body:
PS: Not to single anyone out.

AIUI the check-logs, ie. the who checked what about
who logs are public, no? If not, certainly a list
could be sanitized of IPs for public posting.

SV

--- steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I think its the question of 'who's definition' of
> "trusted members" that people have a problem with.
>
> Being a Wikipedian for at least a year might be a
> good
> idea.
>
> SV
>
> --- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > On 11/13/05, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > > My cents: I think this whole checkuser shit is
> > totally re-tarded. It's
> > > a grave violation of privacy. I have accounts on
> > Wikipedia only
> > > because I care about my anonymousity (otherwise
> I
> > would edit as an
> > > "anon"). I do NOT wan't someone to connect my
> > contributions to my
> > > identity. Especially not someone I don't know
> and
> > who identifies
> > > itself with a random and totally meaningless
> > userid!
> > >
> > > Dumb dumb dumb. Stupid stupid stupid.
> >
> > That is why it is only being used by a trusted set
> > of users and only under
> > strict terms. The developers have always had the
> > ability to see your IP. The
> > ArbCom needs it to check for sock puppets.
> >
> > -- mav
> >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________
> > Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in
> > one click.
> > http://farechase.yahoo.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in
> one click.
> http://farechase.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.
http://farechase.yahoo.com


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration Committee members granted checkuser tool

body:
On 11/12/05, Jtkiefer <jtkiefer at wordzen.net> wrote:
> Yeah but is there really a risk of giving someone who can prove that
> they have good intentions adminship even if they haven't been here for a
> long time and haven't had a huge amount of edits, editcountitis and
> agecountitis in terms of adminship has gone way overboard.
>
> -Jtkiefer

You are free to view my voteing record on adminship. I think you would
have a hard time accussing me of either editcountitis or agecountitis
(not voteing at allitis maybe but I have a policy of only voteing for
or against people I already know).

--
geni


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [HelpDesk-l] permission

body:
Matt Brown wrote:
> There is a strong argument that those concerned with freedom should
> aggressively use the provisions of Fair Use - explicitly to never allow the
> fiction that copyright owners have absolute control to establish itself.
> Fair Use is equivalent to a public right of way, in a sense - and should not
> be a right allowed to lapse through unuse.

I have great sympathy for this argument, of course.  But I also have
great sympathy for the argument that relying too easily on fair use (no
matter how justified it may be in a given situation) is discouraging to
people who are trying to provide free alternatives.

Terry Foote (who works in the office with me) loves baseball.  He goes
to a lot of baseball games and takes pictures of players.  He then puts
those photos into Wikipedia.  A great hobby, a great thing to do.

It's always a little disappointing to him, though, when he goes to put
in a photo and sees a "fair use" photo already there.  He'd like for his
work to be making Wikipedia a lot better, and of course it *does*.

There are many cases like this, in my opinion, where we are currently
relying on (perfectly valid) fair use claims, but in which those photos
are discouraging people from developing alternatives.

This is a balancing act.

--Jimbo


body:
On 11/12/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why?

1.) It looks bad.
2.) We haven't exusted the option of not doing it (there are 4 other
people on the list who haven't caused such high tension situations
lately)

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [HelpDesk-l] permission

body:
Matt Brown wrote:
> Good point. I also have had several ... not-quite-fights ... with users who
> either attempt to replace free-licensed pictures with supposedly 'better'
> "fair use" pictures, or who object to my removing a fair-use picture in
> favor of a free one. They complain that the free ones look 'amateurish'
> because they're not studio shots.

Then I think that you and I are in total agreement on this issue. :-)

Fair use is a good legal doctrine.  It says "look here, the extent of
copyright has limits".  We should support that and rely on it as needed.

We should also reward people emotionally for doing great original work
and releasing it for free.

--Jimbo


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Help needed for helpdesk-l

body:
Timwi wrote:
>
> [about helpdesk-l]
>
>> The moderation queue is being cleaned out, so there are a *lot* of new
>> messages to answer. You can subscribe to the list at:
>>
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/helpdesk-l
>
>
> A mailing list is chronically unsuitable for the task that helpdesk-l is
> trying to solve. In order to answer someone's question everyone has to
> remember to send the reply back to the user and not just to the list.
> Potential follow-ups from that user then go to the answerer and not to
> the mailing list. There is no real way to get a glimpse of what queries
> are as yet unanswered. Since anyone can subscribe to the list and reply
> to questions, and replies cannot be edited by other users, the requestor
> has no way of knowing how authoritative or accurate the answer is. A
> lesser problem is the potential of the user receiving several (possibly
> contradicting) replies from different users.
>
> An issue-tracking system would be vastly more appropriate. Perhaps best
> would be a system like LiveJournal Support, or perhaps exactly that
> system. The system knows what requests are answered and unanswered (open
> and closed), the question and the answer(s) can be seen on one page, the
> user's follow-up reply is on the same page, etc.etc.
>

Ah, you want Bugzilla! :)

(Why go for a proprietary solution when a free one will work just as
well! And even if LiveJournal Support *is* free, we already use Bugzilla
and know how to set it up and use it...)

--
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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list: wikitech-l

from_name: candy

subject: [Wikitech-l] change page rendering to display all metadata

body:
hi all,

Can somebody help me with the folowing :

In wikipedia when we view the page of an article, it displays the
content of the page  and not the metadata such as author(s),page
timestamps etc. A part of these metadata is visible in the history
section where it displays all the page revisions. I want to change the
rendering of the page such that we have a new tab (say metadata) where
all the metadata information regarding that page is displayed.

I would like to know the procedure of how this can be done. I am using
mediawiki1.5 and have already tried hacking through the code. I have a
vague idea but its not very clear and concrete. Your advise,instruction
or help will be highly appreciated.

Thanking you,
C


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Harald Hanek

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Gollum, a Wikipediabrowser

body:
Hello,
i tinkered a small Tool named Gollum, with which one can browse fast and
eyefriendly by Wikipedia.

Gollum is currently in the beta phase, therefore i look at this way for
Users to test Gollum and send me your experiences, error messages and also
suggestions communicate.

http://gollum.easycp.de/

Have much fun with Gollum and thank you.

Greetings from Germany

Harald


from_name: Ilya N.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Probation Committee

body:
I resent that statement.

I agree with the probation committee being redirected. I also agree that the
last thing we need is another committee

On 11/12/05, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> (Next thing we'll have articles about cheeleading squads and revert wars
> about which guy at one of the many thousand high schools we have
> articles on has gotten the most girls, and who's the biggest slut, and
> who looks fat, and...)
>
> --
> 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
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)


from_name: Martina Greiner

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Error 1064 when importing xml file into mysql with
	mwdumper

body:
Hello,

I tried to load the wikipedia 20051105 data dump into my mysql database with an
installation of media wiki 5.1 and mysql 4.0.26

I used the command

56:~/Desktop mgreiner$ nohup java -server -jar mwdumper.jar --format=sql:1.5
20051105_pages_full.xml.bz2 | mysql wikidb &

and received the following error:

56:~/Desktop mgreiner$ ERROR 1064 at line 82: You have an error in your SQL
syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the
right syntax to use near ''\'\'\'Anarchism\'\'\' is a generic term describing
various rev

I suspect that it has something to do with the version of mysql. What version is
recommended for installing wikipedia?

I hope that somebody can help me.

Martina Greiner


body:
Hi...if you are doing what I think you are then kudos!

Is there a way to make your page display in english? I got around, but I
don't understand german very well.

Thanks

On 11/12/05, Harald Hanek <gollumlist at yahoo.de> wrote:
>
> Hello,
> i tinkered a small Tool named Gollum, with which one can browse fast and
> eyefriendly by Wikipedia.
>
> Gollum is currently in the beta phase, therefore i look at this way for
> Users to test Gollum and send me your experiences, error messages and also
> suggestions communicate.
>
> http://gollum.easycp.de/
>
> Have much fun with Gollum and thank you.
>
> Greetings from Germany
>
> Harald
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)


body:
Agreed. I subscribed to the list, but then unsubscribed in a week because of
the constant barrage of mail flooding into my wikipedia mailing list label
-- over 300 messages in 2 days!

On 11/12/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>
> [about helpdesk-l]
> > The moderation queue is being cleaned out, so there are a *lot* of new
> > messages to answer. You can subscribe to the list at:
> >
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/helpdesk-l
>
> A mailing list is chronically unsuitable for the task that helpdesk-l is
> trying to solve. In order to answer someone's question everyone has to
> remember to send the reply back to the user and not just to the list.
> Potential follow-ups from that user then go to the answerer and not to
> the mailing list. There is no real way to get a glimpse of what queries
> are as yet unanswered. Since anyone can subscribe to the list and reply
> to questions, and replies cannot be edited by other users, the requestor
> has no way of knowing how authoritative or accurate the answer is. A
> lesser problem is the potential of the user receiving several (possibly
> contradicting) replies from different users.
>
> An issue-tracking system would be vastly more appropriate. Perhaps best
> would be a system like LiveJournal Support, or perhaps exactly that
> system. The system knows what requests are answered and unanswered (open
> and closed), the question and the answer(s) can be seen on one page, the
> user's follow-up reply is on the same page, etc.etc.
>
> Just a thought. If people in general are happy with the mailing list,
> then of course I won't intervene and let you use it. But I won't help
> answer questions there.
>
> Timwi
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)


from_name: jkelly at fas.harvard.edu

body:
  It is unclear to me how user IP-hiding furthers the goal of writing an
encyclopedia.  Denying Arbitration Committee members the ability to check a
user's IP seems to be imposing inefficiency on an over-burdened community
resource.  That this is an issue is confusing to me.

Jkelly

Quoting BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com>:

> My cents: I think this whole checkuser shit is totally re-tarded. It's
> a grave violation of privacy. I have accounts on Wikipedia only
> because I care about my anonymousity (otherwise I would edit as an
> "anon"). I do NOT wan't someone to connect my contributions to my
> identity. Especially not someone I don't know and who identifies
> itself with a random and totally meaningless userid!
>
> Dumb dumb dumb. Stupid stupid stupid.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[Foundation-l] Incubator Wiki for New Wikimedia Projects (was
	Vote to create Wikiversity Vote)

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 11/11/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Maybe we need an incubator Wiki for potential new sister projects.
>>>Wikicities is certainly not the solution for that.  Wikicities is a
>>>for-profit project complete with advertising being run by a for-profit
>>>company whose only tie to Wikimedia is that its two founders are on
>>>the board of directors of Wikimedia (one of whom is the founder of
>>>Wikipedia).
>>>
>>>
>>I would agree that there is a need for an incubator project.  Clearly
>>the jump from minor discussion on this list and a minor writeup on the
>>Meta Wiki to turning on a seperate Wiki domain is much larger than
>>comparable projects on Wikicities, just for instance.  As far as
>>Wikicities not being the correct solution, I would have to in general
>>agree but from everything I've seen that is the current recommended
>>solution with just about everybody strongly pushed onto Wikicities if
>>their content doesn't fit a current Wikimedia project.  Even the new
>>projects proposal page strongly recommends Wikicities.
>>
It's an interesting idea.  My I suggest the name "The Wikubator".  With
"Wikiwomb" one could imagin a wide assortment of Wikisperm ideas
frantically navigating through Meta looking for recognition. :-)

To go into this domain a proposal would still need to fulfill criteria
established by Meta, but they could be less rigid.  New language wikis
could also go through The Wikubator.  To be born as a full Wiki a
project would need to meet certain requirements.  Not the least of these
would be a minimum number of main namespace articles, and where another
language is involved, the full translation of a predetermined list of
important pages.  Since we would not want any full Wikimedia wiki to be
a one man show, there could be a criterion that some minimum number of
contributors (excluding sockpuppets) must each have started a specified
number of NEW articles.

A project in The Wikubator could stay there indefinitely as long as
there is continuing activity.  If no-one has edited anything in such a
project for six months it could be aborted.  For this purpose editing
would not include obvious vandalism and its removal.

>I can see recommending Wikicities for projects which aren't applicable
>to Wikimedia at all - a wiki for fictional works for instance.  But
>for proposed Wikimedia projects which just haven't been fleshed out
>enough to stand on their own, I don't think it's appropriate to host
>them on Jimmy and Angela's private server.  You seem to agree with me,
>and that's good.
>
Wikicities could still be used for projects that do not meet Meta's
insemination criteria.

>>I do want to emphasis, however, that Wikibooks is not the place to do
>>this either.  This is a need for a whole new project altogether.
>>
>>
>Wikibooks isn't the place for incubation of new projects, I agree.
>And I can see the argument that Wikiversity goes beyond the original
>scope of Wikibooks.  Essentially I feel that Wikiversity is a superset
>of Wikibooks.  For that reason I don't really feel comfortable saying
>that Wikiversity should be a separate project, I'd rather see
>Wikibooks expanded to include other materials.  But I'd be willing to
>concede that point, in fact I essentially have.
>
>As for Wikijunior, well, I find it hard to see how that's not a book,
>but that's a completely different discussion.
>
The discussions for Wikiversity and Wikijunior have been going on for
some time already.  Whatever one thinks of them, I don't think that
their issues are the kind that would be solved in a seed project.  The
purpose of a seed project would be primarily to see if there is enough
interest to sustain an otherwise acceptable project.  The problems
connected with Wikiversity and Wikijunior are different; I have no doubt
that if started both could easily meet the participation critera..
Neither project should be a part of this discussion.

>>Are you interested in helping me with organizing that project? The
>>Foundation board has talked about this issue from time to time, but
>>there is a need to really sit down and try to come up with the
>>guidelines for when a project can be started on the incubator/test wiki.
>> This is a policy issue rather than a technical issue.  This is also
>>something that rather than an abstract idea, there needs to be something
>>written as a formal proposal with debate over the principle ideas for
>>how the whole process would work.  Eventually it would also require a
>>change in the New Projects policy as well, with the ability to both
>>create and cull projects from the incubator Wiki.
>>
>>
>I'd be willing to help.  But in my opinion the guidelines should be
>very minimal, maybe two or three interested sponsors and a one page
>project proposal (which could be modified as the idea gets fleshed
>out).  It's kind of the whole point of the wiki to make the threshold
>very low - unless there's a strong majority sentiment that the project
>could never become a Wikimedia project would I suggest removing
>something (barring a project which took up enormous resources,
>anyway).
>
>And yes, it'd be useful to change the whole policy for new projects to
>basically state that you have to make a test run on the incubator wiki
>first, but that's really a separate issue which could be hashed out
>later.  Along those same lines I'd like to see the more borderline
>AFDs copied over.  If Wikipedia decides to get rid of info about
>Pokemon maybe it could be made into a proposed project there
>(elementary schools which are considered non-notable might be a more
>reasonable candidate).
>
No!!!  It should not be a trash dump for Wikipedia's problems.  I think
that Wikibooks has complained about taking on that role, and rightly
so.  The AfDs can cover a very wide range of subjects,  but these are
individual articles, not projects.  There is nothing in the broad topic
of Pok?mon or elementary schools to suggest that it should belong to a
new Wiki.  Those problems are only about data inclusion, and could
easily be solved in a collaborative community.

Ec


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Thoughts and measurments related to a new storage
	framework for large wikis.

body:
On 11/8/05, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/8/05, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 11/5/05, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> >   > If we use bsdiff (http://www.daemonology.net/bsdiff/ fast and
> > > efficent, if you ignore the anti-social license) rather than diff -du,
> >
> > It uses the BSD license without an advertising clause, what's
> > anti-social about it?
>
> Ha, if only.  It uses the "BSD Protection License" which looks a lot
> like the BSD License unless you actually look at it, then you notice
> that it's free for any use *except* use with a non-X11 equivalent open
> source license. Microsoft could use it in Windows, yet you couldn't
> legally use it inside SVN. It's a very odd license.  I suppose it's no
> more 'anti-social' then any other license that makes you jump through
> hoops, but that it doesn't look like it does to a quick glance...

I stand corrected then, but that's not any more anti-social than a
given viral free software license like the GPL, even less so, because
you can't use that with any other license, but it appears you can use
the BSDPL with X11-equivalents.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Foundation website

body:
Anthere wrote:

> Angela wrote:
>
>> On 11/9/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>>> I no longer think an uneditable wiki is the best way to present the
>>>> Foundation to the world.
>>>
>>> I'll let other people make that decision.
>>
>> I'd like to know if anyone still thinks it is a good idea, and if so
>> why? It clearly doesn't present an official view, so where is the
>> benefit in it being uneditable?
>
To whatever extent there really is official policy it makes sense that
it is uneditable, but there should be ample opportunity to comment that
is directly linked from the uneditable pages.

> Incidently, if you read Traroth report,  It says
>
> 1) Le Louvres is a famous french museum; hosting art, with most of it
> much much older than 100 years old, so likely to be considered owned
> by humanity
>
> 2) Le Louvres has started forbidding taking pictures from this art
>
> 3) Only photographers authorized to take picture of art will be Le
> Louvres photographers, so ALL photos will be under cp. Which means
> that unless you go to Paris and pay the entrance, all this artwork
> will be only visible through work under copyright. None will be free
> to use.
>
> 4) And Traroth concludes he does not think art and freedom will gain
> much of this;
>
> Now, on another note, compare it to Jimbo's speech at Wikimania, about
> freeing 10 things...
>
> How different is that ? How unofficial is it to try to push so that
> people are free to take pictures of famous paintings 500 years old ?
>
> To me, there is no difference. What Jimbo said in his Wikimania speech
> is exactly what Traroth says about what is happening in Le Louvres;
> The only difference is that Jimbo was speaking generally, while
> Traroth is taking an example. But if the Foundation agrees that what
> Le Louvres is doing (ie if the Foundation public view is that
> forbidding access to old painting is just fine) then I must say I do
> not agree with the Foundation public view at all.
>
> I will go further in saying that Jimbo's public speech does not fit
> either with the Foundation position.
>
> Then, if neither Jimbo's nor my position are the positions of the
> Foundation... how do we define what the official position of the
> Foundation is ?

Isn't that the function of the Board?  The Board can and should support
a policy of "freeing" the art and the museums, and explain what that
means in general terms.  It should avoid taking that into great detail
because of the wide variety of country specific or project specific
circumstances that can exist.  The wonder of NPOV is that it is very
difficult to pin down in a way that can be applied the same way to all
projects; at the same time it has been a key factor in Wikipedia's success.

When it comes to the Louvre situation it shoudl not be up to the
Foundation to take a specific stand about those circumstances, but it
can take the position in principle that photographs of portraits that
have themselves gone into the public domain in the relevant country are
not copyrightable.  The French association may be able to elaborate this
further in relation to what its members may do in France, and what ways
of circumventing unjust rules are acceptable.  If I visit France, and
choose to sneak a camera into the Louvre, I can still do so at my own risk.

> Now, there is another important point.
> Traroth position on Le Louvres issue is clearly supported by Wikimedia
> France. Similarly, other people are currently working to free some
> information, such as the people working on the ESA images issue. Most
> of these actions are linked with the French and/or German associations.
>
> Should we also remove all descriptions of what the german and french
> associations are doing from the WMF website, upon the principle that
> those actions are not official views of the Foundation ? Does that
> mean what the associations do are contrary to the Foundation goals ?

Not at all.

> I am quite worried of what you seem to imply in saying that this
> article does not reprensent our official view, because it represents
> my view and quite probably the view of at least one chapter. If we
> remove everything but only what Jimbo's words, then, I agree, there is
> no sense in that website.

Whole Foundation views are not just about your or Jimbo's words.  It is
always a problem when an organization has one key leader whose words are
so influential that they will be taken as absolute truth or duty.  He
becomes trapped in his role as an idol. and must be careful with his
words lest some idiot take a ridiculously extreme interpretation.  This
is why it's even more important for the Board to take a collective
representative position.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki-to-XML

body:
The website seems to be completely broken:

Warning: set_time_limit(): Cannot set time limit in safe mode in
/home/www/ww4553/html/wiki2xml/w2x.php on line 8

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by
(output started at /home/www/ww4553/html/wiki2xml/w2x.php:8) in
/home/www/ww4553/html/wiki2xml/w2x.php on line 64
REDIRECTMetasyntactic variable


from_name: Arkady Rose

subject: [WikiEN-l] Probation Committee

body:
Carbonite wrote:

>I just came across
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Probation_Committee on recent changes
>and I'm a bit concerned by it. This page was only created about an hour ago
>and already four users have been appointed (by themselves as far as I can
>tell) as a board. The page also claims that "The committee is an auxiliary
>of the Arbitration Committee." Has the ArbCom sanctioned or even heard of
>this committee before? I think the last thing Wikipedia needs at this point
>is another committee or more bureaucracy.
>
>
Reaing the Talk: page, I must admit I'm a little bothered by the fact
this has been set up following a discussion amongst a handful of people
on IRC who then decided to arbitrarily set this up without discussion
elsewhere such as this mailing list or somewhere on WP itself.

There are enough accusations of major decision-making being made by
"secret cabals" already as it is; this is just one more thing to
substantiate such suspicians and conspiracy theories.

-a


body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Seeing as there hasn't been much public discussion on this (at least on
> the English-language Wikipedia) I thought it would be a good idea to let
> you all know that Raul654, Fred Bauder, Kelly Martin, The Epopt and
> Jayjg have all been granted access to the checkuser tool[1] (the tool
> which allows for checking of sockpuppets by giving access to IP
> addresses, including those of signed-in Wikipedians).
>
> According to the CheckUser policy[2], editors approved by the
> Arbitration Committee may be granted access to the checkuser tool.
>
> The Arbitration Committee decided who would get access to the tool on
> their private mailing list[3].
>

Haha, that's almost as good as Howard and his cronies rushing through
the IR reform legislation while everyone was yelling "Oh noes!
Terrarists!"...

Erm, not that I doubt the arbcom...

--
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:
On 11/13/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Public perception is not required.
>
> Kelly

However it normaly exists. I can't at short notice think of any cases
involveing it's use where no one had raised any questions.

--
geni


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Category:Soviet spies

body:
On 13/11/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Andrew Gray wrote:
>
> >(There's also a [[Statutory rapists]] subcat, which I'm less
> >comfortable with having - it's rarely a defining feature of anyone in
> >the same way as being a convicted rapist is - but also less worried
> >about; the very nature of the term means you have to be convicted!)
> >
> I'm kind of uncomfortable with this for the same reason, and it applies
> more generally.  In particular, [[Category:Statutory rapists]] sounds
> more accusatory than [[Category:People convicted of statutory rape]],
> which, to my ears at least, sounds more neutral and matter-of-fact.  Of
> course in non-controversial situations the plain term is fine
> ([[Category:Physicists]]), but in potentially controversial categories
> I'd prefer we word things a bit more carefully.

There's a mention on [[Wikipedia:Categorization of people]] of this
concept: "For some "sensitive" categories, it is better to think of
the category as a set of representative and unquestioned examples"

It's a nice idea, but I don't usually see it happening. Hmm hmm.

Digging around, there used to be - but, thank goodness, no longer is -
a Category:Pedophiles -
[[Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2005_July_3]]; there's a
[[Category:Child sex offenders]], but it is limited to convicts and
seems to be policed.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


body:
On 11/13/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> To be fair, you don't know of very many cases.
>
> Kelly

I know of every case in which the result turned up on AN and AN/I.
After all trawling for IP matches makes no sense.

--
geni


body:
On 11/13/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> The log is at
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:CheckUser
>
> Fred
>

I get the error special page does not exist message

--
geni


body:
On 11/13/05, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
> My cents: I think this whole checkuser shit is totally re-tarded. It's
> a grave violation of privacy. I have accounts on Wikipedia only
> because I care about my anonymousity (otherwise I would edit as an
> "anon"). I do NOT wan't someone to connect my contributions to my
> identity. Especially not someone I don't know and who identifies
> itself with a random and totally meaningless userid!
>
> Dumb dumb dumb. Stupid stupid stupid.

There are times when it is very useful to know if two or more accounts
come from the same ip. There are also times when we need to know which
ISP to send complaints to.
--
geni


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Probation Committee

body:
Probation can and should be handled on the administrators'
noticeboard. Making up a ruritanian committee like this makes
probation activities less visible.

For mentorships, I think that insofar as they work well they do so by
a very close personal relationship between the mentors and the
protege.  The mentors have to balance the interests of Wikipedia with
the interests of the protege and those of other editors in the
community.  The mentors in any given instance should be few in number.
 They have to act with relative autonomy, and committees and whatnot
would hamper this.

Earlier activities such as those mentioned further up this thread, and
the formation of a password-only channel for discussion, have been
reversed.  Good.

I think Kelly's comment about Wikipedia becoming a high school rings
true, but we don't need to encourage this process.


body:
On 11/13/05, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> To quote David Gerard:
>
> On Wikipedia, the reward for a job well done is another three jobs.
>

As a general rule I prefer arbcom members to be sorting out fights no
starting them.

--
geni


from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Status of Serbia and Montenegro chapter

body:
On 11/12/05, Arbeo M <arbeo_m at yahoo.de> wrote:
> Yes, I have. My point was that the very mention of
> such words can have unwanted side-effects, no matter
> if they are meant ironically or seriously. Especially
> when the irony is not obvious to everybody at first
> sight.

I can agree with you up to the some level...

If someone argues for something without _any_ knowledge about cultures
which are included in that "something", (s)he is a fool. If (s)he is a
young person, (s)he can learn something in the future and stop being a
fool. If (s)he is a mature fool, it is better that society isolate
such person to prevent any further damage.

If someone argues for something only because of fun AND without any
knowledge about cultures which are included in that "something", (s)he
is NOT ONLY a fool, but a very dangerous person. If (s)he is a young
person, I hope that (s)he can learn something and that (s)he would not
be such person in the future. For such adult persons I think that the
less damage is to kill her/him than to wait to see mass graves because
of such "Innocent games".

Neoliberal social POV is the biggest bullshit as I know. (And Mark is
highly influenced with that kind of bullshit.) It is trying to merge
cultures without any knowledge about these cultures. This is the clear
example of colonialist behaviour which is deep in the souls of
(almost) all Westerners.

And this is not related only to Balkans... I saw the same conversation
about Low Saxon. Even it is reasonable to start to work on
computational translator between Dutch and German one, it is not
reasonable to force people to work together in this moment. The same
is for Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian Wikipedias.

And someone is making an irony about our problems? And (s)he is far a
way of our problems?


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

body:
> Seeing as there hasn't been much public discussion on this (at least on
> the English-language Wikipedia) I thought it would be a good idea to let
> you all know that Raul654, Fred Bauder, Kelly Martin, The Epopt and
> Jayjg have all been granted access to the checkuser tool[1] (the tool
> which allows for checking of sockpuppets by giving access to IP
> addresses, including those of signed-in Wikipedians).

My cents: I think this whole checkuser shit is totally re-tarded. It's
a grave violation of privacy. I have accounts on Wikipedia only
because I care about my anonymousity (otherwise I would edit as an
"anon"). I do NOT wan't someone to connect my contributions to my
identity. Especially not someone I don't know and who identifies
itself with a random and totally meaningless userid!

Dumb dumb dumb. Stupid stupid stupid.

--
mvh Bj?rn


from_name: Tom Cadden

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore MoS,
	NCs for language reasons.

body:
An interesting row is going on at [[Talk:C?te
d'Ivoire]]. The country is usually known in English as
Ivory Coast but is controversially at its
little-used-in-English French name. A proposal by me
supported by Ed Poor to move it to the more widely
used English name, to follow the standard naming
rules, produced the mother of all rows, with users
queuing to claim that 'everyone' calls it Cote
d'Ivoire.

That argument was clearly disproved. Checks on
websites with the BBC, New York Times, ABC, South
African television, Australian newspapers, the Times
of London, the Guardian, NBC, Bloomberg, the British
Foreign Office, etc shows that worldwide Ivory Coast
is more used in some cases by a factor of 10. Only the
US State Department uses the French name, and even
then just occasionally, a far cry from the 'always'
claimed.

Even then the majority was queuing up to insist the
French name be kept, no matter what. But a closer look
showed that a large number of those voting to keep the
French name were French speakers! French and English
are famous rivals to be the dominant world language,
but is it a first for a English Wikipedia article to
be kept at a little used French name rather than the
widely used English version contrary to WP NCs and the
MoS, by a block vote of French speakers defending the
French language?

What is WP policy when language is used to a block
vote to force the MoS and NC to be ignored in an
article's name?

Thom

PS: The vote is still going on. Please come and vote.

___________________________________________________________
How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday
snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com


body:
On 11/13/05, Tom Cadden <thomcadden at yahoo.ie> wrote:
> PS: The vote is still going on. Please come and vote.

You wanted to settle a row so started a vote? oh dear.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Probation Committee

body:
On 11/13/05, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> I resent that statement.
>
> I agree with the probation committee being redirected. I also agree that the
> last thing we need is another committee
>

They seem pretty harmless. No worse than the informal groups that
exist to carry out other admin roles.

--
geni


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Boycot

body:
On 13/11/05, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> With regards to the latest drivel Mark wrote I want to call on everyone
> to boycott Mark. He is a pre-puberescant prick imho.

I'm going to pretend you didn't say the last sentence, and reply
instead to the rest of your e-mail.

I'm not sure which parts of my e-mail are "drivel" -- are you just
referring to the Zlatiborian part, or all of it? I find it hard to
believe that you would agree with Milos on his beliefs about how
people should be isolated from society or even killed for their
attitudes.

Mark

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


body:
No. I made a request for renaming, as is standard
Wikipedia policy. People are voting on the request.
That is how renaming is done.

> On 11/13/05, Tom Cadden <thomcadden at yahoo.ie> wrote:
> > PS: The vote is still going on. Please come and
> vote.
>
> You wanted to settle a row so started a vote? oh
> dear.
>
>
> --
> geni

___________________________________________________________
To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com


body:
On 11/13/05, Tom Cadden <thomcadden at yahoo.ie> wrote:
>
> What is WP policy when language is used to a block
> vote to force the MoS and NC to be ignored in an
> article's name?
>

Policy is unformed on this.  Obviously the thing to do is to ignore
the block votes and move the article to its most common English
language name.  Consensus cannot be gauged only by voting; the
external sources comprehensively refute the votes for the French name.


from_name: Sean Barrett

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

BJ?rn Lindqvist stated for the record:

>>No one with CheckUser privileges has a "random and totally meaningless
>>userid."  If you want to point to a specific individual, please don't be
>>disingenuous about it.
>
>
> Then maybe you can tell me where there Arbitration Committe's real
> life names are? It surely isn't on
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee where I
> would have expected it.

You didn't look very hard, did you?  Or have you determined that "Sean
Barrett" is a "random and totally meaningless userid" and not a "real
life name," just like "Fred Bauder," "James Forrester," and all the rest
of those terribly clever aliases we use?

- --
 Sean Barrett     | For days, we survived on
 sean at epoptic.org | nothing but food and water.
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subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration Committee members granted checkuser
	tool

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

BJ?rn Lindqvist stated for the record:

> IP Checking: Worst case: Someone who doesn't like you get your ip
> checked, calls your ISP and talks with a clueless receptionist who
> reveals your real life name. That person then publishes your name
> somewhere. Your boss who happens to also be a Wikipedia user finds out
> about it and fires you because s/he think your political stuff you've
> written on Wikipedia suck. So some brat on WIkipedia cost you your
> employment.

How very theatrical.  Notice that it took three evil people to cost
"you" "your" (ooo, my very own personalized strawman!) job:

#1: the evil CheckUser user who went far beyond "yes, they match" or
"no, they don't," (which, as you know, is all we ever do)

#2: the evil (and amazingly knowledgeable) receptionist

#3: the evil boss (are there no labor laws in your country?)

Not one of these villains is at all hesitant about heinously violating
the terms and laws governing their roles.

That's a scary world you live in, Bj?rn.  That, of course, makes you a
better person than me.  More wise and more sensitive.

> You don't even need to be an ArbCom member to do that. Let's say a
> veteran editor like Ed Poor asks for an ip check. Will an ArbCom
> member oblige? Yes, because Ed Poor is trusted. So your only job is to
> convince Ed Poor to ask for an ip check.

You, of course, have indisputable evidence showing the willingness of
each and every one of us to bend over any time Ed Poor gets an urge.
There's no way that you could be just making this up out of your febrile
imagination.

> For more details:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_hacking With the checkuser tool it
> becomes so much easier.
>
> If you have ever met a political refugee, you know that they often are
> very careful not to talk politics with persons they don't know.

Oh, very nice escalation there!  We now see that CheckUser is a tool of
political oppression, if we're allowed to use it, people will be getting
shot in the back of the head down in the basement of the Wikipedia
server farm!

> Especially not with strangers from their own home country. The reason
> is that they fear secret agents from their home country. Often this
> fear is unfounded paranoia (there aren't THAT many secret agents in
> the world), sometimes it is not. Their worst case checkuser scenario
> is even worse than the worst case scenario I described two paragraphs
> above.
>
> That's why I hate the checkuser shit - (mis)uses of the tool can have
> very detrimental real-life effects on real-life persons. Something
> that nothing other on the silly text game Wikipedia can have.

Well, Bj?rn, I have to recommend that you take this matter up with
someone who can actually do something about it.  The ArbComm has had the
tool for some time now, and will continue to use it.  Writing to the
mailing list won't help -- it's been too useful so far, and we're not
going to give it up, even if you manage to build some sort of ground
swell of emotion against it.  The Board won't help -- they've agreed to
let us use the tool.  You might try Jimbo, but I doubt he'll overrule
the ArbComm and the Board.

If you're serious about your concerns, you'll probably need to contact
external authorities and tell them that the administrators of a Web site
you like to use are recording your IP address for their internal
monitoring and maintenance of the site.

> --
> mvh Bj?rn

I'm done with this conversation.  Over to you for the last word....

- --
 Sean Barrett     | For days, we survived on
 sean at epoptic.org | nothing but food and water.
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body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Kelly Martin stated for the record:

> Most of the Arbitration Committee give their real names on that page.
> Did you actually look at it?
>
> Kelly

Oh, come on.  Did you seriously expect to fool anyone with that
ridiculous alias, "Kelly"?

By the way, I don't think I've personally welcomed you to the cabal -- I
hope you can stay for a while.

Welcome!  Here's your mop; try not to get any on your shoes.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | For days, we survived on
 sean at epoptic.org | nothing but food and water.
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subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore MoS, NCs for language
	reasons.

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

geni stated for the record:

> On 11/13/05, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>geni wrote:
>>
>>>On 11/13/05, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>geni wrote:
>>>>Well, here's an example of a German company (couldn't think of any
>>>>French ones): Telefonica Deutchland. Should the article on them be
>>>>called "German Telecom"???
>>>
>>>
>>>No becuase that is not how they are know in english. Much as the pre
>>>euro currency of germany was not know as the german mark
>>>
>>
>>The Arc de'Triomphe? The Moulin Rouge?
>
>
> We drop the apostrophe. Other than that english tends to follow the
> french on that one probably because the result of transalteing to
> english would sound horible (red mill I mean what kind of name is
> that?). Short french phrases are quite common in english. Entente
> Cordiale for example. However historicaly we tend to anglisise names
> of countries with the result that ivory coast is the more common name
> at this present time. Perhaps this will change but for the time being
> like Mecca the "Proper name" is not the one in common use.

That's right.  I insist that people address their postal mail to my
address in the Village of our Lady the Queen of the Angels, myself.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | For days, we survived on
 sean at epoptic.org | nothing but food and water.
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body:
On 11/13/05, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> > On 11/12/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>Why?
> >
> >
> > 1.) It looks bad.
> > 2.) We haven't exusted the option of not doing it (there are 4 other
> > people on the list who haven't caused such high tension situations
> > lately)
> >
> >
>
> To quote David Gerard:
>
> On Wikipedia, the reward for a job well done is another three jobs.
>

Geni seems to be using this thread as a vehicle to snipe at someone he
doesn't like, and whom he blames for the recent high profile
announcement (since retracted) by another editor that he intended to
leave the wiki.  This thread isn't the place.


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>Languages and cultures are two very separate entities.
>
Distinct, perhaps, in the sense that they have different definitions
that should not be confused with each other. But suggesting that
languages and cultures can be cleanly separated from each other as
entities is absurd.

--Michael Snow


from_name: charles matthews

body:
> PS: The vote is still going on. Please come and vote.

Have done. But not in the way you hoped.

Charles


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote

> Consensus cannot be gauged only by voting; the
external sources comprehensively refute the votes for the French name.

That's simplistic here.  I wouldn't be surprised to hear 'Ivory Coast' on
BBC radio, because it is much easier to grok.  But I don't imagine the BBC
thinks that's the real name of the country.  Diplomats are supposed to be
able to hack French pronunciation.  Let's face it, most anglophones can't.
However WP is a written medium.

Charles


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 11/13/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> >On 11/11/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>Maybe we need an incubator Wiki for potential new sister projects.
> >>>Wikicities is certainly not the solution for that.  Wikicities is a
> >>>for-profit project complete with advertising being run by a for-profit
> >>>company whose only tie to Wikimedia is that its two founders are on
> >>>the board of directors of Wikimedia (one of whom is the founder of
> >>>Wikipedia).
> >>>
> >>>
> >>I would agree that there is a need for an incubator project.  Clearly
> >>the jump from minor discussion on this list and a minor writeup on the
> >>Meta Wiki to turning on a seperate Wiki domain is much larger than
> >>comparable projects on Wikicities, just for instance.  As far as
> >>Wikicities not being the correct solution, I would have to in general
> >>agree but from everything I've seen that is the current recommended
> >>solution with just about everybody strongly pushed onto Wikicities if
> >>their content doesn't fit a current Wikimedia project.  Even the new
> >>projects proposal page strongly recommends Wikicities.
> >>
> It's an interesting idea.  My I suggest the name "The Wikubator".  With
> "Wikiwomb" one could imagin a wide assortment of Wikisperm ideas
> frantically navigating through Meta looking for recognition. :-)
>
> To go into this domain a proposal would still need to fulfill criteria
> established by Meta, but they could be less rigid.  New language wikis
> could also go through The Wikubator.  To be born as a full Wiki a
> project would need to meet certain requirements.  Not the least of these
> would be a minimum number of main namespace articles, and where another
> language is involved, the full translation of a predetermined list of
> important pages.  Since we would not want any full Wikimedia wiki to be
> a one man show, there could be a criterion that some minimum number of
> contributors (excluding sockpuppets) must each have started a specified
> number of NEW articles.
>
> A project in The Wikubator could stay there indefinitely as long as
> there is continuing activity.  If no-one has edited anything in such a
> project for six months it could be aborted.  For this purpose editing
> would not include obvious vandalism and its removal.
>
> >I can see recommending Wikicities for projects which aren't applicable
> >to Wikimedia at all - a wiki for fictional works for instance.  But
> >for proposed Wikimedia projects which just haven't been fleshed out
> >enough to stand on their own, I don't think it's appropriate to host
> >them on Jimmy and Angela's private server.  You seem to agree with me,
> >and that's good.
> >
> Wikicities could still be used for projects that do not meet Meta's
> insemination criteria.
>
> >>I do want to emphasis, however, that Wikibooks is not the place to do
> >>this either.  This is a need for a whole new project altogether.
> >>
> >>
> >Wikibooks isn't the place for incubation of new projects, I agree.
> >And I can see the argument that Wikiversity goes beyond the original
> >scope of Wikibooks.  Essentially I feel that Wikiversity is a superset
> >of Wikibooks.  For that reason I don't really feel comfortable saying
> >that Wikiversity should be a separate project, I'd rather see
> >Wikibooks expanded to include other materials.  But I'd be willing to
> >concede that point, in fact I essentially have.
> >
> >As for Wikijunior, well, I find it hard to see how that's not a book,
> >but that's a completely different discussion.
> >
> The discussions for Wikiversity and Wikijunior have been going on for
> some time already.  Whatever one thinks of them, I don't think that
> their issues are the kind that would be solved in a seed project.  The
> purpose of a seed project would be primarily to see if there is enough
> interest to sustain an otherwise acceptable project.  The problems
> connected with Wikiversity and Wikijunior are different; I have no doubt
> that if started both could easily meet the participation critera..
> Neither project should be a part of this discussion.
>
> >>Are you interested in helping me with organizing that project? The
> >>Foundation board has talked about this issue from time to time, but
> >>there is a need to really sit down and try to come up with the
> >>guidelines for when a project can be started on the incubator/test wiki.
> >> This is a policy issue rather than a technical issue.  This is also
> >>something that rather than an abstract idea, there needs to be something
> >>written as a formal proposal with debate over the principle ideas for
> >>how the whole process would work.  Eventually it would also require a
> >>change in the New Projects policy as well, with the ability to both
> >>create and cull projects from the incubator Wiki.
> >>
> >>
> >I'd be willing to help.  But in my opinion the guidelines should be
> >very minimal, maybe two or three interested sponsors and a one page
> >project proposal (which could be modified as the idea gets fleshed
> >out).  It's kind of the whole point of the wiki to make the threshold
> >very low - unless there's a strong majority sentiment that the project
> >could never become a Wikimedia project would I suggest removing
> >something (barring a project which took up enormous resources,
> >anyway).
> >
> >And yes, it'd be useful to change the whole policy for new projects to
> >basically state that you have to make a test run on the incubator wiki
> >first, but that's really a separate issue which could be hashed out
> >later.  Along those same lines I'd like to see the more borderline
> >AFDs copied over.  If Wikipedia decides to get rid of info about
> >Pokemon maybe it could be made into a proposed project there
> >(elementary schools which are considered non-notable might be a more
> >reasonable candidate).
> >
> No!!!  It should not be a trash dump for Wikipedia's problems.  I think
> that Wikibooks has complained about taking on that role, and rightly
> so.  The AfDs can cover a very wide range of subjects,  but these are
> individual articles, not projects.  There is nothing in the broad topic
> of Pok?mon or elementary schools to suggest that it should belong to a
> new Wiki.  Those problems are only about data inclusion, and could
> easily be solved in a collaborative community.
>
> Ec

I think we have very different views as to what a Wiki Incubator would
be.  I don't really see the purpose as guaging interest, but more of
answering questions and building a core community.  In that sense I
think something like Wikiversity would be perfect for it - yes,
there's no lack of interest, but there are a number of questions to
the point where approximately 1/3 of Wikimedians don't even think it
should be a project.

I also don't see why a wiki for game cards or for elementary schools
or for (to use another example) dead people wouldn't make a good wiki.
 In fact, at some point or another I've proposed the latter two as
projects.

Finally, whatever Wikicities wants to do is up to it.  We're talking
about a small little site that pretty much no one has heard of.  I
really don't think it matters what they're trying to do.  Wikimedia
should make its policies for Wikimedia, and Wikicities can figure out
how to deal with that.

Anyway, I can't edit on meta, and you seem to have a much different
idea of an incubator wiki anyway.  Besides, the idea has been floating
around for months already.  The cynic in me thinks that the red tape
to create a project is probably too great, especially a project which
threatens to "end up being a fork of" Angela's website.

Anthony


body:
On 11/13/05, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Tony Sidaway wrote
>
> > Consensus cannot be gauged only by voting; the
> external sources comprehensively refute the votes for the French name.
>
> That's simplistic here.  I wouldn't be surprised to hear 'Ivory Coast' on
> BBC radio, because it is much easier to grok.  But I don't imagine the BBC
> thinks that's the real name of the country.  Diplomats are supposed to be
> able to hack French pronunciation.  Let's face it, most anglophones can't.
> However WP is a written medium.
>

What is the name of that country in the middle of Europe, famous for
its sausages and beer?  Deutschland or Germany?  How about the big one
on the bottom left, Sandwiched between France and North Africa?  Spain
or Espa?a?  Is it The Netherland or Nederland, Italy or Italia, Japan
or Nihon, Sweden or Sverige?

Of course Ivory Coast is the real name of the country, just as Royaume
Uni is the real French name of the UK, and it would be a very
fatheaded French speaker indeed who insisted on parking the article on
the UK under United Kingdom where hardly anybody would look for it.


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
Most of the Arbitration Committee give their real names on that page.
Did you actually look at it?

Kelly

On 11/13/05, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
> > No one with CheckUser privileges has a "random and totally meaningless
> > userid."  If you want to point to a specific individual, please don't be
> > disingenuous about it.
>
> Then maybe you can tell me where there Arbitration Committe's real
> life names are? It surely isn't on
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee where I
> would have expected it.
>
> --
> mvh Bj?rn
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionitis

body:
Maybe the people who are adept at editing are not as adept at playing
tag.  The multiplicity of tags, templates and incomprehensible shortcuts
are imposible to remember.  In many case plain language would be more
meaningful than shortcuts designed to save writers a few seconds.

The process that Tom describes in relation to the Irish articles appears
to be organized vandalism by the wiki's Hell's Angels.
Ec

MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>Maybe if you turned it into a general rewrite tag that can be used on
>all articles, it might be kept...
>
>Mgm
>
>On 11/12/05, Tom Cadden <thomcadden at yahoo.ie> wrote:
>
>
>>--- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
>>wrote:
>>
>>
>>>As someone said in #wikipedia the other day: "the
>>>deletionists go around
>>>deleting stuff; the inclusionists just whinge on
>>>wikien-l about how bad
>>>it is." So: stop complaining, and start telling
>>>people *why* they need
>>>to be kept.
>>>
>>>
>>Unfortunately the greek chorus of deleters all group
>>around chanting ''delete, delete delete. Begone you
>>nasty template'' like something out of Lord of the
>>Flies.
>>
>>And they don't like anyone saying 'Hold on a minute'.
>>You get the image they all turn around and mutter in
>>unison: did someone dare speak on our page? How dare
>>he? He isn't one of us.' lol
>>
>>
>>>Notifying the creator/last editor of such templates
>>>would be a Polite
>>>Thing To Do. But no, it's far easier to subst: and
>>>{{d}} something,
>>>because that way you can get away with it.
>>>
>>>
>>I'm beginning to think they do it that way in the hope
>>people who might disagree with them won't notice.
>>
>>When recently a whole blitz of Irish templates were
>>put up for deletion by the one user (He seemed to be
>>having one of his 'and today I will wipe out Ireland'
>>moods) I dared to contact Irish users to suggest they
>>look at the proposed deletions. One of the deleters
>>went beserck. How DARE I "spam" users to tell them
>>about the deletions. She went on and on and on and on
>>in the "How dare I" rant in message after message.
>>Obviously users are meant to have psychic powers to
>>know that she and her colleagues had now picked Irish
>>templates for wipeout. And for daring to disrupt the
>>smooth running of deletions by bring aliens who might
>>vote 'no' onto the page. (She made snide comments
>>about how they were all doing my bidding when they
>>dared disagree with her.) she promptly nominated a
>>another template I had created on the page even though
>>WP was perfectly happy with it and using it all
>>over!!!
>>
>>The Deletioners and their antics  makes Lord of the
>>Flies sound positively heavenly.
>>
>>


from_name: Chris Lüer

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore MoS, NCs for
	language reasons.

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Of course Ivory Coast is the real name of the country, just as Royaume
>Uni is the real French name of the UK, and it would be a very
>fatheaded French speaker indeed who insisted on parking the article on
>the UK under United Kingdom where hardly anybody would look for it.

The issue with Ivory Coast/ C?te d'Ivoire is not
English versus French, but Colonialism versus
Independence. Most African countries that used to
have European names changed to local names by the
time they got independent, e.g. Gold Coast to
Ghana, Southwest Africa to Namibia, British West
Africa to Nigeria. IC/CI didn't. So when they
decided to fix that problem recently, they did
not to do what neighboring Upper Volta did (they
renamed themselves to Burkina and nobody knew
where the place was anymore), but instead they
said the country name shouldn't be translated
anymore, as if it was a local name.

The question is whether a country should have the
right to decide on its own name, and if we should
respect that decision. Deutschland doesn't mind
being called Germany in English, neither does
Nihon mind being called Japan in English, but
CI/IC and Myanmar/Burma do mind their traditional English names.

         Chl


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Perhaps you could explain. So far, and I'm just learning, once you
have the ip address you can then see where it is coming from and
sometimes whether it is a fixed or dynamic address. Blocking of
dynamic addresses is not good. You can also get an address to
complain to, assuming the problem is serious enough to justify that.

Fred

On Nov 13, 2005, at 7:36 AM, BJ?rn Lindqvist wrote:

> And the stupidest thing of all is that there is absolutely no
> technical need to expose peoples IP addressess at all.


body:
His concerns certainly hit home with me. So I'm listening to him and
taking seriously the kind of damage that can occur.

Fred

On Nov 13, 2005, at 8:48 AM, Sean Barrett wrote:

>
>
>> For more details:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_hacking With the checkuser
>> tool it
>> becomes so much easier.
>>
>> If you have ever met a political refugee, you know that they often
>> are
>> very careful not to talk politics with persons they don't know.
>>
>
> Oh, very nice escalation there!  We now see that CheckUser is a
> tool of
> political oppression, if we're allowed to use it, people will be
> getting
> shot in the back of the head down in the basement of the Wikipedia
> server farm!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Horrible Grammar

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>On 11/10/05, Freya <cybercat at redjellyfish.net> wrote:
>
>
>>We need a committee to check the grammar in Wikipedia articles and
>>make corrections! We need some really picky people on this committee
>>too - and I will be glad to help.
>>
>>
>English grammar is very flexible, so if you find something that
>doesn't look right to you it's probably better to fix it yourself--if
>it's really that important to you--than to hope for some committee to
>come up with the One True Wikipedia Grammar (which is feasible) and
>impose it on all of Wikipedia (which is a bit pie-in-the-sky).
>
>The other day someone came on IRC moaning about the use of "which" in
>nonrestrictive clauses, which is apparently a heinous crime in
>American English but perfectly acceptable (and even sometimes
>prefered) in most other forms.  My take on this--as with most style
>questions--is that we have thousands, of regular editors, and while
>it's nice to have stuff like our Manual of style, and Strunk and
>White, Fowler, etc as guides, we will probably have to permit our
>normal editing processes to take care of the question of grammar.  We
>have enough silly edit wars about whether or not to use emdashes and
>whatnot. A crusade on the nonrestrictive clause would not be of much
>use to Wikipedia if it drove away good people, as such battles
>invariably do.
>
I don't completely disagree with the idea of having grammar
specialists.  They do need the ability to pay attention to detail, but
also need the flexibility to understand that there is more than one way
of doing things.  We have long recognized that British and American
English will vary according to vocabulary and spelling, but it is also
important to remember that this also applies to the less well understood
domain of grammar.

In the article on "that" the New Fowler goes on to say, "Some there are
who follow this principle now, but it would be idle to pretend that it
is the practice either of most or of the best writers."

Ec


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote

>What is the name of that country in the middle of Europe, famous for
its sausages and beer?  Deutschland or Germany?

Yes, yes. But there's never been any doubt in my mind about the case in
question: I assumed [[C?te d'Ivoire]] is it, [[Ivory Coast]] would be a
redirect, and if you go to the UN in New York you find the place reserved
for C?te d'Ivoire.

The argument on the page that _other encyclopedias_ go for C?te d'Ivoire is
actually worth several cartloads of the rather grisly populist rhetoric this
is collecting.

Charles


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Incubator Wiki for New Wikimedia Projects

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
>> On 11/11/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>>
>>
>>> I do want to emphasis, however, that Wikibooks is not the place to do
>>> this either.  This is a need for a whole new project altogether.
>>>
>>
>> Wikibooks isn't the place for incubation of new projects, I agree.
>> And I can see the argument that Wikiversity goes beyond the original
>> scope of Wikibooks.  Essentially I feel that Wikiversity is a superset
>> of Wikibooks.  For that reason I don't really feel comfortable saying
>> that Wikiversity should be a separate project, I'd rather see
>> Wikibooks expanded to include other materials.  But I'd be willing to
>> concede that point, in fact I essentially have.
>>
>> As for Wikijunior, well, I find it hard to see how that's not a book,
>> but that's a completely different discussion.
>>
> The discussions for Wikiversity and Wikijunior have been going on for
> some time already.  Whatever one thinks of them, I don't think that
> their issues are the kind that would be solved in a seed project.  The
> purpose of a seed project would be primarily to see if there is enough
> interest to sustain an otherwise acceptable project.  The problems
> connected with Wikiversity and Wikijunior are different; I have no
> doubt that if started both could easily meet the participation
> critera..  Neither project should be a part of this discussion.
>
The problem with Wikiversity and Wikijunior is that they should have
been new proposed Wikimedia projects instead of something different.
 Wikijunior, IMHO, was "forced" upon Wikibooks, and with the plan to
turn Wikijunior more into a kids version of Wikipedia, the connection
with Wikibooks is far less than what it could have been in the past.
 Wikijunior is precisely what the seed wiki would be about... to get a
community going on a concept and see if there will be some viability for
keeping that community going.  Many Wikicities projects only last a few
weeks or months before they die out, and it would be a good idea to see
if that would happen before something gets the status of a full
Wikimedia sister project.  This seed wiki can provide that objective
view about some project idea.

Why Wikijunior in particular is a part of this discussion is because it
is an objective example of what kind of project could be started on the
seed wiki.  It should have started on a seed wiki rather than on
Wikibooks, especially with the Beck Foundation grant and other issues
that still have yet to be explained fully within the Wikijunior
community, and some significant policy differences between Wikijunior
and Wikibooks.  I also have my doubts as to if Wikijunior could in fact
get the necessary participation criteria, but I'm willing to wait and see.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Ilya N.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Probation Committee

body:
I was referring to your statement about that being caused due to the number
of teenagers present. I, myself, am a teenager.

But I don't wish to drag the conversation off-topic any further.

On 11/12/05, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ilya N. wrote:
> > I resent that statement.
> >
>
> I resent your misquoting. Here it is again:
>
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> > Kelly Martin wrote:
> >
> >>On 11/12/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>Do we really need more committees and projects? Couldn't we get by
> >>>with just a "mentorship" page? This sudden drive to factionalize,
> >>>make committees, and make small and obscure rules pages
> >>>([[Wikipedia:Ivies]] being the most flagrant recent example) is just
> >>>ridiculous.
> >>
> >>
> >>Welcome to Wikipedia High School! (Yes, Wikipedia is starting to turn
> >>into a high school, at least from a sociopolitical standpoint.)
> >>
> >
> >
> > Given the number of teenagers present, I am entirely unsurprised...
> >
> > (Next thing we'll have articles about cheeleading squads and revert wars
> > about which guy at one of the many thousand high schools we have
> > articles on has gotten the most girls, and who's the biggest slut, and
> > who looks fat, and...)
> >
> >
>
> I was talking about the high school mentality, thankyou.
>
> --
> 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
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)


from_name: M. Creidieki Crouch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Special Pages feedback

body:
On the current default skin, a user visiting a Special Page only has
one tab at the top, entitled "Special Pages".  There's no Talk page or
other obvious way to give feedback on the page.  I've often had
suggestions or complaints about various special pages, and had trouble
finding where to post about them.

Could a tab be added to the top of all specialpages called "Feedback"
or "Comment" or "Talk" or something?  I don't know whether we'd be
better off having a per-page "Talk", or whether there's an appropriate
centralized location for Specialpage feedback.

-- Creidieki


subject: [WikiEN-l] Totally unscientific investigation...

body:
On 11/12/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> It'd be a fine thing if all the authors of waaaaaay too many Pokemon
> articles turned their attention to more "serious" endeavors, but there's
> no way to make that happen.

Well, we can hope that when they grow up and go to college and
eventually move into the real world, they will continue to edit
Wikipedia, and hopefully not simply to keep the Pokemon articles up to
date with the latest release.  Even if only a few percent of them move
onto real articles, some good will come of it.

And if not, well, we'll have the best encyclopedia of anime and
computer games in the world.  There's something to be said for that.
[[Exploding sheep]] is a fascinating article, for example.

Kelly


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: "How to get a girl"

body:
I don't have much experience on WikiBooks, but wasn't this what Wikibooks
was founded for?

Besides, how would you cite anything for something like the books mentioned?

On 11/13/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
> >
> > It did? Good grief. I'm going to delete it myself, then.
> >
> > It is a blatant violation of the charter of Wikibooks
>
> Who decides that charter? Would you delete it even if the majority of
> the Wikibooks community disagreed with you?
>
> I don't understand the point in limiting the scope of Wikibooks this
> artificially. As if anything that is a book but not a textbook is
> somehow less useful.
>
> Timwi
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>Chris Luer made an excellent point. I would go with whatever article
>was created first in Wikipedia though unless there's massive amounts
>of links pointing to the other article (prior to this discussion) we
>might consider changing that.
>
I don't think we should pay much attention to the link count. Way back
in the mists of ancient history before the Manual of Style had taken its
present form, I split up the article [[Moon]] into [[Natural satellite]]
and [[Luna]] making [[Moon]] into a disambiguation page (Wikipedia
hadn't invented parenthesese yet :), and like the obsessive busy beaver
I am I went around changing every link to "Moon" into [[Luna|Moon]].
Needless to say, Earth's moon later got moved back to "Moon". But as a
result, hundreds and hundreds of articles linked to it via the "Luna"
redirect whereas only a handful of recent articles linked via Moon.

Luna is itself now a disambiguation page, so this example's long gone,
but the basic idea remains. I don't think that the link count within
Wikipedia is all that meaningful, and redirects are perfectly adequate.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Try out the rating scheme

body:
Wikiacc wrote:

>I have contacted the owner of the development version of WikiTree
>(which runs 1.5) for possible use.
>
>
Any word on whether he's interested?

I'm hoping this isn't going to just slip away into forgotten-land again.
Just earlier today I had yet another conversation with someone online in
which they said "Wikipedia's nice and all, but you can never tell if
someone's just inserted a load of nonsense into it." With this feature
I'd finally have a snappy comeback to that. And having just dipped my
toes into AfD for a few days, I'd love to see anything that might
alleviate it. :)


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

Fred Bauder stated for the record:

> His concerns certainly hit home with me. So I'm listening to him and
> taking seriously the kind of damage that can occur.
>
> Fred

In my other hobby, I administer a huge database of information a good
deal more personal than IP addresses.

For my income, I am a manager of a secure military network, compromise
of which would be ... bad.

I have a fair understanding of privacy and security issues.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | For days, we survived on
 sean at epoptic.org | nothing but food and water.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFDd6BFMAt1wyd9d+URAkYtAJwKC7Da9jPss9llz8zPE6r9SG4eaQCeOOww
IWclClcFe5Z2vPLvcTfq8J0=
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from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionitis

body:
On 11/13/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> The process that Tom describes in relation to the Irish articles appears
> to be organized vandalism by the wiki's Hell's Angels.

I think that's taking it too far.  The issue seems to be that what's
in the guidelines for how templates should be used (content that's in
multiple articles) is contrary to what a number of editors have been
doing (using them to separate out complex table and infobox markup
from the main page).

That being said, it seems to me that once it became obvious that the
true issue was one of POLICY, the issue should have been removed from
[[WP:TFD]] and discussed somewhere else, a consensus formed on whether
using templates to extract complexity from a single article is a good
idea or not, and THEN clean things up if needed.

IMO, the argument of 'server performance' being used as the
justification to remove such templates is spurious.  The significant
hit on server performance is when a template that's used on LOTS of
articles gets changed - then, the cached rendering of each page using
the template must be flushed and each page must be regenerated on the
next use.  The transclusion of a template into only one article is not
that heavy a load - if it were, we wouldn't be doing template
transclusion at all.

I tend to the conclusion that what I really dislike about the deletion
pages is the attempt to make policy in them.  Policy issues should not
be decided lynch-mob fashion under a deletion deadline.  In this way,
those who frequent the deletion pages - no matter what "side" they're
on - are trying to set Wikipedia policy for the community as a whole,
without attempting to involve the wider community in that "consensus
building".

-Matt (User:Morven)


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 13/11/05, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Tony Sidaway wrote
>
> > Consensus cannot be gauged only by voting; the
> external sources comprehensively refute the votes for the French name.
>
> That's simplistic here.  I wouldn't be surprised to hear 'Ivory Coast' on
> BBC radio, because it is much easier to grok.  But I don't imagine the BBC
> thinks that's the real name of the country.  Diplomats are supposed to be
> able to hack French pronunciation.  Let's face it, most anglophones can't.
> However WP is a written medium.

My dissertation went for C?te d'Ivoire, and I do hope it counts as an
English-language source...

We also have [[S?o Tom? and Pr?ncipe]], not "Sao Tome and Principe",
though that is by far the most common form of the name in English
(and, interestingly, MS Word's spellchecker doesn't know about the
version with accents!) - or [[Myanmar]] with Burma a redirect.

This latter one seems to be the most comparable situation; the
government requested a change to a less familiar version, and "Burma"
is still in very common use. (1600 "Burma" stories on Google News,
2100 "Myanmar")

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [HelpDesk-l] permission

body:
On 11/12/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> I don't think most of our fair use claims rely on C., that we're a
> non-profit encyclopedia.  They rely primarily on the fact that we are an
> encyclopedia, and using them for informational purposes.  I think a
> for-profit encyclopedia could also make use of most of them for the same
> reasons---for example, Britannica is probably well within their fair-use
> rights to illustrate their encyclopedia article on "Super Mario World"
> with a screenshot from the game.
>
> The major difficulty would come if people tried to reuse the content in
> some form that made it no longer primarily  informational/educational;
> if they simply distributed Wikipedia articles as is for profit, there's
> unlikely to be an issue.

Well, I was under the impression that restricting downstream use to
informational/educational use was too restrictive for Wikipedia's
goals, so I'm not sure your argument changes anything in the end.

Even in a weaker interpretation, the argument still seems to imply
that this policy places part of our project explicitly in a legal
position which benefits non-for-profit and educational use in a
disproportionate manner than it would for-profit and commercial use.
I'm not sure whether this is compatible or not with Jimbo's feelings
on re-use restrictions, though I imagine it likely comes down to how
disproportionate one interprets this difference to be. I don't think
there's any strong argument to say that such a difference does not
exist, though -- it is just a question of how much the difference is.

FF


body:
"Andrew Gray" wrote

>My dissertation went for C?te d'Ivoire, and I do hope it counts as an
English-language source...

If Google is truly my friend, so do the dangerous trendies who write the CIA
Handbook.

Charles


from_name: Anthere

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> Angela wrote:
>>
>>> On 11/9/05, Anthere
>>> <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>> I no longer think an uneditable wiki is the best way to present the
>>>>> Foundation to the world.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I'll let other people make that decision.
>>>
>>>
>>> I'd like to know if anyone still thinks it is a good idea, and if so
>>> why? It clearly doesn't present an official view, so where is the
>>> benefit in it being uneditable?
>>
>>
> To whatever extent there really is official policy it makes sense that
> it is uneditable, but there should be ample opportunity to comment that
> is directly linked from the uneditable pages.

We then go back to the idea of the blog or of commenting spaces.

The current most pressing point imho is that editors can not directly
comment on news or even on pages. It would be helpful that talk pages
are opened to anyone, while the pages themselves have a restricted
access. I do not know if this is technically possible. Does anyone know ?

OR, it would make sense that the "news" section on the main page is
transformed in a collective blog, when anyone can comment at will any news.

>> Incidently, if you read Traroth report,  It says
>>
>> 1) Le Louvres is a famous french museum; hosting art, with most of it
>> much much older than 100 years old, so likely to be considered owned
>> by humanity
>>
>> 2) Le Louvres has started forbidding taking pictures from this art
>>
>> 3) Only photographers authorized to take picture of art will be Le
>> Louvres photographers, so ALL photos will be under cp. Which means
>> that unless you go to Paris and pay the entrance, all this artwork
>> will be only visible through work under copyright. None will be free
>> to use.
>>
>> 4) And Traroth concludes he does not think art and freedom will gain
>> much of this;
>>
>> Now, on another note, compare it to Jimbo's speech at Wikimania, about
>> freeing 10 things...
>>
>> How different is that ? How unofficial is it to try to push so that
>> people are free to take pictures of famous paintings 500 years old ?
>>
>> To me, there is no difference. What Jimbo said in his Wikimania speech
>> is exactly what Traroth says about what is happening in Le Louvres;
>> The only difference is that Jimbo was speaking generally, while
>> Traroth is taking an example. But if the Foundation agrees that what
>> Le Louvres is doing (ie if the Foundation public view is that
>> forbidding access to old painting is just fine) then I must say I do
>> not agree with the Foundation public view at all.
>>
>> I will go further in saying that Jimbo's public speech does not fit
>> either with the Foundation position.
>>
>> Then, if neither Jimbo's nor my position are the positions of the
>> Foundation... how do we define what the official position of the
>> Foundation is ?
>
>
> Isn't that the function of the Board?  The Board can and should support
> a policy of "freeing" the art and the museums, and explain what that
> means in general terms.  It should avoid taking that into great detail
> because of the wide variety of country specific or project specific
> circumstances that can exist.  The wonder of NPOV is that it is very
> difficult to pin down in a way that can be applied the same way to all
> projects; at the same time it has been a key factor in Wikipedia's success.
>
> When it comes to the Louvre situation it shoudl not be up to the
> Foundation to take a specific stand about those circumstances, but it
> can take the position in principle that photographs of portraits that
> have themselves gone into the public domain in the relevant country are
> not copyrightable.  The French association may be able to elaborate this
> further in relation to what its members may do in France, and what ways
> of circumventing unjust rules are acceptable.  If I visit France, and
> choose to sneak a camera into the Louvre, I can still do so at my own risk.
>
>> Now, there is another important point.
>> Traroth position on Le Louvres issue is clearly supported by Wikimedia
>> France. Similarly, other people are currently working to free some
>> information, such as the people working on the ESA images issue. Most
>> of these actions are linked with the French and/or German associations.
>>
>> Should we also remove all descriptions of what the german and french
>> associations are doing from the WMF website, upon the principle that
>> those actions are not official views of the Foundation ? Does that
>> mean what the associations do are contrary to the Foundation goals ?
>
>
> Not at all.
>
>> I am quite worried of what you seem to imply in saying that this
>> article does not reprensent our official view, because it represents
>> my view and quite probably the view of at least one chapter. If we
>> remove everything but only what Jimbo's words, then, I agree, there is
>> no sense in that website.
>
>
> Whole Foundation views are not just about your or Jimbo's words.  It is
> always a problem when an organization has one key leader whose words are
> so influential that they will be taken as absolute truth or duty.  He
> becomes trapped in his role as an idol. and must be careful with his
> words lest some idiot take a ridiculously extreme interpretation.  This
> is why it's even more important for the Board to take a collective
> representative position.
>
> Ec

Agreed.
The main problem we then face here is basically that I am nearly the
only board member interested in putting information there, that goes
beyond just adding news to the news section.

Michael, I think, never added anything (he is working a lot on the
financial side in particular, but does so behind curtains). Tim has only
added meeting notes. Angela is mostly editing the news section. Jimbo, I
think, only ever added the announcement of Danny's employment. Even
pages such as benefactors are not updated.

We can not talk of taking a collective representative position when 4
members just do not comment publicly on their position. I could try to
add what I think is a summary, but how representative can it be if board
members do not even check what is written at all ?
You would believe it could be just managed the wikipedia way (cite your
sources...), but even this is not possible, as most discussions are in
private mails or on private mailing lists... so can not be cited at all.

So... trapped between the
* you can not talk in other people name
* but you can not cite their words either

What is left ?

Not much.

At this point, I can go back to my own blog and at least talk in my
name. Any other information, editors or non editors can go and seek it
with other board members or officers. If one wants to know more about
our grants, he may go and ask Danny. If one wants to know more about our
current legal issues, he can go and ask directly to Soufron. If one
wants to know more about business deals, he can go and directly ask to
Jimbo. Is that efficient ? Absolutely not.

Collective information can only provided if
* people collectively produce it
* or if people agrees that one of them provide, with the inherent risk
of erroneous interpretation.

To my opinion, the Foundation website should reflect what it is taking
care of, what its activity is, what is the opinion of its individual
members, or its collective opinion, as well as what the chapters are doing.
Fact is, if nothing is written at all, either the opinion will be that
we do nothing, or it will be that we are not transparent.

ant


from_name: Ben Yates

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Blocked for nonexistent "3RR vio"

body:
It doesn't matter if you were RIGHT.  The three revert rule is
designed precisely to sidestep discussions of who's right, in order to
prevent edit wars.  If you want to continue reverting an article
inside a 24 hour period, you have to contact someone else and have
them do the reverting. The three revert rule is full of loopholes in
that sense, but it's purpose is only to make revert wars difficult and
annoying enough to carry out that they become rare.  It has to be
enforced or wikipedia gets clogged up.

On 11/13/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> > You disruptively attempted to close an AfD on an article that falls into
> > your area of ... what's that word that isn't "obsession" but means the
> > same thing?  You did so four times.  You then voted "speedy keep", with
> > your first sentence being the same as your edit summary.
>
> Have you looked at the article in question? I don't know about others,
> but to me it's a blatantly obvious speedy keep. People obviously keep
> the AfD discussion going only because it's "accepted practice" or
> "policy" or whatever you call it this time. If anyone actually sat down
> and thought about what we really want, it would be a speedy keep.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Cool.  Do you have any plans to make it client-side, though?  As
things stand it's really a browser-within-a-browser, which is a little
clumsy.

(I'll second the call for english documentation/interface cues.  I
don't speak german, but I'm willing to look over or edit a rough
translation.)

Ben Yates
Wikipedia Blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com

On 11/12/05, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi...if you are doing what I think you are then kudos!
>
> Is there a way to make your page display in english? I got around, but I
> don't understand german very well.
>
> Thanks
>
> On 11/12/05, Harald Hanek <gollumlist at yahoo.de> wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> > i tinkered a small Tool named Gollum, with which one can browse fast and
> > eyefriendly by Wikipedia.
> >
> > Gollum is currently in the beta phase, therefore i look at this way for
> > Users to test Gollum and send me your experiences, error messages and also
> > suggestions communicate.
> >
> > http://gollum.easycp.de/
> >
> > Have much fun with Gollum and thank you.
> >
> > Greetings from Germany
> >
> > Harald
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> ~Ilya N.
> http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Gerrit Holl

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Boycot

body:
Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) wrote:
> Well, I think this whole Zlatiborian hoax has wasted a lot of time, and I
> still don't understand why Mark is going about it as if it's still a
> legitimate language. Wikipedia is a flexible place, and there's nothing
> wrong with having a joke, but I think this has become very bad-taste now. I
> would propose deleting it from Requests for new languages.

I think a boycott is not at all suitable here.

Gerrit.

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-11-13 12:59:52    1.1 degrees Celsius ( 34.1F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.


from_name: Timwi

body:
>>Bugzilla is notoriously unusable for non-technical users.
>
> You mean users who can't read instructions carefully [1]. If you look
> for the right buttons everything is fairly easy (this is coming from a
> moderately technical user).

No offense, but this sounds like you have little experience in user
interface design. Users are not unable to read instructions, but rather
unwilling. A really good user interface doesn't need any instructions.

> [1] I know people like that--a link will be right in front of their
> face and they'll ask, "Where's the link?"

It is right in front of *your* face because you know the interface. It
is pointless (and arrogant) to point fingers at these people and mock
*them* as stupid when it is obviously the user interface that is failing
and that needs to be improved so that more people will find the link.

Why are we discussing this anyway? Would you seriously consider using
BugZilla as a professional corporate customer support platform? Would
you think many customers would be happy if some company did? If the
answers to these are "yes", then you must have really low expectations.
If the answers are "no", but you would still use it for Wikipedia, then
you have some really weird kind of logic.

Timwi


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Tom Cadden wrote:

>An interesting row is going on at [[Talk:C?te
>d'Ivoire]]. The country is usually known in English as
>Ivory Coast but is controversially at its
>little-used-in-English French name. A proposal by me
>supported by Ed Poor to move it to the more widely
>used English name, to follow the standard naming
>rules, produced the mother of all rows, with users
>queuing to claim that 'everyone' calls it Cote
>d'Ivoire.
>
I remember looking at this over three years ago, at which time my first
inclination was to change the name.  Unlike many other French-speaking
countries the official name for English purposes is the French one.  See
the member list for the United Nations at
http://www.un.org/Overview/unmember.html  This does not mean that other
French speaking countries follow the same practice.  The Central African
Republic does not appear as R?publique Centraficaine.

>That argument was clearly disproved. Checks on
>websites with the BBC, New York Times, ABC, South
>African television, Australian newspapers, the Times
>of London, the Guardian, NBC, Bloomberg, the British
>Foreign Office, etc shows that worldwide Ivory Coast
>is more used in some cases by a factor of 10. Only the
>US State Department uses the French name, and even
>then just occasionally, a far cry from the 'always'
>claimed.
>
Maybe the US State Department is just following the UN lead on this.
The proportion of newspapers and websites using the English name is
irrelevant.  The position of official Ivoirian sites is more influential.

>Even then the majority was queuing up to insist the
>French name be kept, no matter what. But a closer look
>showed that a large number of those voting to keep the
>French name were French speakers!
>
This is a racist slur for which you owe everyone an apology.

>French and English
>are famous rivals to be the dominant world language,
>but is it a first for a English Wikipedia article to
>be kept at a little used French name rather than the
>widely used English version contrary to WP NCs and the
>MoS, by a block vote of French speakers defending the
>French language?
>
>What is WP policy when language is used to a block
>vote to force the MoS and NC to be ignored in an
>article's name?
>
Please avoid the use of abbreviations.  They only make your comments
more difficult to read.

>PS: The vote is still going on. Please come and vote.
>
>
Determining the official name of a country is not a matter for voting.
It is a sure way of having facts overwhelmed by ignorance.

Ec