body:
Robert Michel wrote in part:

> 1. When a trusted user logs in he can declare that he would candidate for
> chief duty editor in that session.
>
> 2. The first candidate who logged in become the demand note by the
Wikipedia
> System to be the "chief duty editor" for the next 2 hours. (He can accept
or
> reject, for example when he is drunk at that time).
>
> 3. When two or more candidates are online they have to agree who takes the
> job, in case of a stalemate (stand-off) an algorithmus like the one with
the
> most edits since be the last time chief duty editor could help.
>
> 4. In case that one chief duty editor time of 2 hours are finish, he goes
> offline before or he does not answer on requests to ban one IP/User
inbetween
> 3 minutes, the system calls again all candidates to find one new chief
duty
> editor
>
> 5. In case that no candidate is only all trusted users become a message
> (pop-up) to become candidate inbetween next 2 minutes ;)
>
> 6. On a populare wikipedia page is shown who is chief duty editor right
now
> and has a log of all shifts, with all action in the name of chief duty
> editor.
>
> 7. The chief duty editor use his special account only for administration
and
> statments as administrator, but not for normal editings - for that he must
> use his normal account, but he should work full time with reading, giving
> comments on disscussion pages and delete nonsens, and not try to write or
> change own article during his shift.
>
> 8. In case that the chief duty editor is going mad, every trusted user can
> request a despose of the chief duty editor but the one who request this
can`t
> become chief duty editor for next 24h. If  he has to argue well and to try
to
> solve the problem in dialog with the chief duty editor before and every
> trusted wikipedian who is online become a call to vote. The one who lost
this
> vote lost his status trusted wikipedian after a final voting inbetween 48h
> clears this case.

Yes, that's a very nice fantasy. Are you going to program it? Because I have
better things to do. My objective has always been to produce a practical
model, one which I can code in a few hours of my spare time. We can all
dream up fantastic power models, but they lead to nothing but stalling and
tangential unproductive debate.

Maybe some programmer will come along wanting to spend weeks coding a power
model which will quite possibly meet strong opposition from the users. I
would advise such a programmer to instead spend that time on improving our
seriously inadequate database schema, optimising the parser or working on
load balancing, thus allowing us to keep the site operating with an
acceptable response time for a while longer.

-- Tim Starling


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: MediaWiki 1.2.0rc3 release candidate

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> This should be pretty much it before a formal 1.2.0 release; the main
> thing remaining is smarter update of the messages when updating an
> existing wiki.

Brion,

I seriously think the continual corruption of the links table is a much
more problematic issue, and it should really be looked at.

I just submitted the following query:

	SELECT * FROM links WHERE l_from='Call_Of_Cthulhu' LIMIT 100
                                                ^
                                       (notice capital O)
and I got:

	l_from           l_to
	Call_Of_Cthulhu  399579     (this is [[Call_of_Cthulhu]])
	Call_Of_Cthulhu  177043     (this is [[The_Call_of_Cthulhu]])

Since [[Call_Of_Cthulhu]] is simply a redirect [[The_Call_of_Cthulhu]],
the first row shouldn't be there.

I tried to fix this problem, by changing the redirect to
[[Call_of_Cthulhu]] and then immediately back, and this is what we have now:

	l_from            l_to
	Call_Of_Cthulhu   399579
	Call_Of_Cthulhu   177043
	Call_Of_Cthulhu   399579
	Call_Of_Cthulhu   177043

Enough said!
Timwi


from_name: Itai Fiat

subject: [Wikitech-l] Gnutella

body:
Lightning wrote:
> > How fast is that wiki->PDF script?
> >
> > I mean.. after the kinks are worked out I would be very willing to
> > download a dump,
> > mod the program a bit to grab the stuff from the DB directly, and
> > generate a couple of
> > hundred thousand Wikipedia articles in PDF. I could tar and gz these
> > and offer them as a single
> > download or just put them on a couple of file sharing programs under
> > the names
> >  wikipedia_$articlename.PDF

May I suggest wikipedia_$articlename_$dateOfGeneration? Thus, while Gnutella
users would have no way of knowing whether they have the most recent
version, they would at least be able to occasionally look for a more recent
version.

> > I mean I have no clue why anyone would
> > want these since you can
> > just go to the website and see a (most likely) newer and more correct
> > article.. but it'd be a fun experiment
> > Direct Connect, fast track, and gnutella come to mind.... and I mean I
> > guess they could be published to freenet.. although I dont know what
> > the deal is with freenet and PDF...
> >
> > If someone thinks this is a good idea, tell me please.

I think so, obviously, although, being suicidal, I would much rather have
the articles generated dynamically upon request. (This obviously poses a
problem if we are to distribute PDFs, the generating of which is time and
resource consuming, and I therefore agree that if PDFs are to be distributed
they had best be cached in advance.)

> As a certain category or a certain topic is populated with articles of
> a high caliber it might be fun to release
> PDF formatted "books" or mini encyclopedias of this topic. These could
> be polished, and put out every couple of months. These files which
> would be formatted in a manner suitable for printing and stand alone
> use could be in turn distributed in a limited fashion to certain
> educational institutions in order to raise awareness of the project.

An example comes to mind. Planetmath.org, user contributed but by no means a
wiki, has produced a PDF copy ( http://aux.planetmath.org/book/ ) of its
math encyclopedia. This copy I found so useful that I took to printing 50 of
its pages in order to get ready for an exam.

> People in college have lots of time and ideals. They are the kind of
> people who love to advocate their ideas too. Younger contributors from
> non-tech related areas could really help with the widespread awareness
> of wikipedia and what we have to offer

I seem to recall the issue of school participation being raised once upon a
time. Anyway, I am very much in favor of attracting younger contributors, be
them children or college students (if a difference is to be found). While
ways of attracting such individuals had probably best be discussed at
wikipedia-l, I daresay the implementation of theoretical wikiagglomerations
(well, it's not catchy, but wikibooks is taken) belong here. I think.

Cheers,

Itai


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Mar 9, 2004, at 17:05, Timwi wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> This should be pretty much it before a formal 1.2.0 release; the main
>>  thing remaining is smarter update of the messages when updating an
>> existing wiki.
>
> Brion,
>
> I seriously think the continual corruption of the links table is a
> much more problematic issue, and it should really be looked at.

Suspect #1 is currently the link cache (linkscc table). Its title
column is case-insensitive, which may lead to problems in some cases.
I've turned the link cache off for now, and am running (again) a
sitewide links rebuild (which will take a long, long time, in the
background).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: bugs?

body:
On Mar 10, 2004, at 02:57, teun spaans wrote:
> Does this caching also apply to the {{msg:xxx}} mechanism?
> Though my IE options are set at "every visit to the page", I
> repeatedly had
> caching problems at our main page (which uses this mechanism).

Presently the cache does ***NOT*** update when included messages are
changed.

This means the present Main Page layout on en is very problematic.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikien-l

from_name: Imran Ghory

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Transition to WikiDemocracy

body:
On Tue, 9 Mar 2004, Sheldon Rampton wrote:
>
> I agree. Here's my solution:
>
> (1) Require people to register, providing a verifiable email address
> that is not yahoo or hotmail, as a precondition for contributing.
> (Alternately, restrict the NUMBER of contributions that a
> non-registered individual can contribute within a 24-hour period.)

Bad idea, the ease of making contributions is one of our major "pull"
factors. Also some people don't have a non-yahoo/hotmail account.

Limiting number of contribution doesn't really seem to have any
advantages, after all if a user goes on a vandalism spree they could
easily use multiple accounts. And having all of their "contributions"
under one account allow for us to block them more easily.

> (2) Unambiguously authorize sysops to take immediate, unilateral
> action against egregious abusers (with clear definitions of
> "egregious abuse").

I don't oppose this in principle, but I think we have too many admins who
don't use admin powers, and I'd hesitate to increase the power of
inactive admins.

Incidently on the "registration" issue, I think we should collect more
information on major contributors (>1000 major edits) in case we ever need
to get in touch with them after they leave wikipedia.

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Factions

body:
To be expected from groups with an axe to grind or a political viewpoint
they wish to impose.

Fred

> From: Nikola Smolenski <smolensk at eunet.yu>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 07:50:39 +0100
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The 3-revert rule
>
> Actually, it would be very easy for three users, sysops or not, to gang upon a
> single user, communicate via e-mail, and "independently" revert user's
> changes.


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Erik's Excellent Idea

body:
Erik was at his eloquent best when he wrote:

<< It's not supposed to minimally intrusive. It's supposed
to be effective. Right now we have the situation that
there is a set of users who are quite productive, but who
use edit warring as a technique to get an article into
the revision they want it to be in.

That is so much in contradiction with everything we stand
for that we should take immediate countermeasures. It
creates a very bad impression for newbies if we let
people get away with that kind of behavior without an
immediate reaction.

A 24 hour ban is not the same as a regular ban in the
effects on the user. We can come up with a nice, friendly
standard text, basically telling the user to calm down
and when they are ready to respect our policies, please
return to editing. It won't develop into the kind of
problems we had with Lir, because there's no incentive to
create another identity if you can just keep editing
under your regular one 24 hours later. We could even add
a clause that if they pledge to stop edit warring
immediately, they can be unbanned immediately (of course
if they break that pledge, they will be rebanned). >>

This is what I've been saying the whole time. Thank you, O Eloquent One!

The only variant I would add is that each "ban" should be subject to
review and appeal -- by the Mediation or Arbitration Committees.

That is the essential difference between Vigilantism (which we all
oppose) and Democracy (which I think most of us support).

Let's put this to vote.

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Yes,
	let's ban users with Hotmail and Yahoo addresses...

in_reply_to:
<404F2ACE.2090703@yahoo.com> (message from Anthere on Wed, 10 Mar
	2004 15:48:46 +0100)

body:
> Yes ! By all means, ban users using yahoo adresses, criminal people
> Let's prevent as well people to have several email adresses ! How dare
> they  !

I completely agree.  Multiple e-mail addresses are the tool of the
devil.  Bwah-hah-hah!

--
 Wikipedian #30
 <anything>@epoptic.org
 <anything>@epoptic.net
 <addresses at several_client_sites>


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Yes, let's ban users with Hotmail and Yahoo addresses...

body:
Sheldon Rampton <sheldon.rampton at verizon.net> wrote:
[among other things, let's]
> Require people to register, providing a verifiable email address
that is not yahoo or hotmail, as a precondition for contributing.

By all means!

And let's ban users from AOL, too, they're all such lamers, and from,
Verizon.net, because they allow a single user to have up to four different
email addresses, and people from "vanity" addresses (their own domains)
because who knows how many email addresses _they_ could have, and anyone from
weird little ISP's I've never heard of like Bomis, because who knows what
_their_ policies might be.

And then let's get rid of the top-posters.

And the people with more-than-four-line SIGs, and the piano organists, and
people who eat peppermint and puff it in your face, and the idiot who praises
in enthusiastic tone every century but this and every country but his own.

And let's require a social security number, credit card number, mother's
maiden name, and proof of sexual orientation as a requirement for
registration.

(Is the irony obvious enough yet, or do I need to add a smiley?)


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

subject: [WikiEN-l] The 3-revert rule

body:
On Tuesday 09 March 2004 15:00, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Just to keep everyone guessing here, ha ha, I'm actually very
> sympathetic to what Mark is saying.
>
> One of the things that's tempting about the 3-revert rule is that it's
> easy to administer and judge after the fact.  There are precious few
> borderline cases.  Reverting is reverting, anyone can check the logs
> after the fact and see it.  This is very different from subjective
> judgments like "hostility" and "rude" and even "vandalism".
>
> If we had a rule that say "3 reverts and you're out for 24 hours", it
> would be fairly hard for sysops to abuse it.  It at least has that as
> a merit.

Actually, it would be very easy for three users, sysops or not, to gang upon a
single user, communicate via e-mail, and "independently" revert user's
changes.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Centralization of power: not a good idea

body:
Sheldon Rampton advocated:

> Have Jimbo appoint a governing committee. This would inevitably be a
> non-representative subset of the entire community, but having Jimbo as
> our benevolent dictator is also non-representative.

Sometimes Sheldon has good ideas, but this is not one of those times. He
is otherwise a fine writer, and I've learned a lot from him.

Centralizing power won't help us make an open-content encyclopedia. In
fact, the very reason Jimbo and Larry gave up Nupedia was that having a
central committee guiding all productive activity simply doesn't work.
(It didn't work in the USSR or any other Marxist socialist state,
either: no incentive for individual excellence, and no sufficiently
incorruptible way to coordinate activity)

The thing that has propelled Wikipedia to greatness and will forever
sustain it, is the ability for "anyone, any time" to update it. All we
need are some simple community norms and a transparent, agreed-upon
method of enforcing these norms.

* Be accurate and neutral
* Don't attack other users

We all agree on these norms.

* Don't make trouble, or be elsewhere.

We've been working on how to codify and enforce this rule. We tried:

1. Long, agonizing discussions on the mailing list (drags on for
months!)

2. Bringing "cases" to Jimbo.

3. Mediation and Arbitration committees (still improving, began less
than 3 months ago!!)

Now Erik and I both think it's time to consider empowering individual
admins to use their judgment. Let's talk about the best way to do this.

Ed Poor


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mantas Dirgela

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Developers should mind their own business

body:
lt: wiki has no administators and I don't even have ideas whom to ask about
it. Currently I forward articles, which do not meet wiki criteria to "How to
edit a page" page, but that option seems to me a bit strange.

Mantas Dirgela
"Andre Engels" <engelsAG at t-online.de> wrote in
message news:1B0eTO-08DXcm0 at fwd03.sul.t-online.com...
"Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> schrieb:

> Or better yet, couldn't we even get rid of the bureaucrat account type by
> requiring at least 3 admins to approve bureaucrat+-type actions? Kinda
like
> requiring two keys turned by two people at once and having to enter the
correct
> codes in order to launch a nuke.

Might work on en: and de: and nl:, but it would have ridiculous
consequences to use this kind of rule on smaller Wikipedias. fy:
has 3 admins, one of which has not been around for a few months
now. af: has zero admins. And those are small, but not the smallest.

Andre Engels


body:
I have some trouble understanding this. But ok, mediation doesn't work. This
actually is no surprise. The reason mediation works in the real world is
that going to court is a real bitch. Folks here may justifiably calculate
they have little to lose and if they want to "play around" read "troll" play
games really, no harm no foul.

*Once the Arbitration Committee set itself up, it immediately dropped
even the pretense at arbitration and constituted itself as a panel of
grievance hearings with independent power of adjudication.

That is what abitrators do, decide disputes and render judgements. Comparing
us to a "panel of grievance hearings" injects a practice from labor
relations which contemplates a sort of appeal to an employers. I wonder what
you thought arbitration was supposed to amount to.

The only logical thing to do is to rename the Arbitration Committee
into something more close to what their actual role is, and rename
the Mediation Committee into the Arbitration Committee, and give it
live ammunition. What do I mean with live ammunition? I honestly
don't know! Anything the current "so-called" Arbitration Committee can
bear to part with...

Ok, Maybe you want them to be able to impose short bans, protect pages...
What?

Fred

From: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <jheiskan at welho.com>
Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Date: 10 Mar 2004 16:48:42 +0200
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Root and Branch - it's the only way.

Let's review where the Mediation/Arbitration system currently stands
in practice:

*The genuine custom for mediation is somewhere between zero and zip.
*Mediation is requested as a method of trolling. So far only
once successfully.

*Mediation is requested and once it starts, one or both of the
disputants will insist on behaving as if it were arbitration.
(This has happened more than once, but which cases, I will not
disclose)

*Once the Arbitration Committee set itself up, it immediately dropped
even the pretense at arbitration and constituted itself as a panel of
grievance hearings with independent power of adjudication.

Where do we go from here?

Well, the first thing to acknowledge is that this how it was always
going to go, no matter what we might have wished. Reality is a harsh
mistress.

The only logical thing to do is to rename the Arbitration Committee
into something more close to what their actual role is, and rename
the Mediation Committee into the Arbitration Committee, and give it
live ammunition. What do I mean with live ammunition? I honestly
don't know! Anything the current "socalled" Arbitration Committee can
bear to part with...

J-V Heiskanen (Formerly Cimon Avaro on a pogostick - RIP)
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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from_name: Sheldon Rampton

body:
Imran Ghory wrote:

>Bad idea, the ease of making contributions is one of our major "pull"
>factors. Also some people don't have a non-yahoo/hotmail account.

I think Wikipedia has grown to a point where pulling in more
contributors is less of a priority than retaining quality
contributors and encouraging good behavior. Somehow we have to come
to terms with the fact that contributing to Wikipedia isn't a RIGHT,
it's a PRIVILEGE, like driving, and that as a privilege, it comes
with responsibilities. (Specifically, the responsibility to refrain
from abuse.) There's no way to ensure that people fulfill their
responsibilities without some sort of identity-verification system to
prevent people from coming back repeatedly using anonymizers and
multiple accounts. Right now, all it takes is a few really dedicated
assholes like Bird to put a major hurt on the Wikipedia.

>Limiting number of contribution doesn't really seem to have any
>advantages, after all if a user goes on a vandalism spree they could
>easily use multiple accounts. And having all of their "contributions"
>under one account allow for us to block them more easily.

This is precisely what requiring email verification would prevent. If
someone has to supply a non-yahoo/hotmail account to register, they
COULDN'T "easily use multiple accounts."

--Sheldon Rampton


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] The 3-revert rule

body:
On 03/10/04 06:50, Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> On Tuesday 09 March 2004 15:00, Jimmy Wales wrote:

>>If we had a rule that say "3 reverts and you're out for 24 hours", it
>>would be fairly hard for sysops to abuse it.  It at least has that as
>>a merit.

> Actually, it would be very easy for three users, sysops or not, to gang upon a
> single user, communicate via e-mail, and "independently" revert user's
> changes.

Or one user with three names.

- d.


from_name: Dan Miller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 8, Issue 34

body:
> > (4) Alternately, we could try to develop a system
> of "policy juries,"
> > through which everyone occasionally gets asked at
> random to participate
> > in policy decisions. For a discussion of how
> policy juries work, see:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarchy
> >
> >  --Sheldon Rampton
>
> Better. I also like the idea to do the same with
> arbitrators (like a
> jury)...and with sysops :-)

Of all the ideas in Sheldon's original letter, this
was the only one I might think about agreeing with
(sorry, Sheldon).  The problems would be

1.  Ensuring participation--what if people are asked
and nobody shows?

2.  Getting a representative pool to ask from.

Meelar

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Search - Find what you?re looking for faster
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Factions

body:
It can come from either end of the political spectrum.
Ec

Fred Bauder wrote:

>To be expected from groups with an axe to grind or a political viewpoint
>they wish to impose.
>
>Fred
>
>>From: Nikola Smolenski <smolensk at eunet.yu>
>>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The 3-revert rule
>>
>>Actually, it would be very easy for three users, sysops or not, to gang upon a
>>single user, communicate via e-mail, and "independently" revert user's
>>changes.
>>


from_name: Michael Barnathan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Yahoo and hotmail emails

body:
There are two problems in restricting access from Yahoo! and Hotmail
email addresses:

The first is that it would limit a lot of honest users. If we allow
anonymous contributions, marked only by IP address, we can surely allow
people with any email address to contribute.

Secondly, doing this would not hinder some people. For example, I can
create any number of email forwards in my domains in a few seconds.
True, you can block the entire domain, but there are some domains with
many legitimate users.

Besides, this isn't what Wikipedia is meant to be. Identity verification
is all well and good, but not when there are so many innocents involved.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Root and Branch - it's the only way.

body:
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:

> Let's review where the Mediation/Arbitration system currently stands
> in practice:
>
> *The genuine custom for mediation is somewhere between zero and zip.
>
>     *Mediation is requested as a method of trolling. So far only
>     once successfully.
>
>     *Mediation is requested and once it starts, one or both of the
>     disputants will insist on behaving as if it were arbitration.
>     (This has happened more than once, but which cases, I will not
>     disclose)
>
This suggests that they don't understand what mediation is about.
 Perhaps each party to a mediation should receive an information page
explaining what mediation is as soon as that process is initiated.

E#c


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] The 3-revert rule

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote

> If it really is an acknowledged idiot, it shouldn't be too hard to get
> three respected sysops (or anyone else who happens along for that matter)
> to each perform a single revert.

Agree.  One day we might get faction-fighting, which would be a splitting
issue.  But I don't see that yet as a serious danger.

Charles


body:
Sheldon Rampton wrote

> Ed Poor wrote:
>
> >Wikipedia has grown so large that it is no longer possible to rely on
> >so-called soft security.
>
> I agree. Here's my solution:
>
> (1) Require people to register, providing a verifiable email address
> that is not yahoo or hotmail, as a precondition for contributing.
> (Alternately, restrict the NUMBER of contributions that a
> non-registered individual can contribute within a 24-hour period.)

No, that's giving up the good fight.
>
> (2) Unambiguously authorize sysops to take immediate, unilateral
> action against egregious abusers (with clear definitions of
> "egregious abuse").

I think this probably comes, as WP climbs from 1000th website on Alexa to
500th.  Is it going to be based on case law and precedent?  On an
easily-formulated set of principles?  On a directive from above that sysops
try to enforce?  On giving discretion to a super-sysop group?  These anyway
seem to be the _burning_ WikiDemocracy issues.

<snip rest>

Charles


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: French Wikipedia decided to switch to UTF-8 !

body:
> Evan Prodromou wrote:
>
> > Whoever is going to do this: I actually moved Wikitravel to UTF-8. I
> > outlined a procedure here:
> >
> >
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2003-December/000066.html
>
> This is actually quite a good idea. This will probably work, of course
> with the only caveat that the site will be unavailable (or at least
> uneditable) during this time.
>
> Timwi

At what time (GTM) can you try to switch? About how long it may take?
Bots will convert accents in articles after the switch, but do we need some
change in LanguageFr.php ?
Regards,

Aoineko


from_name: Lucas Carlson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Spell Checker

body:
Has anybody begun development on an integrated spell checking
application for Mediawiki?

-Lucas
http://www.rufy.com/


body:
This is not good because a great deal of experience is necessary to do
arbitration well. We need to eventually get to the place where serious
things are treated seriously and mere annoyances rather lightly. It takes
quite a while to get to where the difference is observable.

Fred

> From: Anthere <anthere8 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: anthere8 at yahoo.com, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 16:17:39 +0100
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Transition to WikiDemocracy
>
>> (4) Alternately, we could try to develop a system of "policy juries,"
>> through which everyone occasionally gets asked at random to participate
>> in policy decisions. For a discussion of how policy juries work, see:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarchy
>>
>> --Sheldon Rampton
>
> Better. I also like the idea to do the same with arbitrators (like a
> jury)...and with sysops :-)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Spell Checker

body:
On Mar 10, 2004, at 10:26, Lucas Carlson wrote:
> Has anybody begun development on an integrated spell checking
> application for Mediawiki?

Doesn't your browser have an integrated spell checker? Mine does
(Safari), I would assume other major browsers offer this standard.
Spell checking in a web app is _very_ clunky to do. When the browser
already offers this capability integrated in the editor, that's much
simpler.

To answer your question more directly, several people have _begun_
development on spell checking. I don't know what state they're in.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: teun spaans

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: bugs?

body:
Brion Vibber <brion at ...> writes:

>
> On Mar 4, 2004, at 01:31, Optim wrote:
> > In some e-mail I received this from a user:
> >
> > "Lately Wikipedia is having serious technical
> > difficulties where the article text and page
> > history are not  in synch with each other."
>
> Probably a cache issue of some sort. Note that page history declares
> itself cacheable, since it doesn't change unless the article changes.
>
Does this caching also apply to the {{msg:xxx}} mechanism?
Though my IE options are set at "every visit to the page", I repeatedly had
caching problems at our main page (which uses this mechanism).


from_name: Jason Richey

subject: [Wikitech-l] german squid ready/dns

body:
The plan is to set two DNS servers, zwinger.wikipedia.org, and
joey.bomis.com.  I was going to make this change yesterday, but there
was some strangeness (I couldn't 'dig @zwinger.wikipedia.org
www.wikipedia.org').  So, we will have 2 nameservers, but register.com
will no longer be in control.

Eventually, both of the servers will be living in the same colocation
facility.  So, I suppose we can see that as a single point of failure
as well.  Of course, if the network connection in the colo goes down
for any long period of time, DNS will not be our primary concern.

I intend to make the change soon (if I can nail down the problem I was
having yesterday).

Jason Richey

Arne Klempert wrote:

> On Wednesday, March 10, 2004 5:35 PM
> Gabriel Wicke <groups at gabrielwicke.de> wrote:
>
> > The german squid is ready to go, pending dns updates.
> > The ttl for the de.wp.org entry should be short to allow a fast dns
> > switch in case of trouble with the german machine. This depends on
> > the dns server entry getting finally switched from register.com to
> > zwinger. Same for load balancing, peaks like the ones after tv
> > reports only hit one of the squids currently while the load will be
> > distributed after the dns switch.
>
> Perhaps I missed some mails. But I was somewhat surprised about this
> announcement. I'm not happy with this, because this server will be a new
> Single Point of Failure.
>
> I strongly recommend to discuss this point before changing the dns
> entries. The actual performance seems to be ok, so we don't need to
> hurry.
>
> We're still having a lot of press contacts in germany. And I would not
> be amused to answer questions why wikipedia is down (especially in a
> live interview on german radio) ...
>
> Arne
> [[de:Benutzer:Akl]]
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] Blocking proxied users

body:
Given the recent problems with a user using many different HTTP proxies
to edit Wikipedia, we should consider using the information in the
HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR header supported by well-behaved proxies. If _any_
address in a HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR header is in our IP block list, the
request should be treated as if it had come directly from a blocked address.

This works well, as the various paranoid scenarios I can think of (eg
spurious headers) only work against the interests of the user sending
the headers, or make no difference from using their own IP address.

Anonymizing/spoofing proxies will have to be dealt with one-by-one as usual.

-- Neil


body:
From: "Brion Vibber"
> Bots cannot make the necessary changes.
>
> The entire database needs to be dumped, converted, and re-imported.

I'm making a character conversion table at
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion_Wikip%E9dia:Unicode. It is useless?
The conversion can be made automatically ?
If possible, it may be good to olso convert back the HTML' &#xxxx; in
Unicode characters.
Regards,

Aoineko


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] Rethinking vandalism

in_reply_to:
<94bJez4hpVB@erik_moeller> (Erik Moeller's message of "10 Mar
	2004 13:40:00 +0100")

body:
>>>>> "EM" == Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> writes:

    EM> We should set permanent cookies on every pageview except
    EM> saves, require cookies for saving pages, assign random account
    EM> names (anon2349bx29s) to anonymous editors, and use cookies to
    EM> block most users.

Although I think anti-vandalism paranoia is the path to doom, I think
the anon cookie is a good idea. It would allow, in addition, setting
preferences when not logged in. Also, we could offer to optionally
give new users credit for the work they've done anonymously so far.

    EM> All in all, I think this would greatly reduce the time spent
    EM> on fighting vandalism, and allow us to focus on more important
    EM> matters, like creating an encyclopedia.

Or, y'know, fostering the community that's needed to create an
encyclopedia.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rethinking vandalism

body:
We should set permanent cookies on every pageview except saves, require
cookies for saving pages, assign random account names (anon2349bx29s) to
anonymous editors, and use cookies to block most users.

We should do away with IP numbers in page histories, recent changes etc.
completely.

We should retain the ability to block by IP in emergencies.

This would address several current problems and have several advantages.

1) Having users' IP numbers published all over the place is a quite
serious privacy violation. It would be trivial to scan recent changes for
hosts with open ports and security vulnerabilities. Furthermore, it
reveals geographic information about anonymous editors which they may want
to keep private (such information can be very specific, depending on the
ISP).

2) Banning anonymous users by IP affects anyone who also uses the same IP.
In case of proxies, this may be thousands of individuals. If the first
message we send a new user - because they share a vandal IP - is "You are
banned from editing for serious vandalism", that user is unlikely to
become a regular contributor. Even regulars are frequently pissed off
because they accidentally get blocked.

3) Banning users by IP is also ineffective, as for most users, it is
trivial to get a new dynamic IP address.

4) For repeat vandals, we can set a very high or unlimited expiry without
fear of blocking someone else.

5) Requiring cookies even for anons allows them to change their user
preferences even without creating an account.

6) We can more easily attribute edits to users and easily change anon
edits over to real accounts when people decide to create an account. This
may also address some copyright issues.

Now, regarding some possible criticisms:

1) "They will just delete the cookie and edit away." Yes, some users will
do that. For these users, we should retain the ability to block by IP
(without revealing that IP address to sysops). However, doing so requires
an understanding of how the blocking mechanism works, which most users
don't have. They will have to know how to *remove* cookies, not just
disable them. The user will have to keep deleting the cookie every time it
is re-blocked. And sysops don't have to be hesitant about blocking them,
because no other users can be affected by it. So we can in fact make this
a single-click operation, making it costly for the average user, and cheap
for us.

2) "I have cookies disabled for privacy reasons!" Then you can't be
editing Wikipedia non-anonymously. We already require cookies for signed
in users. Most modern browsers allow enabling cookies on a case-by-case
basis. If a user tries to edit a page without having cookies enabled, we
will let them know that they need to enable them. If you are concerned
about privacy, you should be more concerned about having IP addresses
publicized everywhere, even stored permanently in the page history.

3) "This won't help us to deal with the most egregious vandals." Maybe,
maybe not. A vandal using a script would have to do the same thing as a
malicious user -- get a fresh cookie from a regular pageview, use that
cookie to submit an edit, then discard the cookie. This isn't hard to do,
but I doubt the average kiddie will be able to figure it out. On the other
hand, we can build more extreme anti-vandalism measures on top of this,
like disabling edits by any completely new contributor (= not setting any
new cookies) for a few hours.

All in all, I think this would greatly reduce the time spent on fighting
vandalism, and allow us to focus on more important matters, like creating
an encyclopedia.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Rethinking vandalism


from_name: Pierre Abbat

body:
On Wednesday 10 March 2004 09:48, Anthere wrote:
> Yes ! By all means, ban users using yahoo adresses, criminal people
> Let's prevent as well people to have several email adresses ! How dare
> they  !

I think we should ban people with houyhnhnm addresses. We don't want anyone
horsing around on Wikipedia.

phma
--
.i toljundi do .ibabo mi'afra tu'a do
.ibabo damba do .ibabo do jinga
.icu'u la ma'atman.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Spell Checker

body:
Theoretically, it is true that web browsers have built in spell
checkers, but in reality, one of my pet-peeves about wikipedia is that
there are so many spelling errors in the posts. If there was a spelling
check before submission, that would reduce the spelling errors
tremendously I am sure. I have seen clean web app spelling checks in
the past.

-Lucas
http://www.rufy.com/

On Mar 10, 2004, at 10:52 AM, Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Mar 10, 2004, at 10:26, Lucas Carlson wrote:
>> Has anybody begun development on an integrated spell checking
>> application for Mediawiki?
>
> Doesn't your browser have an integrated spell checker? Mine does
> (Safari), I would assume other major browsers offer this standard.
> Spell checking in a web app is _very_ clunky to do. When the browser
> already offers this capability integrated in the editor, that's much
> simpler.
>
> To answer your question more directly, several people have _begun_
> development on spell checking. I don't know what state they're in.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Factions

body:
Fred Bauder wrote

>[Ganging up on reverts]  To be expected from groups with an axe to grind or
a political viewpoint
> they wish to impose.

I think this does happen to some extent (it may go on in the Oder-Neisse
line disputes, for example).  If this were used systematically under a
three-revert limitation, that would be easy to see from a page history after
a week.  (Which isn't so long in wiki time, in fact.)

Charles


from_name: Gareth Owen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Yes,
	let's ban users with Hotmail and Yahoo addresses...

body:
<dpbsmith at verizon.net> pens a modest proposal :

> And then let's get rid of the top-posters.
> And the people with more-than-four-line SIGs

Actually, these two are fair enough.
--
Gareth Owen
I'm very enamoured of the idea of meta-content markup ...
there are a lot of cool possibilities. But we should be reluctant to tamper
much with a system that totally works in an amazing way. -- Jimmy Wales


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: german squid ready/dns

body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:

> On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 11:13:39 -0800, Jason Richey wrote:
>
> > The plan is to set two DNS servers, zwinger.wikipedia.org, and
> > joey.bomis.com.  I was going to make this change yesterday, but there
> > was some strangeness (I couldn't 'dig @zwinger.wikipedia.org
> > www.wikipedia.org').
>
> Mind the 'm' ;-) 'dig @zwinger.wikimedia.org www.wikipedia.org any' works
> better.

Right, but register.com wouldn't accept zwinger.wikiMedia.org as a DNS
serversomesome reason or other, so it will have to be
zwinger.wikiPedia.org.

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: german squid ready/dns

body:
On Mar 10, 2004, at 14:11, Jason Richey wrote:
> Gabriel Wicke wrote:
>> On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 11:13:39 -0800, Jason Richey wrote:
>>
>>> The plan is to set two DNS servers, zwinger.wikipedia.org, and
>>> joey.bomis.com.  I was going to make this change yesterday, but there
>>> was some strangeness (I couldn't 'dig @zwinger.wikipedia.org
>>> www.wikipedia.org').
>>
>> Mind the 'm' ;-) 'dig @zwinger.wikimedia.org www.wikipedia.org any'
>> works
>> better.
>
> Right, but register.com wouldn't accept zwinger.wikiMedia.org as a DNS
> serversomesome reason or other, so it will have to be
> zwinger.wikiPedia.org.

We've now got the zwinger.wikiPedia.org thing resolved so it's the
right address (yay) and should work. Sooner or later it should be
"safe" to try switching...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] More proxy headers

body:
See the Google cache of
http://www.proxybench.com/proxy/articles/httpheaders.asp for more
examples of IP-revealing headers from various sorts of proxy.

-- Neil


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Blocking proxied users

body:
On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 12:15:40 +0000, Neil Harris wrote:

> Given the recent problems with a user using many different HTTP proxies
> to edit Wikipedia, we should consider using the information in the
> HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR header supported by well-behaved proxies. If _any_
> address in a HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR header is in our IP block list, the
> request should be treated as if it had come directly from a blocked address.
>
> This works well, as the various paranoid scenarios I can think of (eg
> spurious headers) only work against the interests of the user sending
> the headers, or make no difference from using their own IP address.
>
> Anonymizing/spoofing proxies will have to be dealt with one-by-one as usual.

A first step in this direction would be to store the complete header in
the db, then sysops have much better information about a user to start
with. The HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR header is already parsed into an array in
latest cvs, all it would need for blocking based on this would be matching
the array values against a blocklist.
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Rethinking vandalism

body:
On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 13:40:00 +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:

> We should set permanent cookies on every pageview except saves, require
> cookies for saving pages, assign random account names (anon2349bx29s) to
> anonymous editors, and use cookies to block most users.

This would defeat all caching, we use 'Vary: Accept-Encoding, Cookie'.

Anon and non-anon vandalism wouldn't be such a problem if the 'stable',
publicly visible version wasn't affected by this immediately. Some ideas
in that direction are collected at
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-vandalism_ideas.
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Rethinking vandalism

body:
Gabriel-
> This would defeat all caching, we use 'Vary: Accept-Encoding, Cookie'.

Yes, if we want to allow anons to set preferences, we'd have to think
about ways to integrate the cookie system into the cache. That'd be a
longterm project.

But for vandalism prevention alone, we don't need that. We can just set
the cookie on the "edit" page, which is not cached. Remember, the only
action we need to require the cookie for is saving pages.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Rethinking vandalism


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Transition to WikiDemocracy

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>On 3/9/04 6:25 PM, "Stan Shebs" <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>
>>And your idea is? Ed is right, there are an amazing number of vandals
>>out there, and they seem to have not the slightest hesitation in doing
>>violence to us 24 hours a day.
>>
>>
>It doesn't amaze me. The insistence on figuring out ever-more complex and
>punitive strategies to deter juvenile behavior leads inevitably to a ramping
>up of that behavior. The whole "vandal" label is, as I've said before, not
>helpful.
>
>
There are people who have no idea that Wikipedia even *has* "complex
and punitive strategies" for anything - they see that they can click
on a button to edit and another to save, and they'll do it just because
they can. I just don't see how these people are somehow being magically
encouraged by things they don't even know about. And why would they
care how they're being labelled?  I'm fixing the vandalism hours or
days after the perpetrators are gone.

Stan


from_name: Anthere

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Developers are very precious part of the global
	scheme

body:
I am not entirely sure I understood all what you proposed Tim :-(

Tim Starling a ?crit:
>
> There is no sense in giving developers administrative power. Developers
> are good at programming, not management of a community. By wrapping up
> their ability to contribute with their ability to rule, they are made
> effectively unaccountable. Nobody wants to remove someone's developer
> access if it means they can't do much needed progrmaming work.
> Administration of the encyclopedia also distracts them from programming,
> a task which they have a rare skill and motivation for.

Understood.
Developper are good at programming
They may or may not be good at administration, and they may like or not
like taking care of administration.

I hesitate at using the word management, because I do not see pushing
button "ban", "sysop", "unsysop" etc... as management.

pushing these buttons sounds to me like "we trust the guy to listen to
the community global opinion, and to do what is a natural consequence of
the global opinion and to report what has been done to the community".

As you do.

I do not think the actual power of *decision* is in the hand of the one
pushing the button.

> Wikipedia should not be a technocracy, ruled by those with knowledge of
> computer systems. Wikipedia should be a democracy. Those in power should
> be accountable to the community at large, and ideally selected from and
> by the community at large.

Accountable and selected by the community yes

Selected like with a vote
Accountable such as having to follow rules set by the community, and
having to report

> I have written a feature giving people with the "developer" flag set in
> their wiki user accounts a level of administrative ability similar to
> what developers with shell access are capable of. Specifically, such
> users are able to set arbitrary user rights for any user on any
> Wikimedia project. They may create sysops, desysop, create bureaucrats
> or other developers, or any other user-rights operation you care to
> mention. This feature is operational right now, and I've been using it
> for the last couple of weeks to make bureaucrats on various wikis.

So, there are people with a flag of developper, with extended bureaucrat
powers, with no shell access

And other people with a flag of developper, with shell access and
extended bureaucrat power

did I understand well ?

> The feature is easy to use and does not carry the security risks of
> write-access to the database. At the moment, it is not possible to
> rename user accounts or change the history of articles through the web
> interface, but such features are planned.
>
> I suggest we use this feature to split the roles of developer and site
> administrator. Specifically, here is what I think should happen:
>
> 1. A policy should be instituted disallowing any developer from using
> their power for administrative purposes, except where there is no other
> way to perform the relevant operation. New developers applying for shell
> access should be made aware of this policy.

ok

> By "administrative purposes", I mean exercises of power for any other
> purpose than testing and implementing software.
>
> 2. A small number of users should be made "honorary developers" (perhaps
> a better title can be found). These users should be selected by putting
> forward nominations and then conducting a vote, similar to the vote now
> conducted at the English Wikipedia for sysop access.
>
> 3. These "honorary developers" can lose their developer access by a
> community vote giving a majority in favour, by an arbitration committee
> ruling, or by Jimbo's decree.
>
> It should be possible for a developer to hold both shell access and
> community blessing. Such people would take the role of both programmer
> and administrator. However as I said above, we really have a lot of
> programming work to do.

You do not mention rules.
Would they have specific rules to follow ?
New power should implies more rules to follow

Right now, Erik is typically having this kind of power and
administrative task.
That means
*he participates in setting the rules
*he decides when the rules must be applied
*he implement the decision
*he eventually forget to report :-)

I would like to suggest that at least two rules are necessary

rule 1 : no decision alone : depending on the urgency, Jimbo decision,
arbitration committee decision, full vote (like for sysoping someone),
poll (like urgent desysoping)
I think this rule is very important. No decision taken by a ''honorary
developper alone''

rule 2 : report mandatory. Depending on the action taken, on the mailing
list, on the wikipedia sysop vote page, on the poll page

Breaking of any of these two rules (without a damn good reason) means
suspension of "honorary developer" position.

No power should be entirely in a couple of people hands without rules.
And the more power, the more the rules need to be enforced.

-------

Last : when there are questions about the actions of a "honorary
developer", the one questioning should be granted free speech and public
  place to talk.


from_name: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

body:
Let's review where the Mediation/Arbitration system currently stands
in practice:

*The genuine custom for mediation is somewhere between zero and zip.

    *Mediation is requested as a method of trolling. So far only
    once successfully.

    *Mediation is requested and once it starts, one or both of the
    disputants will insist on behaving as if it were arbitration.
    (This has happened more than once, but which cases, I will not
    disclose)

*Once the Arbitration Committee set itself up, it immediately dropped
even the pretense at arbitration and constituted itself as a panel of
grievance hearings with independent power of adjudication.

Where do we go from here?

Well, the first thing to acknowledge is that this how it was always
going to go, no matter what we might have wished. Reality is a harsh
mistress.

The only logical thing to do is to rename the Arbitration Committee
into something more close to what their actual role is, and rename
the Mediation Committee into the Arbitration Committee, and give it
live ammunition. What do I mean with live ammunition? I honestly
don't know! Anything the current "socalled" Arbitration Committee can
bear to part with...

J-V Heiskanen (Formerly Cimon Avaro on a pogostick - RIP)
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from_name: Arno M

subject: [WikiEN-l] Bird

body:
"You can either start allowing open discussion within
 the Wikipedia namespace, allow writers to rework or
totally repudiate their earlier work, and deal with me
 as a surly collaborator, or you can deal with my
 effort from outside your so-called community for a
long, long time. And it appears you have the hard part
 of the bargain, because all I have to do is watch and
 decide if I will make quality contributions that
 advance human understanding or if I will battle this
collectivity to my last breath because I have found it
 to be a dangerous authoritarian cult.  + +If you
 don't like being pushed around and feel you have the
 moral high ground, I know how you feel. Because I am
 absolutely confident of my stern approach, am
completely fatigued of a mealy mouthed lies from
 educators who are trying to make knowledge a trade
 secret, and I have little to loose and everything to
 gain by fighting with all of my might wherever the
 battle might present."

So what is Jimbo's response to this little edict? Another "all you need is love" approach?

____________________________________________________________
Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10


body:
Anthere wrote

> test...
>
> Will the new yahoo adress work ?
>
> (sorry, still a bit awkard to use forums)
>
> Anthere9atyahoo.com

I think the suggestion is a non-starter; and goes right against the wiki
philosophy of _not making it a challenge_ just to make an edit.
Realistically there is no chance of defeating trolls who can walk into an
Internet cafe and edit for an hour, then walk out.  And if it wasn't that,
it would be some university facility where one could never trace a specific
vandal.  If much graffitism is just attention-seeking behaviour, one would
have to say that it easily achieves the goal of attracting attention (and
nothing else).  But it's not spray paint, and reverting works.

The thing to solve - a troll really wants to attract the attention of some
'enforcement' and get a serious conflict.  How to empower enforcers, so they
can do what is necessary, but make it unrewarding from the troll's POV (an
impersonal conflict, for example).

Charles


body:
On Wed, 2004-03-10 at 17:13, Fred Bauder wrote:

    I have some trouble understanding this. But ok, mediation doesn't
    work. This actually is no surprise. The reason mediation works in
    the real world is that going to court is a real bitch. Folks here
    may justifiably calculate they have little to lose and if they want
    to "play around" read "troll" play games really, no harm no foul.

        *Once the Arbitration Committee set itself up, it immediately
        dropped
        even the pretense at arbitration and constituted itself as a
        panel of grievance hearings with independent power of
        adjudication.

    That is what abitrators do, decide disputes and render judgements.
    Comparing us to a "panel of grievance hearings" injects a practice
    from labor relations which contemplates a sort of appeal to an
    employers. I wonder what you thought arbitration was supposed to
    amount to.

Something close to what the disputants seem to expect us
mediators to deliver. A negotiation between the parties
themselves but with two arbiters and an umpire to make
the final call.

As far as I can see, the current arbitration process has
short circuited any negotiation between the parties
themselves.

        The only logical thing to do is to rename the Arbitration
        Committee
        into something more close to what their actual role is, and
        rename
        the Mediation Committee into the Arbitration Committee, and give
        it
        live ammunition. What do I mean with live ammunition? I honestly
        don't know! Anything the current "so-called" Arbitration
        Committee can bear to part with...

    Ok, Maybe you want them to be able to impose short bans, protect
    pages...

Yup. For starters..

    What?

Anything that will give timely relief, but will not be so heavy as to be
considered a serious sanction which previously would have been the sole
prerogative of Jimbo. Basically anything that won't cause the general
editorship or your operation to cry foul.

J-V Heiskanen

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body:
Yes ! By all means, ban users using yahoo adresses, criminal people
Let's prevent as well people to have several email adresses ! How dare
they  !

Anthere5AT yahoo.com (when I joined)
Anthere6AT yahoo.com (a year later when the previous box was full)
Anthere7AT yahoo.com (a few months later when the previous box was full)
Anthere8AT yahoo.com (a few weeks later when the previous box was full)
Anthere9AT yahoo.com (beginning today since the previous box is full
with useless mediation discussions)

dpbsmith at verizon.net a ?crit:
> Sheldon Rampton <sheldon.rampton at verizon.net> wrote:
> [among other things, let's]
>
>>Require people to register, providing a verifiable email address
>
> that is not yahoo or hotmail, as a precondition for contributing.
>
> By all means!
>
> And let's ban users from AOL, too, they're all such lamers, and from,
> Verizon.net, because they allow a single user to have up to four different
> email addresses, and people from "vanity" addresses (their own domains)
> because who knows how many email addresses _they_ could have, and anyone from
> weird little ISP's I've never heard of like Bomis, because who knows what
> _their_ policies might be.
>
> And then let's get rid of the top-posters.
>
> And the people with more-than-four-line SIGs, and the piano organists, and
> people who eat peppermint and puff it in your face, and the idiot who praises
> in enthusiastic tone every century but this and every country but his own.
>
> And let's require a social security number, credit card number, mother's
> maiden name, and proof of sexual orientation as a requirement for
> registration.
>
> (Is the irony obvious enough yet, or do I need to add a smiley?)


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Creative Commons Licence

body:
Mine are under CC-SA, which is about as copyleft as it comes.

Anthony

Caroline Ford wrote:

> I've dual licensed my images under cc-by-sa (attribution, share
> alike). This seems to closest to the GFDL and I believe to be copyleft.
>
> Caroline/Secretlondon


body:
Sheldon Rampton a ?crit:

> (1) Have Jimbo appoint a governing committee. This would inevitably be a
> non-representative subset of the entire community, but having Jimbo as
> our benevolent dictator is also non-representative. The advantage of a
> governing committee is that it could be SOMEWHAT more representative of
> the entire committee than just Jimbo by himself, and it could also take
> some of the work off his shoulders.

For a healthy place, no cumulation of "power" should exist. An
arbitrator should not be in the government. Nor a "honorary developer"
(the one sysops, desysoping people). Separation of power is best.

> (2) Establish a voting system, through which a large subset of the
> entire Wikipedia community is authorized to vote. Obviously we'll need
> some way to exclude spam-voting by anonymous abusers, but if we gave a
> vote to everyone who has supplied a unique and verified email address,
> that would be a close enough approximation to universal enfranchisement
> for practical purposes.

Each time we voted, it was clear enough that the little noise that could
be brought by vandals was cancelled by all the good contributors.

> (3) Use the voting system to create a "parliament" of elected
> representatives, whose members are charged with setting policies on
> behalf of the entire community.

I disagree with this.

> (4) Alternately, we could try to develop a system of "policy juries,"
> through which everyone occasionally gets asked at random to participate
> in policy decisions. For a discussion of how policy juries work, see:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarchy
>
>  --Sheldon Rampton

Better. I also like the idea to do the same with arbitrators (like a
jury)...and with sysops :-)


body:
test...

Will the new yahoo adress work ?

(sorry, still a bit awkard to use forums)

Anthere9atyahoo.com

Sean Barrett a ?crit:
>>Yes ! By all means, ban users using yahoo adresses, criminal people
>>Let's prevent as well people to have several email adresses ! How dare
>>they  !
>
>
> I completely agree.  Multiple e-mail addresses are the tool of the
> devil.  Bwah-hah-hah!
>
> --
>  Wikipedian #30
>  <anything>@epoptic.org
>  <anything>@epoptic.net
>  <addresses at several_client_sites>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Root and Branch - it's the only way.

body:
Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> writes:

> I felt great till 5 hours later desysoped 168 quit the project.

You shouldn't feel bad.

He abused his sysop powers, you called him on it,
and he threw his toys out of the pram.

That's not your problem, that's his.
--
Gareth Owen
"I love the wikipedia, but sometimes I get the impression that certain people
 on this list are very bored, and so argue about something when there's really
 bugger all to argue about. Edit some articles, for god's sake." -- LP


body:
Fred Bauder a ?crit:

>     The only logical thing to do is to rename the Arbitration Committee
>     into something more close to what their actual role is, and rename
>     the Mediation Committee into the Arbitration Committee, and give it
>     live ammunition. What do I mean with live ammunition? I honestly
>     don't know! Anything the current "so-called" Arbitration Committee can
>
> bear to part with...
>
> Ok, Maybe you want them to be able to impose short bans, protect
> pages... What?

3 days ago, I imposed a virtual protection on the top of DNA page.
It was meant to protect the page from a new edit war, while letting most
of it editable.
And to insure people would talk about it rather than edit the article again.
I soft ban one user who did not respect that virtual protection

I felt GREAT !

Because I felt something was possibly do-able in that direction. And
that *I* could do something about it. Not just wait for nothing to happen.

I felt great till 5 hours later desysoped 168 quit the project.

I think this is an option to explore to fix a dispute, while limiting
impact on other editors. In the end, it is a bit like a mediation (ie,
trying to have people talk and discuss, online and offline) while
limiting damage (by protection and banning possibilities).

(now...I am not sure...what to do next since 168 is gone...I suppose I
will restore the community version and possibly, depending on the DNA
editors position on the matter, I was thinking of letting a soft
protection on the community version for a while longuer in case Lir or
Bensaccount would feel like changing it soon...)

Ant


subject: [Wikipedia-l] HieroTeX

body:
You probably never hear about that, but there is a TeX module to write the
hieroglyphs text from a specific syntax. For example <-p:t-o-l:m-i-i-s->!
may render the name of the pharaoh Ptolemy into a cartouche. Package is
downloadable here:
http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/hieroglyph/?action=/tex-archive/fonts/. I
would like to be able to use it on Wikipedia, but if it is not possible, I
thought of an alternative simple idea.

The alternative idea is to generate and load all pictures on the server
(basic set is about 300 small pictures) and to create an external tool (I
can host it) to generate wiki-table that put together those pictures to
create hieroglyph text. This solution needs no modification to the software
but make text modification difficult.

For example, put p:t-o-l:m-i-i-s! in the tool may create the following table
we just have to copy and paste to Wikipedia:

{|

| |[[image:hiero_p.png]] | [[image:hiero_t.png]]

| rowspan="2" | [[image:hiero_o.png]]

| [[image:hiero_l.png]] | [[image:hiero_m.png]]

| rowspan="2" | [[image:hiero_i.png]]

| rowspan="2" | [[image:hiero_i.png]]

| rowspan="2" | [[image:hiero_s.png]]

|}

TeX or WikiTable generator, what is your recommendation?

Aoineko


subject: [Wikitech-l] HieroTeX


from_name: Peter Jaros

subject: [WikiEN-l] What's the word?  (was: Arbitration policy)

body:
On Monday, March 8, 2004, at 03:44 PM, Lee Pilich wrote:

> "Completed" in quotes because while everything that needs to be
> covered for us to function probably is covered in one way or another,
> everything is still subject to change, and everything will likely be
> tweaked as we deal with more cases, gain experience and whatnot.

Is there a good word for this?  A word meaning that the subject has
been covered completely, but changes are still sought/appropriate/etc.
This concept seems to come up all the time in wiki-space, but no one
seems to have the word for it.  It would be useful over on Wikibooks to
label books which have achieved this status (green - see
[[Wikibooks:Main Page]]).

Peter


body:
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen a ?crit:

>     Ok, Maybe you want them to be able to impose short bans, protect
>     pages...
>
>
> Yup. For starters..
>
>     What?
>
>
> Anything that will give timely relief, but will not be so heavy as to be
> considered a serious sanction which previously would have been the sole
> prerogative of Jimbo. Basically anything that won't cause the general
> editorship or your operation to cry foul.
>
> J-V Heiskanen

Another suggestion...

In a mediation that took place early on, a mediator asked information
about ip number of two people.
He did not mean to have these publicly disclosed, but having that
information apparently would have been great help for him to settle a
few points in the mediation process.

He asked twice the mailing list, and never got any answer.
He finally had to ask Jimbo for help
By the time a developer was here and available and willing to help, the
information was no more recoverable (so I understood).

I will cite some words by Jussi

Are there technical facilities besides the bulletin board that we could
and should have at our disposal?

Or are there justifieable fears of misuse? Should there be a
non-mediator (an arbitrator perhaps) specifically tasked with providing
special technical assistance for mediators?

What do you think ?


body:
"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> writes:

> Now Erik and I both think it's time to consider empowering individual
> admins to use their judgment.

Actually, you thought that a long time ago.
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2002-November/000016.html
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2002-November/000018.html

--
Gareth Owen


body:
On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 15:37:00 +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:

> Gabriel-
>> This would defeat all caching, we use 'Vary: Accept-Encoding, Cookie'.
>
> Yes, if we want to allow anons to set preferences, we'd have to think
> about ways to integrate the cookie system into the cache. That'd be a
> longterm project.
>
> But for vandalism prevention alone, we don't need that. We can just set
> the cookie on the "edit" page, which is not cached. Remember, the only
> action we need to require the cookie for is saving pages.

That's the current behaviour, but the cookies aren't persistent across
browser sessions unless you choose to log in permanently ('remember me').

With ESI the squid can build cached pages from cookie values, i have done
some first tests for this and try to build a skin that can make use of
this. More at http://www.esi.org/ or http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skins.
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Wikitech-l] bandwidth thieves blocked

body:
No more image bandwidth used by the following sites:
# image theft acls
acl imgurl urlpath_regex -i \.(jpg|gif|png)$
acl badimgref referer_regex -i wikipedia.t-st.de
acl badimgref referer_regex -i worldhistory.com
acl badimgref referer_regex -i yourencyclopedia.net
acl badimgref referer_regex -i wordiq.com
acl badimgref referer_regex -i artpolitic.org
acl badimgref referer_regex -i ruv.net
# deny access
http_access deny badimgref imgurl

Thanks to Jeronim who compiled the list.
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Wikitech-l] german squid ready/dns

body:
The german squid is ready to go, pending dns updates.
The ttl for the de.wp.org entry should be short to allow a fast dns switch
in case of trouble with the german machine. This depends on the dns server
entry getting finally switched from register.com to zwinger. Same for load
balancing, peaks like the ones after tv reports only hit one of the squids
currently while the load will be distributed after the dns switch.
--
Gabriel Wicke


body:
On Wed, 2004-03-10 at 17:51, Anthere wrote:

    Jussi-Ville Heiskanen a ?crit:

    >     Ok, Maybe you want them to be able to impose short bans, protect
    >     pages...
    >
    >
    > Yup. For starters..
    >
    >     What?
    >
    >
    > Anything that will give timely relief, but will not be so heavy as to be
    > considered a serious sanction which previously would have been the sole
    > prerogative of Jimbo. Basically anything that won't cause the general
    > editorship or your operation to cry foul.
    >
    > J-V Heiskanen

...snip...

    I will cite some words by Jussi

    "Are there technical facilities besides the bulletin board that we could
    and should have at our disposal?

    Or are there justifieable fears of misuse? Should there be a
    non-mediator (an arbitrator perhaps) specifically tasked with providing
    special technical assistance for mediators?"

Oh, that reminds me. If the mediation committee is reconstituted into a
_real_ arbitration committee (on the basis of two arbitrators per case
and
umpirage provided by a third chosen by the two disputant-chosen ones),
it
would of course mean that we too would have to be voted in/out, just
like
the current "judiciary committee", otherwise we should not be entrusted
with
powers beyond those of other admins.

J-V Heiskanen

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subject: [Wikitech-l] bandwidth thieves blocked

body:
Gabriel-
> No more image bandwidth used by the following sites:

We are not currently offering an archive of our images at
download.wikipedia.org. It seems unfair to me to block Wikipedia mirrors
from referring to images when there's no obvious way to get the images for
them to host them on their own.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Arne Klempert

subject: [Wikitech-l] german squid ready/dns

body:
On Wednesday, March 10, 2004 5:35 PM
Gabriel Wicke <groups at gabrielwicke.de> wrote:

> The german squid is ready to go, pending dns updates.
> The ttl for the de.wp.org entry should be short to allow a fast dns
> switch in case of trouble with the german machine. This depends on
> the dns server entry getting finally switched from register.com to
> zwinger. Same for load balancing, peaks like the ones after tv
> reports only hit one of the squids currently while the load will be
> distributed after the dns switch.

Perhaps I missed some mails. But I was somewhat surprised about this
announcement. I'm not happy with this, because this server will be a new
Single Point of Failure.

I strongly recommend to discuss this point before changing the dns
entries. The actual performance seems to be ok, so we don't need to
hurry.

We're still having a lot of press contacts in germany. And I would not
be amused to answer questions why wikipedia is down (especially in a
live interview on german radio) ...

Arne
[[de:Benutzer:Akl]]


from_name: Rick

body:
As I've explained over and over again, for some reason on this mailing list (and almost exclusively on this list), Yahoo forces me to top post.  I hate it -- I consider it bad form.  Other things that are sent to me don't have this problem.  But if I post inside or below the post I'm responding to, it creates a ">" next to the line I'm typing, making it look as if it's part of the post I'm responding to.  This is the only way I have of making my posting stand out from the rest of what I'm responding to.

RickK

David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
Gareth Owen (wiki at gwowen.freeserve.co.uk) [040311 00:51]:
> pens a modest proposal :

> > And then let's get rid of the top-posters.
> > And the people with more-than-four-line SIGs

> Actually, these two are fair enough.

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Search - Find what you?re looking for faster.
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from_name: Michael Snow

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
>
>
>>Let's review where the Mediation/Arbitration system currently stands
>>in practice:
>>
>>*The genuine custom for mediation is somewhere between zero and zip.
>>
>>    *Mediation is requested as a method of trolling. So far only
>>    once successfully.
>>
>>    *Mediation is requested and once it starts, one or both of the
>>    disputants will insist on behaving as if it were arbitration.
>>    (This has happened more than once, but which cases, I will not
>>    disclose)
>>
>>
>This suggests that they don't understand what mediation is about.
> Perhaps each party to a mediation should receive an information page
>explaining what mediation is as soon as that process is initiated.
>
For mediators in the real world, one of the big challenges is educating
people on how the process works. They all labor under the misconception
that it's an adversarial process like the rest of the legal system.

--Michael Snow
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: bandwidth thieves blocked

body:
Gabriel-
> I don't think the mirrors have a right to get free hosting, and it's not
> hard to save them really if somebody wanted to.

Well, we don't make it exactly easy either, what with blocking all the
spiders ..

> If there's a concensus
> (and no copyright problem) to provide a big tar with all images for more
> convenience, then it's just a matter of adding it at
> download.wikimedia.org.

If it's OK for us to host the images in the first place, then it's also OK
to put them into a tarball.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] New sidebar poll

body:
Since some people on this mailing list have previously asked to be made
aware of polls on the wiki, here is a new one. It addresses what links
to remove from the sidebar so we can add a link to the Community Portal
page. It's actually a revised and restarted version of the old poll,
which ended up being too confusing and did not have a clear result. Vote at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Community_Portal#New_sidebar_poll

--Michael Snow


body:
Start a poll to ban me :-)

Pierre Abbat a ?crit:
> On Wednesday 10 March 2004 09:48, Anthere wrote:
>
>>Yes ! By all means, ban users using yahoo adresses, criminal people
>>Let's prevent as well people to have several email adresses ! How dare
>>they  !
>
>
> I think we should ban people with houyhnhnm addresses. We don't want anyone
> horsing around on Wikipedia.
>
> phma


body:
You did not understand me. I do not suggest that every one takes the
role of an arbitrator in turn. I suggest that the pool of arbitrator is
larger, and that people in *that* pool take turns.

Similarly, I honestly believe that there would be some benefit if some
sysops found themselves not sysops from time in time.

Fred Bauder a ?crit:
> This is not good because a great deal of experience is necessary to do
> arbitration well. We need to eventually get to the place where serious
> things are treated seriously and mere annoyances rather lightly. It takes
> quite a while to get to where the difference is observable.
>
> Fred
>
>
>>From: Anthere <anthere8 at yahoo.com>
>>Reply-To: anthere8 at yahoo.com, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>>Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 16:17:39 +0100
>>To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Transition to WikiDemocracy
>>
>>
>>>(4) Alternately, we could try to develop a system of "policy juries,"
>>>through which everyone occasionally gets asked at random to participate
>>>in policy decisions. For a discussion of how policy juries work, see:
>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarchy
>>>
>>>--Sheldon Rampton
>>
>>Better. I also like the idea to do the same with arbitrators (like a
>>jury)...and with sysops :-)
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Rethinking vandalism

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Gabriel-
>
>
>>This would defeat all caching, we use 'Vary: Accept-Encoding, Cookie'.
>>
>>
>Yes, if we want to allow anons to set preferences, we'd have to think
>about ways to integrate the cookie system into the cache. That'd be a
>longterm project.
>
We don't give unregistered users the ability to set preferences now, why
should we give it to them if we assign them an "anon" account?

Erik's idea sounds very good to me, although I don't have the technical
expertise to understand all of the implications.

--Michael Snow
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from_name: Caroline Ford

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Creative Commons Licence

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

> Not sure what's *horrible* about no derivative works.  Wikipedia
> doesn't need to alter most images.  I'd take cc-nd over copyrighted
> with fair use.  If cc-nd is completely unacceptable, then so is fair
> use, right?
>
> A
>
>> It seems obvious to me that No Deriviative Works is completely
>> unacceptable.
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
I've dual licensed my images under cc-by-sa (attribution, share alike).
This seems to closest to the GFDL and I believe to be copyleft.

Caroline/Secretlondon


body:
On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 19:24:00 +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:

> Gabriel-
>> No more image bandwidth used by the following sites:
>
> We are not currently offering an archive of our images at
> download.wikipedia.org. It seems unfair to me to block Wikipedia mirrors
> from referring to images when there's no obvious way to get the images for
> them to host them on their own.

right click -> save image as...

I don't think the mirrors have a right to get free hosting, and it's not
hard to save them really if somebody wanted to. If there's a concensus
(and no copyright problem) to provide a big tar with all images for more
convenience, then it's just a matter of adding it at
download.wikimedia.org.
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Good News from the UK

body:
I was searching to see if any of the British media had picked up on our
press release when I discovered that the Daily Telegraph has been
linking to us for some time. I've added all the references to the press
pages - but we had 51 links to us when I last checked.

These are links to further reading on the article topic.

This is very good news as the Daily Telegraph is one of the 4 major
national "broadsheet" newspapers in the UK.

Caroline /Secretlondon


subject: [WikiEN-l] Good news!

body:
It would need several return addresses - having to send a piece of paper
by airmail would act as a real deterant.

Caroline

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>You know what would be great?  If we had a standard form for people to
>use.  You could mail to to this person by paper mail with a return
>address to the Wikimedia Foundation, and when the permissions come in,
>I can store them for future due diligence on the part of a publisher
>or reuser or whatever.
>
>It could be carefully worded by the community so as not to frighten
>people.  :-)
>
>--Jimbo
>
>
>Dan Miller wrote:
>
>
>
>>I just called the Democratic National Committee to ask
>>if they would be willing to licence some of their
>>images under the GFDL (I was hoping to get a photo for
>>[[Terry McAuliffe]]).  Anyway, the person I spoke to
>>said that "We probably won't have any problems
>>licencing them to you", but wanted it in writing.  So,
>>I have a question regarding image copyright.
>>
>>Does an email constitute permission to use these? And
>>should I store it? That is, what format is necessary
>>for the permission?
>>
>>The even better news is this: when I called, I
>>launched into my little shpiel about how "I'm calling
>>on behalf of the Wikipedia, we're trying to put
>>together a free-content encyclopedia".  He stopped me
>>in the middle of my sentence and said "Of course I've
>>heard of the Wikipedia."  It kind of made my day.
>>
>>Meelar
>>
>>__________________________________
>>Do you Yahoo!?
>>Get better spam protection with Yahoo! Mail.
>>http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools
>>_______________________________________________
>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
>>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>


from_name: Jay Bowks

references:
<404D7287.8000206@hotmail.com>
	<94YIuicSpVB@erik_moeller><c2kfl8$cq1$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<6DA9EAEB-720A-11D8-88DC-000A95DAA284@pobox.com>

body:
From: "Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com>
> As developers we do *not* manage the social structure of the wiki. We
> are servants. We try to keep the servers running smooth and clean and
> improve the functioning of the wiki.

And all of you do an excellent
job of it! Kudos! You have my
admiration for all the work you
do, and I include my very sincere
thanks.
Jay B.

P.S. We should have a Wiki
Developer appreciation Month
or something like that... ;-)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: german squid ready/dns

body:
On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 11:13:39 -0800, Jason Richey wrote:

> The plan is to set two DNS servers, zwinger.wikipedia.org, and
> joey.bomis.com.  I was going to make this change yesterday, but there
> was some strangeness (I couldn't 'dig @zwinger.wikipedia.org
> www.wikipedia.org').

Mind the 'm' ;-) 'dig @zwinger.wikimedia.org www.wikipedia.org any' works
better.

Arne has his point of course- two squids configured for failover would be
better, especially as the german hoster is a rather cheap one. No reboots
during the weekend for example...
A short dns timeout would keep the downtime low in case the machine
disappears, but some isps apparently don't care about dns ttl's.
--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Camille Constans

subject: [Wikitech-l] single point of faillure

body:
Hello,

I would like to say that actually we have a single point of faillure. The DB server.
We only have one dual-opteron and geoffrin is not yet back. We 'really' need a backup db server which could replace the actual one. None of the others servers could do that.
Jimbo, if you can, try to move those things, or think about getting another dual-opteron.

Thanks

Shaihulud


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rethinking vandalism

body:
On Wednesday 10 March 2004 13:40, Erik Moeller wrote:
> We should set permanent cookies on every pageview except saves, require
> cookies for saving pages, assign random account names (anon2349bx29s) to
> anonymous editors, and use cookies to block most users.

I don't think that it is a good idea to set cookies for READING Wikipedia, but
certainly it couldbe done for editing it.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Yahoo and hotmail emails

body:
On Wednesday 10 March 2004 15:37, Michael Barnathan wrote:
> There are two problems in restricting access from Yahoo! and Hotmail
> email addresses:
>
> Secondly, doing this would not hinder some people. For example, I can
> create any number of email forwards in my domains in a few seconds.
> True, you can block the entire domain, but there are some domains with
> many legitimate users.

It easy to do this even if your computer has temporary IP address (and is even
more effective).


subject: [WikiEN-l] The 3-revert rule

body:
On Wednesday 10 March 2004 10:50, Charles Matthews wrote:
> Bryan Derksen wrote
> > If it really is an acknowledged idiot, it shouldn't be too hard to get
> > three respected sysops (or anyone else who happens along for that matter)
> > to each perform a single revert.
>
> Agree.  One day we might get faction-fighting, which would be a splitting
> issue.  But I don't see that yet as a serious danger.

Factions fighting against single users are not a serious danger?


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Spell Checker

body:
On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 12:54:08 -0800, Lucas Carlson wrote:

> Theoretically, it is true that web browsers have built in spell
> checkers, but in reality, one of my pet-peeves about wikipedia is that
> there are so many spelling errors in the posts. If there was a spelling
> check before submission, that would reduce the spelling errors
> tremendously I am sure. I have seen clean web app spelling checks in
> the past.

Archivist did a prototype for plain wiki syntax. Html-based spell checkers
are available of course, see
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/WYSIWYG_editor.
--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: listen

subject: [Wikitech-l] single point of faillure

body:
> Hello,
>
> I would like to say that actually we have a single point of faillure.
> The DB server.
> We only have one dual-opteron and geoffrin is not yet back. We 'really'
> need a backup db server which could replace the actual one. None of the
> others servers could do that.
> Jimbo, if you can, try to move those things, or think about getting
> another dual-opteron.

What have you got in mind about raising the money that machine would cost?

thanks
Manfred

>
> Thanks
>
> Shaihulud
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--


subject: [Wikitech-l] db trouble

body:
After being slow for most of the day suda has become completely
unresponsive now, the shells are frozen, new ssh connects get an error
message.

We hope to get gunther up as a replacement, but this will take a while as
it's not in sync.

Brion- if you're around- we need you!
--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

body:
Well, it looks like most of my ideas got shot down, which just proves
that I'm a brilliant visionary and ahead of my time. ;-)

For the record, I wasn't proposing that we "ban" all people who use
hotmail and yahoo addresses. I was proposing that we make it a
requirement that NEW registrants supply an ISP-based email address.
This wouldn't need to be applied retroactively. Moreover, it wouldn't
prevent people from continuing to use a hotmail or yahoo address for
the purposes of correspondence.

My main point, though, is not about hotmail or yahoo accounts. The
central thing I'm trying to say is that there's not much point in
having policies regarding behavior if there's no way to enforce them,
and there's no way to enforce policies when anyone can use an
anonymizer and create a hundred sock-puppet identities for
themselves. Some kind of identity verification system is necessary.
It should be done in a way that is non-intrusive and respects
individual privacy, but SOMETHING needs to happen. Otherwise an
enormous amount of decent people's time will continue to be wasted
trying to cope with the childish behavior of a few trolls.

In lieu of a system for identity verification, what we have at
present is a system that falsely pretends IP numbers can be equated
with individual identities, which is both ineffectual and unfair to
innocent people. It's ineffectual, because abusers can easily get
around an IP ban. It's unfair, because banning an IP number punishes
an entire class of people for the behavior of a single individual.

Arguably my "hotmail-yahoo" approach is a half-baked way of achieving
identity verification. I think Erik Moeller's "permanent cookies"
approach might work better.

Another approach might be to create a _reward_ system for people who
supply a verified identity. We'd have three classes of users:

(1) People who have supplied a verified identity, through a means to
be determined.

(2)People who have registered but HAVEN'T supplied a verified identity.

(3)People who haven't registered at all.

The reward for supplying a verified identity would be greater trust
from the Wikipedia community. You'd get some extra privileges, like
the ability to mark changes as "minor," and you could participate in
a system of rating other WIkipedians similar to the way eBay buyers
and sellers rate one another. There would be a feature that makes it
possible to filter out high-ranking Wikipedians when people look at a
list of "recent changes," thus reflecting the presumption that
highly-rated Wikipedians need less monitoring that people who haven't
earned that level of trust.

People who have registered but haven't supplied a verified identity
would still be able to contribute as they do at present, but they
wouldn't be able to earn "trust" and would therefore always be ranked
at zero.

People who haven't registered would also be treated the same way they
are at present.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Poll on 24 hour bans for revert wars

body:
This is a bit different than the 3-revert/article/day rule. This is a
6-revert/day set-up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:How_to_revert_a_page_to_an_earlier_version#Policy_vote%3A_24_hour_bans_for_revert_wars%3F

The vote is not going well, but some people have proposed a neat alternative
enforcement of the new 3-revert policy: If you revert the same article more
than three times in one day, the page gets protected as the version you were
reverting. Thus your version gets pushed into the article's history.

Not sure what would happen if more than one person breaks the 3-revert rule on
the same page or what would happen for repeat offenders on the same article.
But the above mentioned alternative has the advantage that it is a refinement
of current practice instead of something really new. More refinements can and
should improve the system in the future.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Search - Find what you?re looking for faster
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] New sidebar poll

body:
Michael Snow wrote:

> Since some people on this mailing list have previously asked to be
> made aware of polls on the wiki, here is a new one. It addresses what
> links to remove from the sidebar so we can add a link to the Community
> Portal page. It's actually a revised and restarted version of the old
> poll, which ended up being too confusing and did not have a clear
> result. Vote at:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Community_Portal#New_sidebar_poll
>

I hadn't followed this debate until now.  Some people have other things
to do.  But I see that the vote avoids the whole issue of alternatives
to having  a "Community Portal" page at all.

Ec


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] New schema part I: link tables

body:
I've checked into the head branch some changes to the link tables. They
now all use a key on cur_id for the *_from column instead of strings,
and have a unique index to force prevent any duplicate entries. There's
not yet a clean step in the update script, so just clear out your links
tables (patch-linktables.sql) and rebuild them with refreshLinks.php.

This saves trouble in a number of places where we can now do joins with
the link tables to get other info (such as cur_is_redirect!) as well as
the name, and fewer bits need to be juggled on page renaming, as
outgoing links no longer have to be changed (cur_id remains the same
when a page is renamed).

rebuildLinks.inc and some of the tools in the 'maintenance page' still
need to be updated to work with the new setup. (Special:Maintenance
needs a *lot* of cleanup in general. It's kind of a catch-all of
vaguely defined features which suck performance like a hydroelectric
dam.)

Also I've slipped in some extra debug code. And, I think 'indexes.sql'
is a big waste of time and should all be moved into tables.sql.
Building indexes separately doesn't help on InnoDB and won't do
anything on MyISAM either if you're just going to replace the table
after it's built with an imported one from a dump which creates it with
indexes.

Note that one of the driving forces behind schema changes here is size
& number of rows to change. We've had some troubles where someone tries
to rename a page with a _very_ long edit history and the wiki gets a
little lost doing the updates. Changing a username and reassigning the
marked edits can be similarly problematic when a lot of edits have been
made. Ideally, such operations shouldn't be too 'big'... A rename
shouldn't have to touch potentially thousands of old_title fields, when
we can change just one and let the unchanging numeric page id link the
pages to it.

It might actually be a good idea to merge links and brokenlinks into a
single links table that looks like this:
l_from -> key to cur_id
l_to_ns, l_to_title -> key to cur_namespace, cur_title

This would avoid any need to alter the links table on page rename,
creation, or deletion: outgoing links are fixed to the page id, and
incoming links are fixed to the page name. It's late and I can't think
right now so I'm not sure if this would interfere terribly with
operations that need to treat live and broken links differently; it
would require a join to cur and a check for existence or null. For page
rendering duties we can cache that lookup data in linkscc as we do now,
of course.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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