nobody was going to work on it with me.  Each case was a
different side of being ignored.  (Of course, by now I realize the
efficiencies of discussing by editing rather than talking about
editing, and realize too that even the most obscure article comes
around for editing eventually, but I didn't have that perspective at
first.)

With this in mind, I think that the timing of a delete is critical.  If
someone created an empty article a month ago and nothing has happened
to it since, we need have no fear of deleting it.  Whoever made it is
long gone.  They don't care about it, or they wouldn't have left it.
They won't feel that we are undoing their hard work; they aren't coming
back every week to admire their miniscule efforts.

On the other extreme, if a useless article has been created by a newbie
in the last twenty-four hours, they would likely be extremely gratified
at any attempt at communication, if only appending to their article
"Would you like to expand this a little?  See
link-to-writing-a-good-stub."

The impression we make on new contributors is more important than the
impression we make on passive viewers, but the latter is worth a
thought too, since today's passive viewer may become tomorrow's
participant.  I know from my father's reaction to Wikipedia (i.e.
complete dismissal) how damaging it is to have poor articles, and how
much preferable it would be to have nothing at all rather than garbage
or a pathetic stub.  On the other hand, now that I am a contributor
myself, I can see how counterproductive it would be to try to remove
everything that "lowers the average".

The best solution I can think of is to make it more obvious that poor
articles are obviously under construction.  For example, the article on
chess-playing computers for many moons had a placeholder in it saying
"fill in early history" or something like that.  Admittedly, when I saw
that placeholder for the twentieth time it started to grate on me, but
when I saw it for the first time it helped clarify that the article was
not a bad article, but rather an article that needed fleshing out.
Given the current state of much of our product, it is well to focus
outsiders on the process.

My $0.02.
-Karl

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


from_name: Karen AKA Kajikit

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Page deletion policy

body:
Stephen Gilbert wrote:
>
> --- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > I think that this needs to be straightened out,
> > and the language on the page may need to be
> > clarified.
> > IMO, pages with no content but with reasonable
> > titles
> > are the worst of all, when they are linked from
> > other articles.
> > The reader wastes time following links to useless
> > pages;
> > the writer doesn't write an article that might be
> > sorely needed.
> > [[Special:Mostwanted]], in particular, becomes
> > skewed.
>
> I agree with you. No content pages with good titles
> should be deleted.

I think you mean that pages with a 'good title' but no content, should
be deleted! I agree. There's a difference between a stub which contains
some actual useful information and has the hope of expansion, and a page
with just a title and nothing else. I've been making it my business to
try to stay ahead of the entries with 'zero' byte length and other
gibberish, but when I can I try to extend the pathetic little stubs a
little rather than removing them. It's not hard to tell what's
'nonsense'...

--

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: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga Jonat on [[Berlin]]

body:
Jens Frank wrote:
> Oh, I didn't want to suggest to denounce her, I just don't want
> Jimbo to be arrested when occasionally entering Germany ...

*grin* That's a very very good thing.

I'm talking via email with Helga.  It is not going very well.  I feel
that I will not be able to change her mind directly.  I have told her
not to post anything further about WWII, Poland, Germany, Judaism, or
related topics until we get this straightened out.

I am not inclined, as everyone knows, towards bans.  But if someone has
an agenda and is completely uncooperative, well, I'm just not sure how
much we can stand.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] wikipedia.org

body:
Giskart wrote:
> Brion VIBBER wrote:
>
>> Another possibility is to have:
>>   http://www.wikipedia.org/
>>   http://www.wikipedia.com/
>>   http://wikipedia.org/
>>   http://wikipedia.com/
>> merely be a static page that links to the various languages, while:
>>   http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/*
>>   http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/*
>>   http://wikipedia.com/wiki/*
>>   http://wikipedia.org/wiki/*
>> would go to the English to preserve existing links, while the
>> canonical urls for such would be:
>>   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*
>
>
> Good possibility. I like it.
>
>> Unless you'd prefer to move the meta wiki into the www.wikipedia.org
>> place and declare it to be multilingual. (Shudder)
>
>
> Can still be done later. The problem is the lack of time. If you wait to
> long there are to many links to the new location of the english
> wikipedia that can not be broken. If there is no fundamental objection
> to put the English wikipedia at en.wikipedia.org then that must be done.
> What to do whit www.wikipedia.org can wait (a littel.)
>
> giskart

Google is now starting to find wikipedia at the new location
www.wikipedia.org = 18
www.wikipedia.com = 1360

Time is up.

giskart


body:
Karl Juhnke wrote:
>I got so curious about my own suggested statistic of median article
>size that I have been tracking it by hand.  So far the data is:
>
>Date  Median article size in bytes
>----  ----------------------------
>8/15  1001
>...
>8/22   991
>My hypothesis on the basis of one week of observation is that,
>although our front page article count is rocketing up, this indicates
>many new small articles, and thus a decrease in the expected information
>contained in a random article.

To take Karl's idea further, I've calculated the median article size at the
end of February, when Wikipedia was moved onto the Phase II software.
According to my figures, the median article size has fallen from 1035
characters in February to 997 now (August 25).

This is a fairly small drop - less than 4% over 6 months.  I suspect that it
mostly reflects the fact that we are importing fewer big articles now from
public domain sources.  For example, hundreds of large pages from the CIA
factbook were imported before February, and we haven't had so many big
additions since in proportion to the (larger) size of the database.

So we can take the reassuring conclusion that looking at the headline count
of articles is reasonably reliable as a measure of how quickly Wikipedia is
growing.  Articles aren't getting all that much smaller or bigger over the
long term.

Tim (Enchanter)

N.B.  The February figures were calculated as the median size of pages added
by 'Conversion script', the dummy user which was used to transfer all the
articles onto the Phase II database.

_________________________________________________________________
Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com


body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
>
> mirwin wrote:
>
> >Fredbauder wrote:
>
> >>Ok, Yes, Toby's suggestion that an article with a good title but no content
> >>should be deleted is good policy.
>
> >It seems like silly makework to me.
> >The article will be recreated again anytime anyone
> >clicks on one of the links leading to it.
>
> These links will be "?" (or highlighted) if the page is deleted,
> so people following them should be intending to write articles.
> If they do write content, then that's great!
> I don't mind contentless pages being recreated as contentful articles.
>
> >If it is a good title then it is an invitation
> >for anyone who encounters it to add to it.
>
> For somebody interested in writeing content (which is what we want),
> I think that a link of "?" is more inviting than a non"?" link.
> If I know about a subject, then I'll follow "?" links but not non"?" ones.
> If the non"?" link is to a contentless page, then this means
> that I won't be writing articles that I otherwise would write!

Ok.  I can see this might be a problem for writers oriented
towards writing complete new stubs or articles.  Perhaps a
list article page inversely sorted on article length such that
the shortest show up first and the longest last would help
address this.  This may be a current capability on the stub
page, I have not been there for a while.

I think we also want tweaking experts and readers who will
occasionally do some research and drop a sentence, paragraph,
definition, or lengthy rambling explanation that can be tweaked
into quality content.  A thousand readers occasionally tweaking
equals how many dedicated Wikipedians?  A lot of highly educated
people are also fairly busy.  While they may not choose to be
regular contributors, the value of their tweaks should add up
or something is seriously wrong with our project model.

<snip agreement on poor titles>

> >I think that having the Wikipedia Guard or Militia
> >routinely deleting empty good titled articles may
> >only slow down the growth in breadth and depth of
> >the Wikipedia.   Some people may like organizing
> >the link structures and establishing good initial titles
> >and interconnections.   Why should this contribution
> >be routinely deleted?   How much subsequent work is
> >then lost from contributors who while browsing may
> >choose to add an easy paragraph but who will not
> >undertake an entire stub and the effort required
> >to link it appropriately into an entire encyclopedia?
>
> I really have no idea how you think that this will work.
> Do you have examples on Wikipedia?
> (If I need to look in page histories to see
> how this worked in the past, then that's fine too.)

Some use the term twikification or wikification when they
do a concise edit.  Tracing these from recent changes
may illustrate the concept if you find a stub that has
just become active or controversial.

Perhaps the index pages in the tree branch {main page},
{technology},{space technology},{propulsion} would be
illustrative.   I added space technology and alphabetized
technology, IIRC approximately 6 months ago when I first
arrived.  They have been slowly undergoing tweaks
since then but are still pretty poor stubs.  They do
however provide a substrate for tweaks to settle upon.

Personally, I would hope that one day these are solid
multi page essays that are standalone informative overviews
with links and indexes to sub branches and mazes of detailed
articles at appropriate detail which are useful to practicing
professionals, casual browsers, and grade school
students alike.   Extreme success would be when the
material is organized such that a glossary of specialized
jargon is easily available; summaries at various levels of
detail make sense to space enthusiasts, newcomers, and other
field specialists; and detailed state of the art information
is also accessible on demand without impacting the casual
reader or beginner.

I think it will be failure if the articles remain so
general and static that specialists/enthusiasts set up
their own specialized Wikipedia (or equivalent) rather than fill
in this one with deep dense branches of relevant detail organized
such that all users can find an appropriate level of
detail when they need or want it.

I suspect (but certainly cannot prove) that if Wikipedia
is: not a dictionary, not a tutorial, not a place for
discussion of advanced material, not a place for video
addicts, not a place for resolution of controversy and
neutral presentation of all views, not an etc. etc. then
it will have a hard time becoming and remaining an in depth,
broad, reliable Wikipedia.

>
> >Some areas of the Wikipedia already feel pretty
> >circular and concise.   They have no sloppy or poor titles
> >hanging out for random fortuitous contributions from
> >readers.   They have a concise complete feel to them
> >that screams static encyclopedic overview with no place
> >for further detail.
>
> But I think that links to articles with no content ''adds'' to this problem.
> When the link doesn't have "?", things look even more complete.
> But they are not complete, and "?"s will make things look properly incomplete!
> However, I do agree with you that we have this problem in some places.
> People don't follow [[Wikipedia:Always leave something undone]] enough
> (a sin that I've been guilty of too often in the past).

Perhaps as upper levels of summary information get fairly
complete the problem will resolve itself a bit.  The incomplete
or poor articles should start concentrating at the leaf nodes
farthest from the main page entry point since they get the least
traffic. Obviously I am making a few assumptions:

1.  Most readers start at the main page and work towards the
level of detail they desire.   The search function may break
this assumption, particularly with younger readers trained
in computer use rather than use of indexes or tables of content.

2.  Most readers are tweaking at least occasionally as they work
through the material.

3.  Wikipedia is regularly used by a large diverse
group of knowledgeable readers.

<snip wild ideas>

> Do you know how to write the software for this?
Very vaguely.  Certainly not in PHP and mySQL at the
moment.  Most of my education and professional experience
has emphasized top down design methods not well suited to
prevalent open/free source methodologies.  I am way too
lazy by both training and inclination to design/code a feature
or patch (after learning enough PHP, SQL, etc. and setting
up a development/test system) just to see if it gets thrown
away or integrated.

So far I have been pretty lazy about writing entire articles
or stubs as well.  Hence my interest in twikification.

Twikification may be critical to gradual engagement of some
top engineering talent in some projects in which I have
some interest.  Few top notch engineers can resist quickly
annotating a design with random stray thoughts to show how smart
and qualified they are but few will do a complete design without
professional compensation.   Most will back up their opinions
with some calculations if constructively engaged in conversation
about the design detail of interest.  Accrued twikification will
certainly not complete space technology projects by itself.  Might
bring development costs down quite a bit if implemented well in
open/free
technology efforts.  Might make some types of projects feasible
for small companies who cannot afford to have thousands of specialized
engineers on paid standby for consultation about esoteric details.

Usenet is a poor medium for this type of conversation.  The
knowledge and effort does not accrue or coalesce into anything
useful beyond self study question and answer reading material.

> I think that we need to deal with how [[Special:Mostwanted]]
> works now, or can be made to work easily.
I agree but I think we should not negatively impact some
contribution approaches for the benefit of others.

> I'm not against your idea; it's a longer term project, that's all.
Understood.  Personally, I think SVG integration or some other
graphics standard that is wikifiable should be a much higher
priority than the wild ideas I proposed.

regards,
Mike Irwin


body:
At 10:08 PM 8/25/02 -0400, Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
>Actually, I'd favor deleting some of Fredbauder's stubs, since I
>think entries like "a large city in southern Arizona" as the entire article
>reduce the chance of anyone seeing the gap and writing a good article
>on the subject.

So no misunderstanding at all. But the question is not whether Tucson,
Arizona should be removed, but what serves to eventually produce a nice
article. I think a placeholder with a web link to information that can be
used to develop an article serves well enough. Vicki seems to think having
nothing would work better. I don't think there is an question eventually we
would like an article on Tucson. I wrote the stub after I found links to
[[Tucson]], [[Tucson,Arizona]], and [[Tucson, Arizona]].

My thought is that a short stub does no harm, expecially with a link to
local attractions. And looking at the article, it seems there is some work,
but still not a substantial article; in fact now it would seem hard to
justify deleting it. Looking at history User O seems to have picked it up
off recent changes and put in a few facts. I would say that the ball is
rolling, if slowly.

Granted I should take a look at the article "How to write a good stub," but
it seemed to me at the time that a simple placeholder with a link to a
resource that could be used to develop the article served well enough.

Fred Bauder


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Kill the Stubs

body:
Extended previous discussion is at:

http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=Kill_the_Stub_Pages

Fred


body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> Ok.  I can see this might be a problem for writers oriented
> towards writing complete new stubs or articles.  Perhaps a
> list article page inversely sorted on article length such that
> the shortest show up first and the longest last would help
> address this.  This may be a current capability on the stub
> page, I have not been there for a while.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special%3AShortpages
?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Fred Bauder wrote on [[Tucson, Arizona]] in part:

>My thought is that a short stub does no harm, expecially with a link to
>local attractions. And looking at the article, it seems there is some work,
>but still not a substantial article; in fact now it would seem hard to
>justify deleting it. Looking at history User O seems to have picked it up
>off recent changes and put in a few facts. I would say that the ball is
>rolling, if slowly.

[[User:0]] appears because of a bug in the conversion to Phase III;
it'd be interesting to figure out who that ''really'' was
(you used to be able to look this up at old.wikipedia.com)
and find out if the existence of the stub helped or hindered their work.
It is after the edits attributed to 0 that I think that the article
passes the barrier between useless and worthwhile.

>Granted I should take a look at the article "How to write a good stub," but
>it seemed to me at the time that a simple placeholder with a link to a
>resource that could be used to develop the article served well enough.

FYI, it's [[Wikipedia:The perfect stub article]],
originally (it seems) an essay by Larry Sanger.

-- Toby


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

body:
At 06:56 PM 8/25/02 -0700, Karl wrote:
>--- "Michael R. Irwin" <mri_icboise at surfbest.net> wrote:
> > I think that having the Wikipedia Guard or Militia
> > routinely deleting empty good titled articles may
> > only slow down the growth in bread and depth of
> > the Wikipedia.   Some people may like organizing
> > the link structures and establishing good initial titles
> > and interconnections.   Why should this contribution
> > be routinely deleted?   How much subsequent work is
> > then lost from contributors who while browsing may
> > choose to add an easy paragraph but who will not
> > undertake an entire stub and the effort required
> > to link it appropriately into an entire encyclopedia?
>
>It is interesting that the debate about article deletion turns on the
>contributing habits of other people, not ourselves.  Do any of us go
>around creating poor stubs, content-free articles, or other stuff that
>is a candidate for deletion?  It seems not, i.e. it seems that nobody
>on the mailing list is suggesting deleting any article created by
>anyone else on the mailing list.  Apparently, no matter how varied in
>substance and style our contributions may be, we all recognize that we
>are all doing useful work.
Actually, I'd favor deleting some of Fredbauder's stubs, since I
think entries like "a large city in southern Arizona" as the entire article
reduce the chance of anyone seeing the gap and writing a good article
on the subject.

<snip some good discussion of timing and the effect on new contributors
of having articles edited rather than removed>
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga Jonat on [[Berlin]]

body:
Helga Jonat just wrote the following on [[Berlin]]:

	After the Jews of the world in a March 1933 newspaper
	''Daily Express'' stated, '''Judica declares War on Germany'''
	the Jews were persecuted from the beginning of the Nazi regime.
	German Jews opposed the Judica of the world in a letter. But
	that did not keep them from receiving the wrath of the
	dictator as well.

This is a typical revisionist argument: The jews started the war, Hitler
was only defending himself against them.

Apart from this being utter nonsense (see e.g. http://www.nizkor.org/features/qar/qar11.html
for a discussion of these arguments), this most probably violates
German Law (Paragraph 130(3) of our penal code, denial of genocide
performed by the nazis).

It's time to stop her.

JeLuF


body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> FYI, it's [[Wikipedia:The perfect stub article]],
> originally (it seems) an essay by Larry Sanger.

OK, maybe I am getting to be less newbie-ish, because I just completely
thrashed [[Wikipedia:The perfect stub article]], and I didn't ask
anyone's permission first!  I hope what I did is an improvement that
y'all can work forward from, rather than "reverting vandalism"  :-)

Peace,
-Karl

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


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

body:
Most of us don't bite, even when a user makes egregious mistakes (I've made more than my fair share).  Or, as it says somewhere, [[be bold in updating pages]].  :-)

oh, and yes, that was originally by Larry Sanger.

kq

You Wrote:
>--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
>> FYI, it's [[Wikipedia:The perfect stub article]],
>> originally (it seems) an essay by Larry Sanger.
>
>OK, maybe I am getting to be less newbie-ish, because I just completely
>thrashed [[Wikipedia:The perfect stub article]], and I didn't ask
>anyone's permission first!  I hope what I did is an improvement that
>y'all can work forward from, rather than "reverting vandalism"  :-)
>
>Peace,
>-Karl


in_reply_to: <20020826072052.FSQC11061.sccrmhc01.attbi.com@there>; from maveric149@yahoo.com on Sun, Aug 25, 2002 at 12:19:17PM -0700

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> We should therefore /not/ even begin to consider banning anyone just
> because they are breaking such a law.

I agree completely.  Since the servers are in the U.S. and since I am
in the U.S. and it's impossible to come up with ideas that are illegal
to express here, I see no particular reason to even think about such
things.  Individual contributors living in countries with restrictions
on political speech may have their own concerns, of course.

I actually hope people will write things in the encyclopedia that are
illegal in some parts of the world.  As long as it's NPOV, that's
great.  I'm sure that there are some simple NPOV facts that are
illegal to express in China, and I hope that they can be expressed in
a Mandarin Wikipedia.

> Well intentioned reasoning -- the last thing we need is Jimbo behind
> bars ;).

:-) Well, I'd love to visit Germany someday, but I don't think they'll
throw me in jail for anything that Helga does.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Slashcode

in_reply_to: <20020826073713.TGPZ13899.sccrmhc02.attbi.com@there>; from maveric149@yahoo.com on Sun, Aug 25, 2002 at 12:35:38PM -0700

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> PS - I'm also beggining to loose track of all the questions and
> answers of the various strings on this mailing list. A Slashcode
> implementation may be better for the mailing list real soon.

I have experience with slashcode -- it's sort of a big ugly bear.
Also, mailing lists have (like wiki) a lower "threshold of success"
than a slashcode site.  I can explain further if that doesn't mean
something to everyone.

Still, I'm not opposed to the idea of a wikipedia slash or similar, if
there's a general clamor for it and it sounds like we have a good idea
of what it's for.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga Jonat on [[Berlin]]

body:
> Tom Parmenter (Ortolan88) wrote:
>
> PS -- I don't think much of that German law and I imagine many
> Americans (others too) would probably agree that while holocaust
> denial presents a serious problem for the Wikipedia, enforcing that
> law would not be the way we'd want to go about getting rid of her.
> Let's just leave it at this, "She's had her chance and she's more
> trouble than she's worth."
>

Oh, I didn't want to suggest to denounce her, I just don't want
Jimbo to be arrested when occasionally entering Germany ...

	Regards,

		JeLuF


from_name: Jaap van Ganswijk

subject: [Wikitech-l] requested change for wikitech-l behavior

body:
At 2002-08-23 08:43 -0700, Jason Richey wrote:
>I'm happy to make this change...  Of course, I'd like to get the
>general consensus first.  Anybody agree/disagree/not care?
>
>Jason

By the way, after setting the 'Reply-To:'
correctly, I also wouldn't mind losing the
'[list-name]' in the subject line of this
(and any other) mailing list. It makes such
a mess of the subject lines and it's only
useful for dummies who are too stupid or
lazy to set their filters correctly and
since this is a list for technicians I'm
quite sure it doesn't apply to any of us,
but I'd very much like to hear from anyone
who disagrees...

Greetings,
Jaap


from_name: Kurt Jansson

body:
> By the way, after setting the 'Reply-To:'
> correctly, I also wouldn't mind losing the
> '[list-name]' in the subject line of this
> (and any other) mailing list.

Me too.

> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at ross.bomis.com
> http://ross.bomis.com/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

And the e-mail address should be corrected, too. It's also on the
website.

Kurt


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Junk upload alert

body:
Thanks, but it's not my idea.  It was already implemented in UseModWiki, when I first found wikipedia in I think April 2001, but the feature got lost with the conversion to Magnus' software.  And yes, I'd love to have it back too.  :-)

kq

>What is the progress on the ":block user" function developers? I like KQ's
>idea of mouse over exposure of IP addresses (only available to sysop's of
>course).
>
>-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Meta upload

body:
Could somebody with the power to do so delete some obviously inappropriate
material from Meta's upload? Look for yourself at:
http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=special:Upload

Two examples of probable delenda:
http://meta.wikipedia.com/upload/small_homertux.gif
http://meta.wikipedia.com/upload/jpg.jpg

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Slashcode

body:
On Monday 26 August 2002 12:20 pm, The Cunctator wrote:
> Instead of a wikipedia slash, what we need to implement is something more
> like the Yahoo! Groups, where the mailing list has a straightforward
> bulletin board interface, which should be hooked into the Wikipedia user
> database.Then we'd start getting somewhere.

With so many posts to this list I think either your idea or mine would be
better than the current situation. Each should be reviewed for their pros and
cons (a big pro for Slashcode is that it is GPL and almost ready to go out of
the box -- or so I've heard).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)