from_name: Jonathan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Download history tool?

body:
That code is helpful.

One solution is to capture the click on the "compare" button. Once
clicked, restore the pagehistory and submit the correctly selected radio
buttons.

Wikitech-l and Meta are both good places:
    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dzonatas/script/history

Jonathan

Steve Bennett wrote:

>Hi again,
>  Ok I had my own attempt at adding "group edits". It works, but has
>the obvious limitation that displaying the diff across a group of
>collapsed diffs shows not quite what you're expecting. In other words:
>
>Time t0  User A comment1
>Time t1  User A
>Time t2  User A comment2
>Time t3  User B comment 3
>
>It shows this as
>Time t0 User A comment1//---//comment2
>Time t3 User B
>
>So if you attempt to compare between t0 and t3, you of course get all
>the changes made in t1, t2 and t3, whereas you probably just wanted
>t3. Not sure how to deal with that one.
>
>Anyway, feel free to use this code if at all helpful.
>
>Also...I'm sure by now we're on the wrong list. What's the right one? wikitech?
>
>Steve
>
>// ==UserScript==
>
>// @name           Compress history
>
>// @namespace      stevage
>
>// @description    Collapses consecutive edits from the same person into one
>
>// @include        *.wikipedia.org/*action=history
>
>// ==/UserScript==
>
>var hist;
>hist = document.getElementById('pagehistory');
>
>if (hist) {
>  var diffs;
>  diffs = document.evaluate(
>    "LI",
>    hist,
>    null,
>    XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE,
>    null
>  );
>  var last='*x!', prevdiffcomment;
>
>  for (var i = 0; i < diffs.snapshotLength; i++) {
>
>    var diff = diffs.snapshotItem(i);
>    var comment = document.evaluate(
>      'SPAN[@class="comment"]',
>      diff,
>      null,
>      XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE,
>      null
>    ).snapshotItem(0);
>    //GM_log(comment.innerHTML);
>    var a = document.evaluate(
>      "SPAN/A",
>      diff,
>      null,
>      XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE,
>      null
>    );
>    eacha = a.snapshotItem(0);
>    if (eacha.title==last) {
>      if (comment) {
>        prevdiffcomment.innerHTML = prevdiffcomment.innerHTML + '//'
>+comment.innerHTML;
>      } else {
>        prevdiffcomment.innerHTML = prevdiffcomment.innerHTML + '//---';
>      }
>      diff.parentNode.removeChild(diff);
>    } else {
>      last = eacha.title;
>      if (!comment) {
>        comment = document.createElement('SPAN');
>        comment.className='comment';
>        comment.innerHTML=' ---';
>        diff.insertBefore(comment, null);
>      }
>      prevdiffcomment = comment;
>    }
>  }
>}
>
>
>On 3/11/06, Jonathan <dzonatas at dzonux.net> wrote:
>
>
>>It has been updated to animate and export a basic Excel xml:
>>http://dzonux.net/wikipedia-animate-hack.user.js
>>
>>"Group edits" is not finished.
>>
>>Steve Bennett wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>On 3/10/06, Jonathan <dzonatas at dzonux.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>I started to fix the script:
>>>>http://dzonux.net/wikipedia-animate-hack.user.js
>>>>
>>>>It shows the basic layout, but it stops right before it animates.
>>>>
>>>>Steve, are there are any other features you would like?
>>>>
>>>>Jonathan
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Ooh, interesting question :) I can now get that script to activate,
>>>but yeah, doesn't do much useful yet.
>>>
>>>Hard to ask for *more* features when I haven't seen what it does yet.
>>>But things that would be useful would be grouping all subsequent edits
>>>by a single editor (would be useful in general in Wikipedia), and,
>>>yeah like my original quest, somehow being able to download a list of
>>>all changes into Excel or something (with dates and URLs would be
>>>brilliant...)
>>>
>>>Steve
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
>>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] I am Danny

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> How much does the lawyer bill, by the way?

The lawyer Danny was talking about is a volunteer.  If we do not take
his advice seriously, and as a result end up in court, those lawyers
will not volunteer, it will cost us a lot of money.

--Jimbo

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Don't remove a WP:OFFICE tag put there by Danny

body:
Delirium wrote:
> I didn't say anything quite that extreme, and contrary to Jimbo's
> assumption, I'm not particularly angry about it either.  I'm just
> worried that the current policy of letting some people go "over the
> head" of editors by taking things to the Wikimedia Foundation, which
> then deals with them in a top-down manner, will introduce systemic bias
> into the encyclopedia.

Current policy does not let anyone go "over the head" of editors and the
Wikimedia Foundation does not deal with them in a "top-down manner".

>  This leads to some articles having different policies
> than other articles,

This is false.

--Jimbo

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


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 3/12/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 07:06:20 -0500, you wrote:
>
> >> Any corporate entity can close down overnight if the money dries up.
> >> Lawsuits are a great way to get rid of large amounts of money very
> >> fast - actually I wonder if organised crime has ever thought of that?
> >> Set up a law office as a shell company and just watch the money
> >> chugging down the drain :-)  But seriously...
>
> >C'mon now, even Enron didn't close "overnight", and I would think the
> >Wikimedia foundation has much more accurate books than they do.  If
> >the foundation ran out of money, it would be clear a long time
> >beforehand.  And even if they did run out of money, there are lots of
> >servers that could be sold and/or used as collateral for loans to pay
> >for the bandwidth while the encyclopedia gets copied to others and the
> >"no, we're really broke, send us money or we disappear" message goes
> >out).
>
> You're rather missing the point, I think.  There are circumstances
> under which the foundation could be shut down, and lawyers do exist,
> so precautionary temporary blanking or deletion of disputed content is
> not unreasonable.
>
My point was that such a shutdown wouldn't happen overnight (unless
maybe you pissed off the executive branch of the government enough).

If the foundation is facing a legitimate legal threat, then sure, it
needs to comply.  Jimmy seemed to suggest that wasn't always the case,
in fact he said that most of the content was not libelous.

And finally, I don't have any problem with blanking disputed content.
Anyone has the power and in many cases the responsibility to do that.

> The total resources devoted to ass-covering are negligible as a
> proportion of the total costs, and the proportion of articles affected
> is also negligible.
>
> I think the whole thing is being blown out of all proportion.
> Guy (JzG)


from_name: Josh Gordon

subject: [WikiEN-l] Download history tool?

body:
When I try to run this script (in any incarnation), I get nothing on
my Firefox (OS X, Firefox 1.5, monkey 0.6.4), but my Javascript
console says:

Error: Config is not defined
Source File: file:///Users/Josh/Library/Application%20Support/Firefox/Profiles/u4f2twek.default/extensions/%7Be4a8a97b-f2ed-450b-b12d-ee082ba24781%7D/components/greasemonkey.js
Line: 117

Any idea how to fix this?

On 3/12/06, Jonathan <dzonatas at dzonux.net> wrote:
> That code is helpful.
>
> One solution is to capture the click on the "compare" button. Once
> clicked, restore the pagehistory and submit the correctly selected radio
> buttons.
>
> Wikitech-l and Meta are both good places:
>     http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dzonatas/script/history
>
> Jonathan
>
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> >Hi again,
> >  Ok I had my own attempt at adding "group edits". It works, but has
> >the obvious limitation that displaying the diff across a group of
> >collapsed diffs shows not quite what you're expecting. In other words:
> >
> >Time t0  User A comment1
> >Time t1  User A
> >Time t2  User A comment2
> >Time t3  User B comment 3
> >
> >It shows this as
> >Time t0 User A comment1//---//comment2
> >Time t3 User B
> >
> >So if you attempt to compare between t0 and t3, you of course get all
> >the changes made in t1, t2 and t3, whereas you probably just wanted
> >t3. Not sure how to deal with that one.
> >
> >Anyway, feel free to use this code if at all helpful.
> >
> >Also...I'm sure by now we're on the wrong list. What's the right one? wikitech?
> >
> >Steve
> >
> >// ==UserScript==
> >
> >// @name           Compress history
> >
> >// @namespace      stevage
> >
> >// @description    Collapses consecutive edits from the same person into one
> >
> >// @include        *.wikipedia.org/*action=history
> >
> >// ==/UserScript==
> >
> >var hist;
> >hist = document.getElementById('pagehistory');
> >
> >if (hist) {
> >  var diffs;
> >  diffs = document.evaluate(
> >    "LI",
> >    hist,
> >    null,
> >    XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE,
> >    null
> >  );
> >  var last='*x!', prevdiffcomment;
> >
> >  for (var i = 0; i < diffs.snapshotLength; i++) {
> >
> >    var diff = diffs.snapshotItem(i);
> >    var comment = document.evaluate(
> >      'SPAN[@class="comment"]',
> >      diff,
> >      null,
> >      XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE,
> >      null
> >    ).snapshotItem(0);
> >    //GM_log(comment.innerHTML);
> >    var a = document.evaluate(
> >      "SPAN/A",
> >      diff,
> >      null,
> >      XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE,
> >      null
> >    );
> >    eacha = a.snapshotItem(0);
> >    if (eacha.title==last) {
> >      if (comment) {
> >        prevdiffcomment.innerHTML = prevdiffcomment.innerHTML + '//'
> >+comment.innerHTML;
> >      } else {
> >        prevdiffcomment.innerHTML = prevdiffcomment.innerHTML + '//---';
> >      }
> >      diff.parentNode.removeChild(diff);
> >    } else {
> >      last = eacha.title;
> >      if (!comment) {
> >        comment = document.createElement('SPAN');
> >        comment.className='comment';
> >        comment.innerHTML=' ---';
> >        diff.insertBefore(comment, null);
> >      }
> >      prevdiffcomment = comment;
> >    }
> >  }
> >}
> >
> >
> >On 3/11/06, Jonathan <dzonatas at dzonux.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>It has been updated to animate and export a basic Excel xml:
> >>http://dzonux.net/wikipedia-animate-hack.user.js
> >>
> >>"Group edits" is not finished.
> >>
> >>Steve Bennett wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>>On 3/10/06, Jonathan <dzonatas at dzonux.net> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>I started to fix the script:
> >>>>http://dzonux.net/wikipedia-animate-hack.user.js
> >>>>
> >>>>It shows the basic layout, but it stops right before it animates.
> >>>>
> >>>>Steve, are there are any other features you would like?
> >>>>
> >>>>Jonathan
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>Ooh, interesting question :) I can now get that script to activate,
> >>>but yeah, doesn't do much useful yet.
> >>>
> >>>Hard to ask for *more* features when I haven't seen what it does yet.
> >>>But things that would be useful would be grouping all subsequent edits
> >>>by a single editor (would be useful in general in Wikipedia), and,
> >>>yeah like my original quest, somehow being able to download a list of
> >>>all changes into Excel or something (with dates and URLs would be
> >>>brilliant...)
> >>>
> >>>Steve
> >>>_______________________________________________
> >>>WikiEN-l mailing list
> >>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >>>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>_______________________________________________
> >>WikiEN-l mailing list
> >>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >_______________________________________________
> >WikiEN-l mailing list
> >WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> >
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
--jpgordon ????


from_name: Gordon Joly

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Don't remove a WP:OFFICE tag put there by Danny
 under any circumstances

body:
At 16:30 -0500 11/3/06, Kat Walsh wrote:
>On 3/11/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>
>>  Yes, Ant, exactly. If this project is to be *inclusive*, then
>>  everybody who joins has to be brought up to speed.
>>
>>  I have a picture of Danny in my head from Wikimania 2005, but I
>>  struggle to recall his surname.
>>
>>  Using first names (or handles or nicknames) only is a method to keep
>>  the "in crowd" in, and the "out crowd" excluded.
>
>Actually, Danny is also [[User:Danny]], and he makes it clear who he
>is on his userpage(s). So I don't think using his first name is
>intended to keep anyone out at all; unless you want to say "Danny
>Wool, Wikimedia Foundation staff" every time you refer to him I think
>that's the clearest way to refer to him among Wikimedians.
>
>-Kat
>[[User:Mindspillage]], like the sig says

Point taken. But the match between "Danny at the office" and
[[User:Danny]] has to be assumed by a newbie. Here the start of the
current entry at

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Danny

***

Hi

Welcome to my page. I've been a Wikipedian for a while now. I have
recently been asked to help coordinate the Wikimedia Foundation
Grants Committee. For more information and ideas about how you can
help, please see Grants.

About me: I now live in St. Petersburg, Florida, and work fulltime
for the Wikimedia Foundation, helping Jimbo out where I can. In the
past, I have worked overseas in various media, including print, film,
and television. In fact, I still do some odd film work, which I enjoy
immensely.

***

And by the same token Jimbo, Danny, SJ, Angela, Eloquence, Athere...
we all know who they are.

Gordo

--
Gordo (aka LoopZilla)
gordon.joly at pobox.com
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
http://www.loopzilla.org/


body:
At 21:44 +0000 11/3/06, Tony Sidaway wrote:
>On 3/11/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly at pobox.com> wrote:
>>  At 18:32 +0100 11/3/06, Carl F?rstenberg wrote:
>>  >I think the problem people have with this
>>policy, is that few know who Danny
>>  >is (who is Danny?)
>>  >_______________________________________________
>>
>>  Jimbo's familiar.
>
>My master through his art foresees the danger
>That you, his friend, are in; and sends me forth--
>For else his project dies--to keep thee living.
>_______________________________________________

Very well put. Is that original?

:-)

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 15:51:11 -0500, you wrote:

>Foundations with their assets don't close overnight.  Maybe the
>website might go down, but that'd be a government action, a foundation
>(board) action, or a computer glitch - a lawsuit would take at least a
>few days before an injunction was issued.  That said, a replacement
>site could be put up within hours.  The community might become
>somewhat fragmented, though, although I could see some ways in which
>that is actually a good thing.  In the long run a peer-to-peer system
>is probably what's best for Wikipedia.

Any corporate entity can close down overnight if the money dries up.
Lawsuits are a great way to get rid of large amounts of money very
fast - actually I wonder if organised crime has ever thought of that?
Set up a law office as a shell company and just watch the money
chugging down the drain :-)  But seriously...

>> The h2g2 project never really recovered from "Rupert", the enforced
>> shutdown between TDV and BBC hosting - the community changed
>> irrevocably.

>I'm sorry that I have no idea of the facts surrounding that situation,
>so I can't comment.  Was h2g2 released under a free license?

No, it was a community of people drawn to the idea of an online
encyclopaedia inspired by the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  It
was started by Douglas Adams in 1999, and a lot of the people who
joined were fans, and also committed to the idea of contributing to
the Guide (much like Wikipedia).  All rights were released to the
project, but being British in origin nobody cared over much that the
license was not open.  The biggest difference between h2g2 and WP for
me is that on H2G2 an article had to go through peer review before it
became part of the "edited guide".  You could have as many articles as
you liked, but only the ones which had been vetted by the community
were formally endorsed.  Otherwise many common themes - user spaces,
Talk threads on every article, an aim to be accurate.  Differences too
- lighter tone, no anonymous posting.

Anyway, TDV was Adams' company and it went titsup.com during the .com
crash.  The project was offline for well over a month (it seemed like
forever at the time) and when it came back a lot of the old
contributors had gone.

Anyway, the point is, Wikipedia is the content, but also the
community.  Would it survive the period required to assemble new
hosting hardware, a backer for the necessary infrastructure and so on,
if the foundation was shut down by a court injunction?

In the end I think that having the project matters more than having
any one individual article at any one time.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] Download history tool?

body:
It appears to be a problem with Greasemonkey. See this blog for
suggestions:
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=11645460&postID=113598526711842205

Josh Gordon wrote:

>When I try to run this script (in any incarnation), I get nothing on
>my Firefox (OS X, Firefox 1.5, monkey 0.6.4), but my Javascript
>console says:
>
>Error: Config is not defined
>Source File: file:///Users/Josh/Library/Application%20Support/Firefox/Profiles/u4f2twek.default/extensions/%7Be4a8a97b-f2ed-450b-b12d-ee082ba24781%7D/components/greasemonkey.js
>Line: 117
>
>Any idea how to fix this?
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Apology

body:
A wonderful and thoughtful oldtime Wikipedian pointed out to me that I
was getting a bit blunt in my emails yesterday about WP:OFFICE.

I apologize for that.

Here are the main points I want to empahasize:

1.  This policy merely extends longstanding practice, previously not
questioned, becuase I did it myself.

2.  Nothing about this policy changes anything about our NPOV policies
for any article in Wikipedia.  WP:OFFICE in no way implies that some
articles or some people are given any special treatment in the handling
of their biography.

3.  WP:OFFICE is intended to be used only temporarily as a courtesy in
certain highly delimited circumstances.  In some cases, this will be
cases involving a threat of legal action, but in other cases it may be
simply as a courtesy while we sort something out.

4.  In all cases, we will communicate the maximum possible information
in the shortest possible time period, subject to legal constraints and
also time constraints.

5.  Danny has, in my own opinion, formed in long experience, excellent
judgment.

6.  In some cases so far, WP:OFFICE was used for a longer period than I
would have liked, due to various circumstances.  I'm sorry about that.
However, I remind everyone that Assume Good Faith is absolutely
important to our community.

I am frankly shocked and saddened to see some of the accusations I have
seen in this thread, but it is always and everywhere my intention to
respond with kindness even to the most dishonest provocation, and I'm
sorry I was snippy in some of my responses.

--Jimbo

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


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ridiculous nomination for deletion

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

Please permit me to call attention to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Natural_circulation

Full disclosure: I am the article's originator, and apparently a mortal
threat to national security.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Power corrupts. Absolute power is really cool.
 sean at epoptic.org |
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFEFGPgMAt1wyd9d+URAgmPAJ4uwXZGrCuPB+jxMP3wV2IikuJyIQCggWjH
ngsu+h+d8kE+U4xGG/iojv8=
=jjW3
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Anthere

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Don't remove a WP:OFFICE tag put there by Danny
	under any circumstances

body:
Gordon Joly wrote:

> BCNU.... and  YMMV as always,

Talking about inclusive and exclusive... what do BCNU and YMMV mean ?

Ant


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

geni stated for the record:

> On 3/12/06, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I respectfully disagree.
>>
>>-Phil
>
>
> Which policy allows admins to block for stupidity?
> --
> geni

"Don't be a Dick"?

I agree with geni (world to end soon; film at 11): Eclectick should not
be blocked.  He's astoundingly ignorant and way too aggressive, but I
still hope that careful raps with the cluebat will straighten him out.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Power corrupts. Absolute power is really cool.
 sean at epoptic.org |
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=4KXQ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Download history tool?

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Hi again,
>   Ok I had my own attempt at adding "group edits". It works, but has
> the obvious limitation that displaying the diff across a group of
> collapsed diffs shows not quite what you're expecting. In other words:
>
> Time t0  User A comment1
> Time t1  User A
> Time t2  User A comment2
> Time t3  User B comment 3
>
> It shows this as
> Time t0 User A comment1//---//comment2
> Time t3 User B
>
> So if you attempt to compare between t0 and t3, you of course get all
> the changes made in t1, t2 and t3, whereas you probably just wanted
> t3. Not sure how to deal with that one.

It's probably better to give diffs against the *last* edit in each
group.  Doing so not only solves this particular case, but is probably
more meaningful in general.

I haven't taken a look at the code yet; if I get around to it, I may
post a patch for this.

--
Ilmari Karonen


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: A. Decorte

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] RFC: Principles of mass content adding on small
	Wikipedias

body:
Hi I'm following with interest the discussion on this topic as admin in
Friulian wikipedia. I think it would be useful to add things like the
countries of the worlds or the planets, since these may attract the
attention of new contributors. About villages, we had actually already
begun a project to insert Friulian communes in the wikipedia; we already
have a list which links Friulian and Italian names, but we didn't have a
bot to actually do the work
(http://fur.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vichipedie:Progjet_comuns).
Since someone also mentioned Unicode CLDR,  I'm adding in this period
data for Friulian, therefore I guess that when it will be ready these
informations could be used also  in Wikipedia
Regards
Klenje


subject: [WikiEN-l] Phone calls in office

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>>Can't speak for him, but maybe a rough idea of these numbers of angry
>>phone calls would help us understand? I mean, are we talking one a
>>week, or ten a day?
>
>
> The total number of phone calls to the office from the general public
> must be on the order of 50 per day.  The phone is constantly ringing,
> say, every 10 minutes or so.  6 per hour.
>
> That's my guess, but Danny will likely be able to give a more accurate
> estimate.
>
>
>>What is *their* tone normally like? Is it primarily "uh, there seems
>>to be some sort of error, what do I do about it?" or "you have 24
>>hours to remove it before a court injunction arrives on your door
>>step"?
>
>
> They vary widely.  Some are just inquiries.  Some are looooong
> explanations of some trivial point.  Some are extremely upset.  Some say
> that there is an error.  Some say libel.  Some are sane. Some are raving
> lunatics.  Some are in tears.
>
>
>>How much time does it take to deal with a single one of these queries,
>>in following up with the aggrieved person, buying them lunch or
>>whatever?
>
>
> It varies depending on the call.

Incidently...

Wikipedia is not only in english. And complaints or requests for
information also exist in other languages, thought not as numerous than
in english of course. I'll speak only of the french case then.

My phone number is on the net, along with Nicolas Weeger's one (the
president of the french chapter). It is necessary for proposals and
mostly press requests (when a hot topic goes on the net, phone calls
from press can be up to 5-10 people a day roughly).

In the past few weeks, I have observed an increasing number of phone
calls (I think because of traffic increase). Last week, it was roughly
about 10 phone calls per day.

Aside from days with a hot press topic, I would divide this 10 phone
calls on average as

5 phone calls are from people who believe they are calling another
office. They typed "red cross" on the net, found wikipedia article on
the red cross. They think they are at the red cross. They follow the
contact link. They find a phone number and they ask you for information
on the situation in Africa, or how to get publishing rights for a famous
author, or a seat for tonight in their favorite restaurant.
TODO : explain to them that no, this is not the office of president Bush
or their next sportwear shop, but Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
When you are in bad luck, they insult you for not giving you the address
they are looking for.
TODO : stay calm and remember you are trying to give free access to
information to everyone in the world. You may not remember the post
office number though.

1 phone call is from someone who perfectly understood she is at the
encyclopedia office, and want to know more about the cancer her sister
in law just died from. Usually, the call is during the night; this is
when people are scared by the dark and think of life and death.

1 phone call is from the press. Sometimes, they want YOU (neat !).
Sometimes they want Jimbo (I give Florida office). Sometimes they want a
spanish person (I succeeded to get interviewed instead last time though
:-)). Sometimes they want the Technical Director...
TODO : look franctically for the press interview partners page on
internal to get the *right* number. Or go to irc speedily (I recognise
Danny's speedy visits to irc as well to fix an issue :-))

1 phone call is someone looking for a job. Usually, the call comes from
Nigeria. The line quality is very bad. They are nice, but generally sticky.

1 phone call is a business proposition.
TODO : whilst you now feel like screaming, todo is to listen and tell
them to write to board AT wikimedia.org. At least, they usually call at
decent hours...

1 phone call is a complainer.
My current most active one is actually a person from a sect. He started
calling me during Christmas holidays. Last phone call was 3 days ago.
One day, he called 5 times.
The most peculiar characteristic about these ones is that they seem to
be very careful to call you at 2 in the morning, on week-ends or when
you just succeeded to put the baby to sleep.
TODO : good question... I am still wondering :-)

-------

Now, the unfortunate fact is that, in reality, my home is not an office.
The phone number is my personal phone number.
At 2am, I usually sleep.
And I am not paid to answer phone calls from lunatics :-)

Recently, I have removed my phone number from various places.

So, we have a long term issue, because I do not think phone calls will
go down. Quite the opposite. And some of them (press, complaints,
business proposals) are important to answer.

Note that many others choose to write to our email ticketing system on
OTRS. Today, they are 150 emails pending in the board AT wikimedia.org
queue. I go there every day to at least identify the *most* urgent
requests... and let all others pending. But each time some one is
complaining, it is necessary to distinguish what is reasonable complaint
  to what is pure raving... it takes time...

So yes, when those requests are pilling up, I suppose we are acting
rather quickly on wiki. Without explaining in length why we do this :-)
We hope those who know relay the information of *why* we remove an
article or delete a picture.

Ant


from_name: Mark Gallagher

body:
G'day Jimmy,

<many snips />
> Mostly, when people call us on the phone with a beef, quiet upset, they
> are not complaining about a neutral presentation of the facts.  They are
> upset because someone has written a one-sided hack job.   Often it is
> *not* libel, but just bad writing.

Indeed.  It's very easy to *say* "we're just in beta, some articles will
be crap", but when someone is being defamed *right now* I'm sure they
wouldn't find it at all easy to stand by for ~ five years and let the
Wiki Way do its magic ...

Heck, just ask those editors who've edited articles about themselves,
like Chip Berlet, Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters, or ... well ... Jimbo Wales.
  It's absurd to stand back and say "sure, the article was offensive,
but what about community consensus?!"

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

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body:
G'day Mark,

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>Tony Sidaway wrote:
[snip: who is a customer?]
>>>Perhaps that isn't quite the right word, but they're living people
>>>with whom, by choosing to write about them in our encyclopedia, we
>>>have initiated a relationship.
>>
>>Right.  It's probably a very "American" way of putting it.  "Good
>>customer service" in the case of Wikipedia should apply to everyone we
>>are in contact with in any way.
>
> Yes, but this absolutely cannot be done at the expense of our primary
> customers---people who are looking for information.

Like Hell!  We've got thousands of articles yet to be written.  The
other night I finally got 'round to writing [[Raymond Garrett]], which
I'd been planning to do for three months (and which, even now, isn't
really that good).  I recall that Wikipedia's been around since at least
late 2001 (if not before), and yet ... nobody has complained that "you
don't have any information about Raymond Garrett!"  Not once, in all
that time.  And, here's the thing: now that Raymond Garrett has an
article, he (and his colleague, Vasey Houghton) stands alone on the list
of MLCs from the 50s, 60s and 70s Who Have Wikipedia Articles.  There's
dozens more people from that era who deserve articles and don't have
them.  Somehow, however, nobody is rushing to write the articles, and
nobody is crying out in horror at the idea that some student might try
to look up information and be faced with a redlink.

Wikipedia is a work in progress.  It's in beta.  It's under
construction.  It really needs those 1995-esque yellow digger GIFs and
blinkenlights, as David Gerard likes to point out with a bit of a
humorous lilt in his pommy-sounding voice every time he appears on the
radio.  And if we can use this excuse to explain why such-and-such
article is poorly-written and full of lies and defamation, we can
*surely* use it to explain why such-and-such article doesn't exist, and
won't exist until someone gets around to writing it properly.

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Rich Morin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Where is the database Schema, etc?

body:
At 6:52 PM -0800 3/7/06, Rich Morin wrote:
> I'm looking for any documentation on the MySQL tables
> that MediaWiki uses.  Pointers would be appreciated.

Following Rob's hint, I looked in maintenance/tables.sql and
even worked up some pages (eg, User:RichMorin/MySQL_Tables).
Today, however, I ran across Help:Database_layout, which has
quite a lot of useful information.

Unfortunately, none of these documents spell out the foreign
key relationships (etc) used in the tables.  If anyone would
like to help me document these, please get in touch...

-r
--
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm            Rich Morin
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/resume     rdm at cfcl.com
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/weblog     +1 650-873-7841

Technical editing and writing, programming, and web development


body:
G'day Mark,

> Steve Bennett wrote:
>>On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>>>No, powerful people are *not* given more deference.  If anything, people
>>>who are *not* powerful are given more deference.
>>
>>Heh, true, the most deference ever given to the subject of an article
>>lives in a nursing home and hadn't even complained!
>
> In that case, one of the overtly stated reasons for removing the article
> was that it could bring Wikipedia bad publicity.  So, while the subject
> may not be powerful, apparently there was a fear that it would offend
> other people who are.

"If I twist and turn enough, I can make this sound like we're the brave
little fighter trying to take it to The Man!  Oh, Jimbo, why won't you
let us take it to The Man?"

Please, Mark.  You're quite capable of making bloody good arguments; we
all seen you!  But this is just sad.  It doesn't matter what Jimbo will
say, does it?  No matter what, he's the pawn of corporate aggression ...

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

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body:
G'day Steve,

> My only question is...who *is* Danny, and why is he blessed with
> surnamelessless?

If I recall correctly, he is indeed cursed with a real, live,
honest-to-goodness surname.

At least, he introduces himself as "Danny Isme".

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

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body:
G'day Neil,

> Given the history of Wikipedia, Jimbo's been the most hands-off project
> leader in the history of the Internet. Indeed, the community has been
> left to decide almost everything for itself; and this has proved, in
> almost all cases, to be the right thing to do.
>
> Perhaps some of the current problems, such as the userbox nonsense and
> general culture wars, are partly due to this -- without continual
> intervention from above, many people may be unaware, or have forgotten,
> that the Wikimedia Foundation and its corporate structure even exists
> (and, in some cases, may also have forgotten about the whole "Wikipedia
> is an encyclopedia" mission thing).

I recall a user --- but not, alas, his name --- who, in the midst of the
userbox thing, suddenly leapt out of his chair with shock and cried out,
"who the heck is this Jimbo person?"

Many noble Wikipedians took on the task of educating this poor fellow,
who, upon enlightenment, was horrified to discover that he had been
working for a tyrannical dictatorship all this time, and immediately
undertook to convince various admins, and Jimbo himself, to pattern the
website with notices to the effect of "WARNING!  IF YOU EDIT HERE, YOU
HATE FREEDOM!"  Electroshock treatment starts next Tuesday.

Wikipedia has not grown so big that one needs to be hands-off, or
ultra-respectful of policy, or abandon age-old techniques of editing and
interacting.  However, it *has* grown so big that some users can be here
for months without even knowing that we're an encyclopaedia, let alone
some of the fine detail.  It would be nice if there were any easier way
to educate them.

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

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body:
On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 07:06:20 -0500, you wrote:

>> Any corporate entity can close down overnight if the money dries up.
>> Lawsuits are a great way to get rid of large amounts of money very
>> fast - actually I wonder if organised crime has ever thought of that?
>> Set up a law office as a shell company and just watch the money
>> chugging down the drain :-)  But seriously...

>C'mon now, even Enron didn't close "overnight", and I would think the
>Wikimedia foundation has much more accurate books than they do.  If
>the foundation ran out of money, it would be clear a long time
>beforehand.  And even if they did run out of money, there are lots of
>servers that could be sold and/or used as collateral for loans to pay
>for the bandwidth while the encyclopedia gets copied to others and the
>"no, we're really broke, send us money or we disappear" message goes
>out).

You're rather missing the point, I think.  There are circumstances
under which the foundation could be shut down, and lawyers do exist,
so precautionary temporary blanking or deletion of disputed content is
not unreasonable.

The total resources devoted to ass-covering are negligible as a
proportion of the total costs, and the proportion of articles affected
is also negligible.

I think the whole thing is being blown out of all proportion.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] Phone calls

body:
On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 06:44:12 -0500, you wrote:

>That doesn't seem like a particularly scalable policy.

Do you have evidence that it needs to be?
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


list: textbook-l

from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject: [Textbook-l] major WikiBooks cleanup

body:
I only subscribed to the list the other day, so I didn't receive
Karl's original mail - I'm going to have to reply to two posts in one
mail - sorry about this. (See below)

On 3/12/06, michael_irwin at verizon.net <michael_irwin at verizon.net> wrote:
> Karl Wick wrote:
>
> >Help!
> >
> >Wikibooks in in disarray, and we need to work together to make it
> >presentable, if we really want anyone to ever use it.
> >
> >We have been working on the (English) main page for the last week, getting
> >rid of the bunches of dead links, organizing the information, and makin' it
> >look purty. But there is still work to be done there. Especially making sure
> >that all of the links that are there take people right to the information
> >that will be most helpful to them, and eliminating or consolidating all
> >other options.
> >
> >And there is still a lot of work to be done to the pages that are linked
> >from the front page, as these are the first and most important pages that
> >newcomers will find. (Especially Wikibooks:About; Welcome, newcomers;
> >Wikibooks:FAQ; etc.)
> >
> >It is time to begin to elect a couple of books that we can take as far as
> >possible, to ready them for actual real-world use. It is much better to have
> >one great example than have 1,000 bad, mediocre, or half-done examples.
> >
> >
> >

The Wikibooks front page looks good - nice work. I agree that it's
vital to have good welcoming pages and help pages, espcially in an
environment like a wiki, with which many people are still not
familiar. However, these aren't exactly books.Regarding "great
examples", is the only place to find these [[Book of the month]]? If
so, I think the voting section should be further down the page, and
some selected examples left at the top, to impress the curious
newcomer. (Is this the equivalent of the Featured Articles on WP?)
I'll leave someone who's more knowledgeable on Wikibooks content to
decide what they should be.

>Michael (Lazy quasar) wrote:
>
> Karl,  please be cautious in pruning.  We are finally beginning to see
> real experts and enthusiast show up to begin filling in the fractal
> knowledge base.  Unfortunately, a zeal to look professional to potential
> students may backfire.
>
> Is it better to attract two thousand highly qualified individuals to
> write high quality books or a million volunteer students from all walks
> of life to initialize Wikiversity?
>
> I favor the latter.  It is fine with me if material is moved away from
> the inital portals easy to find by newly arriving wiki neophytes but
> deleting or excessive pruning is inevitably going to lead to massive
> conflict as local owners of polished materials competitively discourage
> newcomers who threaten their dominance from intialization efforts of
> what everyone hopes will become a massive pivot point for human
> attention worldwide.
>
> Consider an embryo growing in the womb.  Excessive pruning of initial
> scaffolding to the discouragement of later arriving protein folders
> probably contributes to defect or abortion ??????
>
> I am not a biologist, physiolist, or medical person.  Perhaps we should
> seek JWSurf's assessment of you and I's inverted images of the best way
> to proceed?
>
> piles to integrate eventually  or high quality singular or low integer
> count correct complete final files?
>
> Can both paths coexist peacefully or could Wikibooks take one and
> Wikiversity support the other (among many others obviously).
>
> lazyquasar

I think you're right in as far as what will make a successful
Wikiversity community to begin with. We need enthusiasts, not
necessarily experts. If we can attract two thousand experts early on,
excellent. But they will start trickling in as long as we, as a
community, provide for and value theirs and others' diverse experience
and needs.

I don't really know what the rest of the mail is about, however :-)

Cormac

>
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
>


from_name: Patrick Collison

subject: [Wikitech-l] Back-Up of a wiki --> some problems with mysqldump

body:
The database schema is described in maintenance/tables.sql.

In your mysqldump command, the host argument has to specify a server
running a MySQL server (to which you must have access). You've
specified a HTTP URL. Assuming you can connect to the MySQL server at
wikinition.common-culture.net, you should instead use:

mysqldump --host=wikinition.common-culture.net --user=foo --
password=bar dbname

Of course, the username and password here refer to those for the
_MySQL account_, which is entirely separate from any wiki accounts.

Cheers,

-Patrick

On 11 Mar 2006, at 19:07, Franz wrote:

> Franz schrieb:
>
>> I own the WikiSysop-Account of this wiki:
>> http://wikinition.common-culture.net/index.php/Hauptseite
>>
>> I would like to make a Back-Up of it.
>>
>> I've got this command:
>> mysqldump --host=hostname --user=username --password=userpassword
>> --opt
>> name-of-database
>>
>> I've put in:
>> mysqldump --host="http://wikinition.common-culture.net/index.php/
>> Hauptseite"
>> --user="WikiSysop"
>> --password="mypwd"
>> --opt all-databases
>>
>> nothing happens. I get a message how to use mysqldump. Any help?
>
> Does maybe someone know a site where all surrounding structurs of wiki
> are described? how to acces them. I've got primary interest for the
> databases.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:
> G'day Florence,
>
>
>>Gordon Joly wrote:
>>
>>
>>>BCNU.... and  YMMV as always,
>>
>>Talking about inclusive and exclusive... what do BCNU and YMMV mean ?
>
>
> BCNU = "I'll be seeing you".  You may find it amusing to imagine Gordon
> with his thumb and index finger pressed together to form a circle, which
> is in turn held over his eye to emphasise the "seeing".  Then again, you
> might not.
>
> YMMV = "Your Mileage May Vary", a totally outdated saying unfit for such
> modern marvels as you and I.  The *real* abbreviation ought to be YKMASD.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> --
> Mark Gallagher
> "What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
> - Danger Mouse

?!?!?

Well, I found this one : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Your_mileage_may_vary

http://www.kcmetro.cc.mo.us/~crosby/IllBeSeeingYou.html ???

/me goes banana


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan Wikipedia

body:
Yes, I have.

And why don't YOU champion their rights instead of fighting for the
deletion of a Wikipedia?

Mark

On 12/03/06, Jacky PB <dpotop1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Indeed, Mark. Why don't you champion the rights of actual minorities (such as the roms) instead of promoting conservative stalinist ideas with your mo.wiki?
>
> Ceterum censeo, you still haven't provided the list of Moldovan users supporting your hobby mo.wiki.
>
> Dpotop
>
>
> Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote: I think it's more accurate to say that far too much energy has been
> put into this case to attempt to NOT cater for a use.
>
> All of the energy that has been focused on closing mowiki would have
> been much more constructive if focused on OPENING WPs for minority
> languages of Romania.
>
> Mark
>
> On 12/03/06, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline)  wrote:
> > On 3/12/06, Mark Williamson  wrote:
> > >
> > > If you agree that minorities should be catered to, but you don't
> > > believe ro.wiki is the appropriate location, then what IS the
> > > appropriate location?
> > >
> > > Mark
> >
> >
> > A subdomain, such as mo-cyr:.
> > At the moment, however, there doesn't seem to be the demand for that.
> > But I think far too much energy has been put into this case to cater for a
> > use that at the moment isn't even there, when other Wikipedias, such as
> > Romany, which have active users willing to contribute and many potential
> > readers, sit in waiting.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Mail
> Bring photos to life! New PhotoMail  makes sharing a breeze.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> On 3/11/06, Carl F?rstenberg <azatoth at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I can understand your point of view. But lets take an hypothetically
>>example: What if George W. Bush called and required that the article about
>>him is to be removed indefinently, would that be possible?
>
>
> Oh for fuck's sake.  Is that a serious question, or is this thread to
> descend to naked trolling?
>

Tony, please. You know that it's much more fun wearing lace.

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

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body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:
> G'day Neil,
>
>
>>Given the history of Wikipedia, Jimbo's been the most hands-off project
>>leader in the history of the Internet. Indeed, the community has been
>>left to decide almost everything for itself; and this has proved, in
>>almost all cases, to be the right thing to do.
>>
>>Perhaps some of the current problems, such as the userbox nonsense and
>>general culture wars, are partly due to this -- without continual
>>intervention from above, many people may be unaware, or have forgotten,
>>that the Wikimedia Foundation and its corporate structure even exists
>>(and, in some cases, may also have forgotten about the whole "Wikipedia
>>is an encyclopedia" mission thing).
>
>
> I recall a user --- but not, alas, his name --- who, in the midst of the
> userbox thing, suddenly leapt out of his chair with shock and cried out,
> "who the heck is this Jimbo person?"
>
> Many noble Wikipedians took on the task of educating this poor fellow,
> who, upon enlightenment, was horrified to discover that he had been
> working for a tyrannical dictatorship all this time, and immediately
> undertook to convince various admins, and Jimbo himself, to pattern the
> website with notices to the effect of "WARNING!  IF YOU EDIT HERE, YOU
> HATE FREEDOM!"  Electroshock treatment starts next Tuesday.
>

That's not the one who asked "What is Wikipedia running on? ASP? Oracle?
Slashdot.org says that MySQL is slow..."

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

subject: [WikiEN-l] I am Danny

body:
Daniel R. Tobias wrote:

>Doesn't the foundation give you a professional e-mail address on
>their server?
>
>
It does, but seeing as how it's the weekend, perhaps you can figure out
why he might not be posting from it?

--Michael Snow


from_name: Snowspinner

body:
On Mar 12, 2006, at 1:30 PM, geni wrote:

> On 3/12/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
>> Sean Barrett wrote:
>>> Please permit me to call attention to
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/
>>> Natural_circulation
>>>
>>>
>>> Full disclosure: I am the article's originator, and apparently a
>>> mortal
>>> threat to national security.
>>
>> I blocked the person who nominated this article for deletion for 24
>> hours for being stupid.
>>
>> Chris
>
> Pulled. Stupidity is not a valid reason for blocking.

I respectfully disagree.

-Phil


from_name: Franz

body:
Patrick Collison schrieb:
> The database schema is described in maintenance/tables.sql.
>
> In your mysqldump command, the host argument has to specify a server
> running a MySQL server (to which you must have access). You've
> specified a HTTP URL. Assuming you can connect to the MySQL server at
> wikinition.common-culture.net, you should instead use:
>
> mysqldump --host=wikinition.common-culture.net --user=foo --
> password=bar dbname
>
> Of course, the username and password here refer to those for the
> _MySQL account_, which is entirely separate from any wiki accounts.

thank you so far. I think the problem is the _MySQL account_

Somebody else set up the wiki for me.


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] I am Danny

body:
On 11 Mar 2006 at 19:45, daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

> My name is Danny Wool. I am 42 years old. I am one of two and a half
> employees of the Foundation--the others are Brion, who deals with hardware and
> software issues, and Monica, an intern, who assists me in the
> office.

Her last name isn't Lewinsky, by any chance?  :-)

Doesn't the foundation give you a professional e-mail address on
their server, so you can post without disclosing that you're a (gag,
vomit, retch) AOLer?

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Phone calls

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 06:44:12 -0500, you wrote:
>
>
>>That doesn't seem like a particularly scalable policy.
>
>
> Do you have evidence that it needs to be?
> Guy (JzG)

Yes.
Sleep patterns.

And, secretary costs.

Ant


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

Steve Bennett stated for the record:

> On 3/12/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>
>>I agree with geni (world to end soon; film at 11): Eclectick should not
>>be blocked.  He's astoundingly ignorant and way too aggressive, but I
>>still hope that careful raps with the cluebat will straighten him out.
>
>
> Me2. I'm not an admin, and I have a somewhat utopian view of how they
> should behave. But I would be cut as hell to be blocked for pure
> stupidity or ignorance. Unless the guy showed wilful disregard for
> procedure (as opposed to thinking that AfD was a good place to deal
> with this stuff), or was a repeat offender, or refused to head
> warnings etc etc.
>
> I guess I don't like blocking. And I feel like people deserve a "you
> will be blocked" warning at least. But I suppose adminning is
> frustrating work too. So...(conclusion at 12:30, straight after Sean's
> film).
>
> Steve

We interrupt these messages for an important bulletin: clueness seems to
have transpired!  Please stand down for the moment, while still keeping
an eye on him and the cluebats ready.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Power corrupts. Absolute power is really cool.
 sean at epoptic.org |
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from_name: Peter De Zutter

body:
If you use --opt all-databases, you'ld better use root as user with
mysqldump. The dbuser created during install/config of mediawiki hasn't the
rights to use other databases. And wikisysop is prolly not your dbuser,
default mediawiki uses wikiuser (Correct me if I'am wrong list). You can
always look in LocalSettings.php for the db user and db pass.
Greetz
Peter

On 3/12/06, Franz <franzlinux at gmx.de> wrote:
>
> Patrick Collison schrieb:
> > The database schema is described in maintenance/tables.sql.
> >
> > In your mysqldump command, the host argument has to specify a server
> > running a MySQL server (to which you must have access). You've
> > specified a HTTP URL. Assuming you can connect to the MySQL server at
> > wikinition.common-culture.net, you should instead use:
> >
> > mysqldump --host=wikinition.common-culture.net --user=foo --
> > password=bar dbname
> >
> > Of course, the username and password here refer to those for the
> > _MySQL account_, which is entirely separate from any wiki accounts.
>
> thank you so far. I think the problem is the _MySQL account_
>
> Somebody else set up the wiki for me.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
I have plenty of common sense,
I just choose to ignore it.
--- Calvin


body:
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Steve Bennett stated for the record:

> On 3/12/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
>>My point was that such a shutdown wouldn't happen overnight (unless
>>maybe you pissed off the executive branch of the government enough).
>
>
> You have obviously never seen provisional liquidators or policemen
> with warrants in action. There are lots of ways an organisation like
> Wikimedia Foundation could be shut down a lot faster than overnight.
> Hopefully none of them will happen :)
>
> Tip for imagination: Policeman with warrant walks in, says "This place
> is shutting down in the next five minutes, and those servers over
> there are coming with me".
>
> Steve

"Yessir.  Right away, sir!  Uh, which servers in particular, sir?  This
warrant specifies the Wikipedia servers, and some of these machines host
other sites."

But both by and large you are right.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Power corrupts. Absolute power is really cool.
 sean at epoptic.org |
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from_name: Jesse W

body:
> Steve Bennett stated for the record:
>
>> On 3/12/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>>
>>> My point was that such a shutdown wouldn't happen overnight (unless
>>> maybe you pissed off the executive branch of the government enough).
>>
>> You have obviously never seen provisional liquidators or policemen
>> with warrants in action. There are lots of ways an organisation like
>> Wikimedia Foundation could be shut down a lot faster than overnight.
>> Hopefully none of them will happen :)
>>
>> Tip for imagination: Policeman with warrant walks in, says "This place
>> is shutting down in the next five minutes, and those servers over
>> there are coming with me".

This might be a violation of WP:BEANS, but...

If that happened, this would be my understanding of the fallback plan:

#A quick topic change on #wikipedia (and #wikipedia-overflow ), along
with a post by one of the Foundation members (unless the policeman also
had a gag order, which is possible)
#A massive influx of people to http://wikiinfo.org (or whatever it's
called - the fork run by one of our Arbitrators)
#Various wiki pages set up there to discuss new hosting, funding, etc.

#wikipedia could not be taken down unless the policeman was able to get
a warrant to take down the entire freenode network, which would set up
such massive shock waves that the removal of Wikipedia would be a small
thing - freenode hosts a *lot* of projects.

While it might be possible to do a coordinated takedown of the main
editable forks of Wikipedia, this would be considerably more trouble.

Also, don't we have database master replication across international
borders, specifically, for the toolserver?  If we're replicating the
database from Florida to Germany, even if the servers in St. Petersberg
were taken down, wouldn't the toolserver still work?  And as some of
our admins are not residents of the USA, couldn't they still work with
the remaining servers to reconstruct a non-US based system?  Or are we
considering Interpol's involvement, and a coordinated set of policemen
in multiple countries?

Just pointing this out,
	Jesse Weinstein


body:
On Mar 12, 2006, at 1:45 PM, Sean Barrett wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> geni stated for the record:
>
>> On 3/12/06, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I respectfully disagree.
>>>
>>> -Phil
>>
>>
>> Which policy allows admins to block for stupidity?
>> --
>> geni
>
> "Don't be a Dick"?
>
> I agree with geni (world to end soon; film at 11): Eclectick should
> not
> be blocked.  He's astoundingly ignorant and way too aggressive, but I
> still hope that careful raps with the cluebat will straighten him out.

I agree. Which is why I'm puzzled at pulling the cluebat back after
it has been laid down.

-Phil


from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] major WikiBooks cleanup

body:
For the record, I myself am just a student (well, graduated now.) I'd
welcome constructive contributions from everyone who is able to make them.

And no plans for any pruning, just looking for the way to present the
available information in the way where the greatest number of people can
find meaningful material as painlessly as possible. It's about focus.

Karl

On 3/12/06, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I only subscribed to the list the other day, so I didn't receive
> Karl's original mail - I'm going to have to reply to two posts in one
> mail - sorry about this. (See below)
>
> On 3/12/06, michael_irwin at verizon.net <michael_irwin at verizon.net> wrote:
> > Karl Wick wrote:
> >
> > >Help!
> > >
> > >Wikibooks in in disarray, and we need to work together to make it
> > >presentable, if we really want anyone to ever use it.
> > >
> > >We have been working on the (English) main page for the last week,
> getting
> > >rid of the bunches of dead links, organizing the information, and
> makin' it
> > >look purty. But there is still work to be done there. Especially making
> sure
> > >that all of the links that are there take people right to the
> information
> > >that will be most helpful to them, and eliminating or consolidating all
> > >other options.
> > >
> > >And there is still a lot of work to be done to the pages that are
> linked
> > >from the front page, as these are the first and most important pages
> that
> > >newcomers will find. (Especially Wikibooks:About; Welcome, newcomers;
> > >Wikibooks:FAQ; etc.)
> > >
> > >It is time to begin to elect a couple of books that we can take as far
> as
> > >possible, to ready them for actual real-world use. It is much better to
> have
> > >one great example than have 1,000 bad, mediocre, or half-done examples.
> > >
> > >
> > >
>
> The Wikibooks front page looks good - nice work. I agree that it's
> vital to have good welcoming pages and help pages, espcially in an
> environment like a wiki, with which many people are still not
> familiar. However, these aren't exactly books.Regarding "great
> examples", is the only place to find these [[Book of the month]]? If
> so, I think the voting section should be further down the page, and
> some selected examples left at the top, to impress the curious
> newcomer. (Is this the equivalent of the Featured Articles on WP?)
> I'll leave someone who's more knowledgeable on Wikibooks content to
> decide what they should be.
>
> >Michael (Lazy quasar) wrote:
> >
> > Karl,  please be cautious in pruning.  We are finally beginning to see
> > real experts and enthusiast show up to begin filling in the fractal
> > knowledge base.  Unfortunately, a zeal to look professional to potential
> > students may backfire.
> >
> > Is it better to attract two thousand highly qualified individuals to
> > write high quality books or a million volunteer students from all walks
> > of life to initialize Wikiversity?
> >
> > I favor the latter.  It is fine with me if material is moved away from
> > the inital portals easy to find by newly arriving wiki neophytes but
> > deleting or excessive pruning is inevitably going to lead to massive
> > conflict as local owners of polished materials competitively discourage
> > newcomers who threaten their dominance from intialization efforts of
> > what everyone hopes will become a massive pivot point for human
> > attention worldwide.
> >
> > Consider an embryo growing in the womb.  Excessive pruning of initial
> > scaffolding to the discouragement of later arriving protein folders
> > probably contributes to defect or abortion ??????
> >
> > I am not a biologist, physiolist, or medical person.  Perhaps we should
> > seek JWSurf's assessment of you and I's inverted images of the best way
> > to proceed?
> >
> > piles to integrate eventually  or high quality singular or low integer
> > count correct complete final files?
> >
> > Can both paths coexist peacefully or could Wikibooks take one and
> > Wikiversity support the other (among many others obviously).
> >
> > lazyquasar
>
>
> I think you're right in as far as what will make a successful
> Wikiversity community to begin with. We need enthusiasts, not
> necessarily experts. If we can attract two thousand experts early on,
> excellent. But they will start trickling in as long as we, as a
> community, provide for and value theirs and others' diverse experience
> and needs.
>
> I don't really know what the rest of the mail is about, however :-)
>
> Cormac
>
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Textbook-l mailing list
> > Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
>


body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>On 3/12/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Delirium wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I didn't say anything quite that extreme, and contrary to Jimbo's
>>>assumption, I'm not particularly angry about it either.  I'm just
>>>worried that the current policy of letting some people go "over the
>>>head" of editors by taking things to the Wikimedia Foundation, which
>>>then deals with them in a top-down manner, will introduce systemic bias
>>>into the encyclopedia.
>>>
>>>
>>Current policy does not let anyone go "over the head" of editors and the
>>Wikimedia Foundation does not deal with them in a "top-down manner".
>>
>>
>>> This leads to some articles having different policies
>>>than other articles,
>>>
>>>
>>This is false.
>>
>>
>Now I'm confused. Can you tell me which of the following is inaccurate
>/ not true?
>
>1. Calling the Foundation to complain about Wikipedia is not an
>officially recognized way to change content on Wikipedia.
>
>
This is the inaccurate statement. Contacting the Wikimedia Foundation
with a complaint has been officially recognized as a way to address
inappropriate content for as long as the organization has existed.
That's why we have a designated agent, for example, as required by law.

>2. Calls to the Foundation complaining about Wikipedia content have led to
>a) edits to Wikipedia by Foundation staff
>b) Blanking of Wikipedia articles by Foundation staff
>c) Protection of Wikipedia articles by Foundation staff
>d) Various combinations of the above
>
>
Also, deletion of Wikipedia articles as well as images and other files.
I don't see a problem with this. Do you expect the Foundation to not do
anything about legitimate complaints? It has to take action regarding
such complaints, otherwise it loses any legal protection it has against
being liable for the content on Wikipedia.

>3. Actions listed above by Foundation staff are sometimes marked by
>WP:OFFICE and any interference with such actions by any editor can
>lead to revokation of editing/sysop rights.
>
>
Again, why is there a problem? Violations of plenty of other policies
can lead to revocation of editing or administrative *privileges*.

>If that is above, it seems like a reasonable interpretation of the
>above is that people can go over the head of editors by taking things
>to the Wikimedia Foundation, which then deals with them in a top-down
>manner, with some articles having different "de facto" policies than
>other articles.
>
There seem to be a lot of terms being used lately for rhetorical effect
without much attention paid to what they really mean. To "go over the
head" of someone implies that you bypass normal channels. In many cases,
including for example Jack Thompson, they aren't bypassing the editors,
they actually tried dealing with the editors and that didn't solve the
problem. At the same time, we have a policy of "No legal threats" on
Wikipedia, which in fact specifically directs you to the Wikimedia
Foundation if you want to raise such issues. So when people contact the
Foundation, they are following the same policies as everyone else, it's
just that this particular policy doesn't often come into play.

Also, "top-down" is a management style - though you would never know
that from Wikipedia, where it redirects to an article about software
design, which I trust is not what you were referring to. In management
terms, a top-down system is one where the executives make all the key
decisions themselves, plan how the work will be done, and give
assignments to their subordinates, who have little discretion or input
in the work they do. If anyone can tell me when they were given an
assignment on Wikipedia in which they lacked input or discretion, I'd be
happy to hear about it.

--Michael Snow


body:
Delirium wrote:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> Delirium wrote:
>>
>>> I didn't say anything quite that extreme, and contrary to Jimbo's
>>> assumption, I'm not particularly angry about it either.  I'm just
>>> worried that the current policy of letting some people go "over the
>>> head" of editors by taking things to the Wikimedia Foundation, which
>>> then deals with them in a top-down manner, will introduce systemic
>>> bias into the encyclopedia.
>>
>> Current policy does not let anyone go "over the head" of editors and the
>> Wikimedia Foundation does not deal with them in a "top-down manner".
>>
>>> This leads to some articles having different policies than other
>>> articles,
>>
>> This is false.
>>
> Come on Jimbo, you're better than this.  The email quoted above just
> consists of "ur wrong", with no suggestions as to why.  I must confess
> to being as confused as The Cunctator as to what you mean by such
> blatantly counterfactual assertions.

I think that would be part of why Jimbo followed his post with an
apology for being snippy and blunt.

> 1) How is someone calling up the Wikimedia Foundation and getting a
> page protected not going "over the head" of editors, and not acting in
> a "top-down manner"?  Even if justified in some cases, it's clearly
> doing just that.

See my previous message for an explanation of why these terms are not
good descriptions of the situation. They're obviously rhetorically
convenient, but if the objective here is to get Jimbo and the Foundation
to agree to adopt your rhetoric, it should be clear that no good can
come of that kind of discussion.

> 2) You have explicitly stated that we ought to treat articles on
> living people in a different manner than other articles.  Isn't that
> "some articles having different policies than other articles"?

I don't think that general statements about various groups of articles
amounts to having different policies applied to those groups. Saying
that we should take special care with articles on living people, or
controversial topics like the Middle East, is not a policy as such, it's
a policy consideration. Is there actually a policy that applies
differently to articles on living people?

--Michael Snow


from_name: Andy Rabagliati

subject: [Wikipedia-l] nameservers for wikipedia

body:
;en.wikipedia.org.              IN      A

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
wikipedia.org.          86400   IN      NS      ns2.wikimedia.org.
wikipedia.org.          86400   IN      NS      ns1.wikimedia.org.
wikipedia.org.          86400   IN      NS      ns0.wikimedia.org.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns2.wikimedia.org.      86400   IN      A       145.97.39.158
ns1.wikimedia.org.      86400   IN      A       207.142.131.208
ns0.wikimedia.org.      86400   IN      A       207.142.131.207

% dig @207.142.131.207 en.wikipedia.org

; <<>> DiG 9.3.2 <<>> @207.142.131.207 en.wikipedia.org
; (1 server found)
;; global options:  printcmd
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

Folks,

  wikipedia has been inaccessible from South Africa since Friday.

  None of the listed nameservers will respond for en.wikipedia.org.

  Can someone check what is up ?

Cheers,    Andy!


subject: [Textbook-l] IRC chat client?

body:
Anyone have a recommendation of a decent freeware IRC client I can use on my
Windows XP (sorry) laptop?

Thanks in advance,
Karl


body:
On 12 Mar 2006 at 13:31, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mar 12, 2006, at 1:30 PM, geni wrote:
>
> > Pulled. Stupidity is not a valid reason for blocking.
>
> I respectfully disagree.

Maybe we should have an IQ test score as a required criterion for
admission as a Wikipedia editor, a la Mensa?

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Hobby wikipedia policy

body:
That's already been proposed, and it seems like a good idea.

The only troubling part of your proposal is that data could be stored
in the database in Cyrillic, which I think might anger some Romanians.

Mark

On 12/03/06, Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> Caroline Ford wrote:
> > There seems to be no way that Romanians will tolerate cyrillic language
> > (even via a software setting) on their wikipedia.
> >
> > Caroline/secretlondon
> >
> Okay, then.
>
> Let the ro: and mo: Wikipedias be interfaces to the same underlying
> data, then but let the Wikipedia be a Cyrillic-free zone, both in terms
> of content and interface, and mo: Wikipedia be the same as ro:, only
> with interface and content optionally presented in Cyrillic, with
> two-way transliteration for editing, as per the Chinese and Serbian
> Wikipedias.
>
> -- Neil
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 3/12/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Delirium wrote:
> > I didn't say anything quite that extreme, and contrary to Jimbo's
> > assumption, I'm not particularly angry about it either.  I'm just
> > worried that the current policy of letting some people go "over the
> > head" of editors by taking things to the Wikimedia Foundation, which
> > then deals with them in a top-down manner, will introduce systemic bias
> > into the encyclopedia.
>
> Current policy does not let anyone go "over the head" of editors and the
> Wikimedia Foundation does not deal with them in a "top-down manner".
>
> >  This leads to some articles having different policies
> > than other articles,
>
> This is false.
>
Now I'm confused. Can you tell me which of the following is inaccurate
/ not true?

1. Calling the Foundation to complain about Wikipedia is not an
officially recognized way to change content on Wikipedia.

2. Calls to the Foundation complaining about Wikipedia content have led to
a) edits to Wikipedia by Foundation staff
b) Blanking of Wikipedia articles by Foundation staff
c) Protection of Wikipedia articles by Foundation staff
d) Various combinations of the above

3. Actions listed above by Foundation staff are sometimes marked by
WP:OFFICE and any interference with such actions by any editor can
lead to revokation of editing/sysop rights.

If that is above, it seems like a reasonable interpretation of the
above is that people can go over the head of editors by taking things
to the Wikimedia Foundation, which then deals with them in a top-down
manner, with some articles having different "de facto" policies than
other articles. That's obviously an *interpretation*, but I have
trouble seeing how it's false.


body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>The designated agent is there for takedown notices of copyright
>infringements, and they have to be in writing, not over the phone.
>
>
Do you think that if the Wikimedia Foundation gets a phone call from
someone complaining about copyright infringement, they're going to say,
"Sorry, we're not going to do anything unless you send it in writing
with all the elements required for a takedown notice"?

>Also, Jimmy has stated that most of the problems that people are
>complaining over are not legal problems, but inaccuracy problems.
>
>
The two are not neatly separable. Fundamentally, defamation cases
involve inaccuracy problems.

>So, if I find an inaccuracy in Wikipedia, should I call up Danny?
>
No, you should edit the article, unless the article is actually about you.

--Michael Snow


body:
Delirium wrote:

>Michael Snow wrote:
>
>>/There seem to be a lot of terms being used lately for rhetorical effect
>/>/without much attention paid to what they really mean. To "go over the
>/>/head" of someone implies that you bypass normal channels. In many cases,
>/>/including for example Jack Thompson, they aren't bypassing the editors,
>/>/they actually tried dealing with the editors and that didn't solve the
>/>/problem.
>/>/
>/So isn't that "going over the heads" of editors then?  They tried
>dealing through the normal channels, and it didn't come out to their
>liking, so they decided to change tack and go over the editors' heads
>instead, getting the Foundation to do something about it.
>
>>/Also, "top-down" is a management style - though you would never know
>/>/that from Wikipedia, where it redirects to an article about software
>/>/design, which I trust is not what you were referring to. In management
>/>/terms, a top-down system is one where the executives make all the key
>/>/decisions themselves, plan how the work will be done, and give
>/>/assignments to their subordinates, who have little discretion or input
>/>/in the work they do. If anyone can tell me when they were given an
>/>/assignment on Wikipedia in which they lacked input or discretion, I'd be
>/>/happy to hear about it.
>/>/
>/>/
>/Isn't a directive from the front office saying "nobody can edit this
>page" a top-down directive?  How else would you describe it?
>
Why does it need to be described in the first place? For rhetorical
purposes, as is clear by the choice of description you're applying.

>  Nobody is
>saying that Wikipedia *as a whole* operates in a top-down manner, just
>that some cases are being dealt with in a top-down manner.
>
>
Implicit in much of the rhetoric is the notion that the "top-down"
management will spread and change the way Wikipedia as a whole operates.
If you're purely concerned about the existing cases, then how do you
think they should be approached?

>I can see why it's rhetorically convenient to use weasel words to
>describe the situation, but I don't see why plain English is inappropriate.
>
I've already pointed out why these descriptions are rhetorical in
character. Rhetoric, as a virtually inherent part of its nature, is not
plain English. We're all using rhetoric here, you and me both, and the
rest of the people in this discussion as well.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Delirium

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Delirium wrote:
>
>
>>I didn't say anything quite that extreme, and contrary to Jimbo's
>>assumption, I'm not particularly angry about it either.  I'm just
>>worried that the current policy of letting some people go "over the
>>head" of editors by taking things to the Wikimedia Foundation, which
>>then deals with them in a top-down manner, will introduce systemic bias
>>into the encyclopedia.
>>
>>
>
>Current policy does not let anyone go "over the head" of editors and the
>Wikimedia Foundation does not deal with them in a "top-down manner".
>
>
>
>> This leads to some articles having different policies
>>than other articles,
>>
>>
>
>This is false.
>
>
Come on Jimbo, you're better than this.  The email quoted above just
consists of "ur wrong", with no suggestions as to why.  I must confess
to being as confused as The Cunctator as to what you mean by such
blatantly counterfactual assertions.

1) How is someone calling up the Wikimedia Foundation and getting a page
protected not going "over the head" of editors, and not acting in a
"top-down manner"?  Even if justified in some cases, it's clearly doing
just that.

2) You have explicitly stated that we ought to treat articles on living
people in a different manner than other articles.  Isn't that "some
articles having different policies than other articles"?

-Mark


body:
On 3/12/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
> 1. Calling the Foundation to complain about Wikipedia is not an
> officially recognized way to change content on Wikipedia.
>
> 2. Calls to the Foundation complaining about Wikipedia content have led to
> a) edits to Wikipedia by Foundation staff
> b) Blanking of Wikipedia articles by Foundation staff
> c) Protection of Wikipedia articles by Foundation staff
> d) Various combinations of the above
>
> 3. Actions listed above by Foundation staff are sometimes marked by
> WP:OFFICE and any interference with such actions by any editor can
> lead to revokation of editing/sysop rights.
>
> If that is above, it seems like a reasonable interpretation of the
> above is that people can go over the head of editors by taking things
> to the Wikimedia Foundation, which then deals with them in a top-down
> manner, with some articles having different "de facto" policies than
> other articles. That's obviously an *interpretation*, but I have
> trouble seeing how it's false.
>
Forgot to add the connection between the above points and the "some
articles having different policies" -- it's because appealing to the
Foundation is not official policy, but is an unwritten and semi-secret
method for getting changes to happen, only those who know about that
avenue (or figure it out) get to use it -- creating the effective
policy difference.


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Rich Morin wrote:
> Following Rob's hint, I looked in maintenance/tables.sql and
> even worked up some pages (eg, User:RichMorin/MySQL_Tables).
> Today, however, I ran across Help:Database_layout, which has
> quite a lot of useful information.
>
> Unfortunately, none of these documents spell out the foreign
> key relationships (etc) used in the tables.  If anyone would
> like to help me document these, please get in touch...

maintenance/tables.sql is heavily commented and does spell out foreign key
relationships.

We've already provided documentation, so if you have specific questions after
reading these documents, you'll need to go ahead and actually ask them... :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Hobby wikipedia policy

body:
Jacky PB wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I feel that I need a clarification on wikipedia policies related to hobby wikipedias.
>
> Consider the case of the Moldovan language. The Moldovan wikipedia has been created and administered by Mark Williamson, which does not speak the language correctly. He copied (and replaced the latin script with cyrillic) a lot articles from ro.wiki, just to create what looks like a viable wikipedia. I presume exotic languages are a hobby for him, I have no problem with this. Even originality is not a problem, given that the purpose of wiki is to inform.
>
> However, the Moldovan language is not extinct, so the oppinion of native speakers should count. The problem being that no Moldovan-speaking wikipedia user supports Mark Williamson. And when I say no user, I really mean that there is none. Actually, most Moldovan users dislike the existence of this wiki, because the Moldovan language is actually a creation of the Soviet authorities. To support this affirmation, note that there is no registered Moldovan user on en.wiki, meta.wiki, and not even mo.wiki. :)
>
> So, given that this hobby wikipedia actually hurts the very people it was intended  to help, is it normal that it remains online? I remind you once more that no actual Moldovan supports it. By Moldovan speaker I mean a person able to
> write Moldovan correctly.
>
> I mean, if wikipedia policy is to grant users hobby wikipedias, Mark should get his, but maybe not using the official ISO code.
>
> Yours,
> Dpotop
>
> PS: I am sorry for bugging you with this, but some things discussed here must be clearly said.
>
>
>

In the apparent absence of community support for mo:, and after watching
the many comments on this list, I think the best short-term option is to
start work on the transliteration software settings.

Then we can lock, rather than delete, the mo: Wikipedia, with a note
saying why, what the planned changes are, and when they are expected to
be carried out.

Then, when the automated transliteration software has been properly
configured to support both Cyrillic and Latin scripts in both the
content and user interface, the content of mo: can be deleted, perhaps
after a period of a few weeks to allow for any valuable content to be
archived, and transferred if necessary.

Whether mo: should simply redirect, or whether it should (for example)
change the user interface or default language settings, would then be a
matter for the Moldovan community.  Liaison between the larger community
and as many actual Moldovan speakers as possible would be very useful in
getting this process going, and would also be useful in expanding the
Moldovan Wikipedia community.

Given that someone has (I believe) already written some
language-appropriate Latin <-> Cyrillic transliteration code, and given
MediaWiki's support for automated transliteration (eg. in the
traditional and modern Chinese Wikipedias), the only problem is the will
to get the transliteration code set up.

If I've followed the debate properly, I hope this would be a win for
both Latin and Cyrillic users.

Perhaps Jacky and Mark would like to help with getting the
transliteration tables ready?

-- Neil


from_name: Will "Sceptre" Noble

body:
Mr Barrett, if you could look into this light for me *puts sunglasses on*

On 3/12/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Please permit me to call attention to
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Natural_circulation
>
>
> Full disclosure: I am the article's originator, and apparently a mortal
> threat to national security.
>
> - --
> Sean Barrett     | Power corrupts. Absolute power is really cool.
> sean at epoptic.org |
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFEFGPgMAt1wyd9d+URAgmPAJ4uwXZGrCuPB+jxMP3wV2IikuJyIQCggWjH
> ngsu+h+d8kE+U4xGG/iojv8=
> =jjW3
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
-Sceptre
http://tintower.co.uk


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 3/12/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> I thought there was no policy that articles on living people were
> treated any differently.

I guess WP:AUTO means that articles on living people may be treated
differently, if only because dead people rarely edit their own
articles.

-Matt


from_name: Caroline Ford

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Hobby wikipedia policy

body:
There seems to be no way that Romanians will tolerate cyrillic language
(even via a software setting) on their wikipedia.

Caroline/secretlondon

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Neil Harris
Sent: 12 March 2006 18:08
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Hobby wikipedia policy

Jacky PB wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I feel that I need a clarification on wikipedia policies related to hobby
wikipedias.
>
> Consider the case of the Moldovan language. The Moldovan wikipedia has
been created and administered by Mark Williamson, which does not speak the
language correctly. He copied (and replaced the latin script with cyrillic)
a lot articles from ro.wiki, just to create what looks like a viable
wikipedia. I presume exotic languages are a hobby for him, I have no problem
with this. Even originality is not a problem, given that the purpose of wiki
is to inform.
>
> However, the Moldovan language is not extinct, so the oppinion of
> native speakers should count. The problem being that no
> Moldovan-speaking wikipedia user supports Mark Williamson. And when I
> say no user, I really mean that there is none. Actually, most Moldovan
> users dislike the existence of this wiki, because the Moldovan
> language is actually a creation of the Soviet authorities. To support
> this affirmation, note that there is no registered Moldovan user on
> en.wiki, meta.wiki, and not even mo.wiki. :)
>
> So, given that this hobby wikipedia actually hurts the very people it
> was intended  to help, is it normal that it remains online? I remind you
once more that no actual Moldovan supports it. By Moldovan speaker I mean a
person able to write Moldovan correctly.
>
> I mean, if wikipedia policy is to grant users hobby wikipedias, Mark
should get his, but maybe not using the official ISO code.
>
> Yours,
> Dpotop
>
> PS: I am sorry for bugging you with this, but some things discussed here
must be clearly said.
>
>
>

In the apparent absence of community support for mo:, and after watching the
many comments on this list, I think the best short-term option is to start
work on the transliteration software settings.

Then we can lock, rather than delete, the mo: Wikipedia, with a note saying
why, what the planned changes are, and when they are expected to be carried
out.

Then, when the automated transliteration software has been properly
configured to support both Cyrillic and Latin scripts in both the content
and user interface, the content of mo: can be deleted, perhaps after a
period of a few weeks to allow for any valuable content to be archived, and
transferred if necessary.

Whether mo: should simply redirect, or whether it should (for example)
change the user interface or default language settings, would then be a
matter for the Moldovan community.  Liaison between the larger community and
as many actual Moldovan speakers as possible would be very useful in getting
this process going, and would also be useful in expanding the Moldovan
Wikipedia community.

Given that someone has (I believe) already written some language-appropriate
Latin <-> Cyrillic transliteration code, and given MediaWiki's support for
automated transliteration (eg. in the traditional and modern Chinese
Wikipedias), the only problem is the will to get the transliteration code
set up.

If I've followed the debate properly, I hope this would be a win for both
Latin and Cyrillic users.

Perhaps Jacky and Mark would like to help with getting the transliteration
tables ready?

-- Neil

_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

--
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Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.1/279 - Release Date: 10/03/2006


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

body:
Sean Barrett wrote:
> Please permit me to call attention to
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Natural_circulation
>
>
> Full disclosure: I am the article's originator, and apparently a mortal
> threat to national security.

I blocked the person who nominated this article for deletion for 24
hours for being stupid.

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 3/12/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/12/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > My point was that such a shutdown wouldn't happen overnight (unless
> > maybe you pissed off the executive branch of the government enough).
>
> You have obviously never seen provisional liquidators or policemen
> with warrants in action. There are lots of ways an organisation like
> Wikimedia Foundation could be shut down a lot faster than overnight.
> Hopefully none of them will happen :)
>
> Tip for imagination: Policeman with warrant walks in, says "This place
> is shutting down in the next five minutes, and those servers over
> there are coming with me".
>
> Steve

The police are part of the executive branch of the government.

Anthony


from_name: geni

body:
On 3/12/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> Sean Barrett wrote:
> > Please permit me to call attention to
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Natural_circulation
> >
> >
> > Full disclosure: I am the article's originator, and apparently a mortal
> > threat to national security.
>
> I blocked the person who nominated this article for deletion for 24
> hours for being stupid.
>
> Chris

Pulled. Stupidity is not a valid reason for blocking.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Apology

body:
On 3/12/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> 2.  Nothing about this policy changes anything about our NPOV policies
> for any article in Wikipedia.  WP:OFFICE in no way implies that some
> articles or some people are given any special treatment in the handling
> of their biography.
>

[[Jack Thompson (attorney)]] fails to follow NPOV by any reasonable
standards. It also probably has a copyvio in it in it's present form.
It also fails to cite it's sources and uses weasel words.

> 4.  In all cases, we will communicate the maximum possible information
> in the shortest possible time period, subject to legal constraints and
> also time constraints.

It appears we know the contents of the email Jack Thompson sent to the
wikimedia foundation. Information that is theoreticaly of use to
editors who may want to fix the article. The foundation was not the
source of this information

In other news last I cheaked there were edit wars on two different
articles as a result of the actions taken over the  [[Jack Thompson
(attorney)]] article.

--
geni


body:
On 3/12/06, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> I respectfully disagree.
>
> -Phil

Which policy allows admins to block for stupidity?
--
geni


body:
On 3/12/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
>
> >On 3/12/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Delirium wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>I didn't say anything quite that extreme, and contrary to Jimbo's
> >>>assumption, I'm not particularly angry about it either.  I'm just
> >>>worried that the current policy of letting some people go "over the
> >>>head" of editors by taking things to the Wikimedia Foundation, which
> >>>then deals with them in a top-down manner, will introduce systemic bias
> >>>into the encyclopedia.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>Current policy does not let anyone go "over the head" of editors and the
> >>Wikimedia Foundation does not deal with them in a "top-down manner".
> >>
> >>
> >>> This leads to some articles having different policies
> >>>than other articles,
> >>>
> >>>
> >>This is false.
> >>
> >>
> >Now I'm confused. Can you tell me which of the following is inaccurate
> >/ not true?
> >
> >1. Calling the Foundation to complain about Wikipedia is not an
> >officially recognized way to change content on Wikipedia.
> >
> >
> This is the inaccurate statement. Contacting the Wikimedia Foundation
> with a complaint has been officially recognized as a way to address
> inappropriate content for as long as the organization has existed.
> That's why we have a designated agent, for example, as required by law.
>
The designated agent is there for takedown notices of copyright
infringements, and they have to be in writing, not over the phone.
Also, Jimmy has stated that most of the problems that people are
complaining over are not legal problems, but inaccuracy problems.

So, if I find an inaccuracy in Wikipedia, should I call up Danny?
What number should I use?  According to Jimmy's user page,
727-231-0101 is for press inquiries only, and other inquiries will be
ignored.  You'd think if there was an officially recognized way to
address inappropriate content over the telephone Jimmy would mention
it on his user page.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Apology

body:
On 3/12/06, Carl F?rstenberg <azatoth at gmail.com> wrote:
> How can we know the content of an email to the foundation, if neither Jack
> or the foundation have revealed the content of the letter in question?

No one has stated that this is not genuine:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jack_Thompson_%28attorney%29#Here.27s_Why_It_Was_Blanked

--
geni