body:
Julie Kemp wrote:

>
>Merovingians as not-French is definitely in the radical rethink
>category, and it may be a decade, or a generation, or even longer,
>before it comes to be generally accepted.
>
>** Why do you think this?  What evidence do you have?  Even Anthere
>admits to the possibilities of what I am saying.
>
Well, your own words bolster my point - "Anthere admits to the
possibility". The mere fact that multiple Wikipedia editors are
doubtful means that, by definition, the assertion is not now
"generally accepted" by the population of Wikipedia editors.

>
>Until then, trying to edit Wikipedia based on the assumption that the
>assertion is true
>is going to be hard; you're going against an army of editors who
>are backed by a horde of published authorities with reputations
>much higher than your own.
>
>
>**Again, that's pretty patronizing.  Did you read at all what I had
>written?  It includes the fact that French people traditionally consider
>Clovis a king of France, but that this is not properly true, in that
>France didn't exist.  In fact, have you read any of the discussions on
>the talk pages (where there are a couple of comments that demonstrate
>that a compromise view makes sense)?
>
Every last bit of it, and twice.  There were certainly a lot of hard
words said before anybody mentioned that the list of British monarchs
already incorporated compromises that have been accepted by consensus.
Doesn't anybody ever consult similar pages when there's a dispute?

>And, since you have jumped into
>the fray ready to tell me that, as nice as they are, my views just don't
>jibe with what "most people know based on published authorities," I have
>to ask you one question.  Why exactly do you think you have enough
>background knowledge on the subject to tell someone who has probably
>read a lot more on the subject for the past 15 or so years, including
>reviews of the books I haven't yet gotten to (which means I have an idea
>of what colleagues think of these newfangled theories) that her judgment
>as to what is accepted and what isn't, is in question?
>
Well, you have managed to miss my point, although I probably
expressed it poorly.  I've had a little over 20 years of experience
building things with online communities, going back to the earliest
days of Usenet (look for "shebs" in Google archives to see some of
my embarassing noobisms), and you've fallen into the "I'm a
professional" trap.  Empirically, that line never ever works in
an online community.  I'm going to write a separate item about this
later, because while it's good that we have professionals discovering
Wikipedia, the rules of the game are very different from what they
are used to, and even after just a couple of months here, I'm seeing
the same upsets happening over and over.

To take an area where I am an expert, every day I see stuff in the
articles under computer science that just make my stomach churn with
their lameness.  But it would take some adroit writing and citing to
produce something that wouldn't be mangled by the semi-educated eager
to promulgate the wrong things they were told by incompetent and
biased CS professors, so I don't tend to work on those articles very
much. It's an unfortunate weakness of Wikipedia, but no amount of
fulminating about it is going to change things; what you and I
experience in our respective fields is a predictable consequence of
the rules under which Wikipedia operates.  It's motivating me to
ponder ideas for new rules that would address your complaints
better, but it's tricky and I don't have any good ideas yet.

(I'm sorry if all this sounds patronizing; I have screamed at the
screen myself over article content, so I think I have at least some
idea of how you're feeling.)

Stan


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] languageNl.php

body:
The new languageNl.php has been uploaded to Sourceforge, but the person who
did so apparently is not able to actually upload it to Wikipedia. Could
someone please do so?

Also, Rene Pijlman has left Wikipedia, and thus I think it would be better
to revoke his sysop-ship on WikipediaNL.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Title characters

body:
On Sun, 25 May 2003, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> On Sun, May 25, 2003 at 12:20:12AM +1000, Tim Starling wrote:
> >
> > "Lee Daniel Crocker" <lee at piclab.com> wrote in
> > message news:20030523184628.GA22556 at piclab.com...
> >
> > ...
> >
> > > Anyone have other ideas/suggestions?
> >
> > Here's one that's almost unrelated, but your post has reminded me of it.
> > We've had a number of requests for titles with an initial lowercase letter.
> > I would like to see a checkbox next to "Watch this article" on the edit
> > page, labelled "Title starts with lowercase letter". Clicking on "save" with
> > this checked would set a flag in the cur table, instructing
> > getPrefixedText() to set the initial letter to lowercase. So [[IMac]] and
> > [[iMac]] still go to the same place, but when the software has to display
> > the title, it comes out as [[iMac]].
> >
> > Alternately you could just have a link in the sidebar, like for page
> > protection -- but please make sure the change is registered in RC.
>
> IMHO there is no sense to have 2 articles that differ only by capitalization -
> there should be some "canonical" form, but all links, no matter what
> capitalization they have, should go to the same article.

That's exactly what Tim is proposing - the only change is that the canonical
form can be decided for each word separately rather than being always said
at 'with capital'.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikitech-l] Title characters

body:
On Fri, 23 May 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:

> * Cannot allow: # (sharp), | (pipe), " (quote), [] (brackets),
>   {} (braces), <> (greater,less), + (plus), \ (backslash) because
>   allowing them would interfere with link syntax and make the
>   software more tricky to write. I can live without these, though
>   I think + might be handy in some places (like C++), and might be
>   worth the effort to allow.

(...)

> * Should allow most ASCII punctuation that might appear in a name
>   or title in text, specifically - , . ( ) ' & : ; % ! ? / $ *
>   (Note that some of these, like *, are not currently alowed,
>   and that : is a special case that's allowed but only when the
>   text before it doesn't match a namespace, etc.)

Note that currently & is allowed, but not working - linking to a page
with '&' in the title, takes you to the page with only the part before
the '&'. Thus, this one in my opinion counts also as 'interfering with
link syntax'. It's a very useful one, so if you are going to do things
to make some of these possible, this one should certainly be included.
Same type of problem might exist with '?', I don't know about that.

Andre Engels


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Title characters

body:
On Mon, May 26, 2003 at 09:49:15AM +0200, Andre Engels wrote:
> On Sun, 25 May 2003, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>
> > On Sun, May 25, 2003 at 12:20:12AM +1000, Tim Starling wrote:
> > >
> > > "Lee Daniel Crocker" <lee at piclab.com> wrote in
> > > message news:20030523184628.GA22556 at piclab.com...
> > >
> > > ...
> > >
> > > > Anyone have other ideas/suggestions?
> > >
> > > Here's one that's almost unrelated, but your post has reminded me of it.
> > > We've had a number of requests for titles with an initial lowercase letter.
> > > I would like to see a checkbox next to "Watch this article" on the edit
> > > page, labelled "Title starts with lowercase letter". Clicking on "save" with
> > > this checked would set a flag in the cur table, instructing
> > > getPrefixedText() to set the initial letter to lowercase. So [[IMac]] and
> > > [[iMac]] still go to the same place, but when the software has to display
> > > the title, it comes out as [[iMac]].
> > >
> > > Alternately you could just have a link in the sidebar, like for page
> > > protection -- but please make sure the change is registered in RC.
> >
> > IMHO there is no sense to have 2 articles that differ only by capitalization -
> > there should be some "canonical" form, but all links, no matter what
> > capitalization they have, should go to the same article.
>
> That's exactly what Tim is proposing - the only change is that the canonical
> form can be decided for each word separately rather than being always said
> at 'with capital'.

Well, I'm more concerned about "UNIX" vs. "Unix".


list: wikien-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] User Michael and ways to deal with him

body:
--- Tony Wilson <list at redhill.net.au> wrote:
> I just want to reiterate my full support for Zoe on
> this one. Zoe (and
> several other good Wikicitizens) have been
> implementing a soft ban on
> our misguided friend with the dynamic IP. People, we
> *can't* implement
> a hard ban. At least not without banning several
> good and useful
> contributors as well. On the whole, much as I'd like
> to see the back of
> our socially-challemged friend, I'd rather
> contribute to a Wikipedia
> that had Micheal around than a Wikipedia that
> managed to ban him only
> at the expense of banning Danny as well!
>
> If Mav's suggestion of complaining to AOL works,
> then great! But I
> won't hold my breath for that.
>
> The soft ban is the answer. Zoe and about six or
> eight others (incuding
> me) have taken to ruthlessly reverting *everything*
> that Michael posts.
> We don't bother reading it or tying to work out if
> it contains a shred
> of fact or not (with Michael's stuff, this is damn
> near impossible
> anyway - in 10 minutes he can post up enough of that
> devilishly twisted
> mixture of fact and fiction to keep two or three
> copy-editors busy
> checking on "facts" and correcting 50% of them for
> several hours). None
> of us have time for that idiocy: the only sensible
> way to deal with
> Michael is to revert on sight and without
> compunction. Three clicks and
> the 'pedia is idiocy-free once more, and *you* are
> back to working on
> something *useful* again.
>
> Best of all, because it only takes a few moments and
> hardly any thought
> at all to blanket-revert Michael edits (excuse me
> while I shout this
> bit) ... WE REVERSE THE BURDEN OF LABOUR! For the
> first time, it's
> harder for him than it is for us. Instead of *us*
> taking hours to clean
> up the mess that *he* creates in mere minutes, when
> we just revert
> Michael unread and on sight, we can undo his many
> minutes of creative
> vandalism in just a few seconds. I know he's a
> determined little
> horror, but no-one can push that sort of load uphill
> for too long.
>
> Hell, if I was Tsar Jimbo, I think I'd un-ban his
> user names in the
> hope that he started posting as "Michael" or "No-FX"
> again - 'cause
> that just makes it easier to spot Michael edits and
> revert them.
> Anything he can post in an hour, Zoe can rollback in
> three minutes
> flat.
>
> Or me. Or Quercus. Or *you*.
>
> Let's all pitch in, people. Think of it as an
> experiment in psychology.
> How long would *you* keep on making contributions to
> the 'pedia for if
> every single edit you ever made was reverted without
> coment inside of
> ten minutes?
> Tony Wilson
> (Tannin)

Hum..."reverting" on sight is one thing. Anyone really
wishing to work on one of his article can go dig it
up.

However, "deleting" on sight is another matter. Would
you (that is a plural you, not you specifically
Tannin) consider please, blanking his articles instead
of deleting them. Then, either list the blanked
articles on the vfd in case anyone would wish to work
on them, or let them blank (which would make them
appear next time the "short pages" is working again).

I think it is more respectful to do this way. And
blanking them hardly take more time than reverting
other articles with history. Plus, blanking them is an
action everybody wishing to help 'yous' can do, while
deletion on sight is necessarily a unilateral decision
from a sysop.

Thanks for reading me

Anthere

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] dates on fr:

body:
Guillaume Blanchard wrote:

>>I suspect it's just Aoineko being fancy.
>>Please could we have a plain old comma instead?
>>
>>
>
>I didn't made any aesthetic change.
>It was just a bug.
>The file is shared on the french wikipedia at this address :
>http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%E9dia:LanguageFr.php
>I asked everybody if they were ok with this new version before to send it.
>By the way the old version was " ? " but I put ", " like Tarquin suggested.
>You are free to change.
>
>
>
someone please do!


from_name: Thomas Corell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Security Problem?

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Please don't find any kernel bugs; they don't have a more recent stable
> release of that yet. :D

No interest in Linux-Kernel from my side. I will check the application only.

>>Did I told that I like feature frezze? ;)
> If only we could declare a bug freeze. :)

Nothing easier than that: Declare all open bugs as features and there
you are.

Smurf
--
  --- Anthill Inside! ---


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] scream getting more imminent (and Andre)

body:
Yeah, Triton is bugging me too.

BTW, Andre, if you are reading this, I hope you are okay. What's going on?
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Delete-Log for Images

body:
[Forwarded user question]

Is there a good reason that deleted images are _not_ logged like articles?

Smurf
--
  --- Anthill Inside! ---


subject: [Wikitech-l] Delete-Log for Images

body:
Thomas Corell wrote:
> [Forwarded user question]
>
> Is there a good reason that deleted images are _not_ logged like articles?

Ooops, sorry. Some pictures seem to be logged. Possiblzy only old ones
are not. I have to check, it seems I read the source to fast.

Smurf
--
  --- Anthill Inside! ---


from_name: Julie Kemp

subject: [WikiEN-l] The principle of fair use

body:
Jens said:

But I can't understand why this
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image%3A843-870_Europe.jpg
is fair use. The map has been created for an encyclopedia
or an history textbook. If this is fair use, is there any
picture we may not use?

I reply --

This is actually interesting -- when DW (or Elliot) put this up many
months ago, I asked for a reference.  I claimed then that this map was
likely not in fair use.  My reasoning was as follows:  When I was
finishing my thesis in 2000, I was desperate for maps.  I found this
map, along with a couple others that this person put up, at the UW
library.  I didn't have time to write for permission, and checked the
copyright with the librarians, who said I could only use it under fair
use if I altered the image dramatically, because it was still under
copyright.  Unfortunately, I can't tell you the source -- I had a couple
maps copied, traced the parts I needed (the coastlines and rivers) by
hand, scanned them, and labeled them as necessary.  Anyway, I think we
shouldn't use any images unless we can definitively say where they're
from -- from what the librarian at my present college says, one still
has to credit image sources for fair use, or it isn't fair use.

Julie


subject: [Wikitech-l] Proposals

body:
I mentioned some of this in some mails, I currently are about to add
some 'SpecialPages' and effects, which are all still work in progress.

1) SpecialPage 'Maintenance' addon for a list of the used qualifiers.
With qualifiers I meen those things in bracktes after the article title:
'foo (qualifier)' which are 'Homonymzusaetze' in German and as far as I
know qulifiers in english.

2) I will take a look at the rendering of [[User:*]] links, in order to
suppress the link if the user.user_right contains a string "deleted".
That will enable the deletion of Users, without having the userpage
first of all in "Mostwantedpages", and still have a proper history of
the articles.

3) Some functionality for alphabetical output of some lists (all users,
all articles etc.). This issue is only an idea, and I'm not realy sure
how to implement it the right way.

If there are ideas or other developer working on parts of this issues,
tell me. I'm still not sure if i'm fit enought with the code to get it
right.

Smurf
--
  --- Anthill Inside! ---


subject: [WikiEN-l] The principle of fair use

body:
--- Julie Kemp <juleskemp at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Jens said:
>
> But I can't understand why this
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image%3A843-870_Europe.jpg
> is fair use. The map has been created for an
> encyclopedia
> or an history textbook. If this is fair use, is
> there any
> picture we may not use?
>
> I reply --
>
> This is actually interesting -- when DW (or Elliot)
> put this up many
> months ago, I asked for a reference.  I claimed then
> that this map was
> likely not in fair use.  My reasoning was as
> follows:  When I was
> finishing my thesis in 2000, I was desperate for
> maps.  I found this
> map, along with a couple others that this person put
> up, at the UW
> library.  I didn't have time to write for
> permission, and checked the
> copyright with the librarians, who said I could only
> use it under fair
> use if I altered the image dramatically, because it
> was still under
> copyright.  Unfortunately, I can't tell you the
> source -- I had a couple
> maps copied, traced the parts I needed (the
> coastlines and rivers) by
> hand, scanned them, and labeled them as necessary.
> Anyway, I think we
> shouldn't use any images unless we can definitively
> say where they're
> from -- from what the librarian at my present
> college says, one still
> has to credit image sources for fair use, or it
> isn't fair use.
>
> Julie

Agreed. Wikipedia should have its own mapping system.
Where I could put ecoregions too :-)

Which could be discussed at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipediatlas

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Added bytesize to newpages

body:
On Mon, May 26, 2003 at 08:39:00AM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Just a minor change, should help locating those junk pages.

Could we also re-enable "Short pages" ? We have a certain
backlog of junk.

JeLuF


from_name: Dante Alighieri

subject: [WikiEN-l] User Mydogategodshat

body:
At 11:35 AM 5/26/2003, you wrote:
>Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
>
>>--- Tony Wilson <list at redhill.net.au> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Only two edts from this user, which seem to be OK,
>>>but his username -
>>>Mydogategodshat - seems a little beyond the
>>>borderline of good taste.
>>>Opinions, good Wikipeople?
>>>
>>
>>Only a username
>>--LittleDan
>But we do have policies about usernames, since they are readily visible to
>people who are new to the project and can give a bad impression. Some
>users have been asked to change their usernames, and others have
>volunteered to change after reviewing the policy.
>
>--
>
>--cprompt

OK, but honestly, how offensive can it really be to have someone's dog eat
god's hat? I mean, come on folks...

-----

Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321
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from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] The principle of fair use

body:
--- Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- Julie Kemp <juleskemp at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Jens said:
> >
> > But I can't understand why this
> >
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image%3A843-870_Europe.jpg
> > is fair use. The map has been created for an
> > encyclopedia
> > or an history textbook. If this is fair use, is
> > there any
> > picture we may not use?
> >
> > I reply --
> >
> > This is actually interesting -- when DW (or
> Elliot)
> > put this up many
> > months ago, I asked for a reference.  I claimed
> then
> > that this map was
> > likely not in fair use.  My reasoning was as
> > follows:  When I was
> > finishing my thesis in 2000, I was desperate for
> > maps.  I found this
> > map, along with a couple others that this person
> put
> > up, at the UW
> > library.  I didn't have time to write for
> > permission, and checked the
> > copyright with the librarians, who said I could
> only
> > use it under fair
> > use if I altered the image dramatically, because
> it
> > was still under
> > copyright.  Unfortunately, I can't tell you the
> > source -- I had a couple
> > maps copied, traced the parts I needed (the
> > coastlines and rivers) by
> > hand, scanned them, and labeled them as necessary.
>
> > Anyway, I think we
> > shouldn't use any images unless we can
> definitively
> > say where they're
> > from -- from what the librarian at my present
> > college says, one still
> > has to credit image sources for fair use, or it
> > isn't fair use.
> >
> > Julie
>
> Agreed. Wikipedia should have its own mapping
> system.
> Where I could put ecoregions too :-)
>
> Which could be discussed at
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipediatlas

Is anyone at Wikipedia a cartographer?

In responce to the first post (which I accidentally
deleted), is a cleaned up picture (obviously with most
of the pixels different, but similar colors) still a
violation of copywright? I made one if it would help.
--LittleDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Jacques Delson and Helga-ism

body:
Julie, your emails are very strangely formatted. It is
hard to tell what is your writing and what is Stan's.
In this letter, it might seem confusing, but I am
responding to both.

--- Julie Kemp <juleskemp at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Stan wrote:
>
> I think you're touching on the root of frustration
> here.  Wikipedia
> is supposed to be a secondary source, not a primary
> one, which
> means that every factoid in it should be extracted
> from somewhere
> else, preferably from the published work of a
> recognized authority.

Yes.
>
> **Actually, Stan, you misunderstand the difference
> between primary and
> secondary sources.  I think you may mean that the
> 'pedia is not supposed
> to be articles that are original research?  If
> that's the case, what I
> am saying is neither original nor is it new.  If for
> some reason only
> other encyclopedias and general popular history and
> lower-division texts
> are considered appropriate as sources, but not
> scholarly books and
> articles meant for a narrower audience (or even
> primary sources) then we
> are truly working towards the lowest common
> denominator.  Just because
> it hasn't trickled down to the mass audience doesn't
> make it cutting
> edge or some wild theory.

Wikipedia is supposed to report *everything*. Not just
the old stuff or just the new stuff. We are supposed
to report both the old theory and the new one, and say
that they are *theories*, not facts. And Stan's
definition of primary source was accurate. Your
definition included only a part of it.
>
> When there are multiple authorities disagreeing with
> each other,
> it's a difficult situation for editors.  For
> instance, you've alluded
> to latest research or latest trends among
> historians, but is the
> latest trend authoritative?  Not really, because
> maybe it's just a
> fad and will be discredited by an article - maybe
> even one of yours! -
> a year from now.  Although we'd always like to pick
> up the latest
> info possible, in some cases I think we have to hold
> back, just use
> what is at the most recent edge of consensus, and
> note that more
> recent claims are not yet settled.

Again, we should write about all theories (if
possible). The cutitng edge and the traditional. If
someone wants to report on the cutting edge, while
leaving out the old stuff, then what can you do? All
you can do is write about the old things yourself.
What article are you reffering to?
>
> **How very patronizing -- again, this idea is hardly
> new.  The 1982
> version of Hollister's "Medieval Europe" first
> published in 1964, says
> that Charles the Bald became sole ruler of West
> Frankland, "which
> evolved into Modern France" (p.106).  The
> implication is clear that
> there was no France at this time -- approximately
> 300 years after
> Clovis.
>
> **The crux of the problem is that we are using
> modern boundaries and
> modern concepts of nations anachronistically.  **For
> example, Edward
> James' book, cited on the page in question, is about
> the history of
> France -- it's been a while since I've read it, but
> I would wager money
> that he calls the Merovingians kings of the Franks
> (rex francorum).  Yet
> the book is called Origins of France or something
> like that -- why?
> Because we want to know where the France of today
> came from, and its
> modern roots are in the post-Roman, Germanic world
> of the Franks (not to
> mention all the Roman and Christian things they
> adopted.  You might
> notice that the books Jacques cites are fairly
> recent -- in academic
> terms as recent as the Geary books I cite -- and I
> could name others, if
> I didn't have a ton of papers to correct.  By the
> way, what makes you
> assume that I am stating a view not currently held
> among those people
> whose studies focus on the period?
>
>
> Merovingians as not-French is definitely in the
> radical rethink
> category, and it may be a decade, or a generation,
> or even longer,
> before it comes to be generally accepted.
>
> ** Why do you think this?  What evidence do you
> have?  Even Anthere
> admits to the possibilities of what I am saying.
>
> Until then, trying to edit Wikipedia based on the
> assumption that the
> assertion is true
> is going to be hard; you're going against an army of
> editors who
> are backed by a horde of published authorities with
> reputations
> much higher than your own.
>
>
> **Again, that's pretty patronizing.  Did you read at
> all what I had
> written?  It includes the fact that French people
> traditionally consider
> Clovis a king of France, but that this is not
> properly true, in that
> France didn't exist.  In fact, have you read any of
> the discussions on
> the talk pages (where there are a couple of comments
> that demonstrate
> that a compromise view makes sense)?  And, since you
> have jumped into
> the fray ready to tell me that, as nice as they are,
> my views just don't
> jibe with what "most people know based on published
> authorities," I have
> to ask you one question.  Why exactly do you think
> you have enough
> background knowledge on the subject to tell someone
> who has probably
> read a lot more on the subject for the past 15 or so
> years, including
> reviews of the books I haven't yet gotten to (which
> means I have an idea
> of what colleagues think of these newfangled
> theories) that her judgment
> as to what is accepted and what isn't, is in
> question?
>
> JK -- building up the first scream

All presentation of history in a definitive tone is
somewhat biased. This may sound bad, but Wikipedia
should use an uncertain tone, only quoting others,
never just stating facts. This can go to far, though.
I don't know where to draw the line between unbiased
and bad writing, and I face this problem often.
--LittleDan

__________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


body:
--- Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> Julie Kemp wrote:
>
> >[...] What's in textbooks is not
> >always accurate!  I don't know how it's done in
> France, but I think it's
> >similar everywhere in that much is decided by
> committee.  If you
> >subscribe to some of the H-net mailing lists, like
> I do, or belong to
> >the American Historical Association, you know how
> bad it can be.
> >
> I think you're touching on the root of frustration
> here.  Wikipedia
> is supposed to be a secondary source, not a primary
> one, which
> means that every factoid in it should be extracted
> from somewhere
> else, preferably from the published work of a
> recognized authority.
> When there are multiple authorities disagreeing with
> each other,
> it's a difficult situation for editors.  For
> instance, you've alluded
> to latest research or latest trends among
> historians, but is the
> latest trend authoritative?  Not really, because
> maybe it's just a
> fad and will be discredited by an article - maybe
> even one of yours! -
> a year from now.  Although we'd always like to pick
> up the latest
> info possible, in some cases I think we have to hold
> back, just use
> what is at the most recent edge of consensus, and
> note that more
> recent claims are not yet settled. (For instance,
> many of the articles
> touching on biological taxonomy are full of caveats
> because recent
> DNA results are casting old groupings into disarray,
> and nobody
> yet knows how it will all shake out.)
>
> Merovingians as not-French is definitely in the
> radical rethink
> category, and it may be a decade, or a generation,
> or even longer,
> before it comes to be generally accepted.  Until
> then, trying to
> edit Wikipedia based on the assumption that the
> assertion is true
> is going to be hard; you're going against an army of
> editors who
> are backed by a horde of published authorities with
> reputations
> much higher than your own.
>
> Stan

...So, for now, we should assume that we don't really
know. Some say this, some say that, and there is no
general consensus on who the french really were. We
should write about all of the opinions.
--LittleDan

__________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] This feature would be nice

body:
Go to google and enter "wlug wiki"

After clicking on some of their links, above article it shows something like:

[colorful text:G o o g l e] users: We have detected that you were searching for ''wlug wiki''.

The Waikato Linux Users Group hope that this page answers your questions,
but, if it doesn't, we politely request that if/when you find the answer
to your question you contibute your information back into this Wiki (via
the Edit button at the bottom of the page) so that others can also find
this information easier.

We also suggest that if this page doesn't answer your question, try [Searching
the wiki], or, to find pages similar to this one, try [button:LikePages] or
[button:BackLinks].

Maybe we should add the same feature (for anonymous users only of course) ?


body:
Stan said

you've fallen into the "I'm a
professional" trap

**You are right - on the other hand, when I first started working on the
'pedia (I am testing the waters after a hiatus of about 8 months, but
contributed regularly for a long period before that, and also
collaborated on many of the initial discussions on standards, etc.),
people tended to trust each other's areas of expertise - whether
professional or amateur.  The thing I have found is that people who are
interested in good articles can usually tell good work, and a good
professional will often bow to a better informed amateur -- or vice
versa.  In the case of these particular articles, I really do suggest
that you read the discussion that's been taking place.  You seem to have
gathered that I am in a very small minority, but if you read the
discussions, you will see that I have qualified my discussion, been very
inclusive of other viewpoints, and have provided reasons for my edits.

Stan said:

But it would take some adroit writing and citing to
produce something that wouldn't be mangled by the semi-educated eager
to promulgate the wrong things they were told by incompetent and
biased CS professors, so I don't tend to work on those articles very
much. It's an unfortunate weakness of Wikipedia, but no amount of
fulminating about it is going to change things; what you and I
experience in our respective fields is a predictable consequence of
the rules under which Wikipedia operates.  It's motivating me to
ponder ideas for new rules that would address your complaints
better, but it's tricky and I don't have any good ideas yet.

**That's true to some extent, but remember, Wikipedia isn't paper.  It
isn't the place for original research, but there are tons of examples
where we make statements that mention growing trends and new approaches.
And if we know more on a subject, don't we have some sort of obligation
to share that knowledge and make wikipedia better than other online
encyclopedias?  After all, even the famous Helga did a great deal of
eventual good in that she managed to get articles on issues like the
Heimatvertriebene included and to shake several of us into checking
facts and neutralizing the Polish-German borders. THOSE articles
certainly contain lots of stuff you might not see all in the same place.

Cheers -- JHK

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from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Limits to the non-paperiness of Wikipedia?

body:
Oliver Pereira wrote:

>Hello,
>
>I was wondering if anyone wanted to give their thoughts on the
>applicability of [[m:Wiki is not paper]] to Wikipedia.
>
>In the section headed "No size limits", someone says it should be okay to
>have pages for every "Simpsons" character, and even pages for every
>episode. This is followed by Jimbo saying, "I agree with this one
>completely."
>
>I take this to mean that there is barely any limit on the triviality of a
>subject that could be allowed to have its own Wikipedia article. With
>apologies to "Simpsons" fans if this is blasphemy... ;) As I interpret it,
>it's saying that pretty much any subject could be covered - within the
>usual constraints of NPOV and verifiability, of course.
>
>So we could include people and events that have not had significant impact
>on a global or even a national level, but which maybe only affected a
>small group of people. As long as there is some coverage in published
>sources, somewhere, we could use that to make an article on the subject.
>
>If this is all terribly wrong, can we come up with a more definite policy,
>saying what the criteria are for an article to be allowed, and amend
>[[m:Wiki is not paper]] and the policy pages accordingly?
>
>
I've been mentally testing a "thousand-person rule" - anything that has only
ever had a direct conscious effect on fewer than 1,000 people during its
existence
is too obscure for wikipedia.  So for instance an aircraft carrier makes
the cut
because it has 5,000 crew, is a player in world events, etc, but a
tugboat that
was constructed by 100 workers at a shipyard, with a crew of 20, and
only the
Navy paymaster aware of its continued existence :-), is not important
enough,
unless it happens to save the damaged carrier by towing it somewhere.

Alternates could be a 100-person rule, although that leaves in
small-town garden
clubs and the like, seems too broad to me.  A million-person rule would cut
out lots of specialized technical stuff, although lots of pop culture
would get
to stay, including most likely all of the Simpsons characters. :-)

Stan


from_name: cprompt

subject: [WikiEN-l] User Mydogategodshat

body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

>--- Tony Wilson <list at redhill.net.au> wrote:
>
>
>>Only two edts from this user, which seem to be OK,
>>but his username -
>>Mydogategodshat - seems a little beyond the
>>borderline of good taste.
>>Opinions, good Wikipeople?
>>
>>
>
>Only a username
>--LittleDan
>
But we do have policies about usernames, since they are readily visible
to people who are new to the project and can give a bad impression. Some
users have been asked to change their usernames, and others have
volunteered to change after reviewing the policy.

--

--cprompt


subject: [Wikitech-l] Fix in SkinColongeBlue.php

body:
I fixed in the CVS the SkinColongeBlue.php, which defines a
"valign=center", according to W3C HTML Spec 4.0 and 4.01 this should be
"valgin=middle".

Smurf
--
  --- Anthill Inside! ---


from_name: Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Fix in SkinColongeBlue.php

body:
On Mon, 26 May 2003, Thomas Corell wrote:

> I fixed in the CVS the SkinColongeBlue.php, which defines a
> "valign=center", according to W3C HTML Spec 4.0 and 4.01 this should be
> "valgin=middle".

Surely you mean "valign=middle".

-- Daniel


subject: [Wikitech-l] Fix in SkinColongeBlue.php

body:
Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen wrote:

> Surely you mean "valign=middle".

Well, of course. My fingers are much faster than my brain sometimes.
In the CVS it's correct.

Smurf
--
  --- Anthill Inside! ---


body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Anthere-
> > However, "deleting" on sight is another matter.
> Would
> > you (that is a plural you, not you specifically
> > Tannin) consider please, blanking his articles
> instead
> > of deleting them. Then, either list the blanked
> > articles on the vfd in case anyone would wish to
> work
> > on them, or let them blank (which would make them
> > appear next time the "short pages" is working
> again).
>
> Blanking leaves lots of useless pages that show up
> in title searches and
> have to be manually removed by going through the
> short article list,
> which, to top things, is currently deactivated for
> performance reasons.
`
It appears the performance are much better now. At
least, there are much better for the international
wikis, which I think have not been moved.

Tannin presented "Michael case" as an experiment of
soft banning.
IP banning and deletion on sight are hard ban tools.
RainClouding, instant reversion and blanking are soft
ban tools. I think an experiment has to be done
completely or not done at all.

> There's absolutely no point in doing this if the
> articles are going to be
> deleted anyway.

The fact the pages are going to be deleted anyway is
"your" opinion. Not everybody agree with that opinion
(even if it is very likely 90% of articles will be
deleted in the end).

>More respectful? Towards whom?
> Michael, who has insulted
> virtually every Wikipedian who has tried to talk to
> him?

You know quite well the "toward whom" is not only
adressed to Michael.

> Remember, the reason we may decide not to hard-ban
> Michael is purely
> technical.

I don't think that was the only reason. At least, not
for everybody.

I for one find it absolutely acceptable
> to delete new Michael-
> pages on sight and encourage sysops to do so -- but
> only if it is certain
> that he is really the author.

only if it is certain, right.
And only if the edits are bad, right.

> It is alright to worry a little about abuse of sysop
> powers, I do so
> myself.

I don't think you have to worry much about errors Erik

But I think this has been going too far in
> the last few days. The
> opposite situation to arbitrary deletions is equally
> undesirable:
> Wikipedia turning into a mess of useless pages which
> nobody cleans up.
> Many sysops are spending a lot of time doing
> annoying housekeeping tasks
> -- that's OK, that's what they expected. But a
> little more trust would be
> helpful. Otherwise I think you are contributing to
> the creation of the
> rift between sysops and non-sysops that you are so
> worried about.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

I am not worried of the rift. I am worried of errors.
I also think you are on the verge of saying I will be
responsible of subsequent errors.

This is not nice.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Oliver Pereira

body:
Hello,

I was wondering if anyone wanted to give their thoughts on the
applicability of [[m:Wiki is not paper]] to Wikipedia.

In the section headed "No size limits", someone says it should be okay to
have pages for every "Simpsons" character, and even pages for every
episode. This is followed by Jimbo saying, "I agree with this one
completely."

I take this to mean that there is barely any limit on the triviality of a
subject that could be allowed to have its own Wikipedia article. With
apologies to "Simpsons" fans if this is blasphemy... ;) As I interpret it,
it's saying that pretty much any subject could be covered - within the
usual constraints of NPOV and verifiability, of course.

So we could include people and events that have not had significant impact
on a global or even a national level, but which maybe only affected a
small group of people. As long as there is some coverage in published
sources, somewhere, we could use that to make an article on the subject.

If this is all terribly wrong, can we come up with a more definite policy,
saying what the criteria are for an article to be allowed, and amend
[[m:Wiki is not paper]] and the policy pages accordingly?

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Countering the vandals who attack users (not just pages)

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>The Cunctator wrote:

>>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>>>David A. Wheeler wrote:

>>>>>At the least, why not let the User:NAME pages be ONLY editable
>>>>>by NAME?  The "User_talk:" spaces need to be editable in some way,
>>>>>but I don't see a need for others to "fix" the User: space of someone;
>>>>>it's not critical that that content be fixed, and there's advantanges
>>>>>to having some areas that are "precious" to each user.

>>>>Your other suggestions were against Wikipedia's openness,
>>>>and I'm happy to be confident that they will never happen.
>>>>But I do think that read-only user pages *as*an*option*
>>>>would be a useful idea.  There have been other problems before.

>>>It is an option. Leave a message on a sysop's talk page and ask them to
>>>protect your user page.

>>Then the user himself would be unable to edit it.

>You don't say? Well, these are the problems of read-only pages. ;-)

Ah, I see.  Making a joke at the expense of my poor phrasing.  Very well.

Luckily I included David's original text, so does anybody have a comment
on what we were actually talking about?

-- Toby


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Danny-
> Yeah, Triton is bugging me too.

Please, no unnecessary suspicions or accusations. Looking through his
contributions, he seems to be willing and able to cooperate with others. I
have not seen him revert edits unnecesarily, he is just trying to make his
point (which I have no opinion on).

Regards,

Erik (Eloquence)


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Anthere wrote:

>>But I think it wrong regular users can not from time
>>to time check whether pages were not unproperly
>>deleted (not along community defined rules).

>I'm sympathetic, but we do need a way to delete some things
>*permanently* and *completely*.  Examples would include copyright
>infringement, goatse.cx picture, etc.

But we *don't* delete these things permanently and completely!
Most of the time, they appear on pages that aren't deleted,
and then they're still visible in the edit histories.
There is little correlation between your examples
and the material that's inaccessible to nonadmins on deleted pages.

If you think that we need to more aggressively delete copyright infringements
(whereas we now rely on their simply not being archived by robots),
then I can accept that, especially since you're the one with the liability.
But this has nothing to do with deleted *pages*;
it requires a change to the software allowing us to delete *revisions*
from the edit history of a page that itself may very well survive.

I believe that we have only once permanently and completely
deleted material from the database since soft deletion began.
This was a special operation, performed by developers,
to remove a rash of goatse.cx pics from edit histories.
Even this example wasn't about deleted *pages*.
(And it wouldn't need to be repeated if it happened again,
since we no longer display external images.)

>Since almost anyone can be a sysop, and since we're trying to
>eliminate the "prestige" of being a sysop, there does exist a way for
>anyone who is really interested to gain access to the deleted
>material.

Relatively new people can't become admins.
They'll only be able to gain access after several months.
This is not a recipe for openness and accountability.
Generally speaking, I think that Wikipedia is excellent in these matters;
the inability of users to view deleted pages is glaring as an exception.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] is this the time to ask for intervention? edit skirmishes

body:
Hi all -

is there a possibility we could get a non-interested party to step in?
Triton (who may well be DW or Elliot (I say this because s/he is putting
in maps uploaded by one of them, and for which copyright info has never
been given, not because I'm trying to be nasty) has been creating a very
antagonistic atmosphere at
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_French_monarchs ,
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_French_monarchs/archive_1,
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clovis_I,
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Merovingian_Dynasty (and the related
talk and article pages for the last couple).

While I admit to arguing back, I have been (mostly, except for calling
Triton's understanding obscure and his additions misleading) reasonably
polite -- especially given the onslaught of nasty accusations s/he has
thrown my way.  I am also not the only person involved -- Tannin, jlk6e
(or john), Derek Ross, KT2, and maybe a couple of others have also
weighed in.  Triton refuses to discuss, only to argue (and not in the
sense of well-reasoned argument -- just the simple obstinate kind).  He
has also been very nasty to me on a couple of user pages (where I am,
apparently, Ms. Hemp), and threatened to bring in Jimbo to have me
banned.  I invited him to do so, and if Jimbo thinks anything I've said
or done is out of line, I'm ready to listen.  At any rate, I think we
could all use a break, but obviously I can't freeze the pages.  Would
somebody else be willing to read through all this crap and decide
whether it's worth freezing for about a week?  Thanks.

Julie


body:
Erik Moeller wrote in part:

>currently
>Special:Undelete is almost unusable because of the page size; flushing the
>archive might be a tempfix

I'd like to remind administrators of my work-around for this.
To view the deleted page [[xxx]], just go this URL:
<http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special%3AUndelete&target=xxx>
(or the equivalent on whatever language's wiki is involved).
Note that going here does *not* undelete the page; it only views it!
You'll need to push an extra button to actually undelete anything.
But it does skip the long list at [[Special:Undelete]] itself,
and I use it often (mostly when combining histories) with no problems.

This is, of course, a temporary work-around.
A more user-friendly software solution would still be good.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Optimizing default prefs

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Users who like their links underlined can still turn on this option, but
>extrapolating from the above, I would guess that non-underlined links are
>more popular. Note that we are a very link-heavy page, so the high amount
>of underlining on a page can get quite distracting. Links are reasonably
>easy to distinguish from normal text when non-underlined.

I worry about accessibility to colourblind users (specifically,
new anonymous readers that don't know about the preferences page).
I don't know enough about the matter to know if this worry is reasonable;
if not, then I'll agree with you.

>This option needs to be distinguished from underlining, as it can also be
>accessed on the login screen, not just on the preferences screen, and is
>thus likely to be noticed by more people. However, I still think this
>should be the default. There are users at places where they do not want
>their password remembered, such as cafes and changing terminals at work.
>What is the standard case and what the exception, though? My guess is that
>most people log in to Wikipedia from one or two machines, and that the
>browser on that machine is reasonably secure from access by others.
>Other users should be security aware enough to tick off the "Remember"
>checkbox during login.

For purposes of security, I don't think that we should change the default.
If we change the underlining of links, then presumably this would become
the one preference not set by default to the majority preference.
As such, we ought to give people extra opportunity to change it --
which we already do, having a checkbox for that on the login page.
So I think that it's all OK now.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Optimizing default prefs

body:
Paul Ebermann wrote:

>What about these three options?
> ( ) underline links
> ( ) use browser default
> ( ) not underline links
>Which one to be the default is
>another question.

If my worry about colourblind readers does turn out to be reasonable,
then we should make "use browser default" the default,
since hopefully a lot of people that like nude links
will already have set their browser defaults that way.
(Not Erik, however.)

-- Toby


from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [WikiEN-l] The principle of fair use

body:
On Mon, 26 May 2003 07:03:33 +0200, Jens Frank <JeLuF at gmx.de> gave
utterance to the following:

> Hello,
>
> I understood that a few seconds of music are "fair use",
> we do not distribute the entire song but only a sample
> suitable to give a first impression.
>
> I somewhat understood why a picture of Donald Duck is
> "fair use". We are not in the same business as Disney,
> we are writing an encyclopedia and not comic books.
>
> But I can't understand why this
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image%3A843-870_Europe.jpg
> is fair use. The map has been created for an encyclopedia
> or an history textbook. If this is fair use, is there any
> picture we may not use?
>
Is it possible that the map also comes from the 1911 Britannica like the
basis of the article does? In that case, "out of copyright" would be a
better annotation than "fair use", otherwise I would have to agree with
you.
In any case, an especially created, cleaned up map using the  information
from this map and a png format would probably come to only 40kb or so.
--
Richard Grevers
I hate Victor Hugo said Les miserably


subject:
[WikiEN-l] is this the time to ask for intervention? edit
  skirmishes

body:
At 04:59 PM 5/26/2003, you wrote:
>is there a possibility we could get a non-interested party to step in?

*snip snip*

>Would
>somebody else be willing to read through all this crap and decide
>whether it's worth freezing for about a week?  Thanks.
>
>Julie

I must admit, I've been following the "discussion" on French monarchs for
awhile now. I'm no authority on the subject, so I'm not really qualified to
pass judgement on the situation, but I can certainly say that I support
protecting the pages for a few days while someone else looks them over. I'm
not going to go protect them myself, but anyone who does has my support.

-----

Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321
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from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Two issues here:

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> It's o.k. to delete anything that violates someone's privacy

In Europe we are hearing this sort of argument being used to cover up
Watergate-like situations.  The next Richard Nixon might claim that
his privacy would be violated if the scandal was reported.  This makes
me think twice when I hear the word "privacy".  It's a very vague
term, and can sometimes be used as an opposite to "justice".

I'm starting to agree with Scott McNealy: "Privacy - get over it",
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,17538,00.html

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se/


subject: [Wikitech-l] [tfoote@bomis.com: A MUST see]

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>A friend forwarded me this humor page, and I tried to use
>it with http://www.wikipedia.org, with the very surprising
>result that it returned the "Index of /" from wikipedia, rather
>than the Snoop-Dogg lingo translation of the page.

It works for me today (presumably after Brion changed something).

"''yo' ass can edit any article right now''."
True dat! ^_^

But it can't follow links to other articles,
thanks to its double-slash bug.

-- Toby


body:
Oliver-
> If this is all terribly wrong, can we come up with a more definite policy,
> saying what the criteria are for an article to be allowed, and amend
> [[m:Wiki is not paper]] and the policy pages accordingly?

I agree for the most part, with one exception:

Articles that are always likely to remain stubs should not have their own
page, but be integrated into the main article. This is especially true for
fictional realms. Yesterday I merged two-sentence articles about Gnasher,
Gnipper, Rasher, Bea, and a bunch of other characters from "Dennis the
Menace" into the main article; the same happened earlier with "Chip 'n
Dale". If you check the "Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers" article, you will
notice that it covers extensively the opinions of Chip 'n Dale fan fiction
authors on the psychological state and possibly hardening life
circumstances of Louwhiney, a young female Hawaiian anthropomorphic mouse
and evil twin of lead character Gadget Hackwrench; not to mention giving
us a summary of the current trends among the authors of Slash fiction
(that is, gay/lesbian sexual fantasies) regarding the development of
relationships between Gadget Hackwrench and Tammy the Squirrel.

I like to keep that kind of stuff constrained.

That makes it easier to look after it and edit out material which is going
overboard. I also think we should strive toward a state where every
article is about 20000-30000 characters long. An article that cannot be
this long should be integrated elsewhere, one which is longer should be
split up.

Otherwise we will soon hear that of our 12 million articles (at the
current rate, this seems not too far off), 7.5 million cover fictional
characters. There are probably more of those than real human beings ... So
please help me with the fiction stuff, I currently seem to be the only one
who looks after those pages.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Optimizing default prefs

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Fri, May 23, 2003 at 09:57:00AM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
>>Thoughts?
> skin = Cologne Blue (current standard is too ugly)
> underline = off
> remember password = off (security must be our absolute priority)
> default recent changes size = much bigger than now

I like underlining links:
1) I see the difference between "[[foo]] [[bar]]" and "[[foo bar]]".
2) I see typos like this: "[[foo ]] bar"

Smurf
--
  --- Anthill Inside! ---


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [WikiEN-l] The principle of fair use

body:
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Je Lundo 26 Majo 2003 11:23, Julie Kemp skribis:
> Anyway, I think we shouldn't use any images unless we can
> definitively say where they're from -- from what the librarian at my
> present college says, one still has to credit image sources for fair
> use, or it isn't fair use.

At last under threat of deletion, "Triton"/DW now admits that these two
images:
  http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:843-870_Europe.jpg
  http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:ClovisDomain.jpg

come via:
  http://globegate.utm.edu/french/globegate_mirror/medhist.html
specifically from:
  http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/maps/844-870map.jpg
  http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/maps/frankmapc6.jpg

After some searching, I was able to find them actually cited here:
  http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbookmap.html

  Frankish Domains 511-561 (BW)
  Source: Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, trans. Ernest
  Brehaut,(New York: Columbia University Press, 1916)

  The Division of the Carolingian Empire: Verdun 843 and
  Mersen, 870 (Col)
  Adapted from Muir's Historical Atlas: (1911)

Their age would seem to put them squarely in the public domain. I'm
additing citations...

"Triton"/DW seems to have no concept of reasonable behavior in general,
though. No ability to compromise, no interest in citing sources as
academic honesty demands of us, no willingness to accept that we might
have higher standards of quality assurance than the minimum obligations
the law requires. And waaaaay too much attachment to "his" "FACTS". As
before, any modification earns his wrath. Frankly, I'm not impressed
and would consider anything written by this character to be suspect.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Optimizing default prefs

body:
On Mon, May 26, 2003 at 05:41:32PM +0200, Thomas Corell wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> >On Fri, May 23, 2003 at 09:57:00AM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> >>Thoughts?
> >skin = Cologne Blue (current standard is too ugly)
> >underline = off
> >remember password = off (security must be our absolute priority)
> >default recent changes size = much bigger than now
>
> I like underlining links:
> 1) I see the difference between "[[foo]] [[bar]]" and "[[foo bar]]".
> 2) I see typos like this: "[[foo ]] bar"

You can see that by moving mouse over link anyway.
And of course nobody's going to take away your right to see links,
we just want more sensible defaults.


body:
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Je Lundo 26 Majo 2003 17:31, Toby Bartels skribis:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
> >A friend forwarded me this humor page, and I tried to use
> >it with http://www.wikipedia.org, with the very surprising
> >result that it returned the "Index of /" from wikipedia, rather
> >than the Snoop-Dogg lingo translation of the page.
>
> It works for me today (presumably after Brion changed something).

Yes, I tweaked the rewrite rules to show the mainpage instead of the
directory index, so it's just a happy coincidence that it makes our
main page all snoop-doggy. :)

> But it can't follow links to other articles,
> thanks to its double-slash bug.

True dat. If there were some kind of contact address on the page I could
notify them of the bug, but...

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] [OT] Welsh mythology (Was: larousse.wikipedia.org?)

body:
Sean Barrett wrote:

>Very good.  And even tho Disney made a cartoon of "The Black Cauldron,"
>I don't expect them to sue me.

Mercifully, the memory of that travesty has been enough removed from my brain
that I don't even know if Orddu and her sisters ever made it in there.
The only thing that I really remember is the horrible interpretation of Gurgi
(*shudder*).

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>So am I correct to think that nobody will ever *run*across*
>><larousse.wikipedia.org> -- that is, they'll never find it
>>without typing in "larousse" at some point themselves?

>Oh sure they will, if they're reading the mailing list archives, if
>they're reading Wikipedia History pages which talk about our servers,
>if they're subscribed to wikitech-l and we talk about doing something
>on larousse, etc.

Right, I covered that in an earlier post but forgot it in the last one.
But that's all OK.

-- Toby


from_name: Tony Wilson

subject: [WikiEN-l] User Mydogategodshat

body:
Only two edts from this user, which seem to be OK, but his username -
Mydogategodshat - seems a little beyond the borderline of good taste.
Opinions, good Wikipeople?


from_name: Anthere

body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote in part:
>
> >currently
> >Special:Undelete is almost unusable because of the
> page size; flushing the
> >archive might be a tempfix
>
> I'd like to remind administrators of my work-around
> for this.
> To view the deleted page [[xxx]], just go this URL:
>
<http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special%3AUndelete&target=xxx>
> (or the equivalent on whatever language's wiki is
> involved).
> Note that going here does *not* undelete the page;
> it only views it!
> You'll need to push an extra button to actually
> undelete anything.
> But it does skip the long list at
> [[Special:Undelete]] itself,
> and I use it often (mostly when combining histories)
> with no problems.
>
> This is, of course, a temporary work-around.
> A more user-friendly software solution would still
> be good.
>
>
> -- Toby

That is great ! Just needs to be seeable by anyone.
The sysop status could be just necessary to hit the button

__________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Two issues here:

body:
Sean Barrett wrote:
> The distinction is a simple one, and only those who are actively working
> to eliminate privacy find it difficult to understand.

It is my opinion that "privacy" is a problematic issue, and I don't
think I'm actively working to eliminate it.  But if I'm only handed
these two alternatives, I would rather eliminate privacy than agree
that the distinction is simple.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Alternative to Blanking Pages

body:
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Je Lundo 26 Majo 2003 18:09, cprompt skribis:
> Instead of blanking articles why not replace the article text with a
> redirect to a boilerplate text with something along the lines of "The
> content of this article is being disputed. It has been blanked for
[snip]

Probably a good idea. cf on Ward's Wiki:
http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki?DeleteTestAndWelcome

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
On Mon, 26 May 2003, Anthere wrote:

> Hum..."reverting" on sight is one thing. Anyone really
> wishing to work on one of his article can go dig it
> up.
>
> However, "deleting" on sight is another matter. Would
> you (that is a plural you, not you specifically
> Tannin) consider please, blanking his articles instead
> of deleting them. Then, either list the blanked
> articles on the vfd in case anyone would wish to work
> on them, or let them blank (which would make them
> appear next time the "short pages" is working again).
>
> I think it is more respectful to do this way. And
> blanking them hardly take more time than reverting
> other articles with history. Plus, blanking them is an
> action everybody wishing to help 'yous' can do, while
> deletion on sight is necessarily a unilateral decision
> from a sysop.

That sounds sensible to me. I think it's best if we stick with reversible
actions, so that if anyone is interested they can go back through the
article histories to see if anything can be salvaged, after Michael has
gone.

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


body:
I just want to reiterate my full support for Zoe on this one. Zoe (and
several other good Wikicitizens) have been implementing a soft ban on
our misguided friend with the dynamic IP. People, we *can't* implement
a hard ban. At least not without banning several good and useful
contributors as well. On the whole, much as I'd like to see the back of
our socially-challemged friend, I'd rather contribute to a Wikipedia
that had Micheal around than a Wikipedia that managed to ban him only
at the expense of banning Danny as well!

If Mav's suggestion of complaining to AOL works, then great! But I
won't hold my breath for that.

The soft ban is the answer. Zoe and about six or eight others (incuding
me) have taken to ruthlessly reverting *everything* that Michael posts.
We don't bother reading it or tying to work out if it contains a shred
of fact or not (with Michael's stuff, this is damn near impossible
anyway - in 10 minutes he can post up enough of that devilishly twisted
mixture of fact and fiction to keep two or three copy-editors busy
checking on "facts" and correcting 50% of them for several hours). None
of us have time for that idiocy: the only sensible way to deal with
Michael is to revert on sight and without compunction. Three clicks and
the 'pedia is idiocy-free once more, and *you* are back to working on
something *useful* again.

Best of all, because it only takes a few moments and hardly any thought
at all to blanket-revert Michael edits (excuse me while I shout this
bit) ... WE REVERSE THE BURDEN OF LABOUR! For the first time, it's
harder for him than it is for us. Instead of *us* taking hours to clean
up the mess that *he* creates in mere minutes, when we just revert
Michael unread and on sight, we can undo his many minutes of creative
vandalism in just a few seconds. I know he's a determined little
horror, but no-one can push that sort of load uphill for too long.

Hell, if I was Tsar Jimbo, I think I'd un-ban his user names in the
hope that he started posting as "Michael" or "No-FX" again - 'cause
that just makes it easier to spot Michael edits and revert them.
Anything he can post in an hour, Zoe can rollback in three minutes
flat.

Or me. Or Quercus. Or *you*.

Let's all pitch in, people. Think of it as an experiment in psychology.
How long would *you* keep on making contributions to the 'pedia for if
every single edit you ever made was reverted without coment inside of
ten minutes?
Tony Wilson
(Tannin)


body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> > Tannin presented "Michael case" as an experiment
> of
> > soft banning.
> > IP banning and deletion on sight are hard ban
> tools.
> > RainClouding, instant reversion and blanking are
> soft
> > ban tools. I think an experiment has to be done
> > completely or not done at all.
>
> The question is: Why do you want to use that
> strategy? In order to make
> sure that Michael creates no harm, or to prove a
> point about banning in
> general? If it is the latter, you've lost me: I
> believe in hard bans and
> think they should continue to be used. I'm willing
> to agree on a
> compromise here, that is, to use a "soft ban"
> because it may be more
> effective here.
>
> This is beacuse, if we want to prevent Michael from
> doing harm, we should
> employ the most effective strategy. It has been
> argued somewhat
> persuasively that it would not be wise to ban
> Michael again and again, and
> to continually revert his edits instead. This may be
> worth trying. But the
> "let's blank, not delete" argument does not fall
> into this category of
> argument. It is a more philosophical notion about
> the treatment of vandals
> in general which I do not agree with, at least not
> in this form.

Well. We may disagree on that. Perhaps that does not
necessarily imply who is the one, between you and I
supporting the Best choice ?
Another good point in soft banning is that everyone
can participate (as Tannin pointed out, I think what
he did was proposing people to join the reversion
team, am I right ?). That is good to strenghtening a
community. Deletion on sight, is not, ahma.
Is not that also the goal of blacksheeping ?

Please, would you explain which would be the best form
to your opinion ?

> Michael is a vandal. You may think that some of his
> pages are worth
> salvaging. Unfortunately, this seems to be more
> ideology speaking than
> actual experience with Michael's edits. His articles
> are grossly factually
> inaccurate and the last thing we need are people
> going around willy nilly
> and restoring pages which they "think" are OK, but
> which they haven't
> really bothered to check (Michael's articles usually
> contain a lot of
> wrong titles, dates etc.).

The Point is Michael is not really active on the same
time zone than I. And since his articles are deleted
on sight, it would be quite difficult for me to judge
whether they can be salvaged or not. Right ?

So I don't think I can be of ANY help here.

Also, what I was proposing was not to restore deleted
pages, but rather to blank them. If the pages were
first blanked and later deleted, they would not need
to be undeleted, right ?

If I dare add, the only page which was restored was a
request from Jimregan. If I understood well, Jimregan
checked the facts and found them accurate.

As for myself, I *trusted* Martin when he told me most
of Michael edits were not good to be kept, and have
not asked for any further undeletions.

> > The fact the pages are going to be deleted anyway
> is
> > "your" opinion.
>
> Michael is a banned user, this is not an opinion, it
> is a fact. He was
> banned for virtually all violations of our rules
> that are possible. He was
> never unbanned. We have merely modified the method
> by which we enforce
> this ban. Please do not use the willingness of
> sysops to go along with
> this approach to promote a general anti-ban agenda.

I had the very unhealthy idea perhaps that another
point of view could be proposed. But if seen as a
manipulation of a sysop, I should indeed not try to
challenge the current ban agenda. Apologies.

> >> More respectful? Towards whom?
> >> Michael, who has insulted
> >> virtually every Wikipedian who has tried to talk
> to
> >> him?

> > You know quite well the "toward whom" is not only
> > adressed to Michael.
>
> No, I do not know that. Do you see it as
> disrespectful if articles by a
> known vandal are deleted?

I am sorry, but I think I already explained my
position on this on the en. I don't think it is really
worth explaining it again here. I fear you are not in
the mood to read it :-(

> >> I for one find it absolutely acceptable
> >> to delete new Michael-
> >> pages on sight and encourage sysops to do so --
> but
> >> only if it is certain
> >> that he is really the author.
>
> > only if it is certain, right.
> > And only if the edits are bad, right.
>
> No on the second point. We have already determined
> that Michael's edits
> are not worth the trouble. Will you go to the search
> engines and check
> every single date in a discography, every little
> factoid about a band's
> history? If you're not willing to do this work, you
> should not talk about
> "bad edits". If you are, make a promise now, and I
> will hold you to it.
> For every Michael edit and every claim.

I think my very initial proposition a couple of hours
ago, was not restoration of his edits, but blank of
his edits. So ? Perhaps I was not clear ??

> > I am not worried of the rift. I am worried of
> errors.
>
> Everything can be reverted. This will not be
> necessary in the case of a
> known, banned user, however.
>
> > I also think you are on the verge of saying I will
> be
> responsible of subsequent errors.
>
> See above. The last thing we need are more unchecked
> pages by Michael. It
> will take years to go through the ones he has
> already created and check
> them for errors.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

I think blank pages do not need to be corrected for
errors.
Besides, my comment here was clearly not about content
errors. You were saying that I would be responsible
for degradation of relationships between sysops and
non sysops. I stronly trust the majority of sysops.
You included, even if I disagree with you here.
However, my survival instinct forbid me to trust
everyone just because I am said I must trust them.

Amicalement

__________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Unicode and polices

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

Brion.

Aoineko suggested that it is my police which is wrong
and not my browser (err...browsers) in supporting
unicode. I understood from what you told me it was my
browser. I don't care I can't see international links,
but I do care when I can't read the content of
articles, or even the title of the articles.
So...perhaps I understood nothing, but do you think
Opera 5 is not accepting unicode because of missing
polices or does it just not tolerate it at all ?
Netcape 4.7 is not working either
Mozilla is better (I can see Lech Walesa), but still I
can't see the international links. IE is writing ?

Is that worth that I try to import some polices ?

Ant

__________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Geoffrey Thomas

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mention that Bomis hosts Wikipedia

body:
The bottom of [[fr:Accueil]], the French Wikipedia's home page, contains the text "Site
gracieusement h?berg? par _Bomis_", with a link to the website. Loosely translated, it says, "Site
graciously hosted by Bomis." Should we add something like this to the [[en:Main Page]], e.g.,
"Thanks to [[Bomis]] (www.bomis.com) for hosting the Wikipedia!"? It's awfully nice of them to
provide for what's probably the last big site on the Internet without banner ads and popups; we
really ought to say thanks somehow, and at the least give them a bit of traffic.

-Geoffrey

__________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Unicode and polices

body:
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Je Lundo 26 Majo 2003 19:21, Anthere skribis:
> Aoineko suggested that it is my police which is wrong
> and not my browser (err...browsers) in supporting
> unicode.
[snip]
> Is that worth that I try to import some polices ?

Hmm, I don't think the fonts should make a difference.

For a while at work I used a Mac running OS 9; with IE it would corrupt
unicode characters on meta-wikipedia when editing, but on the same
computer with Netscape 7 I could see them and edit pages without
corruption. The machine had the same set of fonts available either way,
so it seems to be just the browser.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Graham Burnett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l digest, Vol 1 #384 - 13 msgs

body:
> >
> > I think this is what is known as 'blaming the
> > victim'... Apparently I must
> > have  'made him mad' in the first instance by
> > correcting what at first
> > appeared to be genuine mistakes on the Crass
> > article... It seems I continued
> > to 'make him mad' by reverting deliberate vandalism,
> > as did camemebert, Zoe,
> > Danny & others. Michael/Weezer/NOFX or whatever he's
> > calling himself today
> > hasn't actually attacked my userpage (yet) but has
> > written abusive comments
> > and attributed them to me as well as the other
> > people I mentioned. Only Zoe
> > seems to have been treated to having her user page
> > altered to make vulgar
> > inuendos regarding her sexual preferences, from
> > which I can only deduce that
> > this strange individual not only has a problem with
> > Wikipedia, he also has
> > issues with women. For me, my duty is to support Zoe
> > against this
> > inadequate's mysoginism, not to suggest that she
> > only has herself to blame
> > for upsetting him.
> >
> > Best wishes Graham (Quercus robur)
>
> I'm sorry. What I said was completely uncalled for.
>

No problem.

graham (quercus)


subject: [WikiEN-l] User Mydogategodshat

body:
Dante Alighieri wrote:

> At 11:35 AM 5/26/2003, you wrote:
>
>> Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
>>
>>> --- Tony Wilson <list at redhill.net.au> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Only two edts from this user, which seem to be OK,
>>>> but his username -
>>>> Mydogategodshat - seems a little beyond the
>>>> borderline of good taste.
>>>> Opinions, good Wikipeople?
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Only a username
>>> --LittleDan
>>
>> But we do have policies about usernames, since they are readily
>> visible to people who are new to the project and can give a bad
>> impression. Some users have been asked to change their usernames, and
>> others have volunteered to change after reviewing the policy.
>>
>> --cprompt
>
>
> OK, but honestly, how offensive can it really be to have someone's dog
> eat god's hat? I mean, come on folks...
>
> -----
>
> Dante Alighieri
> dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com
>
> "The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
> neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
>    -Dante Alighieri, /1265-1321
> /
>
Hehe, on first look I saw the word "shat", the past and past participle
of "shit". I guess it goes both ways. :-)

--

--cprompt


from_name: Jimmy O'Regan

subject: [WikiEN-l] The principle of fair use

body:
Anthere wrote:

>--- Julie Kemp <juleskemp at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Jens said:
>>
>>But I can't understand why this
>>
>>
>>
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image%3A843-870_Europe.jpg
>
>
>>is fair use. The map has been created for an
>>encyclopedia
>>or an history textbook. If this is fair use, is
>>there any
>>picture we may not use?
>>
>>I reply --
>>
>>This is actually interesting -- when DW (or Elliot)
>>put this up many
>>months ago, I asked for a reference.  I claimed then
>>that this map was
>>likely not in fair use.  My reasoning was as
>>follows:  When I was
>>finishing my thesis in 2000, I was desperate for
>>maps.  I found this
>>map, along with a couple others that this person put
>>up, at the UW
>>library.  I didn't have time to write for
>>permission, and checked the
>>copyright with the librarians, who said I could only
>>use it under fair
>>use if I altered the image dramatically, because it
>>was still under
>>copyright.  Unfortunately, I can't tell you the
>>source -- I had a couple
>>maps copied, traced the parts I needed (the
>>coastlines and rivers) by
>>hand, scanned them, and labeled them as necessary.
>>Anyway, I think we
>>shouldn't use any images unless we can definitively
>>say where they're
>>from -- from what the librarian at my present
>>college says, one still
>>has to credit image sources for fair use, or it
>>isn't fair use.
>>
>>Julie
>>
>>
>
>Agreed. Wikipedia should have its own mapping system.
>Where I could put ecoregions too :-)
>
>Which could be discussed at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipediatlas
>
 Just, so people know, [[Bruce Perens]] has a complete street map of the
United States on his ftp server
(ftp://ftp.perens.com/pub/US-map/tiger2k), which is also available from
the US Census site here (http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tiger2k/).
AFAIR, it's not covered by copyright, having been created by the US
Government, though I can look for the original announcement if required.
So, no help for Europe, but could be useful for someone else.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The principle of fair use

body:
Jimmy O'Regan wrote:

> Just, so people know, [[Bruce Perens]] has a complete street map of
> the United States on his ftp server
> (ftp://ftp.perens.com/pub/US-map/tiger2k), which is also available
> from the US Census site here
> (http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tiger2k/). AFAIR, it's not
> covered by copyright, having been created by the US Government, though
> I can look for the original announcement if required. So, no help for
> Europe, but could be useful for someone else.
>
http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/geo/tigerfaq?Q13 confirms that this is
public domain data.


body:
I was going to start doing this myself, but I figured it'd be better if
people talked about it first, and more effective if they knew about it.

Instead of blanking articles why not replace the article text with a
redirect to a boilerplate text with something along the lines of "The
content of this article is being disputed. It has been blanked for the
time being, though older version are still accessible through the Page
History. It may have been blanked because of blatantly false
information, or non-encyclopedic garbage. This article may be awaiting
[[votes for deletion]], or awaiting a sysop to delete it. Please use the
Talk Page to discuss this dispute if necessary, and check [[Votes for
Deletion]]"

I wouldn't recommend that exact text be used, but basically, my idea is
to redirect articles to a boilerplate text explaining what's going on
rather than just blanking them.
That way, Googlers and people who located the article in the index or
search function will know what's going on.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The principle of fair use

body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

>Is anyone at Wikipedia a cartographer?
>
>In responce to the first post (which I accidentally
>deleted), is a cleaned up picture (obviously with most
>of the pixels different, but similar colors) still a
>violation of copywright? I made one if it would help.
>--LittleDan
>
Sorry, but I tend to think it would still be a violation of copyright,
just as much as taking a popular song and adding a drum beat, or using
an acoustic guitar instead of electric guitar. In this case, you are
changing the original, rather than using the original to create your own
work.

--

--cprompt


subject: [WikiEN-l] The principle of fair use

body:
Jimmy O'Regan wrote:

>>
> Just, so people know, [[Bruce Perens]] has a complete street map of
> the United States on his ftp server
> (ftp://ftp.perens.com/pub/US-map/tiger2k), which is also available
> from the US Census site here
> (http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tiger2k/). AFAIR, it's not
> covered by copyright, having been created by the US Government, though
> I can look for the original announcement if required. So, no help for
> Europe, but could be useful for someone else.

Another offbeat possibility is FlightGear, who compose a bunch of PD map
data layers into flight sim terrain.  An overhead view with shading would
make nice physical maps.  All the raw map data one could want is in the
public domain, the hard work is to assemble it into useful displays.

Stan


body:
Anthere-
> However, "deleting" on sight is another matter. Would
> you (that is a plural you, not you specifically
> Tannin) consider please, blanking his articles instead
> of deleting them. Then, either list the blanked
> articles on the vfd in case anyone would wish to work
> on them, or let them blank (which would make them
> appear next time the "short pages" is working again).

Blanking leaves lots of useless pages that show up in title searches and
have to be manually removed by going through the short article list,
which, to top things, is currently deactivated for performance reasons.
There's absolutely no point in doing this if the articles are going to be
deleted anyway. More respectful? Towards whom? Michael, who has insulted
virtually every Wikipedian who has tried to talk to him?

Remember, the reason we may decide not to hard-ban Michael is purely
technical. I for one find it absolutely acceptable to delete new Michael-
pages on sight and encourage sysops to do so -- but only if it is certain
that he is really the author.

It is alright to worry a little about abuse of sysop powers, I do so
myself. But I think this has been going too far in the last few days. The
opposite situation to arbitrary deletions is equally undesirable:
Wikipedia turning into a mess of useless pages which nobody cleans up.
Many sysops are spending a lot of time doing annoying housekeeping tasks
-- that's OK, that's what they expected. But a little more trust would be
helpful. Otherwise I think you are contributing to the creation of the
rift between sysops and non-sysops that you are so worried about.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] User Mydogategodshat

body:
cprompt wrote:

> Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
>
>> --- Tony Wilson <list at redhill.net.au> wrote:
>
>>
>>  Only a username
>> --LittleDanOnly two edts from this user, which seem to be OK,
>> but his username -
>> Mydogategodshat - seems a little beyond the
>> borderline of good taste.
>> Opinions, good Wikipeople?
>>
> But we do have policies about usernames, since they are readily
> visible to people who are new to the project and can give a bad
> impression. Some users have been asked to change their usernames, and
> others have volunteered to change after reviewing the policy.

I find absolutely nothing in bad taste about it;  it's a lovely piece of
absurdist humour.

Ec


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: User Michael and ways to deal with him

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> No on the second point. We have already determined that Michael's edits
> are not worth the trouble. Will you go to the search engines and check
> every single date in a discography, every little factoid about a band's
> history? If you're not willing to do this work, you should not talk about
> "bad edits". If you are, make a promise now, and I will hold you to it.
> For every Michael edit and every claim.

I wholeheartedly agree and would like to add that undoing such a revert or
undeleting a page is further enabling the vandal or banned user to subvert
the ban and continue to do the things that got them banned in the first
place. That makes the ban useless and the way I see it, it is more than a
tacit act indicating that whatever the banned user did was OK.

So since I was the recipient of a death threat by a now banned user then
pardon me if I may be a bit perplexed and hurt when that user's post-ban
edits and pages are restored. I know the intent of the person restoring the
edits are to save what they see as useful content but please consider the big
picture and understand that by restoring such an edit you nullify the ban and
encourage the banned user to stick around without having to bother with
reforming their ways.

I know our goal is to build an encyclopedia but the wrong way to do this is to
keep around sloppy, rude and destructive workers who either do not share our
goal of creating a respected, accurate and free encyclopedia or who have
other agendas alltogether.

I would also like to know why if each edit by a banned user is supposed to be
viewed on its own merits then how the hell is this different than any other
edit?

Nobody is compelled to work on enforcing a ban, but please do not work against
those that do. However, preventing innocent people from getting caught in the
crossfire is another matter entirely and /is/ a good thing to avoid and /is/
something that needs to be further discussed. I also find Martin's ideas for
SoftBans to be intriguing as a possible way to deal with troublesome users
before a HardBan is needed.

Jimbo said it best:
"If we don't revert every change made by a banned user, then we implicit
encourage them to keep coming back and pulling their stunts over and over."

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Thomas Corell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Database Bugs

body:
I know I start going on your nerves, but have some of the guys with
database access a solution found for:
a) double articles (same title)
b) Redirects, which won't become a redirect?

--
Smurf
Patience is something you admire in the driver behind you, but not in one
ahead.
smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


subject: [WikiEN-l] User Mydogategodshat

body:
cprompt wrote:

> Dante Alighieri wrote:
>
>>>> --- Tony Wilson <list at redhill.net.au> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Only two edts from this user, which seem to be OK,
>>>>> but his username -
>>>>> Mydogategodshat - seems a little beyond the
>>>>> borderline of good taste.
>>>>> Opinions, good Wikipeople?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> But we do have policies about usernames, since they are readily
>>> visible to people who are new to the project and can give a bad
>>> impression. Some users have been asked to change their usernames,
>>> and others have volunteered to change after reviewing the policy.
>>>
>>> --cprompt
>>
>>
>> OK, but honestly, how offensive can it really be to have someone's
>> dog eat god's hat? I mean, come on folks...
>>
>>
> Hehe, on first look I saw the word "shat", the past and past
> participle of "shit". I guess it goes both ways. :-)

Yes, I saw that reading at first too, and that made the wordplay all the
more interesating..  The hat is indeed going both ways :-)

Ec


body:
Anthere-

> It appears the performance are much better now. At
> least, there are much better for the international
> wikis, which I think have not been moved.

The disabled functionality is of pages that do not scale well, regardless
of current sever load. Unless the underlying SQL queries are rewritten and
additional indices added to the respective tables, these pages will
continue to generate high load. Enabling them without optimizing the code
and database first would be unwise, as we would quickly find ourselves in
the molasses we just crawled out of (thanks possibly in larger part to
Brion's programming hacks than to the new server).

> Tannin presented "Michael case" as an experiment of
> soft banning.
> IP banning and deletion on sight are hard ban tools.
> RainClouding, instant reversion and blanking are soft
> ban tools. I think an experiment has to be done
> completely or not done at all.

The question is: Why do you want to use that strategy? In order to make
sure that Michael creates no harm, or to prove a point about banning in
general? If it is the latter, you've lost me: I believe in hard bans and
think they should continue to be used. I'm willing to agree on a
compromise here, that is, to use a "soft ban" because it may be more
effective here.

This is beacuse, if we want to prevent Michael from doing harm, we should
employ the most effective strategy. It has been argued somewhat
persuasively that it would not be wise to ban Michael again and again, and
to continually revert his edits instead. This may be worth trying. But the
"let's blank, not delete" argument does not fall into this category of
argument. It is a more philosophical notion about the treatment of vandals
in general which I do not agree with, at least not in this form.

Michael is a vandal. You may think that some of his pages are worth
salvaging. Unfortunately, this seems to be more ideology speaking than
actual experience with Michael's edits. His articles are grossly factually
inaccurate and the last thing we need are people going around willy nilly
and restoring pages which they "think" are OK, but which they haven't
really bothered to check (Michael's articles usually contain a lot of
wrong titles, dates etc.).

> The fact the pages are going to be deleted anyway is
> "your" opinion.

Michael is a banned user, this is not an opinion, it is a fact. He was
banned for virtually all violations of our rules that are possible. He was
never unbanned. We have merely modified the method by which we enforce
this ban. Please do not use the willingness of sysops to go along with
this approach to promote a general anti-ban agenda.

>> More respectful? Towards whom?
>> Michael, who has insulted
>> virtually every Wikipedian who has tried to talk to
>> him?

> You know quite well the "toward whom" is not only
> adressed to Michael.

No, I do not know that. Do you see it as disrespectful if articles by a
known vandal are deleted?

>> I for one find it absolutely acceptable
>> to delete new Michael-
>> pages on sight and encourage sysops to do so -- but
>> only if it is certain
>> that he is really the author.

> only if it is certain, right.
> And only if the edits are bad, right.

No on the second point. We have already determined that Michael's edits
are not worth the trouble. Will you go to the search engines and check
every single date in a discography, every little factoid about a band's
history? If you're not willing to do this work, you should not talk about
"bad edits". If you are, make a promise now, and I will hold you to it.
For every Michael edit and every claim.

> I am not worried of the rift. I am worried of errors.

Everything can be reverted. This will not be necessary in the case of a
known, banned user, however.

> I also think you are on the verge of saying I will be
> responsible of subsequent errors.

See above. The last thing we need are more unchecked pages by Michael. It
will take years to go through the ones he has already created and check
them for errors.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Julie Kemp wrote:

> Stan said
>
> you've fallen into the "I'm a
>
> professional" trap
>
> **You are right ? on the other hand, when I first started working on
> the ?pedia (I am testing the waters after a hiatus of about 8 months,
> but contributed regularly for a long period before that, and also
> collaborated on many of the initial discussions on standards, etc.),
> people tended to trust each other?s areas of expertise ? whether
> professional or amateur. The thing I have found is that people who are
> interested in good articles can usually tell good work, and a good
> professional will often bow to a better informed amateur -- or vice
> versa. In the case of these particular articles, I really do suggest
> that you read the discussion that?s been taking place. You seem to
> have gathered that I am in a very small minority, but if you read the
> discussions, you will see that I have qualified my discussion, been
> very inclusive of other viewpoints, and have provided reasons for my
> edits.
>
To be totally candid, I got a mixed reaction from reading your comments.
There were several that sounded to me like "this is what me and all my
buddies have agreed is the truth, and anybody who disagrees with us is
ignorant and can't read either". I know that's not exactly what you
said, but that's what I heard, and if you had said something like that
directly to me, I would have been hopping mad.

I'm sure the good old days of wikipedia are long gone - there are
lots more editors and lots more opposing viewpoints to deal with.

> [...] remember, Wikipedia isn?t paper. It isn?t the place for original
> research, but there are tons of examples where we make statements that
> mention growing trends and new approaches. And if we know more on a
> subject, don?t we have some sort of obligation to share that knowledge
> and make wikipedia better than other online encyclopedias? After all,
> even the famous Helga did a great deal of eventual good in that she
> managed to get articles on issues like the Heimatvertriebene included
> and to shake several of us into checking facts and neutralizing the
> Polish-German borders. THOSE articles certainly contain lots of stuff
> you might not see all in the same place.
>
Absolutely. Part of my work with navy ships is simply to assemble a
consistent set of accepted facts that are presently scattered across
dozens of books and sites on the net. But those aren't particularly
controversial, or perhaps more accurately we haven't yet had a
thousand ex-sailors descend on the Wikipedia to tell us that "those
admirals and their eggheads didn't know what really happened". If
you want to tangle with a tough subject, well, it's going to be
tough, and you have to decide if it's worth the time you're going to
have to spend arguing about it, when you could instead enjoy filling
in the many empty parts of Wikipedia. For instance, what are the
main sources of what we think we know about the Dark Ages? Many of
the primary documents have interesting stories of their own, but only
a handful are described in articles, and as I far as I know there's
no "list of" article that I can scan to see what all there is.

Stan


body:
cprompt wrote:

>Instead of blanking articles why not replace the article text with a
>redirect to a boilerplate text with something along the lines of "The
>content of this article is being disputed. It has been blanked for the
>time being, though older version are still accessible through the Page
>History. It may have been blanked because of blatantly false
>information, or non-encyclopedic garbage. This article may be awaiting
>[[votes for deletion]], or awaiting a sysop to delete it. Please use the
>Talk Page to discuss this dispute if necessary, and check [[Votes for
>Deletion]]"

This is a good idea, to which I'd suggest one change:
Make several boilerplate text pages to redirect to,
and choose the appropriate one in each case.
None of this "It may have ...", "[it] may be ..." stuff.
And such boilerplate texts have already been written in many cases;
it'd just be easier to redirect than to cut and paste.

-- Toby


body:
Anthere wrote:

>That is great ! Just needs to be seeable by anyone.
>The sysop status could be just necessary to hit the button

That's basically what I would support.
Non-admins need not even see the button.

-- Toby