subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia broken

body:
On 4/7/06, David Alexander Russell <webmaster at davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> But that's exactly my point. _What the policy says_ is (ie 'if this
> happens, in this way, then this is the consequence') _all_ that achieved
> consensus (and therefore all the is enforceable) - anything above and
> beyond that is not endorsed by the community (or, in the case of
> decrees, not endorsed by Jimbo unless he subsequently says so) and
> therefore is not policy. Taking your example, if there was community
> consensus to extending the 3RR to 25 hours then it would be amended as
> such.
>
> Cynical

I would like to think that we are moving towards improving our standards.
It wasn't so long ago that FAs could be unreferenced.  It wasn't that long
ago that no one was talking about WP:CITE.  I wouldn't say that Wikipedia is
broken, I'd say that it's becoming fixed.  That change isn't going to come
overnight, but the changes in that regard that have happened in the time
I've been here (~19.5 months) are substantial.  Some people have to be hit
with a cluestick a bit harder than others, some people won't be able to
adapt and will leave the project, but what's important is that we develop
our standards and determine what constitute reliable and verifiable
sources.  In some cases that's going to change over time - the standard on
blogs as sources, for example, is evolving as the nature of (some) blogs
change.  At the same time, it's unlikely for messageboards to be reliable
sources (except as a primary source for what was said on the board)

Ian


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Mathematical expressions and conditional
	constructs, now implemented

body:
On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 04:13:05PM +0200, Tels wrote:
> > > Moin,
> >
> > Huh?  Excuse me: "Moin is the name of another wiki software,
> > occasionally considered to be competitive with MediaWiki.  Are you
> > using it's name here repeatedly as a form of address to be
> > provocative?"
>
> No, I use it as a form of greeting since like, oh, a decade.

Does it mean something, in one of the 25000 or so languages I don't
speak?

> > > On Friday 07 April 2006 04:27, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > > > On Thu, Apr 06, 2006 at 06:42:51PM +0200, Tels wrote:
> > > > > Exactly, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a distributed
> > > > > programming contest, whose ouput accidentily looks like an
> > > > > encyclopedia :)
> > > >
> > > > But, as is frequently pointed out, Mediawiki is not *only*
> > > > wikipedia, even if you only take WMF projects into account.
> > >
> > > Yes, that was my point, too. How do you intent to distribute all the
> > > wonderfull little "code-snippets" written on wikipedia to other
> > > wikis?
> >
> > I'm becoming more and more certain that you're merely trolling;
>
> I hope not. :-( I am writing about these issues because I see problems
> arise and want them to be avoided before it's to late. Handwaving and "I
> dont see this as a problem" will not make problems go away, and I'd
> rather have a discussion about potential designs and solutions _before_
> they are implemented.

Ok, that's fine.  But the things you say you see as potential problems
just... well, I can't see how they *could* be problems -- to the people
potentiall implementing the extensions *or* the people running wikis --
and I say that with almost 25 years of systems analysis and design as a
background.

People will take advantage of any tool you provide them to accomplish
their own work -- but there is no *global* problem of managing *those
templates* (the ones which take advantage of the proposed new
extensions), because they are all effectively private.

Someone may choose to *start* a repository of such scripts/templates,
orthogonally to the people who create them, and subject to licensing,
and that would potentially be a neat idea (though it might merely be
another branch on meta), but it's not necessary to justify *adding* the
extensions in any fashion that I can perceive.

> > this
> > question is completely orthogonal to the issue at hand, and appears to
> > be merely intended to be provocative as well.
>
> No, it is an issue I consider very important. There is a difference
> between adding something like {{yesterday}} as a feature to the mediawiki
> software, or creating a template for it. In the later case you get all
> sorts of issues, like I described earlier.

And yet, AFAIK, {{yesterday}} *is* a template.  If it isn't now, it
certainly started as one, and that's the old cycle: you implement the
feature you need with what you have, and if it's useful and
inefficient, you then push it down into the core.

> As I said before, these requested features should be added to the software
> side, and not be created by creating a new template-language with all the
> problems that arise from that.
>
> I hope that clears it up.

It does, but I disagree with you.  Your suggested approach ("everything
people want should be implemented in the core, immediately") does not
scale well at all, and therefore will pinch off useful development by
people who *are* equipped to build complex templates, but are *not*
equipped to write PHP code.

That is obviously a Bad Thing to me.

Again: it's penalising the smart people.

You haven't, as far as I can see, provided a cogent argument as to why
it's good.  Hopefully, I have clarified both my point of view and my
perception of yours, and some other folks will also jump back on this
bandwagon, that we may hear theirs as well.

Cheers,
-- jra

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

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

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

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


body:
On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 02:17:01PM +0000, Reinhardt WIEWE @ torg.is wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 10:02:55 -0400
>  "Jay R. Ashworth" <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 10:43:33AM +0200, Tels wrote:
> > > Moin,
> >
> > Huh?  Excuse me: "Moin is the name of another wiki software,
> > occasionally considered to be competitive with MediaWiki.  Are you
> > using it's name here repeatedly as a form of address to be
> > provocative?"
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moin
> "Moin is a Frisian language greeting from East Frisia, the eastern Netherlands,
> North Frisia and Flensburg, meaning hello. ..."

Ah.

Thanks.

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

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

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


list: wikien-l

from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Illegal sources

body:
"any representation"

Fred

On Apr 7, 2006, at 6:52 AM, Daniel R. Tobias wrote:

> On 7 Apr 2006 at 11:45, Mikkerpikker <mikkerpikker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> Excellent idea! I have just looked at the protocol, and can see no
>> reason why Wikipedia can't adopt it for this specific (and very
>> serious and potentially damaging) issue of child porn.
>>
>
> But would the picture under recent debate count as "child porn" under
> that protocol?  The definition there is:
>
>   (c) Child pornography means any representation, by whatever means,
>   of a child engaged in real or simulated explicit sexual activities
>   or any representation of the sexual parts of a child for primarily
>   sexual purposes.
>
> The picture was a cartoon.  This was clearly not "real".  Maybe it
> can be argued to be "simulated", but only in a cartoony manner, not
> anything approximating a realistic simulation.  The girl in question
> was pulling down her pants, but no "explicit sexual activities" were
> actually shown.  Is her bare (cartoon) butt a "sexual part"?
>
> In the trailer for the SpongeBob SquarePants movie (approved for
> general audiences by the MPAA), SpongeBob drops his SquarePants, and
> you see a brief image of his cartoon butt.  Is that pornographic?
>
> If you start defining things based on what the viewers of the picture
> think about (are they sexually aroused, or do they just find it
> humorous?) then you get in the territory of "Thought Crime".  If
> enough people get aroused by the Sears lingerie catalog, should that
> be classified as pornographic too?
>
> --
> == Dan ==
> Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
> Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
> Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deleting the Lolicon picture

body:
On 4/7/06, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
> Would you please mind telling a curious reader how this image either
> is harmful to Wikipedia or has the potential to harm Wikipedia?

In that it provides an easy way for detractors to rubbish Wikipedia,
in that it has the potential to make Wikipedia harder to access for
some people (particularly children with parental control programs) and
in that including child pornography is not part of our goal to build a
free encyclopaedia.

> > The image deletion process has shown itself incapable of removing this
> > image.  The process is demonstrably broken when there is a hint of
> > controversy.  I don't take stepping outside accepted policy and
> > process lightly.  Here, however, it is absolutely right and absolutely
> > necessary.
>
> This seem to indicate that people disagree with you, why do they do that?

As far as I can tell, a good number (*not* all) of the people
discussing the matter on IfD were POV-pushing trolls.  IfD has long
shown itself incapable of deleting anything where there is a vague
controversy and where groups of POV-pushers are manifesting
themselves.

> > I apologise to any who see my actions as outrageously rogue-ish.  I
> > wish there were an alternative, less radical way.
>
> No. When you take the "my way or the highway" approach, people
> naturally tend to get irritated.

I don't quite understand your point.  I knew people would get
irritated.  What is your point?

--
Sam


from_name: Tels

body:
Moin,

On Friday 07 April 2006 04:27, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 06, 2006 at 06:42:51PM +0200, Tels wrote:
> > Exactly, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a distributed programming
> > contest, whose ouput accidentily looks like an encyclopedia :)
>
> But, as is frequently pointed out, Mediawiki is not *only* wikipedia,
> even if you only take WMF projects into account.

Yes, that was my point, too. How do you intent to distribute all the
wonderfull little "code-snippets" written on wikipedia to other wikis?

Best wishes,

Tels

--
 Signed on Fri Apr  7 10:42:52 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 Kernel Panik is here! - http://ubersoft.net/kpanic/

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from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] en: CD! Well, sort of

body:
On 4/7/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> A lot of the cleaning up involved, as I understand, removing links to
> articles not included in the project and abridging some of the
> entries.  Not really stuff we need.

Heh, ok. Yeah, that would be great, someone going around deleting all links...

Are there many of these projects, incidentally? I only just came
across the Wikiproject for WP 1.0, and a lot of the tasks seem to be
the same...could lead to a lot of duplicated work, no?

Steve


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Illegal sources

body:
On 4/7/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's a problem: what happens when the contents of an article can
> only be verified by relying on sources which are illegal to view?
>
Hi Stephen, the article should cite third-party sources about the
contents of the material. If Wikipedians have to look at the material
themselves, that constitutes original research, because it would
involve them relying on their own interpretations of it. If there are
no third-party descriptions, then the material shouldn't be described
in our article about it.

Sarah


subject: [WikiEN-l] Page hit counts

body:
On 4/7/06, Violet/Riga <violetriga at gmail.com> wrote:
> There should be more stats available to the people that helped write the
> thing - what better way of getting feedback that people are reading what
> you've worked hard to contribute?

I think it would be fair to say that everyone is in agreement, but for
technical reasons, this is not currently possible.

Steve


from_name: Mark Wagner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia broken

body:
On 4/7/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/7/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We require not only verifiability, but notability. I can create
> > something today and document it today, but - save in rare
> > circumstances - I cannot prove its importance today.
>
> If something is referenced by a third-party reliable source today,
> chances are it's important.

I'd strongly dispute that.  Because of the ease and speed of
record-keeping and publishing, it's very easy to get third-party
information on something.

For example, I could create thousands of stub articles on small
private schools in Michigan.  But I'd describe them as extremely
non-notable: every last one of them has students from only a single
family, often only a single student, and exists as a "private school"
with significant government records only because of a quirk in the
Michigan homeschooling law.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


subject: [Wikitech-l] new features for exention developers

body:
Moin,

as an extension developer I'd like to have two new features. I looked at
the doc, the code the FAQ etc but I couldn't find out if it is not
already possible to achive that:

* addCSS();

You can call from your extension things like addMeta(), addHeader() etc,
including addStyleSheet(), which adds a link to a stylesheet to the page.
However, forvarious reaons and extensions adding CSS code into the head
ala:

	addCSS('YourCodeHere') would result in:

	<style type="text/css">
	<!--
	YourCdeHere
	--></style>

Is this already possible and did I just overlook it? If not, could it be
implemented? (Adding a link to a stylesheet requires external files,
which is messy and leaks files,see my other post "File leakage in
extensions")

Likewise, I would like something along the lines of:

	__NOCATEGORIES__	(or __NOCAT__
	__NOMENU__
	__NOTOOLBOX__
	__NOSEARCH__
	__NOFOOTER__

that supress the various elements of the interface. (This is for a slide
extension, that allows one to give presentations from a wiki diectly).
Now, with the addCSS() from above that could be hacked (if you know which
skin to use, and add an extenion to each slide article, but the special
variables would be much cleaner and they would also allow these things to
be used on other pages w/o an extension.

For wikipedia, they should be probably disabled, but this can be achieved
via a technical solution (config var, or spamblicking etc).

What do I need to get these things into the current code?

Best wishes,

Tels

--
 Signed on Fri Apr  7 10:47:09 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "...pornographic images stay in the brain forever." -- Mary Anne Layden;
 "That's a feature, not a bug." -- God

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subject:
[Wikitech-l] Texvc (was Re: Mathematical expressions and
	conditional constructs, now implemented)

body:
On 4/7/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Texvc works by giving a very short return code on stdout to indicate success or failure. It throws
> away the output from latex itself, there's no way to return it to MediaWiki. Rethinking that
> interface is probably the way to go.

Yeah, figured.

> As for double quotes, I'm not sure there's a way to do it. In TeX outside math mode it's just `` and
> ", but I don't think there's a way to get outside of math mode, or a way to generate those
> characters inside math mode using the whitelisted control codes.

Huh. For some reason, I didn't expect to ever hear "can't do that" from TeX.

Weird. But thanks.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deleting the Lolicon picture

body:
On 4/7/06, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
> Something I feel have been missed is Sam Korn's original assertion
> that "[The image deletion] process is demonstrably broken" because
> this image was not deleted by it. I believe the process is not broken
> at all, but that Sam's approach to it was wrong. If he had stuck with
> the 100% demonstrably true facts; 1. the image is not free, 2. there
> is a free replacement, then I believe the image could have been
> deleted without much fuss. But when you use emotional arguments ("This
> image is extremely harmful to Wikipedia..."), expect a filibuster.

Some of us feel that even if the image had been free, it still should
never have been included in Wikipedia. Concentrating on its copyright
status is ignoring the real debate, rather than deciding once and for
all how to deal with images that would be perceived by the public to
be child porn.

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] File leakage in extensions

body:
Moin,

it occured to me recently that there is a file leak in any extension that
creates external files, like graphviz, graph, or possible even math
(creating PNGs).

It works like that:

	Article A contains one <graph> object, called AA
	Article B contains two <graph> objects, called BA and BA

When you edit article A, the following happens:

	* the new graph code is sent to the extension
	* it is hashed
	* the hash is the filename that will be used to generate the file,
	  lets call it "ABCD" for now
	* file AB/CD/ABCD is generated, and included in the output

(The hashes are done for two reasons: to save a file if two articles
contain the same text, and to convienently generate short, unique file
names)

Likewise for article B, except that BCDE and BCDF are the hashes, so we
get BC/DE/BCDE and BC/DE/BCDEF as files.

No problem so far, but now what happens if you edit file A again and
change something: A new hash results, like ABXY. This results in the file
AB/XY/ABXY generated.

Note that the file ABCD was never cleaned off. In fact, it is impossible
for the current scheme to clean it up for the following reasons:

* ABCDE could be as well used by page B, since only the content go into
the hash, not the article name. Deleting the file should only be done if
it is not used from any other article. (if the file ever vanishes, a
null-edit is nec. to re-generate it!)
* the extension doesn't even get to know the old text, or the filenames
used on the page, so it can't simple know which file to potentional to
delete

The end effect is that the file cache gets bigger and bigger, and there is
no easy way to clean ununsed files out of it.

Here are a few ideas how to deal with that:

* peridically clean off al files until you are left with X files. (there
  is at least on extension already doing this). This does not work, since
  the deletion cannot guarantue that the files left over are really used,
  and the files delete are no longer used. It's an ugly hack and creates
  more problems than it solves.
* Somehow we could track of all filenames used on all articles. Just
  think of article B;

	first edit creates two entries in the table under "B"
	second edit:
		* first time extensio runs, it cleans table "B", and adds
		  new hash
		* second run cleans table again, and adds a new HASH

  The problem here is that the exention cannot decide which text to
  convert is the first on the page (and thus when to clean the table)
* Various other schemes that gen. the hash based on the article name plus
  per-article unique ID (potentially given by the user creating the text
  ala <graph id="1">). These also require somehow a real big table listing
  which files are all used.

The last idea I had are data-urls. These allow emebedding the content
inline, instead linked via a file: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data:_URL

This would work beautyfull, except for a few bits:

* we would lose the savings that if article A and B contain the same text,
it would no embedded twice.
* the data is in mysql, not on the file system
* it is not supported by IE at all (bummer :-(
* Opera apparently only supports these up to 4K,which is way to little for
being practically usefull :-(

Anyway, the problem needs to be solved, even my testwikie which contains
only 3 SVG graphs already accumulated thousand little files in
images/graph due to the many edits done on these three articles.

Best wishes,

Tels

--
 Signed on Fri Apr  7 10:53:56 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Call me Justin, Justin Case."

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body:
Moin,

On Friday 07 April 2006 10:59, Locke Cole wrote:
> On 4/7/06, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> > Yes, that was my point, too. How do you intent to distribute all the
> > wonderfull little "code-snippets" written on wikipedia to other
> > wikis?
>
> If they're working from a database dump, they'll be in the dump.

That would be only usefull for people who want to replicate the entire
wikipedia, e.g. almost none. I was speaking about the thousand other
wikis that run mediawiki.

> If you meant more generally, I suppose they could be copied to meta and
> categorized if really useful.

So you need to re-invent software distribution for them (which was my
point).

And you also need:

* testing framework
* versioning
* debugging
* profiling
* security reports, updates and packaging

If the feature is really so usefull as claimed, than we will see thousand
little usefull computing templates littered all over the place. That will
be messy and I don't want neither to maintain it, nor take blame when it
blows up (e.g. becomes unmanageble).

I place dibs on the first Template:Virus in late 2007 :-D

Best wishes,

Tels

--
 Signed on Fri Apr  7 11:09:28 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 This email violates U.S. patent #6,775,781 <http://tinyurl.com/3khqm>:

   sudo rm -fR *

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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Funny joke...

body:
geni wrote:

>On 10/18/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>I fail to see the connection between the principle of keeping
>>discussions open forever, and your anti-obscenity project.  Your
>>response is a total non-sequitur.
>>
>>
>If you look at that case it caused a lot of problems. Fortunety there
>was a built in time limit on the process which ment that ultimetly it
>was self limiting. You wish to take that away. You are failing to
>think through the consiquences of your proposals.
>
The problem is in letting a particular issue guide the more general
policy.  That is bound to create injustices in places where they are
unforseen.  I did personally delete the now famous lolicon image from
Wiktionary, and I'm in constant debate with people who want to generate
lists of unverified "naughty words".  But I would not be so na?ve as to
blindly resist any community consensus to keep these.

At the same time I believe in perpetually open process that can change
results with the times without the need for newcomers to feel left out
of the decisons.  If there is a general consensus that pedophilic images
should be banned from the project I don't think that leaving that debate
open is going to change anything; it is reasonable to expect that
newbies will divide in the same ratio as established editors.

There is an unfortunate tendency in established communities to believe
that what has happened in a community up to a given point in time is the
best that could be.  A really open Wiki community needs to leave room
for new ideas, and needs to be open to changing virtually all policies.
This is especially important for policies where the support for either
side is marginal

Now that Wikipedia has become such a huge Wiki it is important to have
decision-making become scalable.

Ec


from_name: Mikkerpikker

subject: [WikiEN-l] Illegal sources

body:
On 4/7/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's a problem: what happens when the contents of an article can
> only be verified by relying on sources which are illegal to view?
>
> The issue has arisen in the context of the article currently known as
> [[2004 Ukranian child pornography raids]]
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Ukranian_child_pornography_raids>.
>
> The article has changed now, but much of the content (describing the
> pornography-producing organisation, aswell as describing the actual
> material produced) was based on the assertions of those who had viewed
> the content. On a couple of occasions, when sources were asked for in
> relation to particular claims in the article, users provided links to
> the Internet Archive's stored copy of the pornographic website.
>
> Based on the descriptions given in the news sources, it would be
> illegal for me (and for most others) to view this content, and thus it
> would be illegal for me to verify the article. Thus, from my
> perspective, the article is unverifiable.
>
> I think it would be very much a matter of common sense to alter
> [[WP:V]] and [[WP:RS]] to prohibit the use of illegal sources to
> verify articles. But the question is where should the line of
> definition be drawn? Laws vary substantially across jurisdictions.
> Should we prohibit reliance on sources which are illegal to view in
> Florida? Laws are much stricter in other countries: New Zealand
> springs to mind as an example, but there are other countries where I
> am sure the laws are even stricter.

Mmmmm... interesting case. In my view, sources have to be verifiable
for someone, i.e. at least some wikipedians need to be able to check
verifiability. So perhaps sources that are illegal everywhere should
not be allowed? (This, of course, causes severe practical problems. If
it is illegal for, say, most citizens of English speaking countries to
check something, it is difficult to argue there *is* verifiability.
Moreover, how would we know something is illegal everywhere?).
Nonetheless, I don't think the laws of Florida should apply, if users
in, say, Australia can check a source legally, I see now verifiability
problem even if US users cannot.


from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Illegal sources

body:
On 4/7/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) stated for the record:
>
> > Wouldn't it also count as Original Research?
>
> There is (or at least should be) a difference between Original Research
> and extensive, in-depth research.

True, but when one relies heavily on *primary* sources it's almost
impossible to avoid doing Original Research.

Jay.


from_name: Steve Block

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia broken

body:
David Alexander Russell wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> So you basically want a group of admins with no experience in editing
> the article concerned to vote-stack any content disputes?
>
> RFC generates plenty of interest, the problem is that it has no 'teeth'
> - - there is nothing to stop the party who 'loses' an RFC from ignoring
> its conclusions.

No, I think what's being asked for is a group of people who will apply
policy in a neutral way.  The votes are already stacked, that's the
purpose of having policy; policy is the vote stacking tool, not the
group of editors. RFC provides no comment, at least not at articles I've
listed on it.  Actually, if I'm honest, I'm finding more and more that
Wikipedia is imply broken.  We've got clear guidance at [[WP:RS]] that
message boards aren't acceptable sources, and yet we've got thousands of
articles that are relying on just that.  Either we need to rewrite our
policies and have an anything goes policy, or we need to get a lot
tougher in enforcing the key policies.

Steve block

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.3.5/303 - Release Date: 06/04/06


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia broken

body:
On 4/7/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> No, I think what's being asked for is a group of people who will apply
> policy in a neutral way.  The votes are already stacked, that's the
> purpose of having policy; policy is the vote stacking tool, not the
> group of editors. RFC provides no comment, at least not at articles I've
> listed on it.  Actually, if I'm honest, I'm finding more and more that
> Wikipedia is imply broken.  We've got clear guidance at [[WP:RS]] that
> message boards aren't acceptable sources, and yet we've got thousands of
> articles that are relying on just that.  Either we need to rewrite our
> policies and have an anything goes policy, or we need to get a lot
> tougher in enforcing the key policies.

And if we want to be a serious encyclopaedia, it must be the latter.

--
Sam


from_name: Sydney Poore

subject: [WikiEN-l] Illegal sources

body:
Based on my experience in WebEx arb comm case, I think government
records can be cited but must be used with great caution. Often they
contain information that mainstream media outlets do not publish. Names
of minors, rape victims, personal information. The typed of stuff that
Smoking Gun redacts.

Must have editors willing to put in a whole lot of time. Court records,
FBI files, SEC ruling and such are long and boring.  Filled with
technical jargon that is above the reading level of the average
newspaper. They can be misunderstood or misrepresented.

If those issues are recognized, I think a group of editors with a good
understanding of Wikipedia policy can use them in limited ways.

Sydney

Sam Korn wrote:
> On 4/7/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The FBI puts most of its released FOIA material online; much more is
>> held by places like the National Security Archive and, again,
>> accessible to the public. Wouldn't this class as publication by a
>> reputable source?
>>
>
> Oh, I didn't know that.  Yes, then, it would.
>
> --
> Sam


subject: [WikiEN-l] Illegal sources

body:
> I think that content that cannot be verified other than by accessing illegal
> materials is unverifiable. As well, our policy on sourcing requires reliable
> third-party sources. Thus a Reuters report for example on the raids would be
> deemed to be a reliable source. A cached copy of the material is not a
> reliable third party source quite apart from its illegality.
>
> Of course, there are materials that are illegal to view in one country that
> are perfectly legal in another. It is probably illegal to view neutral
> accounts of the Tianenmen Square protests in 1989. It is not in most other
> countries and would obviously considered as verifiable material.
>
> However, I understand that there is an Optional Protocol to the
> International Convention on the Rights of the Child see (
> http://www.law-ref.org/CHILDPROTOCOL2/index.html ).
>
> Perhaps it should be considered a banning offence to provide links to
> materials that contravene this protocol or to upload images that contravene
> it. As it is an international agreement, it might be considered as more of
> an international standard. Such materials should certainly not be considered
> to be verifiable and editors should be encouraged to remove it on sight.
>
> Regards
>
>
> Keith Old
>

Excellent idea! I have just looked at the protocol, and can see no
reason why Wikipedia can't adopt it for this specific (and very
serious and potentially damaging) issue of child porn.


from_name: Petr Kadlec

body:
> In which case they ALSO wouldn't have been able to figure out the markup
> which the template has replaced/simplified.

I don't think so.

A user sees an article that contains a nice little infobox, edits the
article and sees
{{Infobox Foobar|maintitle=Foo|subtitle=Bar}}
The user wants to have a similar infobox in another article, only with
an added subsubtitle.

Remark: If the user knows nothing about templates, he has a problem
already. This was one of the reasons why the "templates used on this
page" list was added.

So, the user goes to Template:Infobox Foobar.

Option A: The template is a plain-old simple template containing something like
{| align=right
! {{maintitle}}
|-
| {{subtitle}}
|}
The user just copies the template into [[Template:Infobox Foobar
extended]] and copy&pastes a single line in the table. Only the
knowledge of table syntax is required.

Option B: The template is extremely powerful, general, using complex
logic with many qifs, switches, etc. and comes with a two-page usage
guide.
In this case, the user is lost. He might once or twice try to copy a
line containing subtitle, only to find out it does not work (maybe
because it was in an if branch that is used only on even Tuesdays, or
he forgot to wrap that line to another template so it ended in an
invisible div, or whatever).

Note that I admit there are uses to complex templates, but they _do_
add complexity and raise the bar for (novice?) users.

-- [[cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]]


list: foundation-l

from_name: Gavin Chait

subject: [Foundation-l] Adult and Illegal content on Wikimedia

body:
> opinions like this that seem to encourage this type of content to remain
from Robert Horning
> The problems with such an article is more likely to be in its effect on
> the copycats and other unprofessional idiots.
> Calling on Jimbo to decide on something is a cop-out.  It's a sad
> admission that the community isn't strong enough to settle its own
> problems.
from Ray Saintonge

Which is precisely why I suggested having a constitution of some
description.

If you don't want this type of content on wikibooks then you have to give up
neutrality.  And you're going to have to be very specific.  I am working on
a wiki project that educates how to start businesses.

I would hate for someone later on to declare that "capitalism is theft" and
then go on to use that as a reason to remove my project.

NPOV may be adequately defined.  A textbook on how alarm systems work, how
they're installed and how they may be disabled is not advocacy to break into
homes, but it can be used that way.

There are two ways of defining rules:  everything is allowed unless
specifically forbidden; everything is forbidden unless specifically allowed.
You may wish to adopt the former.

How about a growing list that starts with the following:
- No book may describe how to perform any of the following actions:
        i)     torture
        ii)    murder
        iii)   all forms of violence from either public or private sources
        iv)   cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
        v)    xenophobia or discrimination based on gender, age, sex,
pregnancy, race, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual
orientation, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language or
birth

You can discuss torture in an entirely neutral way (how to use a battery,
water and jumper leads to cause pain, for instance), but the discussion of
torture (as above) can be banned outright.  I would suggest that the list
itself needs to be maintained by someone with an international legal
background (no good having laws specific to any country) to offer guidance
and a small team to act as "constitutional court" to decide on changes to
these rules.  And don't defer to the Human Rights Commission, you may find
that Libya is in charge of it again.

The above - by the by - is paraphrased from the South African constitution.

---
Gavin


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Tels wrote:
> Here is a snippet from DynamicPageList2:
>
> // The callback function for converting the input text to HTML output
> function DynamicPageList2( $input ) {
> 	...
[snip]
> 	$wgOut->addMeta("http:Pragma", "no-cache");
> 	...
>
> When I add $wgOut->addScript( "<style>....</style>" ); here, would that
> add the style to every page in the wiki, or only pages that have a <DPL>
> tag on it (which triggers that extension).

That would only add the style when the <dpl> tag gets parsed and rendered; it
looks like a bug in the extension code.

It would, for instance, *not* add the style when the page containing the tag is
shown if the HTML is pulled from the parser cache (as it would be, most of the
time.)

> As for the cache, I don't intent to do the "no-cache" etc, so, if I added
> AddScript(), would the added style get cached or would it disappear when
> someone views a cached copy?

It would disappear.

>> (You could make a custom skin which works this way.)
>
> But that would change all pages. What I want to achive is that everypage
> is normal, even the first page of a presentation (the table of contents),
> and when you switch to the second one, only the navigation box remains
> and the menu etc disappears, making more space available for the actula
> slide.

Let me be more specific. :) You could make a custom skin which responds to the
custom signals you add in your extension.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] request to Jimbo for out-of-process deletion of image

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Thanks Steve, and I want to make super clear that I think people can in
>good faith have quite varied opinions on different matters.
>
>What I wanted to point out is that we need to be especially vigilent
>when we have an area where we know there are POV pushers and trolls who
>are active.  As Erik pointed out, in a lot of cases like this, a tiny
>turnout at IfD will mean that community consensus is not well reflected,
>because the POV pushers will show up in force to override the small
>number of good editors who come by.
>
>Imagine this case:
>100 good editors, 80 voting delete, 20 voting in good faith to keep
>4 pov pushers
>4 trolls
>
>End result: 80 - 28, consensus to delete
>
>versus
>
>10 good editors, 8 voting delete, 2 voting in good faith to keep
>4 pov pushers
>4 trolls
>
>End result: 8 - 10, no conclusion, image kept
>
Such results are plausible, but establishing a series of rules just to
deal with trolls and POV pushers is not likely to be productive.  It
would be far better to allow them their votes, but to marginalize the
effects of their votes.  This constant group of 8 miscreants seems to be
winning in the second example because they were quick off the mark with
putting in their votes.  Keeping votes open indefinitely will mean that
they can't use their quickness to their advantage.  If the image is
meant to be deleted the Wisdom of Crowds will prevail over an extended
period of time.

Ec


from_name: Gordon Joly

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia broken

body:
At 07:17 -0400 7/4/06, Sydney Poore wrote:
>Serious encyclopedia means leaving out material that is not
>encyclopedic.  Too many editors are stretching the meaning of
>encyclopedic to include anything that can be sourced. During Afd, it
>is very common for editors to cite tabloids, forums or publicly
>written dictionaries such as Urban Dictionary.
>http://www.urbandictionary.com/. Since it takes a super majority to
>delete, often the outcome is no consensus and the material stays.
>
>Sydney
>

But surely a word, a work or art, a meme, or artifact, can be created
today and archived contemporaneously?

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


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] en: CD! Well, sort of

body:
Oh !

Talking about places...

If you go to "places" on the list of pages... you'll find the article on
[[Brazaville]] and the one below is [[Brussell sprouts]] :-)

ant

Steve Bennett wrote:
> So, [[Paramaribo]] made their "Places" list, but [[Paris]] didn't.
> Hmm, [[Oakland Cemetery]] did too. All in all, a rather strange
> collection of information. Seems also that many places are actually in
> the "general knowledge" section, including, god bless it, [[Mount
> Osmond, South Australia]].
>
> I don't immediately see the list of authors for each article?
>
> But goodness I'm in a negative mood aren't I...
>
> Steve
>
> On 4/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>http://fixedreference.org/2006-Wikipedia-CD-Selection/
>>
>>2011 articles, hand-picked and cleaned up. Only 1,000,000 to go ;-)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Illegal sources

body:
I argued on the talk page that it was "explicit sexual activities". Others disagreed. Said that it was implied. Fantasy. Abstract thinking that could be interpreted in different ways. If I recall correctly, I was in the minority on this point.
Sydney

Fred Bauder wrote:
> "any representation"
>
> Fred
>
> On Apr 7, 2006, at 6:52 AM, Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
>
>
>> On 7 Apr 2006 at 11:45, Mikkerpikker <mikkerpikker at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> Excellent idea! I have just looked at the protocol, and can see no
>>> reason why Wikipedia can't adopt it for this specific (and very
>>> serious and potentially damaging) issue of child porn.
>>>
>>>
>> But would the picture under recent debate count as "child porn" under
>> that protocol?  The definition there is:
>>
>>   (c) Child pornography means any representation, by whatever means,
>>   of a child engaged in real or simulated explicit sexual activities
>>   or any representation of the sexual parts of a child for primarily
>>   sexual purposes.
>>
>> The picture was a cartoon.  This was clearly not "real".  Maybe it
>> can be argued to be "simulated", but only in a cartoony manner, not
>> anything approximating a realistic simulation.  The girl in question
>> was pulling down her pants, but no "explicit sexual activities" were
>> actually shown.  Is her bare (cartoon) butt a "sexual part"?
>>
>> In the trailer for the SpongeBob SquarePants movie (approved for
>> general audiences by the MPAA), SpongeBob drops his SquarePants, and
>> you see a brief image of his cartoon butt.  Is that pornographic?
>>
>> If you start defining things based on what the viewers of the picture
>> think about (are they sexually aroused, or do they just find it
>> humorous?) then you get in the territory of "Thought Crime".  If
>> enough people get aroused by the Sears lingerie catalog, should that
>> be classified as pornographic too?
>>
>> --
>> == Dan ==
>> Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
>> Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
>> Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>

--
Sydney Poore

Go Bengals!


from_name: Conrad Dunkerson

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Mathematical expressions and
 conditional	constructs, now implemented

body:
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:

> And yet, AFAIK, {{yesterday}} *is* a template.  If it isn't now, it
> certainly started as one, and that's the old cycle: you implement the
> feature you need with what you have, and if it's useful and
> inefficient, you then push it down into the core.

> You haven't, as far as I can see, provided a cogent argument as to why
> it's good.  Hopefully, I have clarified both my point of view and my
> perception of yours, and some other folks will also jump back on this
> bandwagon, that we may hear theirs as well.

As the person who wrote that {{yesterday}} template allow me just to say a
big "ditto".

I agree that alot of this 'stuff' would be better handled in the MediaWiki
software... but I'm not going to hassle the developers to implement this
feature and that feature and the other feature. I take whatever they give
me and use it to the limits of it's applicability. At some point, if they
are useful, those implementations become widespread enough that their
inefficiency is a notable issue and they are replaced with a new
capability in the base system. That is happening right now for 'qif',
'calcadd', and various unit conversion templates.

Yes, we could put {{yesterday}} and {{tomorrow}} and {{leapday}} and
{{NextMonth}} and {{switch}} and {{if defined call}} and all the rest of
them directly into MediaWiki, but we aren't there yet... adding just Tim's
proposed 'if:' and 'expr:' will vastly simplify and improve the efficiency
of all these existing applications. It isn't neccessary to replace each of
them with a MediaWiki equivalent right now. Maybe somewhere down the line
on or more of those will become as widespread as 'qif' and warrant direct
implementation, but they are fine the way they work currently and would be
improved by Tim's changes.


from_name: Matt R

subject: [WikiEN-l] Page hit counts

body:
Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com>  wrote:
> On 4/7/06, Violet/Riga <violetriga at gmail.com> wrote:
> > There should be more stats available to the people that helped write the
> > thing - what better way of getting feedback that people are reading what
> > you've worked hard to contribute?

> I think it would be fair to say that everyone is in agreement, but for
> technical reasons, this is not currently possible.

>From what I read, it would seem to be possible, but that it's not a priority:

   http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-March/044102.html
   http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-March/044125.html
   http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-March/034620.html

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia broken

body:
On 4/7/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> I totally support that. I would also like the basic reasons for
> notability guidelines to be stated more explicitly. We don't, from
> memory, have any rationale stronger than "Wikipedia is not paper, but
> still!"

Good luck on getting consensus on that.  Attempts to define notability
have been rather unsuccessful.  Projects to define notability in
particular subject areas, rather than globally, have had more success,
but are still controversial and are explicitly guidelines rather than
policy - because of the simple fact that any mechanical process like
that will have false positives / negatives.

> So we first need to explain why we don't want infinite numbers of articles:
> - We can't maintain them all to an acceptable standard

This one is a valid point.  If the interest level in a particular
topic is just not there, no encyclopedia-worthy article can be created
or maintained.

Thus an informal rule of notability: if not enough people are
interested in writing about it, it's probably not notable enough, at
least yet.  Of course, certain groups of 'interested' are not well
represented yet online in general or on wikipedia in specific.

> - We do have physical standards

Clarify?

> - Articles on trivial topics damage the credibility of the
> encyclopaedia as a whole

Controversial - and attempts to codify that have been roundly rejected.

I believe one of Wikipedia's /strengths/ is its breadth of topics;
people come to us partly because we have obscure articles.

> Then we need to explain how we determine notability, and how we decide
> what's in and what's out:
> - For recent creations of mankind, newspaper articles are virtually a
> requirement

Strongly disagreed.  Many topics are outside the scope of newspapers.

If you extend that to the technical and specialist press, you have a
stronger case, but still, I am very uneasy about that as an absolute
requirement.

> - For societies, clubs etc, longevity and true notability compared to
> peers are required

Agreed here - and some might be worthy of mention as a list item only.

> - Our natural bias against popular culture

Please say 'my' rather than 'our' here.  A casual study of Wikipedia
would probably show a bias /towards/ popular culture.

SOME Wikipedia editors have a bias against popular culture.  These
people may even be quite influential.  However saying that there is a
CONSENSUS bias against popular culture is incorrect.

> It seems like it might not be a bad idea to establish some precedents
> or borderline cases. "If your website is not at least as notable as
> foofoo.com, which has been repeatedly rejected, don't even bother".

Useful, but I feel it just moves the goalposts; there's no way to
objectively reduce notability to a number for numeric comparisons
against other subjects.

-Matt


body:
Steve Block wrote:

>Katefan0 wrote:
>
>
>>I think this is similar to what happens sometimes at pedophilia-related
>>articles.  For the most part, we as Wikipedians are drawn to edit articles
>>in which we have a personal interest or stake.  Naturally, then, those who
>>disagree with age of consent laws will be drawn to articles such as
>>[[NAMBLA]].  Not only do most other Wikipedians not feel drawn there, they
>>in fact would rather purposefully avoid them because they make them feel
>>icky.  (I can certainly attest to that personally.)  But in that manner, I
>>have found that sometimes the "consensus" on these types of articles gets
>>skewed.  And this makes issues raised on the talk page very difficult to
>>resolve.
>>
>>
>I noted a while back at the pump that the article branch of requests for
>comment wasn't serving it's purpose anymore, and that it should get
>moved to the pump as [[Village pump (article)]].  Sadly, and a little
>ironically, I got no discussion at the pump, and I'm starting to wonder
>if the community is so big it is beginning to fracture.  There needs to
>be a high profile way of grabbing editor attention and getting a
>reflective consensus on issues.  I'm starting to agree with the idea of
>a parliament or maybe an article arbitration commitee.  Any thoughts?
>
If I keep away from articles like [[NAMBLA]], being "icky" won't be my
primary reason for doing so.  Most of us have our own interests to use
up our time, without putting on hip-waders to grovel through a shit pile
of time wasters.

I don't think that parliaments or new committees will do anything to
accomplish what you want.  People who associate with such institutions
tend to be POV pushers themselves;  these may be more socially
acceptable POVs, but POVs nevertheless.

My own experience is that at different times I have made both quick
one-liners, and detailed reflective comments.  The latter seldom
receives replies at all.  You don't get reflective comments by
"grabbing" editor attention.  Reflection is the antithesis of grabbed
circumstances.

There are indeed problems associated with being so big.  For most of us
this is an unaccustomed problem.  Is it too much of a clich? to say that
we need to start thinking outside the box?

Ec


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] LS Studio and pro-pedophilia pov

body:
On 4/7/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> I believe that the only verifiability problem here is the name of the
> organisation, which is not mentioned in any of the sources that I
> checked.  That there was a major child pornography ring using child
> modeling as a front in Kharkov and Kiev and other Ukrainian cities is
> well sourced by references to, inter alia, Pravda and Reuters.

That's precisely the point, and precisely the reason why I rewrote the
article and moved it to [[2004 Ukranian child pornography raids]]. The
article is now a discussion of the police raids, the only verifiable
component of the original article.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Markus Krötzsch

body:
On Friday 07 April 2006 10:53, Tels wrote:
> Moin,
>
> as an extension developer I'd like to have two new features. I looked at
> the doc, the code the FAQ etc but I couldn't find out if it is not
> already possible to achive that:
>
> * addCSS();
>
> You can call from your extension things like addMeta(), addHeader() etc,
> including addStyleSheet(), which adds a link to a stylesheet to the page.
> However, forvarious reaons and extensions adding CSS code into the head
> ala:
>
> 	addCSS('YourCodeHere') would result in:
>
> 	<style type="text/css">
> 	<!--
> 	YourCdeHere
> 	--></style>
>
> Is this already possible and did I just overlook it? If not, could it be
> implemented? (Adding a link to a stylesheet requires external files,
> which is messy and leaks files,see my other post "File leakage in
> extensions")

I don't know about this, since I am fine with addStyleSheet. Another problem,
however, is *where* to call this method in an extension. If, e.g., you have a
tiny parser extension that adds some new elements to each article-output
during parsing, then you want all articles to have your new CSS. However,
articles are often produced from the parser cache, which does not include the
headers. Thus your code for adding CSS is typically not exectued on each
view, but the CSS is not recovered from the cache either.

I don't know whether 1.6 provides new hooks for adding CSS and similar header
stuff in extensions. AFAIK, the only way to get CSS into every page in 1.5
was to patch Ouptupage.php or something similar ...

See http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5077

Best regards,

Markus

--
Markus Kr?tzsch
Institute AIFB, University of Karlsruhe, D-76128 Karlsruhe
mak at aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de        phone +49 (0)721 608 7362
www.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/WBS/     fax +49 (0)721 693  717
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from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia broken

body:
On 07/04/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly at pobox.com> wrote:
> At 07:17 -0400 7/4/06, Sydney Poore wrote:
> >Serious encyclopedia means leaving out material that is not
> >encyclopedic.  Too many editors are stretching the meaning of
> >encyclopedic to include anything that can be sourced. During Afd, it
> >is very common for editors to cite tabloids, forums or publicly
> >written dictionaries such as Urban Dictionary.
> >http://www.urbandictionary.com/. Since it takes a super majority to
> >delete, often the outcome is no consensus and the material stays.
>
> But surely a word, a work or art, a meme, or artifact, can be created
> today and archived contemporaneously?

We require not only verifiability, but notability. I can create
something today and document it today, but - save in rare
circumstances - I cannot prove its importance today.

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


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deleting the Lolicon picture

body:
> Some of us feel that even if the image had been free, it still should
> never have been included in Wikipedia. Concentrating on its copyright
> status is ignoring the real debate, rather than deciding once and for
> all how to deal with images that would be perceived by the public to
> be child porn.

Are you debating for the debates sake or are you contributing to an
encyclopedia?

--
mvh Bj?rn


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deleting the Lolicon picture

body:
> > Would you please mind telling a curious reader how this image either
> > is harmful to Wikipedia or has the potential to harm Wikipedia?
>
> In that it provides an easy way for detractors to rubbish Wikipedia,
> in that it has the potential to make Wikipedia harder to access for
> some people (particularly children with parental control programs) and

Why is it a bad thing that detractors have an easy way to rubbish
Wikipedia? Doesn't detractors already have about one million other
things about Wikipedai that they can complain about? Quality not
popularity.

> > This seem to indicate that people disagree with you, why do they do that?
>
> As far as I can tell, a good number (*not* all) of the people
> discussing the matter on IfD were POV-pushing trolls.  IfD has long
> shown itself incapable of deleting anything where there is a vague
> controversy and where groups of POV-pushers are manifesting
> themselves.

You lost when you started to apply denigrating labels on people. I
don't think it is strange that you thougth that "the process was
demonstrably broken" when you belittled those you were supposed to
work with.

--
mvh Bj?rn


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia broken

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 4/7/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>We require not only verifiability, but notability. I can create
>>something today and document it today, but - save in rare
>>circumstances - I cannot prove its importance today.
>>
>>
>If something is referenced by a third-party reliable source today,
>chances are it's important.
>
Whenever I use a quotation in Wiktionary I create a link to the author
on Wikipedia.  This doesn't mean that I know there is an article there
about him, but at least having a published book is evidence of notability.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia broken

body:
Sydney Poore wrote:
> Serious encyclopedia means leaving out material that is not encyclopedic.  Too many editors are stretching the meaning of encyclopedic to include anything that can be sourced. During Afd, it is very common for editors to cite tabloids, forums or publicly written dictionaries such as Urban Dictionary. http://www.urbandictionary.com/. Since it takes a super majority to delete, often the outcome is no consensus and the material stays.

True.  I'm currently bogged down in [[LUEshi]], [[UGOPlayer]]
[[GameFAQS]] and [[GameFAQs message boards]].  That's before I start on
[[Internet Phenomenon]]. There's no chance of getting them deleted,
simply because of pile on voting, but trying to keep them even
pragmatically close to [[WP:V]], [[WP:NOR]] and [[WP:NPOV]] is a
nightmare.  Wikipedia seems far too easy to game; simply create an
article on your message board, every time it's listed for deletion
mention it on your message board, and just keep re-adding material
that's removed.  There really needs to be a high profile place for
getting the attention of editors.  Maybe we need a WikiProject for
encyclopaedic standards. Or do we have that already?

Steve block

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from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Illegal sources

body:
On 4/7/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> If you start defining things based on what the viewers of the picture
> think about (are they sexually aroused, or do they just find it
> humorous?) then you get in the territory of "Thought Crime".  If
> enough people get aroused by the Sears lingerie catalog, should that
> be classified as pornographic too?

No, things should be defined based on what the creators intended the
viewers of the picture to think about.  Otherwise you delete pictures
of sheep on account of the Welsh.

--
Sam


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia broken

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 4/7/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>> We require not only verifiability, but notability. I can create
>> something today and document it today, but - save in rare
>> circumstances - I cannot prove its importance today.
>
> If something is referenced by a third-party reliable source today,
> chances are it's important.

That's a point I'm trying to address in
[[Wikipedia:Notability/Proposal]].  My definition is that:

"Notability as a concept on Wikipedia is conferred through mentions in
verifiable sources. These sources should be independent of both the
topic and of wikipedia, and should be of the standard described in
Wikipedia:Reliable sources. Articles should not be built using only the
subject itself as sole source. This requirement for independent sources
is so as to determine that the topic can be written without bias, and
also that any claim to notability is likewise independent; otherwise the
article is likely to fall foul of our vanity guidelines."

Now to some people this probably doesn't go far enough, but to me I
think this is the base level that's been indicated time and time again
and is established implicitly in our verification policy.  I really want
to get it defined explicitly.  If we can get a consensus on this base
definition/level of notability, that's going to impact heavily on
debates across wikipedia.  Having to explain the linking and intricacies
of five policy pages over and over again is wearing me out and it's too
open to being gamed.  It would be nice to have this issue done and
dusted and described at the level at which consensus exists.

Steve block

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from_name: Will "Sceptre" Noble

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia broken

body:
On 4/7/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
> Sydney Poore wrote:
> > Serious encyclopedia means leaving out material that is not
> encyclopedic.  Too many editors are stretching the meaning of encyclopedic
> to include anything that can be sourced. During Afd, it is very common for
> editors to cite tabloids, forums or publicly written dictionaries such as
> Urban Dictionary. http://www.urbandictionary.com/. Since it takes a super
> majority to delete, often the outcome is no consensus and the material
> stays.
>
> True.  I'm currently bogged down in [[LUEshi]], [[UGOPlayer]]
> [[GameFAQS]] and [[GameFAQs message boards]].  That's before I start on
> [[Internet Phenomenon]]...etc
> Steve block
>
>
> --
> No virus found in this outgoing message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.3.5/303 - Release Date: 06/04/06
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

I'd like to note that I only know two people off LUE (I'm one myself). One
is [[User:TheCoffee]] and the other is [[User:CorbinSimpson]]
--
-Sceptre
http://tintower.co.uk


from_name: Reinhardt WIEWE @ torg.is

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Mathematical expressions and conditional
 constructs, now implemented

body:
On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 10:02:55 -0400
 "Jay R. Ashworth" <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 10:43:33AM +0200, Tels wrote:
> > Moin,
>
> Huh?  Excuse me: "Moin is the name of another wiki software,
> occasionally considered to be competitive with MediaWiki.  Are you
> using it's name here repeatedly as a form of address to be
> provocative?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moin
"Moin is a Frisian language greeting from East Frisia, the eastern Netherlands,
North Frisia and Flensburg, meaning hello. ..."

reinhardt [[user:gangleri]]


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deleting the Lolicon picture

body:
On Apr 7, 2006, at 4:33 AM, Ryan Delaney wrote:

>> Some of us feel that even if the image had been free, it still should
>> never have been included in Wikipedia. Concentrating on its copyright
>> status is ignoring the real debate, rather than deciding once and for
>> all how to deal with images that would be perceived by the public to
>> be child porn.
>
> It's not even that the public would perceive that image to be child
> porn. It
> is child porn.

So it's not whether the *public* would perceive it to be child porn--
it's whether *Ryan Delaney* would perceive it to be child porn.

"Imagine a world in which Ryan Delaney has free access to the sum of
human knowledge..."

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


from_name: Vedant Lath

subject: [WikiEN-l] en: CD! Well, sort of

body:
sorry somehow a blank msg. was sent.

In India there are many towns and villages which have very slow internet
connection. The internet connection also drops frequently. It may take even
5 minutes to open the Main Page.

On 4/7/06, Vedant Lath <vedantlathetc at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 4/7/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 4/6/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Yes, but to rain just once more on its parade, am I to understand they
> > > "clean up" the articles before dumping them on CD? Would it not be
> > > better to "clean up" the articles at Wikipedia, so everyone else can
> > > benefit too?
> >
> > A lot of the cleaning up involved, as I understand, removing links to
> > articles not included in the project and abridging some of the
> > entries.  Not really stuff we need.
> >
> > -Matt
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 4/7/06, Petr Kadlec <petr.kadlec at gmail.com> wrote:
> Option B: The template is extremely powerful, general, using complex
> logic with many qifs, switches, etc. and comes with a two-page usage
> guide.
> In this case, the user is lost. He might once or twice try to copy a
> line containing subtitle, only to find out it does not work (maybe
> because it was in an if branch that is used only on even Tuesdays, or
> he forgot to wrap that line to another template so it ended in an
> invisible div, or whatever).

Can you give an example of Option B? Seems to me that someone would
wrapper an Option B with an Option A.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Illegal sources

body:
On 4/7/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wouldn't it also count as Original Research?

I would say so. I've seen this a couple of times, when someone makes a
claim, then provides a link that they believe justifies the claim.
However the link is a primary source, and it is their interpretation
which they believe makes it "proof". Whereas, a secondary source is
usually much more straightforward.

An example was in the Safe Speed article. There were claims along the
lines of "This isn't actually true, Johnson and Thomas proved in 1984
that the speed of a vehicle blah blah...[1]". Whereas IMHO you really
need to cite a direct refutation of the claim, "Smith and Jackson
challenged this claim [2], citing numerous studies including Johnson
and Thomas (1984)".

In other words, any situation that would lead you to visit a website
to verify some claim is already shakey ground. Beyond checking whether
a specific sentence is readily visible on the site, I'm not sure what
could be gained that wouldn't be straying into OR.

Steve

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Illegal sources

body:
On Apr 7, 2006, at 7:25 AM, Andrew Gray wrote:

>>> Yeah, the fact that you obtained the document yourself (e.g. by
>>> siccing
>>> FOIA on the FBI) does not IMHO make it original research - any
>>> more than
>>> going to the library and finding a book to read about the
>>> subject, and
>>> then citing that book as a source.
>>
>> But... it doesn't pass WP:V because it has not been published in a
>> reliable source.
>
> The FBI puts most of its released FOIA material online; much more is
> held by places like the National Security Archive and, again,
> accessible to the public. Wouldn't this class as publication by a
> reputable source?

I don't think they put "most", but "a significant amount of material
with wide public and historic interest" is put online by the FBI. But
the FOIA also allows one to, for instance, request their own FBI file
and submit corrections. For the most part, this is private
information that won't be published publicly.

The FOIA requires one to specifically request the information in
question. Information that is just released by the government
separate from specific requests for that information falls outside FOIA.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Page hit counts

body:
i think there was logwood. i tried to set it up but couldn't. there was no
docs around and i thought it would be better to spend time improving my wiki
rather than seeing stats.

but who wants to see the stats of 2003?

On 4/7/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 4/7/06, Violet/Riga <violetriga at gmail.com> wrote:
> > There should be more stats available to the people that helped write the
> > thing - what better way of getting feedback that people are reading what
> > you've worked hard to contribute?
>
> I think it would be fair to say that everyone is in agreement, but for
> technical reasons, this is not currently possible.
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deleting the Lolicon picture

body:
On Apr 7, 2006, at 5:40 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:

> I'm not convinced there's much reason to include *any* images of *any*
> sex acts, involving children or otherwise. Does Britannica?

We're not just trying to replace Britannica; we're trying to replace
specialized encyclopedias as well. I'm sure that an encyclopedia of
sexual behavior would include sketches of varying sexual positions
much like our own.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deleting the Lolicon picture

body:
On 4/7/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's not even that the public would perceive that image to be child porn. It
> is
> child porn. It's an image of a child created for the sole purpose of
> producing
> pleasurable sexual excitation in the viewer. Child + porn = child porn.
> Process
> isn't relevant when it comes to stuff like this. Whether we should host
> child
> porn on WMF servers is not something that is up for a vote.

Depends what you mean, "up for a vote". To me, Wikipedia *could* take
the line that hosting images such as the one that sparked this
discussion is acceptable, or justified for whatever reason. But I
doubt that the Foundation would be silly enough to let that happen.

In other words, I'm not certain, but I suspect that that image would
be legal in many parts of the world. But there are all sorts of good
reasons for not including it, that have nothing to do with legality.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deleting the Lolicon picture

body:
On 4/7/06, Sydney Poore <poore5 at adelphia.net> wrote:
> I think all drawing that depict adults having sex with children or
> children engaged in age inappropriate sex acts should be banned from
> Wikipedia. My reasoning is that it depicts and condones the sexual

I'm not convinced there's much reason to include *any* images of *any*
sex acts, involving children or otherwise. Does Britannica?

> exploitation of children. These drawing shock the consciousness of
> people that are otherwise strong free speech advocates.

And worse, it ruins Wikipedia's credibility.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia broken

body:
On 4/7/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> We require not only verifiability, but notability. I can create
> something today and document it today, but - save in rare
> circumstances - I cannot prove its importance today.

If something is referenced by a third-party reliable source today,
chances are it's important.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deleting the Lolicon picture

body:
On Apr 7, 2006, at 2:36 PM, Sam Korn wrote:

>> So it's not whether the *public* would perceive it to be child porn--
>> it's whether *Ryan Delaney* would perceive it to be child porn.
>
> Please give a definition under which it is *not* child porn.

Easily: child pornography is visual material that depicts explicit
sexual activity involving children. My understanding (albeit unclear,
as I've never seen the image in question) is that the image did not
portray sexual activity.

You could also define child pornography as visual material that
documents actually-occurring explicit sexual activity involving
children. Since it's a fantasy sketch, not a photograph, there's no
clear evidence that the image documents any actually-occurring
activity either. Under US law, as well as the laws of several
nations, erotic materials depicting children are perfectly legal so
long as no children were harmed in their production--i.e., so long as
they do not depict any actually-occurring activity.

I find absolutely no *moral* problem with the deleted image
(although, needless to say, I do find it disgusting on other levels).
However, I still support its deletion on *pragmatic* grounds--that
the image itself was of net negative value to the encyclopedia.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deleting the Lolicon picture

body:
On Apr 7, 2006, at 2:43 PM, David Alexander Russell wrote:

> I think the point that he was making is that perceptions are not the
> main problem in a case such as this - many child porn laws make no
> distinction between real and simulated child porn images, so
> *objectively* these images *are* child porn

But many child porn laws *do* make the distinction, so *objectively*
these images *are not* child porn.

As we can both see, it's useless to argue about whether the images
themselves are, objectively, child pornography. That's not what
matters, though. It's an irrelevant question. The real question is:
was the image of net positive value to the encyclopedia? Due to the
legal liabilities, PR risks, and general disrepute attached to the
image, I argue that it was of net *negative* value, and ought to have
been deleted on those grounds.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deleting the Lolicon picture

body:
On Apr 7, 2006, at 2:46 PM, David Alexander Russell wrote:

> Exactly. Child porn images shouldn't be included for moral and legal
> reasons but ordinary sexual images (where they are relevant to the
> article of course) are perfectly fine. WP:NOT censored for minors.

Or, on a pragmatic level, child porn images incur legal and
reputation-related risks to the project whilse ordinary sexual images
do not incur these same risks.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deleting the Lolicon picture

body:
On 4/7/06, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why is it a bad thing that detractors have an easy way to rubbish
> Wikipedia? Doesn't detractors already have about one million other
> things about Wikipedai that they can complain about? Quality not
> popularity.

Please explain how this image that was *child pornography" furthered
our encyclopaedic mission.

> You lost when you started to apply denigrating labels on people. I
> don't think it is strange that you thougth that "the process was
> demonstrably broken" when you belittled those you were supposed to
> work with.

I've "lost"? I didn't know I was competing.  The IfD process did not
work because *some* (forgive my shouting, NOT ALL) the users voting
keep were POV-pushing trolls.

--
Sam


from_name: David Alexander Russell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia broken

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

Yes, but the problem is people who try to enforce these policies are
referred to as 'wikilawyers' and 'process wonks' - see the recent
(pre-CSD T1) userbox flamewar, where the people seeking to enforce
deletion policy (ie that there was no policy allowing speedying of
userboxes) were treated as trolls.

I'm not seeking a reconsideration of the userbox 'issue' here (thank
God/[insert alternative deity of your choice here] that's over), but it
shows just how easy it is to ignore policy if you characterise those
seeking to uphold policy as trolls, wikilawyers and process wonks.

Cynical

Steve Block wrote:
> David Alexander Russell wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> So you basically want a group of admins with no experience in editing
>> the article concerned to vote-stack any content disputes?
>>
>> RFC generates plenty of interest, the problem is that it has no 'teeth'
>> - - there is nothing to stop the party who 'loses' an RFC from ignoring
>> its conclusions.
>
> No, I think what's being asked for is a group of people who will apply
> policy in a neutral way.  The votes are already stacked, that's the
> purpose of having policy; policy is the vote stacking tool, not the
> group of editors. RFC provides no comment, at least not at articles I've
> listed on it.  Actually, if I'm honest, I'm finding more and more that
> Wikipedia is imply broken.  We've got clear guidance at [[WP:RS]] that
> message boards aren't acceptable sources, and yet we've got thousands of
> articles that are relying on just that.  Either we need to rewrite our
> policies and have an anything goes policy, or we need to get a lot
> tougher in enforcing the key policies.
>
> Steve block
>
>

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from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deleting the Lolicon picture

body:
On 4/7/06, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Would you please mind telling a curious reader how this image either
> is harmful to Wikipedia or has the potential to harm Wikipedia?

I suspect that the attitude demonstrated by that question is pretty
much the reason why the image deletion process is broken in this
instance, and why someone had to work up the guts to delete it in the
end.

The picture showed a child being sexually abused, presented in a
manner intended to sexually titillate the viewer, and you ask how this
could have the potential to harm Wikipedia.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deleting the Lolicon picture

body:
On Apr 7, 2006, at 2:54 PM, Sam Korn wrote:

>> Easily: child pornography is visual material that depicts explicit
>> sexual activity involving children. My understanding (albeit unclear,
>> as I've never seen the image in question) is that the image did not
>> portray sexual activity.
>
> It wasn't explicit, but it was very, very strongly implied.
> Wikipedia's article on [[pornography]] says "Pornography ... is the
> representation of the human body or human sexual behaviour with the
> goal of sexual arousal".  This image very clearly fits into this.

You asked for "a definition", not "Wikipedia's definition".

>> You could also define child pornography as visual material that
>> documents actually-occurring explicit sexual activity involving
>> children. Since it's a fantasy sketch, not a photograph, there's no
>> clear evidence that the image documents any actually-occurring
>> activity either. Under US law, as well as the laws of several
>> nations, erotic materials depicting children are perfectly legal so
>> long as no children were harmed in their production--i.e., so long as
>> they do not depict any actually-occurring activity.
>
> Child pornography isn't ipso facto illegal, nor was it deleted on
> those grounds.  It was deleted because child pornography is completely
> inappropriate for a serious encyclopaedia.

The image in question was completely inappropriate for a serious
encyclopedia. Whether it was really child pornography or not is an
academic question of little interest to us now.

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


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Mathematical expressions and
	conditional	constructs, now implemented

body:
On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 01:15:48PM -0400, Conrad Dunkerson wrote:
> Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > And yet, AFAIK, {{yesterday}} *is* a template.  If it isn't now, it
> > certainly started as one, and that's the old cycle: you implement the
> > feature you need with what you have, and if it's useful and
> > inefficient, you then push it down into the core.
>
> > You haven't, as far as I can see, provided a cogent argument as to why
> > it's good.  Hopefully, I have clarified both my point of view and my
> > perception of yours, and some other folks will also jump back on this
> > bandwagon, that we may hear theirs as well.
>
> As the person who wrote that {{yesterday}} template allow me just to say a
> big "ditto".

Glad to know I'm not a *total* moron this week.  Thanks.

> I agree that alot of this 'stuff' would be better handled in the MediaWiki
> software... but I'm not going to hassle the developers to implement this
> feature and that feature and the other feature. I take whatever they give
> me and use it to the limits of it's applicability. At some point, if they
> are useful, those implementations become widespread enough that their
> inefficiency is a notable issue and they are replaced with a new
> capability in the base system. That is happening right now for 'qif',
> 'calcadd', and various unit conversion templates.

And that capsulizes my argument: there's no scalable way to determine
what extension functionality is *useful* and *desired* if there's no
lighterweight way to implement it than by writing extensions directly
in PHP.

That's a bug, in my estimation.

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

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

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Illegal sources

body:
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Yeah, the fact that you obtained the document yourself (e.g. by siccing
FOIA on the FBI) does not IMHO make it original research - any more than
going to the library and finding a book to read about the subject, and
then citing that book as a source.

Cynical

Sean Barrett wrote:
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) stated for the record:
>
>>> Wouldn't it also count as Original Research?
>
> There is (or at least should be) a difference between Original Research
> and extensive, in-depth research.
>
> Some articles require sources more difficult to obtain than simply
> googling the Web.
>
> --
>  Sean Barrett     | We completely deny the allegations, and
>  sean at epoptic.org | we're trying to identify the alligators.
_______________________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Illegal sources

body:
On 4/7/06, David Alexander Russell <webmaster at davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:
> Yeah, the fact that you obtained the document yourself (e.g. by siccing
> FOIA on the FBI) does not IMHO make it original research - any more than
> going to the library and finding a book to read about the subject, and
> then citing that book as a source.

But... it doesn't pass WP:V because it has not been published in a
reliable source.

--
Sam


subject: [WikiEN-l] Illegal sources

body:
On 07/04/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/7/06, David Alexander Russell <webmaster at davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:
> > Yeah, the fact that you obtained the document yourself (e.g. by siccing
> > FOIA on the FBI) does not IMHO make it original research - any more than
> > going to the library and finding a book to read about the subject, and
> > then citing that book as a source.
>
> But... it doesn't pass WP:V because it has not been published in a
> reliable source.

The FBI puts most of its released FOIA material online; much more is
held by places like the National Security Archive and, again,
accessible to the public. Wouldn't this class as publication by a
reputable source?

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Illegal sources

body:
On 4/7/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> The FBI puts most of its released FOIA material online; much more is
> held by places like the National Security Archive and, again,
> accessible to the public. Wouldn't this class as publication by a
> reputable source?

Oh, I didn't know that.  Yes, then, it would.

--
Sam


subject: [WikiEN-l] Illegal sources

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OK, didn't realise it actually had to be published. Although if the FBI
were forced to release information about an investigation of this type
then I guess some sort of media organisation would pick up on it anyway.

Cynical

Sam Korn wrote:
> On 4/7/06, David Alexander Russell <webmaster at davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:
>> Yeah, the fact that you obtained the document yourself (e.g. by siccing
>> FOIA on the FBI) does not IMHO make it original research - any more than
>> going to the library and finding a book to read about the subject, and
>> then citing that book as a source.
>
> But... it doesn't pass WP:V because it has not been published in a
> reliable source.
>
> --
> Sam
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia broken

body:
On 4/7/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> Now to some people this probably doesn't go far enough, but to me I
> think this is the base level that's been indicated time and time again
> and is established implicitly in our verification policy.  I really want
> to get it defined explicitly.  If we can get a consensus on this base
> definition/level of notability, that's going to impact heavily on
> debates across wikipedia.  Having to explain the linking and intricacies
> of five policy pages over and over again is wearing me out and it's too
> open to being gamed.  It would be nice to have this issue done and
> dusted and described at the level at which consensus exists.

I totally support that. I would also like the basic reasons for
notability guidelines to be stated more explicitly. We don't, from
memory, have any rationale stronger than "Wikipedia is not paper, but
still!"

So we first need to explain why we don't want infinite numbers of articles:
- We can't maintain them all to an acceptable standard
- We do have physical standards
- Articles on trivial topics damage the credibility of the
encyclopaedia as a whole

Then we need to explain how we determine notability, and how we decide
what's in and what's out:
- For recent creations of mankind, newspaper articles are virtually a
requirement
- For societies, clubs etc, longevity and true notability compared to
peers are required
- Our natural bias against popular culture
- Links to existing guidelines.

It seems like it might not be a bad idea to establish some precedents
or borderline cases. "If your website is not at least as notable as
foofoo.com, which has been repeatedly rejected, don't even bother".

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Illegal sources

body:
(oops, sent to Sam not the list)

On 07/04/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/7/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The FBI puts most of its released FOIA material online; much more is
> > held by places like the National Security Archive and, again,
> > accessible to the public. Wouldn't this class as publication by a
> > reputable source?
>
> Oh, I didn't know that.  Yes, then, it would.

It's a big thing now.

Bear in mind that the author, the FBI or whoever, is inherently a
citable source - they're the government. All you need to do is make
sure that the material is available to people who aren't you; indeed,
I'd argue that hosting it on your own website is fine as long as it's
not in serious doubt the original publisher was the FBI. (and
copyright permits)

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia broken

body:
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But that's exactly my point. _What the policy says_ is (ie 'if this
happens, in this way, then this is the consequence') _all_ that achieved
consensus (and therefore all the is enforceable) - anything above and
beyond that is not endorsed by the community (or, in the case of
decrees, not endorsed by Jimbo unless he subsequently says so) and
therefore is not policy. Taking your example, if there was community
consensus to extending the 3RR to 25 hours then it would be amended as such.

Cynical

Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> David Alexander Russell wrote:
> <snip>
>> I'm not seeking a reconsideration of the userbox 'issue' here (thank
>> God/[insert alternative deity of your choice here] that's over), but
>> it shows just how easy it is to ignore policy if you characterise
>> those seeking to uphold policy as trolls, wikilawyers and process
>> wonks.
>>
>
> There's a difference between process wonks and policy wonks:
>
> - Process wonks favour process over policy
> - Policy wonks favour policy over process
>
> A process wonk will often get the wrong result using the right method. A
> policy wonk will get the right result using the wrong method. Remember,
> it's not the letter of the rules which counts, it's the spirit of the
> rules; hence, making 4 reverts in 25 hours counts as breaking 3RR.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia broken

body:
On 4/7/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/7/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> If we can't agree on even basic principles of notability, something is
> wrong. We must be able to explain why we don't want 50 articles on the
> same pokemon character. Even in broad, general, non-mechanical terms,
> there must be *some* binding common principle.

> > Thus an informal rule of notability: if not enough people are
> > interested in writing about it, it's probably not notable enough, at
> > least yet.
>
> Maybe...when talking about ancient history topics, most people would
> agree that "the more the better", even if each only gets two edits per
> year.

Indeed.  Not a hard and fast rule, perhaps - just my thinking out loud.

> > > - Articles on trivial topics damage the credibility of the
> > > encyclopaedia as a whole
> >
> > Controversial - and attempts to codify that have been roundly rejected.
>
> Ah, any examples?

I can't think, off the top of my head, of a specific example to point
you to - but I know this has been discussed multiple times on this
list with nothing that one could describe as consensus.

> > I believe one of Wikipedia's /strengths/ is its breadth of topics;
> > people come to us partly because we have obscure articles.
>
> On ancient Babylonian vase patterns, sure.  On pro-pedophilia blogs
> no. On different nomenclature systems for describing 3 or 4 toed tree
> frogs, sure. On the initiation rituals of a fraternity in an
> unremarkable university in Wisconsin, no.

I generally find that Verifiability and No original research tend to
weed these out fairly well.  I'm leery of having Notability as a
policy because it will be used as a weapon by people, and because any
policy that does not match the articles we in fact have / agree upon /
keep is empty words.

> I'm just trying to make a starting point. What's the nearest statement
> you could make to mine that you would agree with?

It should have been written about in a publication not associated with
the creators that has some level of credibility, the latter being hard
to determine of course.  Newspapers, trade journals, credible academic
journals, etc.

A 'credible source' is a topic that people have tried to define on
wp:cite and wp:v, I believe, with some degree of success.  For the
purposes of notability, we are not concerned with primary sources -
primary sources do not, by their very nature, define notability.

This is, granted, simply moving the point of hard definition to
'credible third-party source', but is at least a step.

Note that we're not talking about what sources can be used in the
article - primary sources have their uses - but those that can
establish a claim for notability.

Some online sources are credible in specific fields - I would strongly
disagree with counting all online sources as non-credible.

> Agree. I don't like the culture of "that's not worthy of an article,
> nuke from space". A better "vote" would be "how much space do we
> dedicate to this topic? two words? ok!"

Exactly - if something is just 'yet another <x>', then it is simply a
list entry.

> Oh it's not "mine". People will "nn" a pop culture article more easily
> than a science, geograhy or literature topic, no?

Definitely, but I'd disagree that it's anything approaching a
consensus - perhaps a consensus of those who frequently nominate for
deletion.

> Tell me, you want to write about a topic, but fear it may not be
> notable. Short of asking someone, how do you find out?

If I want to write about it, I write an article about it - nobody's
deleted one yet, so I must have it right ... ;)

Of course, I have it easy - very few of my interests are 'popular culture'.

I think the actual thought processes are to do with working out if
there's enough to at least write a decent stub about it that can be
sourced.  If not, I'll generally simply add it to a list or a more
general article.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deleting the Lolicon picture

body:
On 4/7/06, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
> Are you debating for the debates sake or are you contributing to an
> encyclopedia?

I'm debating for the sake of not having the debate even take place next time.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Illegal sources

body:
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Perhaps it could even be put on Wikisource (works of US Federal Govt.
employees in the course of their official duties are ineligible for
copyright afaik, per the tags on zillions of NASA images!)

Cynical

Andrew Gray wrote:
> (oops, sent to Sam not the list)
>
> On 07/04/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 4/7/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> The FBI puts most of its released FOIA material online; much more is
>>> held by places like the National Security Archive and, again,
>>> accessible to the public. Wouldn't this class as publication by a
>>> reputable source?
>> Oh, I didn't know that.  Yes, then, it would.
>
> It's a big thing now.
>
> Bear in mind that the author, the FBI or whoever, is inherently a
> citable source - they're the government. All you need to do is make
> sure that the material is available to people who aren't you; indeed,
> I'd argue that hosting it on your own website is fine as long as it's
> not in serious doubt the original publisher was the FBI. (and
> copyright permits)
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>

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