body:
On 03/05/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> There are not many who upload in bad faith, and those who do tend
> to weed themselves out by getting blocked. The usual case is
> ignorance; while one doesn't need to know much to add a legit
> sentence, valid uploads require more knowledge, including a basic
> familiarity with the legalities. Even after simplifying the
> legalese down via templates, and providing lots of links and advice
> on the upload pages, we still get hundreds of bad uploads per day,
> many of which will require admin cycles to clean up. It doesn't
> help that many uploaders think they know about image copyrights
> already, so there is a lot of unlearning for them to do.

Maybe we need a green line and a red line like with customs at airports.

Do you own this image? Did you take it, or make it with your own bare
hands, starting from scratch? Are you willing to release virtually all
rights to it, and let others sell, modify or otherwise abuse it?
Green line for you!

All others, line up over here, we'll deal with you next week.

Steve


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On 03/05/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> > I'm not clear on what you mean by citing a game? And the motivations
> > of doing so. Using "The blue monster appears on levels 7, 23 and 37,
> > and bonus level Z3 if you finish the first 50 levels without taking
> > hit" as a citation is unmanageable.
> >
> Howso? You just managed it right there, slap <ref> tags around it
> instead of quotation marks and you're good to go. :)

I think when there's that much effort involved, I'd rather "According
to BlueMonsterKilla on walkthroughs.com, ..."

Steve


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Upload by default to Commons?

body:
On 5/3/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/3/06, Gallagher Mark George <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
> >
> > Frankly, the number of dodgy images uploaded by irresponsible, selfish or just downright stupid people every day is enough to make one break down and gibber in terror.  The last thing we want to do is inflict our problems on Commons ...
> >
>
> Agreed.  I'm about *this* far from accidentally modifying OrphanBot to
> remove every image uploaded by someone with fewer than a hundred
> edits.
>
> --
> Mark
> [[User:Carnildo]]

Can you come up with a way of modifying it to kill everything that
comes from playboy?

--
geni


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On 03/05/06, Gregory Szorc <gregory.szorc at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was curious what the current plans are for MW 2.0.  Will it just be
> announced sometime during the quarterly release schedule?  Will it be a
> considerable rewrite?
>
> If the later, I have an interesting idea for SoC.  How about somebody
> rewrite the MW 1.6 core.

Why the 1.6 core? 1.7alpha is in constant development and is in use on
Wikimedia sites.

Rob Church


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Watchlist feature requests (was Re: Cruft)

body:
Guillaume Paumier wrote:
> On 5/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 03/05/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> How many articles are on your watchlist? Do /you/ check every edit that
>>> appears on your watchlist?
>> Until there are better facilities for managing watchlists, I don't
>> think anyone can do that. I have close to 1000 articles on mine, and
>> others have 5 or 10 times as many. I tend to find that using "my
>> contributions" works better, checking any article for which my edit is
>> not the latest.
>>
>> If anyone did feel like building some watchlist management tools, here
>> are some requests:
>> * Create a view which shows each article in your watchlist, sorted by
>> the most recent change (unlike the current view which can show each
>> article several times)
>> * Add checkboxes to the previously described view, allowing you to
>> rapidly unselect large numbers of pages from the watch list
>> * Add an option to remove all pages which you have not edited in the
>> last X days, or for which none of the last Y edits have been made for
>> you.
>> * Allow a way of bookmarking pages without actually "watching" them.
>> That is, to record the fact that a particular page was interesting,
>> without actually wanting to be informed of every change to that page.
>> *On a watchlist view, provide a link to compare the current version of
>> the page with the last version that you edited.
>>
>> Even a way to bulk delete *all* items from my watchlist would be
>> better than nothing. So frequently I want to watch an article for a
>> couple of days, but that's it. I end up with hundreds of articles I
>> don't really have much interest in, but there's no way to prune them
>> except by the very tedious process of unwatching them one at a time.
>>
>
> Some of your requests are available through edition of your
> monobook.js. Contributors from fr wikipedia have created javascripts
> to manage watchlist easilly: for example, you can remove all articles
> from your watchlist, or only subpages from AfD... you can also hide
> bots in your watchlist. You can find this there :
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Monobook/Fonctions_avanc%C3%A9es
>

Oh yes, there's
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_User_scripts on en:
which has a heap of these sort of things (somewhere). I've crosslinked them.

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

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from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [wsimpson@greendragon.com: Wikipedia watching
	(was: Tier 2 - Lease?)]

body:
On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 07:36:43PM -0400, William Allen Simpson wrote:
> Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > FYI; forwarded from NANOG.  William, don't even bother yelling at mefor
> > crossing it.  :-).
> >
> Why would I do that?  It's a public list.  Not sure that it was content
> appropriate for this list, but that's your call.  If it gets some more
> experienced network folk involved, that would be a "good thing" (tm)....

Your responses to things are sometimes... not the same as other
people's.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


list: foundation-l

from_name: Brian Anderton

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews IOTM for May

body:
I'm pleased to announce that Andrew Westphal has accepted a request
for an interview with Wikinews.

Andrew Westphal is the Project director for the Stardust at home project.
Stardust was an interstellar capsule that collected samples from Comet
Wild 2. The project allows user to sign up, scan the capsule in the
frame they are assigned, to find interstellar matter from the comet.

We will be doing research and developing questions at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Interview_of_the_month/May_2006_Questions

This months Interview will be taking place on Thursday, 18 May 2006 in
the International Wikinews IRC channel
(irc://irc.freenode.net/wikinews).

Brian


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews IOTM for May


subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability equating to notability

body:
On 03/05/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> Not that it's unprecedented for people on this list to be civility
> hypocrites.

Eep, let's chill, everyone, please?

Steve


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright?

body:
On 5/3/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> SPUI has repeatedly tagged http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sbekele
> as a copyvio of http://www.cbsintl.com/people.htm.  I refused to
> speedy it on that basis, so SPUI blanked it and added the copyvio
> template.

> Sbekele self-identifies as Sophia Bekele, CEO of CBS
> International,

Looking at user contributions, I don't see this to be the case.  Was
there a deleted edit you're referring to?

> and therefore presumably the copyright owner.

The copyright owner of that website is more likely to be CBS
International.  The website is most likely a work for hire.

> Since
> this is user space, and the content is an "about us" bio, not
> commercial content, I think that blanking and deletion are a bit
> excessive.  On the other hand, copyright is copyright I guess.  What
> does the panel think?
>
Who's "the panel"?

What I think is that you're both arguing over something completely
pointless.  It's just a user page.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright?

body:
On 5/3/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/en/Author%27s_claim_of_license is
> the standard reply to "someone keeps tagging my material as copyvio,
> but I wrote it, damnit"
>
>From that page: "In order to accept into Wikipedia content which is
published on another website, we usually require a clear statement
from the author of the content that the content is being licensed
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) [...].
This statement must come from an email address that we can clearly
recognize as being from the operator of the website, or be in reply to
a message sent to the operator of the website."

Umm, what if the operator of the website isn't the author of the content?

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On 5/3/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> The explication I read at [[Cruft]] and at the Jargon File's entry
> for "cruft" fit well within what I understood the meaning of "cruft"
> to be on Wikipedia.
>
> >> In AfD contexts, it's extraneous
> >> content not suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia.
> >
> > Well, the actual usage is as a pejorative-type suffix; what you are
> > smuggling there into 'extraneous'.
>
> That's not what I'm smuggling there, that's what the word means, and
> that's what I and many others have always understood it to mean. The
> fact that large numbers of people don't know that only reiterates my
> point that we should educate Wikipedians about the jargon.
>
> "Listcruft" is cruft in the form of a list. "Fancruft" is cruft of
> interest only to fans of the topic in question.
>

I still don't understand the point of the term.  If all "cruft" means
is something not suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia, isn't it
redundant?

Does "delete, bandcruft" really mean the same as "delete, deletable
article about a band"?  Why not just say "delete"?

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On 5/3/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> >>> In my opinion calling content contributed in good faith by our
> >>> valued
> >>> contributors "cruft" is incivil. It sends the clear message that
> >>> their contributions, and by extension themselves, are valueless.
> >>
> >> Reductio ad absurdum time:
> >>
> >> "In my opinion, nominating content contributed by our valued
> >> contributors is incivil. It sends the clear message that their
> >> contributions, and by extension themselves, are valueless."
> >
> > Nothing absurd about it, deleting someone's contributions DOES send
> > the signal that that particular contribution is considered
> > valueless by the deleting authority (speedying admin or
> > supermajority of AfD folks).
>
> You missed two important points there:
>
> 1. "and, by extension, themselves"
> 2. Kelly's' implied conclusion is that we shouldn't call things
> "cruft". By her reasoning, we should never delete anything either.
>
Deletion from Wikipedia doesn't necessarily mean something is
valueless, only that it isn't suitable for Wikipedia.

I suppose the same could be said about something called "cruft", though.

Anthony


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
geni wrote:
> On 5/3/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>> No, that would be citing a _primary_ source, which is entirely within
>> the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia. Indeed, in many cases the game
>> itself would probably be a lot easier to get ahold of for verification
>> than old issues of game magazines that might discuss it.
>>
>
> By that standard I could give you the instructions for doing various
> chemical experiments (ones that don't appear in the lititure) as a
> source.
>
Not at all. I use that standard and I would not consider your example to
be a "primary source," so you're putting something else into the mix to
reach that conclusion not present in my standard. Perhaps I'm not
explaining it clearly or we have a basic difference in underlying
philosophy.

IMO the key difference between the two is that a computer game is a work
of "literature" (in a broad sense) whereas a pile of chemicals is not.
You "read" a game by playing it but you don't "read" a pile of chemicals
by combining them in various predefined ways.


from_name: William Allen Simpson

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [wsimpson@greendragon.com: Wikipedia watching
 (was: Tier 2 - Lease?)]

body:
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> FYI; forwarded from NANOG.  William, don't even bother yelling at mefor
> crossing it.  :-).
>
Why would I do that?  It's a public list.  Not sure that it was content
appropriate for this list, but that's your call.  If it gets some more
experienced network folk involved, that would be a "good thing" (tm)....


subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 03/05/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>> Howso? You just managed it right there, slap <ref> tags around it
>> instead of quotation marks and you're good to go. :)
>>
>
> I think when there's that much effort involved, I'd rather "According
> to BlueMonsterKilla on walkthroughs.com, ..."
>
There are articles that cite books which would probably take way more
effort for me to track down than it would for me to play 50 levels of
BlueMonsterKilla without taking a hit, though, so I still don't think
one should reject a reference purely on the basis of how easy it is to
verify (provided it's at least _possible_). Though if a walkthrough were
indeed available I agree that it would be a nicer thing to reference.


from_name: Gregory Szorc

subject: [Wikitech-l] Google summer of code : RSS Category feeds

body:
On 5/3/06, Plyd <wiki.vincent at amplyd.com> wrote:
>
> I propose to add two main things:
> * RSS feed for every category
> * An article-included category limited listing/feed

My WikiFeeds extension already does the former.  It isn't officially part of
MediaWiki, however.  See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiFeeds for more
info.

Gregory Szorc
gregory.szorc at gmail.com


body:
On 03/05/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> Trial by fire. If someone can't take the "abuse" of a standard RfA,
> they can't take the ongoing abuse that admins take all the time from
> vandals, trolls, and other trouble-makers.
>
> Personally, I went through RfA just like a lot of people here. You
> don't see me whining about how I was bludgeoned over the head. RfA is
> supposed to be a tough process to get through.

Oh, I'm not objecting to it being rough. I'm objecting to someone
actually being opposed for RfA for petty reasons

Steve


body:
On 03/05/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> As for "an article with no claim to notability", I actually have no
> idea what that phrase means.

An article has to establish the notability of its subject. If it
doesn't do that, it's subject to speedy deletion.

...I recite.

> Stubbing only works if there's something there you can verify in the
> first place.  Stubbing an article without verifying that your stub is
> accurate first is a very bad idea IMO, because it gives false
> credibility to the possibly inaccurate statement.

Heh: '''John Smith''' was a rap singer [citation needed].

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 11:51:22PM +0200, Daniel Wunsch wrote:
> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

Can I make a smart-ass crack about programmers who put that many
non-significant 0's in a URL?  :-)

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


body:
On 03/05/06, Pete Bartlett <pcb21 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >I actually tried to get "Wikipedia is not your plaything" added to
> >[[WP:NOT]], but I wasn't able to get consensus for it.
>
> I hate how we don't have [[WP:IS]] *
> and how anything on [[WP:NOT]] is somehow seen to be
> bestowed from above with so few people saying [[WP:WHY NOT]]
>
> Pcb
>
> *Well we do, but it doesn't redirect to where you might think.

[[WP:8W]]

Steve


from_name: SilverSide

body:
Hey, I didn't know about that - that's one SICK extension! Thanks for
dev'ing that, implementing it as I type... well in between words.
Even I can't type with one hand and FTP with the other (-:

On May 3, 2006, at 3:38 PM, Gregory Szorc wrote:

> On 5/3/06, Plyd <wiki.vincent at amplyd.com> wrote:
>>
>> I propose to add two main things:
>> * RSS feed for every category
>> * An article-included category limited listing/feed
>
>
> My WikiFeeds extension already does the former.  It isn't
> officially part of
> MediaWiki, however.  See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiFeeds
> for more
> info.
>
> Gregory Szorc
> gregory.szorc at gmail.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 07:41:41PM -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 11:51:22PM +0200, Daniel Wunsch wrote:
> > http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
>
> Can I make a smart-ass crack about programmers who put that many
> non-significant 0's in a URL?  :-)

Yes, I suspect you can.

--
Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"A script is what you give the actors.  A program
is what you give the audience." - Larry Wall


subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 01:42:38AM +0200, Tels wrote:
>
>  "In my opiniation, "burglarize" is a perfectionally validative
>  wordification. How else would reportization of the securitial/policial
>  forceship appearize to be importantive enoughly to be respectative by
>  the massmediaship and influentate the societyness?" SharpFang (651121)
>  on 2004-12-13 at /. about "burgle" vs. "burglarize"

This may come off as needlessly superficial, but your sig was my
favorite part of the email.

--
Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"The ability to quote is a serviceable
substitute for wit." - W. Somerset Maugham


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On 03/05/06, Jesse W <jessw at netwood.net> wrote:

> > appears on your watchlist?
> As of now: 482 items with 78 changes in the last 3 days. Do I check all
> the contributions that include an edit summary like "{subs:afd}",
> "nomiating for deletion", or something like that?  Yes, and I don't
> think that's too much to ask.  If you have so much on your watchlist
> that you can't do that - take some things off your watchlist.

But a large number of articles put on AFD are done so without a clear
edit summary. (I try to remember to use "DELETE", which is
eye-catching, but I often forget). Even if this is done, if someone
reads the discussion, looks at the article, and helpfully copyedits it
ten minutes later... the watchlist is useless.

I use my watchlist regularly. I've still had situations where I look
on AFD and think "hey, didn't I just rewrite that article last week"?
It's a good-sounding theory, but it falls apart in contact with normal
use.

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


from_name: Ivan Krstic

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
Tels wrote:
> You just insulted me as a Perl programmer that all my code is
> unmaintanable.

Can we please drop this discussion? People are free to use whatever
tools make them happy. MediaWiki currently happens to be a huge PHP
codebase. Rewriting the core, even in PHP, is absolutely inappropriate
for a SoC project; rewriting all of MW in a different language is not
likely to happen anytime soon. Pointless language bickering adds
unnecessary and irrelevant noise to this list; those inclined to
continue it should do so privately.

--
Ivan Krstic <krstic at fas.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D


subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On 5/3/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> Gregory Szorc wrote:
> > I was curious what the current plans are for MW 2.0.  Will it just be
> > announced sometime during the quarterly release schedule?  Will it be a
> > considerable rewrite?
>
> Whether there will even be a 2.0 is an open question. So far we've made
> huge
> changes in internal structure incrementally, without having to rewrite
> everything, and there's no obvious reason why this can't continue.
>
> > If the later, I have an interesting idea for SoC.  How about somebody
> > rewrite the MW 1.6 core.  Details of the rewrite would include
>
> A core rewrite is I think not going to work for SoC. :)
>
> > *Changing everything to PHP 5 (better OO support in core)
>
> We already require PHP 5 for 1.7, and will be making more use of the new
> features as things get refactored.
>
> > *Eliminating $wg global usage.
>
> This too happens piece by piece. Most non-configuration globals have been
> pruned
> from most code, though there's still further work to be done.
>
>
Thank you, Brion, for the reply.  This is exactly what I wanted to hear.

Would a suitable project for SoC be to go through the code base and assist
with the PHP 5/$wg global phase out that has been occurring with 1.7?  For
example, adding visibility keywords on all the functions and fixing all the
references to functions that are currently marked with comments as private
or protected?  On top of that, someone could update all the functions that
have a better PHP 5 implementation.  For example, replacing the XML
functions with PHP 5 DOM ones and replacing all the references to the old
functions.

Gregory Szorc
gregory.szorc at gmail.com


from_name: Cheney Shill

subject: [WikiEN-l] We need a policy against vote-stacking

body:
Ben McIlwain <cydeweys at gmail.com> wrote:

    We cannot put up with these attempts at gaming our consensus-based
    system. Consensus doesn't work when it just becomes a numbers game of
    who can recruit the most votes. And trying to make a rational decision
    about the merits of an article when a bunch of sheeple are coming in
    mindlessly on both sides and voting without even considering the issues
    is absurd. We need to deal with this problem. We need to modify our
    policy so that it IS a blockable offense to vote-stack and game the
    system.
    - --
I've read both your and geni's responses.  I'd agree if the solution were to eliminate consensus from the system.  As it stands, there are plenty of problems with or without vote blocking and consensus:
*Anybody can vote stack easily enough outside Wiki (email, IRC, etc.).  Blocking doesn't fix that.  In fact, they can still use the built in user email with compiling AFD lists and userboxes.
*Contributors that only follow the article occasionally (less than once a week) need to be informed.  Blocking them and the notifier would be unfair.  This applies to the ongoing discussion regarding biographies, too.  Should everyone that contributes to an article be expected to follow it every day or even every week?  If they don't, the AFD will be closed in a week (maybe 1 in 1000 go much beyond a week).
*Sooner or later, groups are going to realize they can meet and decide the fate of an article without even discussing it on Wikipedia.  A politically active college group with members at many colleges could easily AFD many articles.  Short of Jimbo picking up a clue bat, they could take over Wiki with an extended effort.
*With consensus, regardless of whether you block for stacking or not, you are turning the content on Wiki into an original research project.  Instead of verifiability/notability, AFD uses a pole, violating 2 policies in favor of a guideline that's intended for "working with others" not content.~~~~Pro-Lick

---------------------------------
Blab-away for as little as 1?/min. Make  PC-to-Phone Calls using Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Wed, 3 May 2006 10:42:12 +0200, you wrote:

>Militantly Oppose - JoshuaZ seems to be a bright guy and very
>level-headed - I'm sure he'll be a great admin here. But with all
>sincerity, I cannot do anything but oppose someone who has lowered
>themselves to the reprehensible depths of posting "Questions" on
>WP:RfA pages. The Q/A grandstanding has nothing to do with anything.

They said that about Joshua?  Where's that wet trout?  Joshua is a
very calm and levelheaded person, ideal admin material IMO.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On Wed, 03 May 2006 22:04:50 +1000, you wrote:

>For many people, nominating an article is no different from "voting" to delete.

This is true.  In my case, I will nominate if there is a speedy
tag/untag war going on.  In these cases I will have no opinion at all.
I usually remember to say so, I don't want a nom to count as a delete
vote.  I rarely vote on my own nominations.

>I've been sporadically trying, along with several others, over the
>past few months to lift the quality of AfD nominations (the AfD
>nomination I link above, I would consider a minimum standard).  An
>article nominated for deletion on the grounds of non-notability, for
>example, should include the reasons the nominator believes the article
>is non-notable, any steps he took to verify this (check history for
>number of editors, check "what links here", check Google, and so on),
>relevant policy if any, and so on.  What it should *not* include is
>any bolded recommendation ("'''Delete''' NN"), insults, or the word
>"merge".

A worthy initiative.  One problem is that there is such a torrent of
spam, vanity and other nonsense that it is hard to spot the difference
between these and genuine-but-bad articles on valid subjects.  PROD
was a good idea to try to separate out the crud, but of course the
most blatant spam is often what people will wage the fiercest wars to
keep.  The tone of discussion on music articles has improved markedly
since speedy A7 was extended to bands, most of the really vacuous
garage bands never make it to AfD now.  But we're never going to fix
the problem with AfD without reducing the queues to manageable levels.
Maybe that means separate queues per subject area.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright?

body:
SPUI has repeatedly tagged http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sbekele
as a copyvio of http://www.cbsintl.com/people.htm.  I refused to
speedy it on that basis, so SPUI blanked it and added the copyvio
template.  Sbekele self-identifies as Sophia Bekele, CEO of CBS
International, and therefore presumably the copyright owner.  Since
this is user space, and the content is an "about us" bio, not
commercial content, I think that blanking and deletion are a bit
excessive.  On the other hand, copyright is copyright I guess.  What
does the panel think?

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Ben McIlwain

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

I recently came across a very contentious Afd having to deal with the
movement to impeach George W. Bush.  The discussion was overwhelmed with
vote-stacking.  I caught two users doing it and temporarily blocked
them, but was reverted by an admin who says it's "not in policy" that we
can block for that.  I've also since discovered a third person who was
vote-stacking.

Vote-stacking is wrong, it is harmful to Wikipedia, and it needs to be
discouraged and stopped.  The simple way to do this is to block users
who are doing this.  If it's not in the policy now, it should be.

I heard the argument, "Well, if you're just informing other users,
that's not vote-stacking."  That's wrong on two counts.  First of all,
all of this vote-stacking going on here was specifically encouraging
people to come to the Afd and vote a specific way.  And, even if the
message is "neutrally worded", it's still vote-stacking unless I'm
sending it out to a random sample of Wikipedians.  Do you think these
vote-stackers were using a random sample?  No.  They were sending the
messages to people they know already vote their way.  In this case, it
appears to be a combination of a What links here on the {{User
republican}} userbox and an examination of which ways people voted on
the previous Afd, and then selectively sending the message to just the
people who previously voted in agreement with the vote-stackers views.

We cannot put up with these attempts at gaming our consensus-based
system.  Consensus doesn't work when it just becomes a numbers game of
who can recruit the most votes.  And trying to make a rational decision
about the merits of an article when a bunch of sheeple are coming in
mindlessly on both sides and voting without even considering the issues
is absurd.  We need to deal with this problem.  We need to modify our
policy so that it IS a blockable offense to vote-stack and game the system.

- --
Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys")

~ Sub veste quisque nudus est ~
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body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

geni wrote:
> On 5/4/06, Ben McIlwain <cydeweys at gmail.com> wrote:
>> We cannot put up with these attempts at gaming our consensus-based
>> system.  Consensus doesn't work when it just becomes a numbers game of
>> who can recruit the most votes.  And trying to make a rational decision
>> about the merits of an article when a bunch of sheeple are coming in
>> mindlessly on both sides and voting without even considering the issues
>> is absurd.  We need to deal with this problem.  We need to modify our
>> policy so that it IS a blockable offense to vote-stack and game the system.
>
>
> Way way way to subjective. RFC and arbcom would probably be a better option.

That would take weeks, and by then the vote-stackers have long gotten
away with it.  And I don't think vote-stacking is too subjective.  If
you see someone recruiting votes, deal with them.  It's pretty simple.

As an update to the situation, the two users I blocked have been
unblocked, but hopefully they are not going to keep on vote-stacking.
Meanwhile, a third user has already started vote-stacking the DRV so I
blocked him ... I imagine the same admin is going to revert me on that
too, though.  This is getting ridiculous.  Our very system of how we
make decisions is under attack and I'm trying to do something about it
and meeting resistance.

- --
Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys")

~ Sub veste quisque nudus est ~
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from_name: Paweł Dembowski

subject: [Foundation-l] RfC: A Free Content and Expression Definition

body:
> Sure, but at the same time we should acknowledge that an encyclopedia
> article that is legal to copy, distribute, improve, and translate, for
> any purpose (including commercial ones), in the vast majority of the
> world, is "free enough", even if the pictures can't be cut out and put
> in your car commercial.  IOW, some fair use can be allowed while the
> work remains free.
> Anthony

The same can be said about "educational use only" images, which in my
opinion are much better than dubious "fair use".

--
Pawe? 'Ausir' Dembowski


from_name: Brian Salter-Duke

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 01:27:09AM -0700, Pete Bartlett wrote:
> >Er. [[WP:OWN]]?  Images are an exception, as nearly all images are the
> >work of one or two people at most.  Articles are not.  Articles can,
> >and often are, watched.  Wikipedians ought to pay attention to their
> >watchlists if they wish to express opinions about their contributions.
>
> The vast majority of AfDed articles are very new and have just one author.

Indeed and it is likely that they are put off by having their gems
described as "cruft". However, I think people are put off more by other
things:-

1. General jargon of which cruft is just one.
2. Being put to AfD within hours or sometimes minutes of starting the
article. I think this is most offensive. New editors are finding their
way. They are not obsessed with WP. They have a life. They will take
time to develop the article. If someone thinks the article is bad, they
make a note of it and follow it for a week or so, talk to the editor on
his talk page and perhaps the article talk page. It is sheer bad manners
and certainly biting the newbie to push something to Afd so quickly. There
is no hurry. WP is not going to be perfect tomorrow if you speedy delete
a few articles.
3. Comments on Afd like, "looks non-verifiable to me", "seems
non-notable" and other comments that show the nominator has not done
enough homework before jumping to conclusions. I have seen quite a few
AfDs withdrawn recently after the nom realises that the debate is
showing they were quite wrong. Nominating something for deletion has its
responsabilities.
4. Nominations which are basically "I do not understand this, so lets
see whether people want to delete it". We should want to improve and
keep stuff, noit delete it.

I could go on. AfD depresses me for several reasons and the fact that
most of the articles are so bad they deserve deletion is only one of
them. It is the others that could be improved that leads to so much
trouble.

> >> It is amazing how often AfD debates
> >> do not benefit from the opinion of the original creator.

They may not have set their preferences so articles they edit
automatically go on their watchlist. They probably do not yet understand
the watchlist system. Welcome messages should advise newbies on the
watchlist.

Brian. [[Bduke]]

> >It is not amazing.  Most people do not feel the need to continue to
> >respond to questions about their contributions to Wikipedia after they
> >have contributed them.  This is unsurprising.
>
> >I throughly oppose a requirement to notify people who have expressed
> >(through not using their watchlists) a desire not to continue
> >discussing their contributions.
>
> That is breathtaking arrogant Jesse. A sizeable proportion of AfDed articles
> are written by anonymous contributors. They don't even have watchlists!
>
> Are you frightened that if contributors get involved we might actually
> have to keep some of the articles?!
>
> Pcb21
>

--
         Brian Salter-Duke (Brian Duke) b_duke at octa4.net.au
       Post: 626 Melbourne Rd, Spotswood, VIC, 3015, Australia
    Phone 03-93992847. http://members.iinet.net.au/~linden1/brian/
Honorary Researcher Fellow, Dept. of Medicinal Chemistry, Monash Univ.


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] "should not be written by an interested party"

body:
On 5/3/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/3/06, Thommandel at aol.com <Thommandel at aol.com> wrote:
>  > blocked twice because I suggested that such behavior would
> > amount to legal action in the real world
>
> Why on earth would a dispute over plasma cosmology result in legal
> action in the real world?

Read the talk page.
--
geni


from_name: Raphael Wegmann

subject: [WikiEN-l] Howto prevent administrator privilege abuse

body:
Hello,

I have a question regarding administrator privilege abuse:
What mechanism exists to prevent administrators from
blocking users with whom they disagree in a content dispute?
AFAIK a report should be filed on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RFC/ADMIN#Use_of_administrator_privileges
but a blocked user cannot do so before his block expires
and for an indefinitely blocked user, it will never be possible
using regular means. I don't think it's in the interest
of Wikipedia to let administrators have a final say in
a content dispute by blocking disagreeing parties for
disruption (vaguely defined as posing a threat to the normal
             functioning of Wikipedia)
or
vandalism (which btw. requires them to assume
            bad faith as per WP:VANDAL).

Thank you for your comments
--
Raphael


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Philip Welch wrote:

>Great. Now every city street has its own article. Imagine:
>---
>From [[Merman Drive, Pullman, Washington]]:
>
>The drive goes past several apartment complexes, a coffee shop, and a
>bar. The vast majority of the street's population consists of
>[[Washington State University]] students.
>
>Merman Drive intersects [[Terre View Drive, Pullman, Washington]] at
>a [[four-way stop]]. This stop is at the same intersection as Zoe's
>Cafe, the aforementioned coffee shop.
>
At least you could say who it's named after.  Two US streets that I've
been on and have wondered about are Chef Menteur Highway in New Orleans
and Last Chance Gulch in Helena. MT

Ec


from_name: Rob

body:
I'd think this counts as a disruption of the normal workings of afd
and is blockable on those grounds.   Isn't this exactly why we were so
concerned about userboxes - to prevent this sort of thing from
happening?


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
"Philip Welch" wrote

>>> If someone wants to join that community, they have to learn the
>>> jargon. Even the most welcoming communities work this way.
>>
>> No they don't.  You're describing rude, myopic communities with
>> little real
>> interest in outreach.  Not a global voluntary organisation.
>
> Only rude, myopic communities have their own jargon?

Not at all.  Medical doctors have jargon, for example.  But only certain
people actually do expect what you say, that is, to join the community you
must immerse yourself in the jargon.  The analogy here is not with becoming
a doctor, but in taking part in a discussion with one
.
>Are you saying
> that (for instance) the hacker community, academics, and
> professionals all belong to "rude, myopic communities"?

Those groups can certainly come across that way.  My point is that
Wikipedians, at their best, do _not_ snow people with jargon, but speak to
them using the usual English language.

>Are you
> saying that baseball fans are a "rude, myopic community" because they
> use terms unfamiliar to newbies like "strikeout", "walk", and
> "infield fly rule"?

Now you mention it, I have noticed that certain baseball articles have some
of the worst lead sections I have seen.

> The purpose of jargon is to make communication easier within a group.
> Everyone here knows what "cruft" is.

Actually, the thread demonstrates the precise opposite: it is used by people
who have really no idea of its denotation and connotations.  The essay at
[[Wikipedia:Listcruft]] gives numerous possible readings.  People use it not
with full knowledge, but because they think buzzwords have power that
rational argument lacks.

> In AfD contexts, it's extraneous
> content not suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia.

Well, the actual usage is as a pejorative-type suffix; what you are
smuggling there into 'extraneous'.

>We're all
> willing to explain that to newbies. And anyone who's offended by the
> word "cruft" needs to grow a thicker skin, because once we start
> making up euphemisms for it, we'll end up with even more impenetrable
> jargon than we have now.

As I say, myopic rude jargon-using people miss the point of the Wikipedia
mission; which is not to send people away seething.  Hacker mentality must
die.

Charles


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On 03/05/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable at avxw.com> wrote:
> We're working on a complete re-write of MW in Perl. Well not exactly
> a port, but we like lots of mediawiki features, and will be really
> looking at it for tips, we just like perl more and need a few things
> customized to work with our goal instead of the messed up wikimedia
> one; including a lot more support for integration between wikis on a
> network.

Your post seems to assume two things which are fallacious, as far as I can tell.

1. "the messed up Wikimedia [goal]"

That a particular organisation chooses to persue a particular course
which differs from that of another does not disqualify the intentions
as "messed up". If the product is not fit for your purpose, don't use
it. Roll your own, as you are apparently doing.

2. "a lot more support for integration between wikis on a network"

I was under the understanding that cross-wiki interaction is beginning
to pick up in terms of priorities and sharing of data, etc. Lack of
implementation does not equal lack of intention.

Rob Church


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright?

body:
On 03/05/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> SPUI has repeatedly tagged http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sbekele
> as a copyvio of http://www.cbsintl.com/people.htm.  I refused to
> speedy it on that basis, so SPUI blanked it and added the copyvio
> template.  Sbekele self-identifies as Sophia Bekele, CEO of CBS
> International, and therefore presumably the copyright owner.  Since
> this is user space, and the content is an "about us" bio, not
> commercial content, I think that blanking and deletion are a bit
> excessive.  On the other hand, copyright is copyright I guess.  What
> does the panel think?

This uninformed panel member thinks that people have a general right
to upload photos of themselves to their user pages.

Steve


from_name: Gallagher Mark George

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
G'day Brian,

> On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 01:27:09AM -0700, Pete Bartlett wrote:
> > >Er. [[WP:OWN]]?  Images are an exception, as nearly all images
> are the
> > >work of one or two people at most.  Articles are not.  Articles
> can,
> > >and often are, watched.  Wikipedians ought to pay attention to
> their
> > >watchlists if they wish to express opinions about their
> contributions.>
> > The vast majority of AfDed articles are very new and have just
> one author.
>
> Indeed and it is likely that they are put off by having their gems
> described as "cruft". However, I think people are put off more by
> otherthings:-

I would make a distinction between "gems" and "articles that should not be deleted".  Good articles are rarely put on AfD (an exception is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/TransLink_%28South_East_Queensland%29_services, which I started myself and wholly acknowledge received a *lot* of effort; but which is not an encyclopaedia article).  Articles that need work and could one day become real gems, however, are put on AfD all the time, and this is a pity.

> 1. General jargon of which cruft is just one.

Absolutely true.

> 2. Being put to AfD within hours or sometimes minutes of starting the
> article. I think this is most offensive. New editors are finding their
> way. They are not obsessed with WP. They have a life. They will take
> time to develop the article. If someone thinks the article is bad,
> theymake a note of it and follow it for a week or so, talk to the
> editor on
> his talk page and perhaps the article talk page. It is sheer bad
> mannersand certainly biting the newbie to push something to Afd so
> quickly. There
> is no hurry. WP is not going to be perfect tomorrow if you speedy
> deletea few articles.

Indeed.  What's the rush?

> 3. Comments on Afd like, "looks non-verifiable to me", "seems
> non-notable" and other comments that show the nominator has not done
> enough homework before jumping to conclusions. I have seen quite a few
> AfDs withdrawn recently after the nom realises that the debate is
> showing they were quite wrong. Nominating something for deletion
> has its
> responsabilities.

For many people, nominating an article is no different from "voting" to delete.  I've been sporadically trying, along with several others, over the past few months to lift the quality of AfD nominations (the AfD nomination I link above, I would consider a minimum standard).  An article nominated for deletion on the grounds of non-notability, for example, should include the reasons the nominator believes the article is non-notable, any steps he took to verify this (check history for number of editors, check "what links here", check Google, and so on), relevant policy if any, and so on.  What it should *not* include is any bolded recommendation ("'''Delete''' NN"), insults, or the word "merge".

> 4. Nominations which are basically "I do not understand this, so lets
> see whether people want to delete it". We should want to improve and
> keep stuff, noit delete it.

Absolutely.

> I could go on. AfD depresses me for several reasons and the fact that
> most of the articles are so bad they deserve deletion is only one of
> them. It is the others that could be improved that leads to so much
> trouble.

Fortunately there are very few of these, but those that crop up could be handled much better.

> > >> It is amazing how often AfD debates
> > >> do not benefit from the opinion of the original creator.
>
> They may not have set their preferences so articles they edit
> automatically go on their watchlist. They probably do not yet
> understandthe watchlist system. Welcome messages should advise
> newbies on the
> watchlist.

Uhh, *no*.  Welcome messages are long enough as it is --- I often wonder how many newbies take the time to read the current crop of welcome messages, let alone an expanded version.

Cheers,

--
MarkGallagher


subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On 03/05/06, Gregory Szorc <gregory.szorc at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/3/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable at avxw.com> wrote:
> >
> > including a lot more support for integration between wikis on a
> > network.
>
> If you are referring to the ability of MediaWiki to host multiple wikis and
> have more robust support for permissions.

Um...one can't run multiple wikis with MediaWiki?

I KNEW IT! THIS WIKIMEDIA THING IS AN ELABORATE CON! A HOAX! YOU HAVE
PULLED THE WOOL OVER ALL OUR EYES, VIBBER! I DEMAND VENGEANCE!

[Please don't stab me.]

Rob Church


subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
"Philip Welch" wrote

> Exactly. People who become Wikipedians should learn the jargon, and
> it's quite clear that at AfD, the opinions of *wikipedians* are the
> opinions that matter. Not the opinions of every anonymous contributor
> who comes in a vain ballot-stuffing attempt.

Ah, cruft is some sort of shibboleth then.  You don't know what cruft is,
you must be an outsider.

> The
> fact that large numbers of people don't know that only reiterates my
> point that we should educate Wikipedians about the jargon.

Oh, but then it turns out that far to many insiders are really outsiders.

> Once again: you deride "myopic rude jargon-using people" for their
> incivility, not realizing that calling people "myopic" and "rude"
> just because they use technical jargon is in itself uncivil.

People who draw these kinds of distinctions about other editors of Wikipedia
are certainly myopic.  You can be a very good Wikipedian without succumbing
to the lure of jargon.  As for the hat, wear it only if it fits.  I happen
to think your whole line of argument fits into what Wikipedia is not.

Charles


body:
On 03/05/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 3 May 2006 10:42:12 +0200, you wrote:
>
> >Militantly Oppose - JoshuaZ seems to be a bright guy and very
> >level-headed - I'm sure he'll be a great admin here. But with all
> >sincerity, I cannot do anything but oppose someone who has lowered
> >themselves to the reprehensible depths of posting "Questions" on
> >WP:RfA pages. The Q/A grandstanding has nothing to do with anything.
>
> They said that about Joshua?  Where's that wet trout?  Joshua is a
> very calm and levelheaded person, ideal admin material IMO.

Your opinion is that; and neither wrong nor right. I'd fight for your
right to have it, but I would fight you before it was thrust upon
another.

Rob Church


from_name: John Tex

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cyde should not have violated Deletion policy (Johntex)

body:
Today, User Cyde improperly closed a AfD that had been listed for less than
a day.  He voted to Keep it and then he closed it Keep even though the
majority of votes were for deletion.

Deletion Policy states "If a clear consensus for non-deletion is quickly
reached, discussion may be closed before the end of the typical period, for
example, a clear consensus for speedy deletion, a clear consensus for a
speedy keep, or a consensus for a redirect. The debate should remain
transcluded on the appropriate deletion page. *If the proposed solution has
not achieved a very clear consensus, the listing should remain for the full
five-day period. Any substantial debate, regardless of how lopsided the
keep/delete count may be, implies that an early closing would be a bad idea.
* [76]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Early_closure>(emphasis
mine)

In this case, discussion was ongoing and the AfD should not have been
closed. Cyde had even voted on the AfD prior to closing it. He was not a
neutral party and he should not have closed this AfD even after the normal
time period, let alone close it prematurely.

Johntex


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright?

body:
On 03/05/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> SPUI has repeatedly tagged http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sbekele
> as a copyvio of http://www.cbsintl.com/people.htm.  I refused to
> speedy it on that basis, so SPUI blanked it and added the copyvio
> template.  Sbekele self-identifies as Sophia Bekele, CEO of CBS
> International, and therefore presumably the copyright owner.  Since
> this is user space, and the content is an "about us" bio, not
> commercial content, I think that blanking and deletion are a bit
> excessive.  On the other hand, copyright is copyright I guess.  What
> does the panel think?

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/en/Author%27s_claim_of_license is
the standard reply to "someone keeps tagging my material as copyvio,
but I wrote it, damnit"

Simply claiming to be someone doesn't magically mean everyone has to
assume you are them...

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


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
Other administrators.
You shouldn't block an administrator who you're in disagreement with even if
there's disruption or vandalism involved. Ask someone else to do it and if
you're right they will do it. If you end up being blocked and can't respond
to things on the wiki, you can email to this list or send a message to any
individual admin by email.

Mgm

On 5/3/06, Raphael Wegmann <raphael at psi.co.at> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have a question regarding administrator privilege abuse:
> What mechanism exists to prevent administrators from
> blocking users with whom they disagree in a content dispute?
> AFAIK a report should be filed on
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RFC/ADMIN#Use_of_administrator_privileges
> but a blocked user cannot do so before his block expires
> and for an indefinitely blocked user, it will never be possible
> using regular means. I don't think it's in the interest
> of Wikipedia to let administrators have a final say in
> a content dispute by blocking disagreeing parties for
> disruption (vaguely defined as posing a threat to the normal
>             functioning of Wikipedia)
> or
> vandalism (which btw. requires them to assume
>            bad faith as per WP:VANDAL).
>
> Thank you for your comments
> --
> Raphael
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
Daniel Wunsch wrote:
> On Wednesday 03 May 2006 22:18, Gregory Szorc wrote:
>
>> On 5/3/06, Ivan Krstic <krstic at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> Chad Perrin wrote:
>>>
>
>
>>> Any kind of core rewrite as a SoC project is sheer lunacy. In fact, the
>>> best thing that can happen is for this thread to die young :)
>>>
>
>
>> How is it "sheer lunacy?"  Do you doubt the abilities of good programmers?
>>
>
> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
>
> daniel
>
>
That article is spot-on. Progressive refactoring, piece by piece, until
each part has been rewritten without ever breaking the system, is the
only way to go: think of [[George Washington's axe]]. Radical rewrites
result in [[second-system syndrome]].

-- Neil


from_name: Solo999uk at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] blocked!

body:
I have been blocked and not for the first time since joining wikipedia 10
days ago.

Each time I get blocked a different IP address is quoted and a different
false 'offence' cited which could not possibly concern me directly.

Can you please help to sort ASAP.

The blocker this time is 'canadian caeser'.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Cyde should not have violated Deletion policy (

body:
On 5/3/06, wikien-l-request at wikipedia.org

>
> From: Ben McIlwain <cydeweys at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Cyde should not have violated Deletion policy
>         (Johntex)
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID: <4459925E.90903 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
>
> I didn't "close" the debate so much as I "canceled" it.  My "vote", as
> you mention, was to cancel it ... and then a minute after that I
> realized I could go through with what I said should be done.

Unfortunately, this misses the point.  Whether you called it a "closure" or
"cancellation" or a "stoppage" or whatever.  You halted the process that a
lot of people were contributing to.  They had a right to be heard.  This
wastes a lot of time and looks like bad behavior for an admin to kill an AfD
early, especially one he has been involved in.

Johntex


from_name: Daniel Wunsch

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On Wednesday 03 May 2006 22:18, Gregory Szorc wrote:
> On 5/3/06, Ivan Krstic <krstic at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> > Chad Perrin wrote:

> > Any kind of core rewrite as a SoC project is sheer lunacy. In fact, the
> > best thing that can happen is for this thread to die young :)

> How is it "sheer lunacy?"  Do you doubt the abilities of good programmers?

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

daniel


body:
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geni wrote:
> On 5/4/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'd think this counts as a disruption of the normal workings of afd
>> and is blockable on those grounds.   Isn't this exactly why we were so
>> concerned about userboxes - to prevent this sort of thing from
>> happening?
>
> That would depend on which set of claims you belived.
>
> In any case it appears at least one of the people used a list compiled
> from past AFD votes.

Well, specifically, a list of all of the people who had voted Delete in
the previous vote.  That user made no attempt to notify any of the Keep
voters.  It's this kind of selective voting recruitment (aka
vote-stacking) that is so harmful to Wikipedia.  When I canceled that
Afd it was leaning heavily towards Delete, but that was only because two
Delete vote-stackers had been out campaigning heavily and there was only
one Keep vote-stacker who had just begun operations.  The end result
would've just been another no consensus once both sides were "properly"
marshaled.

The kind of actions I'm describing here are pretty clearly disruptive
and work against the policies we have in place for deciding issues.
It's extremely harmful.  Note that the ArbCom has already come out
against vote-stacking, in one form or another, in three separate instances:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/IZAK
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Guanaco%2C_MarkSweep%2C_et_al
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Jason_Gastrich

In the past many blocks have been issued to deal with these issues.  Yet
suddenly we're running into a lot of resistance from people who are
saying it isn't explicitly listed in policy.  Well, since policy is
simply a written-down version of what happens in practice, we need to
modify policy.  The only single diehard policy is "Wikipedia is an
encyclopedia", and it's pretty clear that these vote-stacking campaigns
I've been describing go against that ultimate goal of making the best
encyclopedia we can.

- --
Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys")

~ Sub veste quisque nudus est ~
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from_name: Angela

body:
On 5/4/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> If the overriding goal
> of WMF is to focus on solely on "free content" by this
> definition, then Wikisource can focus its enerigies in
> other areas and change it's scope a bit.

Yes, that is the goal. As the
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws state the
"Wikimedia Foundation is dedicated to the development and maintenance
of online free, open content ... under a free documentation license
..."

> But if being successful is truly half of our goal...

We can be successful while still maintaining our focus on providing
free content. If Wikisource is becoming something that requires
non-free content, then it should certainly change its scope so it can
return to its original mission.

Angela.


from_name: Dan Rosenthal

body:
Uh, I'm one of said non-admin CVU-ers, and I don't encourage that view. On
the other hand, I could CSD a half dozen highly notable subjects on
wikipedia simply because the articles make no assertion of the notablity.
The fact is, that the vast majority of speedy deletions are shite articles,
either vandalism/vanity, myspace, external redirects, etc. Are you saying
those shouldn't be speedied? We all know that AfD is totally free from
vote-stacking and any other forum of corruption. *cough*I

-swatjester

On 5/3/06, Gallagher Mark George <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au>
wrote:
>
>
> G'day Steve,
>
> > On 03/05/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > As for "an article with no claim to notability", I actually have no
> > > idea what that phrase means.
> >
> > An article has to establish the notability of its subject. If it
> > doesn't do that, it's subject to speedy deletion.
> >
> > ...I recite.
>
> No, it has to *assert* the notability of its subject.  When clearing up
> CAT:CSD I see a lot of speedy taggings where the tagger simply figured
> "sure, there's an assertion of notability there, but I don't think it's good
> enough".  Wrong.
>
> The question of whether an article establishes notability is not one that
> can, or should, be answered by a single admin working very very fast to
> delete as much stuff as quickly as possible.  Unfortunately there are a few
> admins who seem to think "well, it's tagged for speedy, who am I to
> judge?  That would be elitist."  Oh, and let's not forget the non-admin
> CVUers who encourage that view ...
>
> <snip/>
>
> Cheers,
>
> --
> MarkGallagher
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-05-04

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

Running test Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test Magic Word: {{NUMBEROFFILES}}... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test Language converter: output gets cut off unexpectedly (bug 5757)... FAILED!
Running test HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML ordered list, closed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested ordered list, closed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!

Passed 303 of 313 tests (96.81%) FAILED!


body:
On 03/05/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> Your opinion is that; and neither wrong nor right. I'd fight for your
> right to have it, but I would fight you before it was thrust upon
> another.

Without going into specifics, this is the problem with things like RfA
and AfD. We have a set of principles that decisions are meant to be
based on. But ultimately, the most flawed reasning is worth pretty
much as much as the best reasoning.

Except that in the case of RfA, we don't even have agreed principles
that decisions should be based on, so all reasoning is good reasoning.

Steve


body:
G'day Steve,

> Or perhaps I'm missing something - is there any reason I should ever
> want to upload something to EN, other than fair use?

If you wanted to upload a copyvio, it's probably preferable you do so on en-WP, where there's more people ready and watching (no disrespect intended to Commons admins, they're fine people).  Also, any damage caused is thus limited to en-WP, rather than spread across other languages as the other 'pedias attempt to use that creamy image goodness.

Frankly, the number of dodgy images uploaded by irresponsible, selfish or just downright stupid people every day is enough to make one break down and gibber in terror.  The last thing we want to do is inflict our problems on Commons ...

Cheers,

--
MarkGallagher


from_name: Molu

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 34, Issue 22

body:
Unfortunately, when I made a proposal to formalise this notion a few weeks ago it was unanimously gunned down, people voting to keep content of article as an AfD criteria.

  Molu

  >>Message: 1
Date: Wed, 3 May 2006 14:53:14 +0200
From: "Steve Bennett"
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Cruft
To: "English Wikipedia"
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

On 03/05/06, Gallagher Mark George
wrote:
>encyclopaedia article). Articles that need work and could one day
become real gems, >however, are put on AfD all the time, and this is a
pity.

This should never happen. AfD is totally superfluous when the *topic*
belongs in WP. Someone should just remove all the crud they don't like
and turn it into a stub at worst.

>>Steve

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Mail goes everywhere you do.  Get it on your phone.


from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
Moin,

On Wednesday 03 May 2006 22:18, Gregory Szorc wrote:
> On 5/3/06, Ivan Krstic <krstic at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> > Chad Perrin wrote:
> > > If you're going to rewrite it -- why not rewrite it in another
> > > language?
> >
> > Any kind of core rewrite as a SoC project is sheer lunacy. In fact,
> > the best thing that can happen is for this thread to die young :)
> >
> > It's something we might want to discuss at Hacking Days, however.
>
> How is it "sheer lunacy?"  Do you doubt the abilities of good
> programmers? Google is paying $4500 for a student to complete this
> work.  Student coding can go anywhere from $10 to $25/hr on average.
> Let's say it is $25/hr. That is 180 hours, or 4.5 40 hour weeks.

Maybe I am just a slow programmer, but I would say you need at least 10
times that amount for a refactorisation of such a big project.

I have spent easily 1000 hours last year into a little pet project which
is _far_ less complcicated as Mediawiki.

To "rewrite" the core of MW, or even just refactor it or clean it, you
need to be familiar with it, which easily eats the first 100 hours.

Best wishes,

Tels

--
 Signed on Thu May  4 01:14:31 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 Like my code? Want to hire me to write some code for you? Send email!

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
Moin,

On Wednesday 03 May 2006 22:43, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 5/3/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable at avxw.com> wrote:
> > We're working on a complete re-write of MW in Perl. Well not exactly
> > a port, but we like lots of mediawiki features, and will be really
> > looking at it for tips, we just like perl more and need a few things
> > customized to work with our goal instead of the messed up wikimedia
> > one; including a lot more support for integration between wikis on a
> > network.
>
> Perl?
>
> You're kidding right?
>
> Is there some rule that says mediawiki must be written in a language
> which encourages, nay demands!, unmaintainable results?

You just insulted me as a Perl programmer that all my code is
unmaintanable. Please have a look at:

	http://search.cpan.org/~tels/

and show me the unmaintanable bits so that I can fix them.

No wishes this time,

Tels

--
 Signed on Thu May  4 01:17:14 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 Morton's Law: If rats are experimented upon, they will develop cancer.

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from_name: Plyd

body:
Hello!
Here is my idea for the SoC. I'd to have devlopper point of view before
applying.
Else I'll apply for the Javascript RC Stuff :)

I propose to add two main things:
* RSS feed for every category
* An article-included category limited listing/feed

The RSS feeds as article-inclusion could be sorted by their timestamp
(already in db), or another index like date.
Another functionality is an article-included line, description on the
article, that will be extrated in RSS feeds and could be used in articles.

Advantages:
* RSS feeds by category -> closer to RSS feeds we can get elsewhere on the
web
* Automatic last articles on portals
* Watch lists by categories (check new pages in categories)
* Get partly-automatic pages with different categories (like Wikinews, last
news are added together with the category inclusion)

Ideas:
* Sub-Categories (define how deep we must go - idea to study in terms of
database performance).
* Article description joined with sub-categories
* Add a second index to sort articles differently that alphabetic order
(example dates)

Inclusion example:

{{Category:IT
news|sorted=last|subcategories=0|description=true|modelbefore=star|modelafter=newline}}

could give

{{star}} [[Google Summer of Code]] Google is again hosting a "Summer of
Code" program through which it will provide financial assistance to students
to work on open-source software projects during their summer break.
{{newline}}
{{star}} [[Google Summer of Code]] Google is again hosting a "Summer of
Code" program through which it will provide financial assistance to students
to work on open-source software projects during their summer break.
{{newline}}

with this line in the article [[Google Summer of Code]] :

[[Category:Google Summer of Code||05/01/2006|Google is again hosting a
"Summer of Code" program through which it will provide financial assistance
to students to work on open-source software projects during their summer
break.]]

Update to do on mediawiki:
* minor database changes (only to improve speed and server load)
* php RSS generation (use of existing class or redevelop since it is really
simple?)
* minor parser evolution for [[Category:]] tags to allow second index and
description
* php feed generation for the new {{Category:}} tag.

Thanks for every idea/suggestion!
Plyd


from_name: Ben McIlwain

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Cyde should not have violated Deletion policy
	(Johntex)

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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John Tex wrote:
> Today, User Cyde improperly closed a AfD that had been listed for less than
> a day.  He voted to Keep it and then he closed it Keep even though the
> majority of votes were for deletion.
>
> Deletion Policy states "If a clear consensus for non-deletion is quickly
> reached, discussion may be closed before the end of the typical period, for
> example, a clear consensus for speedy deletion, a clear consensus for a
> speedy keep, or a consensus for a redirect. The debate should remain
> transcluded on the appropriate deletion page. *If the proposed solution has
> not achieved a very clear consensus, the listing should remain for the full
> five-day period. Any substantial debate, regardless of how lopsided the
> keep/delete count may be, implies that an early closing would be a bad idea.
> * [76]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Early_closure>(emphasis
> mine)
>
> In this case, discussion was ongoing and the AfD should not have been
> closed. Cyde had even voted on the AfD prior to closing it. He was not a
> neutral party and he should not have closed this AfD even after the normal
> time period, let alone close it prematurely.

I didn't "close" the debate so much as I "canceled" it.  My "vote", as
you mention, was to cancel it ... and then a minute after that I
realized I could go through with what I said should be done.

I encourage you to restart a new Afd that is untainted from
vote-stacking and together we will all stay on top of it to make sure
that everything is legit and on the level.  The way the other one was
going, I wouldn't trust its outcome to actually be reflective of
consensus, as the POV vote-stacking was outshining everything else.

I may even be in favor of deleting this article; a lot of people I trust
have pointed out that it started as a POV fork.  But getting it deleted
through massive vote-stacking is NOT the way to let it get done.

- --
Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys")

~ Sub veste quisque nudus est ~
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from_name: geni

body:
On 5/4/06, Ben McIlwain <cydeweys at gmail.com> wrote:
> We cannot put up with these attempts at gaming our consensus-based
> system.  Consensus doesn't work when it just becomes a numbers game of
> who can recruit the most votes.  And trying to make a rational decision
> about the merits of an article when a bunch of sheeple are coming in
> mindlessly on both sides and voting without even considering the issues
> is absurd.  We need to deal with this problem.  We need to modify our
> policy so that it IS a blockable offense to vote-stack and game the system.

Way way way to subjective. RFC and arbcom would probably be a better option.

--
geni


body:
G'day Kirill,

> On 5/3/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 5/3/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 5/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > You make some excellent points. A way of easily migrating
> free images
> > > > once checked by confirmed users would solve my original
> problem. Can
> > > > you elaborate on these increasingly stringent demands?
> > >
> > > Aside from the propensity of random people to tag 15th-century
> > > paintings with {{nsd}}? ;-)
> > >
> >
> > If the copy of the painting was made within the uk it is quite
> posible> it is under copyright. Or at least the copyright status
> would be
> > rather complex.
>
> Curious.  I was under the impression that Bridgeman v Corel drew no
> distinction based on where the copy was made (if the copy is accurate,
> how could you tell?), and that _any_ (two-dimensional, slavish, etc.)
> reproduction of a PD artwork was considered PD under US law.

I agree: if a copy is accurate, you couldn't tell.  BUT, that's American law.  If a copy is made in the UK (say by a museum), and the uploader is also a Yukian, could he be held liable by Yukian courts for copyright infringement if the museum claims copyright?

I don't know --- IANAL, IJPOOTV.

--
MarkGallagher


subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
Moin,

On Thursday 04 May 2006 01:11, Chad Perrin wrote:
> On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 02:45:15PM -0700, Ben Garney wrote:
> > I've seen large sites written in a variety of languages (Google has
> > at least one major web app written using Java, the GarageGames
> > website is all PHP and one of the top 3 sites for games programming
> > according to Alexa, there are several big portal sites on ColdFusion,
> > slashdot is still in Perl last I checked, and even some guys doing
> > things in C++!). Whatever works for your team and situation is best,
> > of course, but I don't think the _viability_ of projects in non-PERL
> > languages is really open to question. They seem to be doing quite
> > well. :)
>
> I'm pretty sure the point wasn't "non-Perl languages aren't viable",
> but that PHP is a huge pile of functions held together by an anemic
> syntax, and they'd prefer to use something a little more robust than
> that. Python, Ruby, C/C++, Java, or Lisp might well have been the
> option if the programmers discussing this liked those languages better,
> I would guess -- but, apparently, they like Perl.  Frankly, I
> sympathize.
>
> Of course, PHP is still very useful.  It's just not typically my own
> first choice for anything beyond the occasional bit of markup-embedded
> control structures and includes.

And as an author with thousand lines of Perl under my belt (do they make
me look fat?) who wrote recently his first PHP extensions, I can just say

	Amen!

How in the world am I supposed to work if the "compiler" doesn't tell me
that I typoed $sMyStringType as $sMxStringType? Bah!

Back to the topic, I think the tool doesn't matter as much as the
tool-yielder. A good programmer can write robust code in anything. (and
vice versa!)

But I do not blame or bash people when they want to use tools that support
them and help them, instead of something that hates the tool-user :)

(Specific examples not named, because this would start a silly and useless
flamewar)

As for MW, refactoring and improving two specific points:

  * usage of globals
  * mixing of code and data (and data and code in skins)

would be the first goal, but you don't need a full rewrite for that,
especially not from scratch.

If you want to build something that is suitable different than MW, well, I
guess then it makes sense to re-invent a few bits. But maybe MW could be
structured so that it provides a low-level lib, which can then be
extended etc. Basically an API and interface sitting on top of a few
backend libraries.

The the guys wanting to use Perl wouldn't need to re-invent the mysql
backend :) Just throwing out ideas.

Best wishes,

Tels

--
 Signed on Thu May  4 01:34:31 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "In my opiniation, "burglarize" is a perfectionally validative
 wordification. How else would reportization of the securitial/policial
 forceship appearize to be importantive enoughly to be respectative by
 the massmediaship and influentate the societyness?" SharpFang (651121)
 on 2004-12-13 at /. about "burgle" vs. "burglarize"

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subject:
[WikiEN-l] Cyde should not have violated Deletion
	policy	(Johntex)

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

Angela wrote:
> On 5/4/06, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
>> What was the AFD?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Rationales_to_impeach_George_W._Bush_%282nd_nomination%29
>
> It's back on AfD, and also on deletion review and AN/I.

Yes, if nothing else, at least I brought attention to the evils of
vote-stacking X-|

- --
Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys")

~ Sub veste quisque nudus est ~
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from_name: maru dubshinki

body:
On 5/4/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/4/06, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> > What was the AFD?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Rationales_to_impeach_George_W._Bush_%282nd_nomination%29
>
> It's back on AfD, and also on deletion review and AN/I.
>
> Angela

Ohh.... You know, I was wondering why I missed voting on that- I got a
message from one of the anti-vote stack vote stackers that I might be
interested in voting in it, and I was about to vote for a merge when
it closed.

~maru


body:
So wikipedians like me who have (unsucessfully) supported the userboxes are all bad people just clogging up the system?

  Molu

  Message: 6
Date: Wed, 03 May 2006 14:00:09 -0400
From: Jimmy Wales
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] "should not be written by an interested party"
To: English Wikipedia
Message-ID: <4458EFA9.9070700 at wikia.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Steve Bennett wrote:
> Any idea how often people edit their own articles? That is, how
> frequently an outsider publicly makes it known that they are editing
> their own article? Once a day? Once a week? We could always have a
> set of processes for these situations, where users who are good with
> the kid gloves can take them by the hand and help them get the best
> out of an awkward situation. There is still the problem of becoming
> aware of these situations.

Agreed, fully, with both the problem and the general direction of a
solution.

WP:OFFICE should be a last resort, and long before we get to that point,
we need a way for non-partisan, good wikipedians, who (despite the
userboxers and myspacers clogging up the system lately) are still very
much in control of the project, to find and concentrate some very strong
brainpower on these articles.

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

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Make PC-to-Phone Calls to the US (and 30+ countries) for 2?/min or less.


subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 34, Issue 32

body:
Ah, look who's being vain. And some people actually call Wikipedia anti-elitist *shakes his head*

  Message: 1
Date: Wed, 3 May 2006 13:58:39 -0700
From: Philip Welch
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Cruft
To: English Wikipedia
Message-ID: <48ECE898-69A0-48C1-83C8-B718CF20AC96 at philwelch.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed

On May 3, 2006, at 1:47 PM, charles matthews wrote:

>>>> If someone wants to join that community, they have to learn the
>>>> jargon. Even the most welcoming communities work this way.
>>>
>>> No they don't. You're describing rude, myopic communities with
>>> little real
>>> interest in outreach. Not a global voluntary organisation.
>>
>> Only rude, myopic communities have their own jargon?
>
> Not at all. Medical doctors have jargon, for example. But only
> certain
> people actually do expect what you say, that is, to join the
> community you
> must immerse yourself in the jargon. The analogy here is not with
> becoming
> a doctor, but in taking part in a discussion with one

Exactly. People who become Wikipedians should learn the jargon, and
it's quite clear that at AfD, the opinions of *wikipedians* are the
opinions that matter. Not the opinions of every anonymous contributor
who comes in a vain ballot-stuffing attempt.

>> The purpose of jargon is to make communication easier within a group.
>> Everyone here knows what "cruft" is.
>
> Actually, the thread demonstrates the precise opposite: it is used
> by people
> who have really no idea of its denotation and connotations.

The explication I read at [[Cruft]] and at the Jargon File's entry
for "cruft" fit well within what I understood the meaning of "cruft"
to be on Wikipedia.

>> In AfD contexts, it's extraneous
>> content not suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia.
>
> Well, the actual usage is as a pejorative-type suffix; what you are
> smuggling there into 'extraneous'.

That's not what I'm smuggling there, that's what the word means, and
that's what I and many others have always understood it to mean. The
fact that large numbers of people don't know that only reiterates my
point that we should educate Wikipedians about the jargon.

"Listcruft" is cruft in the form of a list. "Fancruft" is cruft of
interest only to fans of the topic in question.

>> We're all willing to explain that to newbies. And anyone who's
>> offended by the
>> word "cruft" needs to grow a thicker skin, because once we start
>> making up euphemisms for it, we'll end up with even more impenetrable
>> jargon than we have now.
>
> As I say, myopic rude jargon-using people miss the point of the
> Wikipedia
> mission; which is not to send people away seething. Hacker
> mentality must
> die.

Once again: you deride "myopic rude jargon-using people" for their
incivility, not realizing that calling people "myopic" and "rude"
just because they use technical jargon is in itself uncivil.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch

---------------------------------
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subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 34, Issue 33

body:
No thanks. As you say, it's just informing people, and it's okay irrespective of sample selection methods. Wikipedia is not a democracy, there's no such thing as vote stacking. And please stop wheel-warring without consensus.

  Message: 7
Date: Wed, 03 May 2006 20:32:12 -0400
From: Ben McIlwain
Subject: [WikiEN-l] We need a policy against vote-stacking
To: English Wikipedia
Message-ID: <44594B8C.1030001 at gmail.com>
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I recently came across a very contentious Afd having to deal with the
movement to impeach George W. Bush. The discussion was overwhelmed with
vote-stacking. I caught two users doing it and temporarily blocked
them, but was reverted by an admin who says it's "not in policy" that we
can block for that. I've also since discovered a third person who was
vote-stacking.

Vote-stacking is wrong, it is harmful to Wikipedia, and it needs to be
discouraged and stopped. The simple way to do this is to block users
who are doing this. If it's not in the policy now, it should be.

I heard the argument, "Well, if you're just informing other users,
that's not vote-stacking." That's wrong on two counts. First of all,
all of this vote-stacking going on here was specifically encouraging
people to come to the Afd and vote a specific way. And, even if the
message is "neutrally worded", it's still vote-stacking unless I'm
sending it out to a random sample of Wikipedians. Do you think these
vote-stackers were using a random sample? No. They were sending the
messages to people they know already vote their way. In this case, it
appears to be a combination of a What links here on the {{User
republican}} userbox and an examination of which ways people voted on
the previous Afd, and then selectively sending the message to just the
people who previously voted in agreement with the vote-stackers views.

We cannot put up with these attempts at gaming our consensus-based
system. Consensus doesn't work when it just becomes a numbers game of
who can recruit the most votes. And trying to make a rational decision
about the merits of an article when a bunch of sheeple are coming in
mindlessly on both sides and voting without even considering the issues
is absurd. We need to deal with this problem. We need to modify our
policy so that it IS a blockable offense to vote-stack and game the system.

- --
Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys")

~ Sub veste quisque nudus est ~
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---------------------------------
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body:
No thanks. As you say, it's just informing people, and it's okay irrespective of sample selection methods. Wikipedia is not a democracy, there's no such thing as vote stacking. And please stop wheel-warring without consensus.

  Message: 7
Date: Wed, 03 May 2006 20:32:12 -0400
From: Ben McIlwain
Subject: [WikiEN-l] We need a policy against vote-stacking
To: English Wikipedia
Message-ID: <44594B8C.1030001 at gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

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I recently came across a very contentious Afd having to deal with the
movement to impeach George W. Bush. The discussion was overwhelmed with
vote-stacking. I caught two users doing it and temporarily blocked
them, but was reverted by an admin who says it's "not in policy" that we
can block for that. I've also since discovered a third person who was
vote-stacking.

Vote-stacking is wrong, it is harmful to Wikipedia, and it needs to be
discouraged and stopped. The simple way to do this is to block users
who are doing this. If it's not in the policy now, it should be.

I heard the argument, "Well, if you're just informing other users,
that's not vote-stacking." That's wrong on two counts. First of all,
all of this vote-stacking going on here was specifically encouraging
people to come to the Afd and vote a specific way. And, even if the
message is "neutrally worded", it's still vote-stacking unless I'm
sending it out to a random sample of Wikipedians. Do you think these
vote-stackers were using a random sample? No. They were sending the
messages to people they know already vote their way. In this case, it
appears to be a combination of a What links here on the {{User
republican}} userbox and an examination of which ways people voted on
the previous Afd, and then selectively sending the message to just the
people who previously voted in agreement with the vote-stackers views.

We cannot put up with these attempts at gaming our consensus-based
system. Consensus doesn't work when it just becomes a numbers game of
who can recruit the most votes. And trying to make a rational decision
about the merits of an article when a bunch of sheeple are coming in
mindlessly on both sides and voting without even considering the issues
is absurd. We need to deal with this problem. We need to modify our
policy so that it IS a blockable offense to vote-stack and game the system.

- --
Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys")

~ Sub veste quisque nudus est ~
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---------------------------------
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body:
On 5/4/06, Ben McIlwain <cydeweys at gmail.com> wrote:
> That would take weeks, and by then the vote-stackers have long gotten
> away with it.

Eventualism has much to recomend it.

> And I don't think vote-stacking is too subjective.  If
> you see someone recruiting votes, deal with them.  It's pretty simple.
>

Great so AFD becomes the sole relm of those who hang out there all the
time. I think not. By the sandard you have just used I should have
been blocked for informing people about arbcom elections.

> As an update to the situation, the two users I blocked have been
> unblocked, but hopefully they are not going to keep on vote-stacking.
> Meanwhile, a third user has already started vote-stacking the DRV so I
> blocked him ... I imagine the same admin is going to revert me on that
> too, though.  This is getting ridiculous.  Our very system of how we
> make decisions is under attack and I'm trying to do something about it
> and meeting resistance.
>
> - --
> Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys")

That would be becuase you are attacking the way we make decisions. I'm
sure you know how to propose new policy.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
G'day Joe,

> On #wikipedia last night, a user pointed out I may be in violation of
> [[m:Don't be a dick]]. This is most probably true.
>
> This whole thing has gone out of proportion, and I accept that
> both of my
> actions maybe seen as incivil (albeit in good faith).
>
> I still, however, think the term hypocrite was unneccessarily
> harsh and I
> think the fact I am chair of [[WP:CJ]] is irrelevant.

"Hypocrite" is indeed a very harsh word.  While we're talking about you being [[m:DICK]]ish, however, I think being chair of [[WP:CJ]] is a pretty dickish act in and of itself.

This is, of course, assuming that CJ is what I think it is, and not some harmless "welcoming committee"-esque thing?

Cheers,

--
MarkGallagher


subject: [WikiEN-l] Upload by default to Commons?

body:
G'day Stan,

> There are not many who upload in bad faith, and those who do tend
> to weed themselves out by getting blocked. The usual case is
> ignorance; while one doesn't need to know much to add a legit
> sentence, valid uploads require more knowledge, including a basic
> familiarity with the legalities. Even after simplifying the
> legalese down via templates, and providing lots of links and advice
> on the upload pages, we still get hundreds of bad uploads per day,
> many of which will require admin cycles to clean up. It doesn't
> help that many uploaders think they know about image copyrights
> already, so there is a lot of unlearning for them to do.

Or the users who don't give a damn about copyright; they've found a purdy picture and YOU USELESS BLUDGING VANDALS are trying to RUIN OUR HARD WORK.

Maybe we should just have a big, red, bold, blinking sign up before uploads: "Note: if you do not know what you are doing, FUCK OFF.  WE DON'T NEED THIS IMAGE AS MUCH AS YOU THINK WE DO."

It'll look quite nice, under my other proposals:
"WIKIPEDIA IS AN ENCYCLOPAEDIA"
"NO, NO-ONE CARES"
"EDITING IS AN OPPORTUNITY TO HELP OTHERS, NOT A RIGHT TO SATISFY YOUR OWN EGO.  DON'T LET IT PASS BY."
"BE CIVIL, MORON."
"NO, 'CENTRE' IS NOT AN ERROR."
"JIMBO DOES NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR PATHETIC ATTEMPTS AT TROLLING."
"YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO ABUSE OUR GENEROSITY FOR ADVERTISING."
And my personal favourite ...
"WIKIPEDIA IS NOT A TOY!"

You might say I need a break from editing.  The problem, however, is that I've just had one, doing stuff that's far more stressful than Wikipedia ever is ...

> One advantage to commons is that the rules are enforced rather
> more stringently; while the admins from en: agonize over whether
> the newbie copviolators are being sufficiently praised for investing
> a whole 20 seconds copying from a random website, admins from de:
> come along and blam blam blam, the problem images are gone. :-)

Heh!

Cheers,

--
MarkGallagher


from_name: Pete Bartlett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Watchlist feature requests (was Re: Cruft)

body:
>> 1. User makes a single modification to their monobook.js to include
>> the module tool.
>> 2. The module tool provides an interface such that they can select the
>> modules that interest them
>> 3. Modules currently selected are saved somewhere like user:Stevage/modules
>> 4. When the user confirms, the tool retrieves the originals and writes
>> them to something like user:Stevage/modulecode
>> 5. Either the user, or the tool automatically adds a line which
>> includes everything in user:Stevage/modulecode as you described above.
>>

>Theoretically, yes. I thought about having a similar system, only the
>entire code would be written back to the monobook.js, because it's
>protected from other users. However, I'm not sure that it would be
>/practical/ to implement it without something like XUL to get the UI
>setup - ie. it would be a Mozilla extension.

This is all very sexy. But wouldn't an easy first step just to be gather
the code in one set of pages first? Then users can do "manual" transclusion
to begin with, and the neat interface could come later?


body:
On 5/4/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd think this counts as a disruption of the normal workings of afd
> and is blockable on those grounds.   Isn't this exactly why we were so
> concerned about userboxes - to prevent this sort of thing from
> happening?

That would depend on which set of claims you belived.

In any case it appears at least one of the people used a list compiled
from past AFD votes.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability equating to notability

body:
G'day Steve,

> On 03/05/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> > Not that it's unprecedented for people on this list to be civility
> > hypocrites.
>
> Eep, let's chill, everyone, please?

I think he was making a joke (referring to Joe's problem of being accused of "hypocrisy").  If so, it was ... reasonably ... droll.  I guess.  Definitely unnecessary, regardless of the verdict.

If he was not joking, it was of course an unconscionable insult and I shall stand ready to defend Phil B's honour in a duel at dawn.  Smelly socks at twenty paces, Phil W!  Are you ready?

Cheers,

--
MarkGallagher


body:
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MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> Nothing wrong with informing previous voters, as long as you inform ALL of
> them, not just the ones that vote "your way". Selectively notifying people
> is disruptive (and in my opinion blockable already). No need for additional
> policy there.

The problem is that some people (e.g. John Tex) are saying that the
blocking shouldn't be allowed because it isn't explicitly mentioned in
policy.  I'm with you; we shouldn't have to codify something so obvious;
but John Tex and others seem to want it, so we have to.

- --
Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys")

~ Sub veste quisque nudus est ~
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from_name: Kernigh

subject: [Foundation-l]English Wikipedia Version 1.0 logo copyrighted to	foundation

body:
Titoxd <at> Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at ...> writes:

> ... As this is not possible due to the Foundation's policy, after
> consulting with Anthere, I changed the copyright of the image to point to
> the Foundation, as done in the Wikipedia logo page.

I think that you would need to ask the copyright holder of the other part (the
shiny colored disk around the outside of the Wikipedia logo) whether they agree
to transfer the copyright. Did you do this?
-- [[User:Kernigh]]
   http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kernigh


from_name: brian

subject: [WikiEN-l] 100 day block

body:
Hi, I was just blocked for 100 days --it is an obvious mistake, hopefully someone can check it out.  (apperently I have been making poor, pov edits.  --However, I have only made one article edit in the past week, and it was removal of a pov, albiet popular one).  I have had a bit of an issue with sockpuppets in the past, although nothing serious.  I have also had a username change, as my last one had a personal attachment. See my userpage at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Myciconia

Thanks in advance,

Brian

---------------------------------
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from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] 100 day block

body:
The error has been corrected, but you are obviously engaging in
tendentious edit warring, see

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cuba&diff=prev&oldid=51448785

While not elegantly expressed, the deleted material violates no
consensus and even if it did, it represents a significant point of
view regarding the subject, Cuba. I fully support inclusion in the
Wikipedia article of material about what a wonderful free democratic
country Cuba is, but you can't just delete the opposing viewpoint
under a bogus claim of "consensus".

You say you "removed a pov"; our neutral point of view policy
contemplates the inclusion of all significant points of view
regarding a subject, not washed out, dumbed down pablum.

Fred

On May 4, 2006, at 3:03 AM, brian wrote:

> Hi, I was just blocked for 100 days --it is an obvious mistake,
> hopefully someone can check it out.  (apperently I have been making
> poor, pov edits.  --However, I have only made one article edit in
> the past week, and it was removal of a pov, albiet popular one).  I
> have had a bit of an issue with sockpuppets in the past, although
> nothing serious.  I have also had a username change, as my last one
> had a personal attachment. See my userpage at: http://
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Myciconia
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Brian
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Now you can have a huge leap forward in email: get the new Yahoo!
> Mail.
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