from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] Caching; a modest proposal

body:
After a very informative exchange with Tim Starling, I've thought a bit
more about my proposal last night about making Wikipedia cacheable,
which in the light of day seems excessively complex. Here's a simpler
version:

At the moment, according to Tim, all Wikipedia pages are served as
uncacheable pages, thus preventing any intermediate proxy caches from
cahing them -- a quick packet dump shows that they are served with

   Cache-Control: private, s-maxage=0, max-age=0, must-revalidate

whether or not I am logged in. Clearly, if Wikipedia content was
cacheable, there would be massive bandwidth gains, but the current
policy is designed to prevent caches serving out-of-date content, or the
same page to anons and logged-in users.

I'd be interested in the effects if we were to serve most ordinary pages
with

   Cache-Control: public, must-revalidate

with (say) a max-age of a week, except for the three following
exceptions which need different or rapidly-changing data (I'll call it
"dynamic content") served to different users for the same URL:

(a) pages for logged-in users
(b) pages for anon users who have a pending message
(c) pages with auto-generated dynamic content (Special: pages, and any
others with similar behaviour)

which would be served with the anti-caching cache control header as before.

Since all pages would be must-revalidate, the Wikimedia cluster would
still get a conditional GET request per hit, so that it could check
freshness, then decide which header to generate, based on source IP and
any user cookies. The twist would be that the page would be reported as
outdated by the server if _either_ it had been changed since the cache
stored it, _or_ dynamic content was needed, thus serving the desired
dynamic content to those users who need it, whilst preventing that
content from being cached for other users.

Since 95%+ of all hits are presumably from anons without pending
messages, this should, in an ideal world, result in a very large number
of pages being successfully served by hits on ISPs' proxy caches,
without stopping dynamic content from being served to those users who
need it, or affecting the freshness of pages for anons.

The hit rate would not be quite as high as possible, since every hit
from a dynamic-content user would "wash out" any static version of the
page in question from the cache, but since these users would only
account for about 1 in 20 of page accesses, the remaining 19 out of 20
times there will still be a hit.

I'd be interested to hear what others think. Is there an obvious flaw in
my reasoning? Is this worth a try?

-- Neil

-------------------------------------------------------------

Pseudo-code:

if (logged_in_user) or (user_has_messages) or (special_page):
   say has changed; serve with Cache-Control: private. must-revalidate
else:
   if (modification_date > if_modified_since_date):
       say has changed; serve with Cache-Control: public. must-revalidate
   else:
       say has not changed


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Silverback, indefinite block in order?

body:
On 10/16/05, Mattwolf Binder <matt_binder at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I am not involved, and 172 supporting my RfB has nothing to do with it. In
> fact if you check the arbcom pages you'll see I opposed 172. But after
> seeing all this crap he puts up with I think that I'll end up supporting.
> Silverback has been attacking 172, trolling, being a level 19 revert
> warrior, and is all around raising the stress for everyone involved. In fact
> he'll probably end up in front of the arbcom, and I'm tempted to
> indefinitely block just to save them work. He's turning into another Tern, a
> user who I block for a short period of time, whines on the mailing list,
> doesn't seem to let up anything, and will probably end up blocked
> indefinitely. I'm also really tired of the political hatred and right wing
> POV pushing by Silverback. Would anyone object to indefinitely blocking him?
>
> --Redwolf24

I don't think that Silverback's conduct yet reaches the level at which
we should be talking about a life ban.  I haven't looked at the full
history yet, but I doubt that the ArbCom would ban him for a year (the
longest time ArbCom is permitted to ban a user) based on what I have
seen; a shorter ban of perhaps a week, a personal attack parole, and
perhaps some other remedies are more likely to be imposed.  Perhaps we
should just skip the circus and ban him straightaway, but I think
doing so circumvents a process that we hope, perhaps naively, will
remediate the conduct of problem users without requiring a permanent
ban.

If you want to keep this off ArbCom's docket, try actually talk to him
to find out what his grouse is, and then address whatever that might
be.  This might be futile, but I would think that you, as acting chair
of MedCom, would be more willing to talk an issue through than lay
down the hard and heavy on the guy.

Kelly


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
G'day Tony,

> On 10/16/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> VFU's (why isn't that
>
>>AFU?) main function should be makeing sure closeing admins are
>>following procedure and that people are not abuseing speedies.
>
> Well actually a bad speedy can be remedied by any admin.
>
> So the only function of VFU is to undelete articles that have been
> processed properly but shouldn't have been deleted even so.

Worl, I'd say a bunch of delete votes with no argument, attached to a
subpage where the nominator made no argument, but where the admin
deleted, counts as "not processed properly".  Surely VfU has something
to say there?

> Where did this idea that we needed to check up on admins who failed to
> delete come from?

That's not what he said.  Why would VfU be checking up on admins who
*fail* to delete?

> About 25-30% of all nominations to AfD fail to result in deletion.
>
> Get over it.
>
> VFU's function is not to deal with those problems.  Its function is to
> look at the articles deleted and see if they were, in fact, actually
> good articles.
>
> And undelete them!

Well, erm, we must be careful to see that VfU doesn't become AfD part 2.
  If new information comes to light, if the deletion arguments were
unworthy, if the admin closed incorrectly ... any more?  I don't recall
seeing "If Tony Sidaway, Ray Saintonge and SPUI wish to redress the
balance against those lousy deletionists" on the VfU guidelines, but
then, I admit that I'm not a regular there, and on a Wiki these things
can change bloody quickly.

> Why doesn't it do its job?

You've already said why, repeatedly.  Somewhere along the way it stopped
being a last-gasp "hang on we missed something" effort and became an
appeals court.  "Dost thou have a point of law to make?  Then begone!"

We're slowly building our own government to mirror that of the Real
World, at least in Western Common Law countries.  We're unconsciously
trying to build "courts" of different jurisdiction to judge articles and
users, and --- you'll laugh when I tell you this --- even an effort like
Esperanza was meant to come with a free top-heavy parliament!

Some of y'all complain of "instruction creep".  I think the big problem
with instruction creep is not, well, creeping instruction, but that
we're trying to mirror real-world institutions e'en when they be
entirely inappropriate for us.  If no-one else objects, I think I'll add
to the "community" section of WP:NOT --- "Wikipedia is NOT the real world."

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

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.12.2/137 - Release Date: 16/10/2005


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
G'day Jay,

>> From: Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com>
>> Absolutely not.  When we decide that the forum dedicated to undeleting
>> articles should not undelete articles?
>
> VfU does undelete articles, regularly.  What you are arguing about are
> what VfU should consider as valid rationales for undeletion.  Until now
> its mandate has been to undelete (or not) based on process - in other
> words, an appeals court; you would like to expand that to include
> undeletions based on content.

Worl, "appeals court" is pretty slim.  I don't think we *need* an
appeals court on Wikipedia, frankly.  Not unless instruction creep
becomes a lot creepier ...

I know I've had to change my vote from "delete" to "keep" (or, on one
memorable occasion, "merge with existing article on this person") from
time-to-time.  Not often, it's true, but often enough, as an article is
rewritten, or new information slinks out from under the bed.  What
happens if this information pops up a few days and/or weeks too late for
me to change my vote?  For everyone to change their votes?

It's time for undeletion then, innit?

Cheers,

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

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.12.2/137 - Release Date: 16/10/2005


from_name: Stefan Sittler

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admins, please delete my EYES, per the rules (EOM)

body:
I am still willing to read about content, my offers for discussion are
still open, but I've changed my mind and must demand that MY EYES be
deleted per the 48 hours of HORRIBLE PAIN of ACRIMONIOUS DEBATE rule.
Please use your magical "admin" powers of "Make Everything Right"
soon, because the corners of the monitor are not sharp enough and I
don't have the self -control for the sharp, sharp stick.

Also I could use some minutes on my phone card and some better
shoelaces. (Yeah, you know how they get all cut up on the eyelets)
(amazing flying shoes would be nice, but I understand if I am not
ready) Thank you, magical "admins"!

Stefan
(user:Kiaparowits)

P.S. OH GOD THE PAIN. OMGWTFBBQ
P.P.S. no offence, really


from_name: actionforum at comcast.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Karmosin: "172 has baggage"

body:
Karmosin,

You left this message on my talk page while I am blocked,
so I am responding here:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ASilverback&diff=25718620&oldid=25697995

I apologize, I probably should have said that "wikipedia
has baggage in dealing with 172".  However, you don't
provide any evidence of your characterizations.

Ask yourself why, you are considering a long ban,
for "off-topic accusations in the form of insulting
political guilt by association."  Considering the
amount of personal attacks, name calling and vitriol
on wikipedia, I am being singled out for a few
comments in one running battle with 172.

Note, I am not condemning wikipedia as a whole,
the quantity of these occurances can be large,
but the percentage managable because wikipedia
has become quite large.  I admit that I look for
connections and underlying principles, and my focus
in my degree in philosophy was basicly anti-marxism.

But it does not take a stretch of the imagination to
see the relation to someone who disrupted the vote
for deletion of  "Category: totalitarian dicatators",
and who routinely battles against negative information
on Fidel Castro, Khruschev, etc. as a POV warrior.
Except that instead of just calling him a POV warrior,
I actually label what that POV is, by referring to him
as an "apologist for dictators".    There is no way
this particular "personal attack" can be considered
off topic.  Given all the personal attacks on wikipedia,
with people getting mild or no rebukes for dozens,
is that theirs were just heated emotional outbursts
instead of carefully considered and apropo labels.

It is interesting that you label my editing warring
as "frustratingly elusive", of course, you could have
said "patient and clever" just as easily.  Perhaps you
just pass territorial editors by and concede articles.

While I am sure that comment relates to my editing
with csloat on Saddam and al Qaeda, it is also
appropriate to the 172 behavior.  Marxism is purposely
frustratingly elusive and deceptive.  Calling dictatorships
and oligarchies "peoples republics" or "dictatorships
of the proletariat", and if for some reason these
terrible transitional means of getting to the ends that
justify them, i.e. the nirvana of the stateless
classless, communally held property society,
then they still are not called totalitarian dictatorships,
but instead "permanent proletarian revolutions",
or are said to be in a "permanent revolutionary state".

Current "progressives" openly embrace mass-action
"democracy" as a form of disrupting events through
mob behavior by a small minority willing to misbehave
under the cloak of anonymity.  Marxist influence on
our culture has been considerable is probably partially
responsible for the postmodern denial of truth and
morality that is so popular among the weak minded.
172 harkens to this when he argues for deletion
of totalitarian dictator, because there is NO WAY it
can be NPOV.    However, as we do in science,
it can be defined for out purposes, and then applied
to factual circumstance, if we are intellectually honest
and really do have "good faith".  The reality is that
172 does not want it to be NPOV, it is too dangerous
and possible true a term.

I am trying to keep this brief, but rest assured, provide
sufficient evidence that he is an apologist for dictators.

Given this, and your statement that I made "off-topic"
accusations, I believe we come down to you proposing
a "long ban" for only two concepts that I put forward,
one is the speculation that 172s line crossing behavior
may carry forward into his personal life, and the other
is that his line crossing behavior may be due to the
cloak of anonymity, and not translate to his personal
life where he may actually be a milquetoast.

Yes, negative characterizations that hit close to home
"hurt", so don't assert that these were "off-topic",
I am being persecuted because, my comparatively
miniscule number of "offenses" were too close to
the truth.

So, what is wikipedia's baggage in relation to 172?
The arbcom gave him only a mild rebuke for his
first abuse of admin powers, the arbcom did not
review his second even more serious abuse of
admin powers, because he "left", although it did
shutdown his admin powers and not restore them
despite his defiant and unapologetic protest, and
then wikipedia just winked at his disruption of the
VfD on the totalitarian category.

Why single out 172 for "abuse"?  He is not really
any worse person than the others in the progressive
or marixts cliques, in fact, he is actually a sympathetic
figure, actually likable.  He gets singled out because
of his lack of self control, and impulsive line-crossing
disruptive outbursts.  The sad thing is, he doesn't
realize that wikipedia, with its respect for consensus,
is actually a friendly place to the collaborative efforts
of collectivist thinking.  There is critical mass here
of progressives that, united, could get anything
they want, so is outbursts are completely
unnecessary.  He needs to be patient and clever
like the rest of them (or should it be called "frustratingly
elusive"), but instead he misbehaves and becomes
vulnerable, like the slowest antelope in the herd.

It is customary, in these circumstances, to point to all
the valuable contributions to wikipedia as extenuating
circumstances.   I think I have contributed to a lot
of balance on both scientific and political topics,
including much that is well sourced to peer review
literature.  However, I would not want to be judged
on my record of the last couple months, I've been
on a bit of a wiki-vacation watching the scientific
literature for interesting new developments, and
as far as wiki goes, just monitoring the watch list
and occassionally be stirred to action by something
particularly outrageous, such as csloats monomanic
territorialism and 172s "bold" disruption of the
deletion vote.
                              -- Silverback


from_name: Michael Turley

body:
On 10/17/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> You need to back off on the indefinite blocks a bit. The ArbCom can
> ban for a maximum of a year. You have had good luck so far (and might
> succeed with Silverback) but simply relying on the fact that someone
> is so disliked that no other administrator will unblock them is very
> shaky ground. I think you are on the verge of putting yourself into
> avoidable trouble.

This is excellent advice.  I would have thought it self-evident that
admins would know not to block users for times exceeding the limits
available to arbcom.  I think that more modest use of authority is
called for.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


subject: [WikiEN-l] I've been blocked by an involved admin

body:
------------- Original message --------------
> On 10/17/05, MAURICE FRANK wrote:
> > Aha! This is a total admission of a corrupt system:
> > among the worst of all human traits is "closing ranks"
> > or "ganging up".
> >
> > This totally disproves everything that has often been
> > said here before, about how you can find another admin
> > to unblock you and how if you can't then your block is
> > impartially upheld and must be proved fair!
> >
> > System caught out as weighted in its own favour.
>
> Nah it's mostly a case of burnout. There have been so many false
> claims of admin persucution over the years that most of us have become
> slightly fed up. Generaly your best bet is to find an admin who is a
> least tagently involved in the case already.

A nice example of the dismissive attitude.  Probably a case of burnout.

You know, perhaps procedural justice is a poor facsimile
of real justice, but lets not dismiss it until we come up with
something better.
                       -- Silverback
                -- Silverback


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD works Great

body:
On 10/17/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/17/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> >1) allow
> > any user to view the content of deleted pages
>
> Not legal.

 It is fair use. Otherwise, explain why it is legal to allow an admin to see
something but illegal to allow me to see it.
 Besides, I was referring to articles deleted under AFD et. al. anyway.
Articles which are illegal to distribute shouldn't be viewable by anyone,
including admins.

--
> geni

 Anthony


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] NTL

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
>On 10/17/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Note that the NTL problem has been solved (presumably through some
>> horribly ugly special cases in the MediaWiki code) -

>My understanding is that NTL passes the client IP via a standard
>protocol and MediaWiki simply interprets it in the standard manner.
>The only place where it gets hairy is that, as I understand it, some
>anonymizing proxies also use this protocol and forward a spoofed IP,
>so you do need to maintain a list of proxies that can be trusted.

Semi-standard - it uses an X-Forwarded-From header and sometimes it
reverses the order of the octets (for no good reason).

That said, I just spotted a MARMOT sock (User:Captain Kreuk and a few
others) with his IP showing as the NTL proxy address, not his actual
address. Bother.

(cc'd to wikitech-l - is this a reportable bug, or hadn't the
NTL-checking code kicked in at that point?)

- d.


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] NTL


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD works Great

body:
geni wrote:

>On 10/17/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
>
>
>>1) allow
>>any user to view the content of deleted pages
>>
>>
>Not legal.
>
According to what law?
Ec


body:
-------------- Original message --------------
> > A nice example of the dismissive attitude. Probably a case of burnout.
> >
> Posibly.
> --
> geni

me too.
    -- Silverback


subject: [WikiEN-l] [username]: "[username] has baggage"

body:
-------------- Original message --------------

> I've put Silverback on moderation unless and until he ceases this
> habit of putting the names of people he's in a dispute with in the
> subject line.

I have no problem complying with that restriction, if it is
a general restriction, I was unaware of it, if is specific to me,
I still have no problem complying with it.  I have no need
to put usernames in subjects, it just seemed an apopro
subject, absent any constraint.
                                  -- Silverback


from_name: geni

body:
On 10/17/05, MAURICE FRANK <megaknee at btopenworld.com> wrote:
> Aha! This is a total admission of a corrupt system:
> among the worst of all human traits is "closing ranks"
> or "ganging up".
>
> This totally disproves everything that has often been
> said here before, about how you can find another admin
> to unblock you and how if you can't then your block is
> impartially upheld and must be proved fair!
>
> System caught out as weighted in its own favour.

Nah it's mostly a case of burnout. There have been so many false
claims of admin persucution over the years that most of us have become
slightly fed up. Generaly your best bet is to find an admin who is a
least tagently involved in the case already.

--
geni


body:
Kat Walsh wrote:

>On 10/17/05, Stacey Greenstein <stacey.nj at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>... which might be in a few minutes, or could be several weeks or months,
>>depending on how controversial the admins deem the delete-tag to be. Be
>>forewarned, you may have to go through a EfD (EYES for Deletion) vote before
>>your desired deletion takes place.
>>
>>
>If you put a lot of makeup around them and brag about how lovely they
>are without claiming anything else of importance about them, they can
>get speedily deleted as vanity.
>
>"There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily
>escaped the chronicler's mind."  --Douglas Adams
>
You make them sound like literary equivalents to drag queens. :-)

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/16/05, Travis Mason-Bushman <travis at gpsports-eng.com> wrote:
> >When you have 150
> > AFD noms per day, it is absurd to suggest that there is some sort of
> > obligation to explain votes, especially when so many nominations are
> > uncontested junk.
>
> "Uncontested" != "junk"
>

However it does mean that for five days no one who visted the article
thought it was worth keeping

> We just had an uncontested deletion of an article, and VFU was about
> to treat the application for undeletion with its usual feckless "the
> process was followed so keep deleted" idiocy.
>
> Yes, people who think that an article *must* be deleted *should* be
> required to explain why.
>
> Every single time.
>

You don't think the template namespace is has enough rubish in it already?

> Why is this a problem?
>
> If this professor Wolters really had been such an inconsequential
> fellow, the article should have been redirect to the article about his
> college.  If he was more important but still not for an article of his
> own then the article could have been merged.

People move around

> Why are we going around deleting articles like this?

Becuase aprently no one cares about them.

> Why are people
> seriously suggesting that we're doing it in such numbers that nobody
> need even give a reason any more?  That's utterly bonkers.

Time use of course it would be fairly trival to create with {{agree}}
(argee with nominator) so if comments were really required it wouldn't
do any good.

--
geni


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arrgh! Please proofread your emails!

body:
On Mon, 17 Oct 2005, Anthony DiPierro wrote:

> On 10/17/05, Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> >
[snip]

> > I wouldn't say anything about this paragraph, had it not appeared
> > in the same post, because despite having a college degree in English,
> > I still manage to misspell words. However, it borders on parody to
> > find one statement with 3 glaring misspellings follow an incoherent
> > one. I like to think that the people who post here on a regular
> > basis are some of the brightest & most articulate (& yours truly)
> > members of Wikipedia; seeing the above, I have to strongly reconsider
> > that assumption. Typos & misspellings only undercut the power & logic
> > of a writer's arguments, which is why I struggle to keep them out
> > of what I write. (And an old Usenet rule dictates that at least one
> > of these can be found in my email.)
>
>  Take a look at the other writings by this person. I'm not sure what the
> problem is, but it might be that they don't speak English as their primary
> language.
>
The point of my email was to focus on the problem, not the person; that
is why I snipped off the identifying details. But since you raised that
issue, I'll say this. I was under the impression that the original poster
(OP) was a native English speaker, based on the idiomatic fluency of his
language. Add to that the fact that the OP often makes a logical &
plausible argument for his opinions, & this blemish of typos & misspellings
is just a shame. If he's not a native speaker of English, he's fooling me
now, & would fool me even better if he did just a little more work.

Had this person been another, run-of-the-mill whiner sending us another
forgettable "I've been banned by a rogue Admin who picks on me because I
violated the 3RR rule, but I won't mention it because that would make me
look like the loon I am" email, I wouldn't bother making the effort; at
most, I'd adjust the settings on my computer & make his email go bye-bye.

I'm trying to offer constructive criticism here. My message was "you
could be a more effective writer if you did these things", not "your lack
of grammar & spelling cancels out anything you might have to say; now
go away." I'm sorry if that was not how it was received.

Geoff


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD works Great

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>On 10/17/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>geni wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On 10/17/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>1) allow
>>>>any user to view the content of deleted pages
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Not legal.
>>>
>>>
>>According to what law?
>>Ec
>>
>>
>Articles are not only deleted for being crap, sometimes an article is
>also deleted for containing possibly libellous information or info
>that could violate someone's privacy. Access to such information
>should be limited to a minimum of people. Keeping it as historical
>evidence in case we need it in legal accusations so we can retrace who
>said what and posted what is essential to Wikipedia, which is why
>something is rarely completely purged from the database.
>
>
Anthony's comments related to the general case.  Your point, and those
since made by others about copyvios, are certainly valid.  The problem
is that you are using those valid particular arguments to apply to the
general case.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Why is this a problem

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>AFD may have had a concensus when it was deleted, but editors (even
>the ones voting on AFD) are fallible and if like with the professor
>case, they are not fully aware of certain facts they can make bad
>decisions. Just because procedure was followed, it shouldn't be
>automatically assumed, the concensus was correct.
>
>If additional info comes to light on a subject, undeletion should be considered.
>
And how is a person who did not see the original article supposed to
know if his information is "additional"?

Ec


body:
> A nice example of the dismissive attitude.  Probably a case of burnout.
>
Posibly.

--
geni


body:
I've put Silverback on moderation unless and until he ceases this
habit of putting the names of people he's in a dispute with in the
subject line.

- d.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Static HTML dumps

body:
Earlier, elian wrote:
> If we're going to offer it for download, we should keep in mind that
> people won't put it only at their computers at home, but also back on
> the web. In this case, it absolutely should conform to the license,
> with the usual wikipedia back links, history links and a copy of the
> license included. And we should also remove the wikipedia logo not to
> invite any imitations and trademark violations.

I just wanted to be clear that I agree with this completely.  At the
bare minimum of a first change, the page
http://static.wikipedia.org/

Should make it very clear that this dump is not for commercial use with
our logo still on it.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
On 10/17/05, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
> Very true. That is why I have many times contemplated writing an
> hourly cron script that votes "Keep, this article is notable" on each
> and every article on AfD. I have always assumed that such behaviour
> would be frowned upon. But if it is as you say, that the deletionists
> doesn't waste too many neutrons/vote, then why should I?
>
> I'm pretty sure I could have this script completed before tonight...
> I'm very sure that there are alot of other rabid inclusionists out
> there that would also like to script-vote... Yes, this IS a threat.
>
> --
> mvh Bj?rn

I refuse to belive that there are enough inclusionists out there
stupid enough to try that tactic (if there were the debate would long
since have been settled in favour of the pro-encylopedists). Firstly I
would block the lot of you for operateing unauthorised bots. Secondaly
the amount of credibilty you would lose for voteing mass keep on hoax
articles would be sevearly damageing in the greak game of wikipedia
politics.

--
geni


body:
-------------- Original message --------------
> I am not involved, and 172 supporting my RfB has nothing to do with it. In
> fact if you check the arbcom pages you'll see I opposed 172.

You were involved, perhaps what you mean is that you feel you
were objective.  I believe you thought you were, but in the real
world, actions can appear to be biased based on appearances,
so in procedural just appearances get emphasized,  in lieu,
of have personal knowledge of the persons motives.

> But after
> seeing all this crap he puts up with I think that I'll end up supporting.
> Silverback has been attacking 172, trolling, being a level 19 revert
> warrior, and is all around raising the stress for everyone involved. In fact
> he'll probably end up in front of the arbcom, and I'm tempted to
> indefinitely block just to save them work. He's turning into another Tern, a
> user who I block for a short period of time, whines on the mailing list,
> doesn't seem to let up anything, and will probably end up blocked
> indefinitely. I'm also really tired of the political hatred and right wing
> POV pushing by Silverback. Would anyone object to indefinitely blocking him?

Procedural justice is a pain, it just slows things down, and worries about
stuff like the actual evidence instead of just "insightful" characterizations of that
evidence as "crap", I note that when you blocked me you prejudged
issues that were the subject of an RfC.  This form of "justice" has
been found to be unreliable, try following the procedures.

You seem comfortable labeling people, perhaps we have
that in common.   I don't take offense, it the label is slightly
off, I offer my own opinion of what of what the label should be.
BTW, I could have used your help on "right wing politics",
I couldn't get libertarian labeled right wing there.

Here is how I respond to a mischaracterizion, even if it is
close to the mark.  Note that it is more of a chuckle than
an "I am a victim" whine:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ACommodore_Sloat&diff=24803660&oldid=23841418

Most other labelings such as yours were not worthy of
a response.  Someone calling me "right wing" is just try to
distract from the merits of the issues.

                     -- Silverback


subject:
[WikiEN-l] DANG! I apologize. (was [username],
	indefinite block in order?

body:
I can't believe I went back on my word so quickly.
Apologies, I clicked the send in my reply before
thinking.

I've learned my lesson.
                    -- Silverback

-------------- Original message --------------

> -------------- Original message --------------
> > I am not involved, and 172 supporting my RfB has nothing to do with it. In
> > fact if you check the arbcom pages you'll see I opposed 172.
>
> You were involved, perhaps what you mean is that you feel you
> were objective. I believe you thought you were, but in the real
> world, actions can appear to be biased based on appearances,
> so in procedural just appearances get emphasized, in lieu,
> of have personal knowledge of the persons motives.
>
> > But after
> > seeing all this crap he puts up with I think that I'll end up supporting.
> > Silverback has been attacking 172, trolling, being a level 19 revert
> > warrior, and is all around raising the stress for everyone involved. In fact
> > he'll probably end up in front of the arbcom, and I'm tempted to
> > indefinitely block just to save them work. He's turning into another Tern, a
> > user who I block for a short period of time, whines on the mailing list,
> > doesn't seem to let up anything, and will probably end up blocked
> > indefinitely. I'm also really tired of the political hatred and right wing
> > POV pushing by Silverback. Would anyone object to indefinitely blocking him?
>
> Procedural justice is a pain, it just slows things down, and worries about
> stuff like the actual evidence instead of just "insightful" characterizations of
> that
> evidence as "crap", I note that when you blocked me you prejudged
> issues that were the subject of an RfC. This form of "justice" has
> been found to be unreliable, try following the procedures.
>
> You seem comfortable labeling people, perhaps we have
> that in common. I don't take offense, it the label is slightly
> off, I offer my own opinion of what of what the label should be.
> BTW, I could have used your help on "right wing politics",
> I couldn't get libertarian labeled right wing there.
>
> Here is how I respond to a mischaracterizion, even if it is
> close to the mark. Note that it is more of a chuckle than
> an "I am a victim" whine:
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ACommodore_Sloat&diff=24803
> 660&oldid=23841418
>
> Most other labelings such as yours were not worthy of
> a response. Someone calling me "right wing" is just try to
> distract from the merits of the issues.
>
> -- Silverback
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
>> I've put Silverback on moderation unless and until he ceases this
>> habit of putting the names of people he's in a dispute with in the
>> subject line.

>I have no problem complying with that restriction, if it is
>a general restriction, I was unaware of it, if is specific to me,
>I still have no problem complying with it.  I have no need
>to put usernames in subjects, it just seemed an apopro
>subject, absent any constraint.

OK, I've removed the moderation.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD works Great

body:
>
> In order to ensure that they are effectively cleansed, snd that we're
> not just redistributing protected content, we have to make them
> not-viewable - it sort of defeats the point if someone can say "huh,
> just look at [revision] for the content".

 They already are viewable - by admins. What's the difference from a legal
standpoint if this is expanded to all editors, or even to all editors who
applied for the privilege?

However, for the benefit of the project, we need some way of
> overseeing this process - some way of looking at deleted material to
> confirm that it was a copyvio, or to see if it should be undeleted, or
> whatever.

 And that's where fair use comes into play.

And we can't split things into "deleted because crap" and "deleted
> because copyvio", allowing people to look at one and not the other -
> because we'd still need someone to be able to assess the deleted
> "copyvio material", check that the process wasn't being abused, &c &c.

 We certainly can split things up, and in fact we already do. As for whether
or not anyone needs to be able to see copyvio materials, I don't think this
is necessary, but it is the way it currently works. If an admin is deleting
as a copyvio articles which never went through the proper channels, that
admin would be quickly found regardless of whether or not the actual text
were viewable. Maybe we should keep the information anyway, just so we could
back out such changes, but all that would need to be viewable is the title
in order to check that the system wasn't being abused.

So, someone has to have this access capacity. It's a big and diffuse
> job, so it can't really be handled efficiently by palming it off on
> the handful of developers. Admins are the rational next layer of
> people to give the right to - there's enough of them that they can do
> the necessary, but not so many of them that the ability to access the
> information is being handed out all over the place.

 And all editors are the next rational layer of people to give the right to.
And there's no reason that one layer is legal but the other one isn't.

Giving the right of access only to admins is a way of saying "we
> intend to limit this capacity to the sole amount needed by the
> project", thus showing that we believe we are using this copyrighted
> material in an acceptable manner. Giving it to everyone, or even every
> registered user, would be far les so - the project doesn't need four
> hundred thousand people to be able to review deleted material, meaning
> there's no defensible reason for handing out the power to everyone.

 Giving the right of access to all admins isn't *necessary*, it's
*convenient*. Giving it to all editors, or to all editors who requested
permission, isn't necessary, but it'd be convenient. And even then, if that
access were limited to a certain subset of deleted pages, say AFD and speedy
deletions which weren't copyvios, then there wouldn't even be an argument
regarding copyright issues.

On other threads, recently, we've been discussing Special:Checkuser
> (and associated database work); there, we're all agreed that
> IP-username information is strictly private, could lead to bad things
> if thrown around, and so on. But we have a pressing and valid reason,
> integral to the project, to use that information. The solution is to
> give it to a limited number of users - it's been suggested for them to
> be chosen on a case-by-case basis, or to give it to all bureaucrats or
> stewards, as they're the largest group of people we would need to have
> the right in order to attend to the problem. The analogy here should
> be clearish.

 Actually, the analogy is quite poor. The concerns of giving away
IP-username information are completely different than the concerns of
distributing articles on non-notable topics. And it's highly unlikely that
IP-username information will be given to all admins anyway.

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

 Anthony


list: foundation-l

from_name: GerardM

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation

body:
Hoi,
It is one thing to highlight contributions of our sponsors (and it is a good
thing to give them facetime) there are also our partners that deserve some
presence. I missed Kennisnet, I missed Yahoo. Google is as willing to do our
hosting.... Maybe there are other organisations that help us continually..
Thanks,
GerardM

On 10/17/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> So...
>
>
>
> I have worked a bit in the past 2 weeks in refactoring the Foundation Home
> Page, to merge it with Quarto.
>
>
>
> PLEASE, do not consider the graphical aspect of it, it can LOOK different.
> I am very bad at graphics, so do not take this as the final look.
>
>
>
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:Anthere/home
>
>
>
> What I would like to have feedback on is
>
> * the content of the new page
>
> * the way information is organised
>
> * adding logos of sponsors or not (depending on how much they gave or how
> recently it was...)
>
> * etc...
>
>
>
> The main idea is to merge Quarto in the Foundation site, in such a way
> that
>
>
>
> * most big categories are kept (so, it is not too difficult to "create" a
> pdf Quarto from the content from time to time if we have the will and
> energy...)
>
>
>
> * topics normally edited by board members or officers will be directly
> editable on the website. Each officer will for example have a report page
> associated and this one will always be the same.
>
> For example : for the hardware officer :
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Hardware_and_hosting_report
>
> I kept Jimbo's letter (and whatever big messages he wishes to share with
> the community), while the board letter may contain a overview of WMF over
> time (organisation, collaborations etc...)
>
> Each officer will have his own report page, which he can edit alone or
> with anyone he wishes (some links might be missing right now; I mostly want
> to give the idea)
>
>
>
> * topics which can be created/offered by anyone will be created on meta.
> So fully editable. They will be later copied on the Foundation site or not.
>
> For example, by Alterego (copied on the WMF site) :
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Projects/An_exciting_growth_%21
>
> We can also include here all Specials, which might be report on Wikimania
> (no one feels like doing it it seems though) or Interviews etc...
>
> I would love to see there stuff like [[How to use and reuse our content]]
> or [[All you ever wanted to know on our licences...]]
>
>
>
> * A controversial point to validate : I would like that we introduce a
> "opinion area" or a "essay area" for personal texts of some of our
> proeminent members. These will be clearly labelled "not Foundation
> approved"... but naturally, we'll not let crazy text settle here :-)
>
>
>
> * I left a prize and award which might be nicely featured in a special
> area with what often goes with it.... a picture of the prize... Currently,
> it is just a paragraph to suggest it should be here
>
>
>
> * The road ahead will be mostly to announce major events (such as
> Wikimania, or WSIS ?) and planning.
>
>
>
> * Controversially, I added a special area for donations and sponsorship...
> with some logos....
>
>
>
> * And I finished with a little bit of corporate details, which might
> certainly be improved.
>
>
>
> The right side is still allocated with current news...
>
>
>
> ---------------
>
>
>
> When you go down in reports, you'll notice a [[archive]] link, which allow
> to go back in the past. See for example :
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Finance_report
>
> As well as put some atemporal links (such as the link to the budget).
>
> All reports might be categorized to better find them back as well.
>
>
>
> Of course, all officers will be free to fill these quartely reports in the
> way that seems best to them. Imho, in most cases, a global report per
> quarter is best, but in some cases, adding information little by little when
> new stuff get done might be good as well.
>
> I mostly wish/hope that information gets there...
>
>
>
> Of course, most content is right now outdated. This is mostly to show what
> it could be. So do not complain about that please :-)
>
>
>
> ----------------
>
>
>
> Now, I would love some feedback on all this. If no one says anything (as
> most of the time :-(...), I'll consider it an agreed and will put it on the
> main page soon (likely next week end).
>
>
>
> Otherwise, please comment here, or on irc, or on the talk page if you can
> or wherever...
>
>
>
> Thanks
>
>
>
> Ant
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Music Unlimited - Access over 1 million songs. Try it free.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation


body:
On 10/17/05, Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
>
> Okay, I'm probably asking to get flamed by writng this, but
> would people *please* make an effort to check their spelling
> & grammar before they post here? In the haste to contribute to
> an ongoing conversation, sometimes the result can be, well,
> incoherent, as shown by the quoted passages below.

 I agree with you, although the fact that you misspelled "writng" in your
very first sentence leads me to believe you don't use a spell checker
yourself.

> > Unless you consider the reason for this may a combination of low
> > profile and the knowlage amoungst those that do know about it that
> > they would be wasteing there time. Any article that is so important
> > that it must be included in wikipedia this year is unlikely to get
> > wiped out through AFD.
> >
> I wouldn't say anything about this paragraph, had it not appeared
> in the same post, because despite having a college degree in English,
> I still manage to misspell words. However, it borders on parody to
> find one statement with 3 glaring misspellings follow an incoherent
> one. I like to think that the people who post here on a regular
> basis are some of the brightest & most articulate (& yours truly)
> members of Wikipedia; seeing the above, I have to strongly reconsider
> that assumption. Typos & misspellings only undercut the power & logic
> of a writer's arguments, which is why I struggle to keep them out
> of what I write. (And an old Usenet rule dictates that at least one
> of these can be found in my email.)

 Take a look at the other writings by this person. I'm not sure what the
problem is, but it might be that they don't speak English as their primary
language.

To repeat myself, if you believe your opinion is important enough to
> be put into an email to this list, then it is important enough to
> proof-read that email before you send it to this list. I may be wrong
> to say this, but any topic will wait a minute or two while you
> perform this simple task.

 I don't usually do it, but I did click on "check spelling" for this
particular post.

Geoff

 Anthony


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
> Why should there be a requirement that someone has to waste time by
> repeating the explanations given by other people for deleting an article?
>
> If an article is non-notable, it's non-notable. There is no requirement that
> anyone who votes has to write explanations for anything. When you have 150
> AFD noms per day, it is absurd to suggest that there is some sort of
> obligation to explain votes, especially when so many nominations are
> uncontested junk.

Very true. That is why I have many times contemplated writing an
hourly cron script that votes "Keep, this article is notable" on each
and every article on AfD. I have always assumed that such behaviour
would be frowned upon. But if it is as you say, that the deletionists
doesn't waste too many neutrons/vote, then why should I?

I'm pretty sure I could have this script completed before tonight...
I'm very sure that there are alot of other rabid inclusionists out
there that would also like to script-vote... Yes, this IS a threat.

--
mvh Bj?rn


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nice article on Jimbo/Wikipedia

body:
On 10/17/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.floridatrend.com/issue/default.asp?a=5617&s=1&d=9/1/2005

"Like the great artists Jerry Lewis and David Hasselhoff, I'm only
appreciated overseas."


from_name: Jack Lynch


from_name: Dan Grey

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation

body:
I think there should still be an explanation of what the board is at
the top - the current layout talks about the board, but doesn't
actually explain what it is (probably one of the commonest questions)
:-). In fact the coporate details section contains the info people
seem to care about most - I'd put that at the top of the page.

To be honest I don't think I'd try and merge Quarto with the front
page. I think the existing front page is quite good, and the old
Quarto material could have it's own page within the site. A lot of the
material is already very dated, and shouldn't be on the front page.

Or just cut out the bits more than a couple of months old...

maybe...

Dan


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation


from_name: Vincent "Bentong" S. Isles

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Questions on {{{NUMARTICLES}}} + adminship on ceb-wp

body:
Hi all,

1. Why is it that {{{NUMARTICLES}}} in ceb-wp's main
page gives inconsistent results between sessions?
Yesterday our article count was already up to 600+,
but last time I check (just now, before I hit the Send
button) it's down to 400+?

2. Are the date entries (i.e. [[Enero 1]]) acceptable
for the "This wikipedia is with 1,000 articles"? If
yes, then ceb-wp is nearing 1,000 pages (698 on last
count) but 365 of them are day's entries. ;) 4 months
in operation and no bots ;)

3. Finally, who is really in charge of making admins
on new wp's? I submitted my application (for adminship
on ceb-wp) last Sept. 27, 2005, but I was passed over
by Yann who made admins on Oct. 9. I really want to
change the interface into Cebuano, esp. that I have
just finished translating the Google interface into
our language.

Daghang salamat! (That's how we say thank you!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Vincent "Bentong" S. Isles   Chemistry & Physics Teacher
bentong_isles at yahoo.com      http://bentong.topcities.com
         56-C San Miguel St. Cebu City, Philippines
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
     Unsa ang tinuod nga pagkamakinasodnon?  Kini mao ang
pagdapig sa budaya [culture] batok sa mga buot mopasipala
niini, langyaw man kun isigka-Pilipino.
           Mabuhi ang pinulongang Sinugboanon!
      SCRAP THE PHILIPPINE NATIONAL LANGUAGE POLICY!
          STOP THE FORCED LEARNING OF TAGALOG!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Abag sa Sinugboanong Wikipedya | http://ceb.wikipedia.org

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Jtkiefer

body:
Stefan Sittler wrote:

>I am still willing to read about content, my offers for discussion are
>still open, but I've changed my mind and must demand that MY EYES be
>deleted per the 48 hours of HORRIBLE PAIN of ACRIMONIOUS DEBATE rule.
>Please use your magical "admin" powers of "Make Everything Right"
>soon, because the corners of the monitor are not sharp enough and I
>don't have the self -control for the sharp, sharp stick.
>
>Also I could use some minutes on my phone card and some better
>shoelaces. (Yeah, you know how they get all cut up on the eyelets)
>(amazing flying shoes would be nice, but I understand if I am not
>ready) Thank you, magical "admins"!
>
>Stefan
>(user:Kiaparowits)
>
>P.S. OH GOD THE PAIN. OMGWTFBBQ
>P.P.S. no offence, really
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
For lack of a better term, wtf ?

-Jtkiefer


from_name: charles matthews

body:
"Like the great artists Jerry Lewis and David Hasselhoff, I'm only
appreciated overseas."

Shame the Nutty Professor has a (less cool) Hyundai, compared with Knight
Rider.

Charles


from_name: Jochen Magnus

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: dumps failing for en.wp

body:
Brion,

I think that not only en dumps failed. I found some errors in the most
recent de dump (20051017_pages_articles.xml): As far as I inspected the
xml file manually, I saw several <title>'s which do not belong to the
comtent. I.e.:

<title>Vitruvius</title> contains an article about the planet Venus
<title>Indianische Fl?te</title> contains the history of Poland
<title>Marlon Brando</title> contains Madonna (sic!)
and so on

Besides, there a many articles which exceptionally length in the dump,
which are not belonging into Namespace #0.

Cheers

jo

>> Several en dumps have failed due to the backup.lock file already
>> existing.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I have worked a bit in the past 2 weeks in refactoring the Foundation Home
> Page, to merge it with Quarto.

I like it a lot. Esp the reports part which, sadly, is very out of date. Giving
that a higher profile will encourage department heads, like me, to keep those
reports up to date.

-- mav

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation


from_name: actionforum at comcast.net

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Access to Talk Page for blocked user (was Re: ???:
	"??? has baggage")

body:
-------------- Original message --------------
> wrote:
> > You left this message on my talk page while I am blocked,
> > so I am responding here:
>
> I thought even a blocked user could edit their own talk page.
>
> Has this changed?

You are right.  I didn't know that.  I tried first without logging in
and my IP was blocked, but when I logged in, I could get
an edit page up, I didn't try a save, but all indications
are that I can edit.   Evidently the capability does not
apply to the talk hierarchy.  I couldn't edit my talk
archive pages for instance.

I thought I tried this during my first block back when
I first signed up, has the capability been recently
added?
              -- thanx, Silverback


from_name: Stacey Greenstein

body:
... which might be in a few minutes, or could be several weeks or months,
depending on how controversial the admins deem the delete-tag to be. Be
forewarned, you may have to go through a EfD (EYES for Deletion) vote before
your desired deletion takes place.

On 10/17/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Just stick a speedy deletion tag on your eyes explaining they are not
> suitable for Wikipedia and an admin will come by to delete them as
> soon as possible.
>
> --Mgm
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Kat Walsh

body:
On 10/17/05, Stacey Greenstein <stacey.nj at gmail.com> wrote:
> ... which might be in a few minutes, or could be several weeks or months,
> depending on how controversial the admins deem the delete-tag to be. Be
> forewarned, you may have to go through a EfD (EYES for Deletion) vote before
> your desired deletion takes place.

If you put a lot of makeup around them and brag about how lovely they
are without claiming anything else of importance about them, they can
get speedily deleted as vanity.

-Kat
[[User:Mindspillage]]

--
"There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily
escaped the chronicler's mind."  --Douglas Adams


subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
On 10/17/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Why are people
> > seriously suggesting that we're doing it in such numbers that nobody
> > need even give a reason any more?  That's utterly bonkers.
>
> Time use of course it would be fairly trival to create with {{agree}}
> (argee with nominator) so if comments were really required it wouldn't
> do any good.
>

The nominator in this case gave no reason except that he found this
fellow boring and believed him to be non-notable.  The former was very
believable but obviously isn't a serious criterion for deletion.  The
latter would surely require some kind of rationale.

Here we have a professor who has worked in Canada and Netherlands (not
one of these merkin professors who are apparently not so senior) and a
published author.  We have a deletion precedent that (non-vanity)
published authors are notable, and another that professors who have
published books rather than just papers are notable, so the
non-notability claim was, to put it mildly, somewhat implausible.


body:
...although if they get photographed and published in glamour magazines, an
EfU vote can undelete them.

[[User:UtherSRG]]

On 10/17/05, Kat Walsh <mindspillage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/17/05, Stacey Greenstein <stacey.nj at gmail.com> wrote:
> > ... which might be in a few minutes, or could be several weeks or
> months,
> > depending on how controversial the admins deem the delete-tag to be. Be
> > forewarned, you may have to go through a EfD (EYES for Deletion) vote
> before
> > your desired deletion takes place.
>
> If you put a lot of makeup around them and brag about how lovely they
> are without claiming anything else of importance about them, they can
> get speedily deleted as vanity.
>
> -Kat
> [[User:Mindspillage]]
>
> --
> "There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily
> escaped the chronicler's mind." --Douglas Adams
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Phil Boswell

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Access to Talk Page for blocked user (was Re: ???: "???
	has baggage")

body:
<actionforum at comcast.net> wrote:
> You left this message on my talk page while I am blocked,
> so I am responding here:

I thought even a blocked user could edit their own talk page.

Has this changed?
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Michael Turley

body:
On 10/17/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Are they a copyvio?

Tag them {{copyvio}} and someone will arrive shortly to remove them,
dice them, rearrange the pieces and then reinsert them.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


subject: [WikiEN-l] ???, indefinite block in order?

body:
-------------- Original message --------------

> On 10/16/05, Mattwolf Binder wrote:
> > I am not involved, and 172 supporting my RfB has nothing to do with it. In
> > fact if you check the arbcom pages you'll see I opposed 172. But after
> > seeing all this crap he puts up with I think that I'll end up supporting.
> > Silverback has been attacking 172, trolling, being a level 19 revert
> > warrior, and is all around raising the stress for everyone involved. In fact
> > he'll probably end up in front of the arbcom, and I'm tempted to
> > indefinitely block just to save them work. He's turning into another Tern, a
> > user who I block for a short period of time, whines on the mailing list,
> > doesn't seem to let up anything, and will probably end up blocked
> > indefinitely. I'm also really tired of the political hatred and right wing
> > POV pushing by Silverback. Would anyone object to indefinitely blocking him?
> >
> > --Redwolf24
>
> I don't think that Silverback's conduct yet reaches the level at which
> we should be talking about a life ban. I haven't looked at the full
> history yet, but I doubt that the ArbCom would ban him for a year (the
> longest time ArbCom is permitted to ban a user) based on what I have
> seen; a shorter ban of perhaps a week, a personal attack parole, and
> perhaps some other remedies are more likely to be imposed. Perhaps we
> should just skip the circus and ban him straightaway, but I think
> doing so circumvents a process that we hope, perhaps naively, will
> remediate the conduct of problem users without requiring a permanent
> ban.
>
> If you want to keep this off ArbCom's docket, try actually talk to him
> to find out what his grouse is, and then address whatever that might
> be. This might be futile, but I would think that you, as acting chair
> of MedCom, would be more willing to talk an issue through than lay
> down the hard and heavy on the guy.

I am more than willing to consider mediation.  I already
made offers for settling the dispute that haven't been
responded to on the RfC page.

172 has never tried to settle the dispute, although
that dispute is no longer active.  I made him
an offer for the future on the RfC page.

With csloat, I made an offer of a 1RR  limit for
each of us on the Saddam and al Qaeda page.

With Bishonen, we already reached a agreement as
he states, he asked me to stop and I did.

With El_C, he accepted my apology months ago.

Note, that the RfC page is supposed to be deleted
at this time, but I am still willing to resolve the
dispute.  172 and I got along fine for months,
although on opposite sides of editing issues.
I have not received any counter offers for
settling the disputes.

        -- Silverback


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
On 10/17/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> At the time of this writing en has 776,230 articles. By definition, the
> articles we're talking about are generally not "popular" - there are
> only a few people interested in them one way or another. It's very easy
> to overlook an AfD in all that for a five-day period, I managed to miss
> the entire existence of the "The Jar" article from its creation through
> to its deletion over a much longer period than that.
>

You relise the logical end point of that is that wikipedia has grown
beyond our ability to manage it and needs drasticaly downsizeing? Even
the most extream deletionists would probably feel that that was going
a little far.

> Bit of a topic shift there. The template namespace is very different
> from the article namespace and is not addressed by AfD. There's TfD for
> that, with its own separate set of criteria for template deletion.
>

I was refuring too the human habit of minimising expenditure of
energy. Under the suggested changes we would end up with an impressive
number of templates for voteing on  AFD

> Redirects can be changed. This is kind of a side-issue, though, specific
> to this one particular article.

No you have already admited that not many people would care. What
makes you think the redirects would be changed?

> But you're only basing that on the results of an AfD, and a major point
> of this discussion is that some of us are arguing that some AfDs are not
> receiving the sort of attention that they should be.

> Here's another idea that just occurred to me to toss into the pot, how
> about leaving AfDs open for a much longer period of time, like a month
> or so? Before reacting that this would make AfD's backlog enormous, bear
> in mind that it wouldn't affect the rate at which articles enter AfD and
> are deleted from AfD, and thanks to each day having its own page it'd be
> just as easy to handle the housekeeping. There'd just be 30 day-pages in
> the queue in front of /old rather than 5. This doesn't address the issue
> of unsupported votes, but it would be a step towards getting more votes
> from people who read the articles as opposed to those who specialize in
> reading the AfD listings.
>

ADF/[[wikipeida:wikiproject decency]] going on for thirty days? You do
know that dissrupting wikipedia is a blokerble offence.

> I really don't see any difference between a vote that's explained with a
> useless "nn" and a vote that's explained with {{nn}} which expands into
> a paragraph-long genereric dissertation on the subject of notability.
> Typing those curley brackets doesn't require any extra thought and
> provides no extra information.

I don't regard nn as useless so I have no problem with them amounting
to the same thing.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD works Great

body:
On 10/17/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
>1) allow
> any user to view the content of deleted pages

Not legal.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFU is utterly beyond hope

body:
On 10/17/05, Poor, Edmund W <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> "function of VFU is to undelete articles that have been processed
> properly but shouldn't have been deleted"
>
> Huh? What kind of process can be followed properly, yet produce an
> incorrect result?

An imperfect one.

The AfD process is supposed to determine which articles are deletable.
 Sometimes even though it's followed completely it ends up deleting
perfectly good articles.   This is predictable and is why we have an
undeletion policy.


body:
Yep, there's a one-line change to make all articles in the talk
hierarchy editable.  I should commit it to CVS.


from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Wikimania 2006 - host city,
	contest part two - change in schedule

body:
Well... The jury has gathered, argued, fought...and has not come to a
conclusion. Decision has been postponed until next week-end.

Sorry about the delay.

Delphine

On 10/13/05, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> (warning, cross post to many lists, thank you for not replying to all
> - thank you for forwarding to the relevant lists)
>
> Boston (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006/Boston) and
> Toronto (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006/Toronto) have
> been shortlisted to host the 2006 edition of Wikimania.
>
> Wikimania 2006 will be the second international Wikimedia conference
> and will gather members of the Wikimedia community acorss projects as
> well as participants and speakers from different horizons to talk
> about wikis and more. An overview of the 2005 edition can be found at
> http://wikimania.wikimedia.org.
>
> Contrarily to what was announced on the Wikimania page
> (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006), and due to tight
> schedules of the jury from 3 corners of the planet, the jury might not
> be able to meet and give its answer on the 15th october as was
> planned.
>
> This will only be delayed a day or two, please stay tuned for an update.
>
> In the meantime, participants and others are free to ask/answer
> questions on the talk pages of the Boston
> (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimania_2006/Boston) and
> Toronto (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimania_2006/Toronto)
> bid.
>
>
> Best,
>
> Delphine
> --
> ~notafish
>

--
~notafish


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikimania 2006 - host city,
	contest part two - change in schedule


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD works Great

body:
Ben E. wrote:

>The thing is that, since AFD is deleting the crap that most of us want
>deleted (garage bands with no songs, the dead-end road down a block from my
>house), we can say that it works most of the time. To prevent it failing in
>cases where "save" articles deserve an keeping, but might recieve "nn del"
>votes, all we have to do is spend more time on AfD.
>
Bleah, no thanks. But get back to me when you've developed a
deletion process that discourages an "AfD clique" from making
binding decisions in areas where they don't actually know anything.

Stan


from_name: Jakob Voss

subject: [Wikitech-l] Size of all dumps

body:
Hi!

Once there was the size of all Wikipedia database dumps at
download.wikipedia.org. In March 9, 2005 I noticed 50 Gigabytes
compressed (15 for just current). I wonder what the actual numbers are.
I assume the change to XML does not make a big difference because data
is compressed but it don't remember if it was compressed with gip oder
bzip2. Anyway a total number would be interesting to give an impression
of how much information we collect. Can anyone with access to the server
please run a simple shell script to get the size you need if you wanted
to download all wikipedias data?

Thanks and greetings!
Jakob

P.S: by the way 20050713_pages_full.xml.bz2 (29.9G) seems to be the
newest full dump of english wikipedia but I bet you don't need a
Terabyte for all compressed full dumps - yet. I found the first plans
for RAID systems with several Terabytes here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers/hardware_orders/wishlist


from_name: Ilia Alshanetsky

subject: [Wikitech-l] PHP 5.1.0RC3 testing

body:
Hello!

You are receiving this email because your project has been select to
take part in a new effort by the PHP QA Team to make sure that your
project still works with PHP versions to-be-released. With this we hope
to make sure that you are either aware of things that might break, or to
make sure we don't introduce any strange regressions. With this effort
we hope to build a better relation between the PHP Team and the major
projects.

If you do not want to receive these heads-up emails, please reply to me
personally and I will remove you from the list; but, we hope that you
want to actively help us making PHP a better and more stable tool.

The third release candidate of PHP 5.1.0 can be found at
http://downloads.php.net/ilia/. This is not a final RC, but we hope it
will be followed by a final RC4 that should be released no later then
October 31st. I'd like to ask you to use this 2 week period to test your
application against this release and let us know about any issues that
you discover. We are particularly interested in backwards compatibility
breaks and new issues appeared in this release, but were not present in
prior 5.1 versions. If you find any issues, please contact the PHP QA
team at "php-qa at lists.php.net".

In case you think that other projects should also receive this kinds of
emails, please let me know privately, and I will add them to the list of
projects to contact.

regards,

Ilia Alshanetsky
5.1 Release Master


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admins, please delete the RfC page, per the rules

body:
I am still willing to mediate the disputes, my offers for
resolution are still open, but I've changed my mind
and must demand the page be deleted per the 48
hour rule.  Here is the page to delete:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Silverback

Note, that the only two signed statements in the dispute
resolution section, are for different disputes, not the same
one.  Frankly, neither one qualifies.  The Bishonen dispute
is settled, he admits it.  The worst he can say is that it went
on a little further and he asked me to stop and I did.

csloat does not really disclose any attempts to resolve the
dispute, he jsut points to the talk page.  So this is well
short of the requirements.

I want it deleted, because I think we need to reform the RfC/user
process.  After signing the statement and notifying me, they
have been modifying it all over the place, even after I have
responded, they change the responses underneath me.

I don't think my solution of reverting as vandalism any changes
will work, because people don't seem to trust the subject
in these proceedings.  However, I think the integrity of
the certified text and fairness to the respondent requires
some solution.  I propose that every RfC have a neutral
admin assigned who guarantees that the certified text
does not change in any way that undermines the response,
or presents and unfairly moving target.

Reforming the process is far more important than the RfC
of any one user, lets get it done.

                 -- Silverback


from_name: Keith Old

subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
Why would it be a redirect to his college especially as that article may
contain nothing relevant to his work and as academics often leave their
university to work elsewhere. If it had been merged, where is the
appropriate place to merge it?

AfD is a human institution and as such is not perfect. The way that it will
work best is with the active participation of Wikipedians.

On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/16/05, Travis Mason-Bushman <travis at gpsports-eng.com> wrote:
> >When you have 150
> > AFD noms per day, it is absurd to suggest that there is some sort of
> > obligation to explain votes, especially when so many nominations are
> > uncontested junk.
>
> "Uncontested" != "junk"
>
> We just had an uncontested deletion of an article, and VFU was about
> to treat the application for undeletion with its usual feckless "the
> process was followed so keep deleted" idiocy.
>
> Yes, people who think that an article *must* be deleted *should* be
> required to explain why.
>
> Every single time.
>
> Why is this a problem?
>
> If this professor Wolters really had been such an inconsequential
> fellow, the article should have been redirect to the article about his
> college. If he was more important but still not for an article of his
> own then the article could have been merged.
>
> Why are we going around deleting articles like this? Why are people
> seriously suggesting that we're doing it in such numbers that nobody
> need even give a reason any more? That's utterly bonkers.
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Ben E.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD works Great

body:
The thing is that, since AFD is deleting the crap that most of us want
deleted (garage bands with no songs, the dead-end road down a block from my
house), we can say that it works most of the time. To prevent it failing in
cases where "save" articles deserve an keeping, but might recieve "nn del"
votes, all we have to do is spend more time on AfD. If more dedicated
users/inclusionists spend a bunch of time "voting" for articles that need
keeping, then the votes of the AFD clique will effectively be canceled. A
"no consensus" decision is better than a "delete".

--[[:en:User:Bratsche|Ben]]

--
Bratsche-It means "viola!"


from_name: SJ

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Placeopedia

body:
A link to the placeopedia [PP] entry might not be useful on average.
On the other hand, a geotag, formatted according to Wikipedia
geotagging-style (once that is settled on), could be added
automatically.  Then an eager geotagging Wikipedian could quickly find
the right geo-coordinates via PP, add a PP entry with the appropriate
title, and thereby update the WP article.

On 10/17/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Board are currently working on a logo licensing contract which
> would permit such sites to use the Wikipedia logo.

Huzzah for that.

++sj


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Placeopedia


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Placeopedia

body:
On 10/17/05, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> A link to the placeopedia [PP] entry might not be useful on average.
> On the other hand, a geotag, formatted according to Wikipedia
> geotagging-style (once that is settled on), could be added
> automatically.  Then an eager geotagging Wikipedian could quickly find
> the right geo-coordinates via PP, add a PP entry with the appropriate
> title, and thereby update the WP article.

I second this. The usefulness of such a tag going forward can not be overstated.

Well. Maybe it could be a little overstated... but not much!


body:
Wrong, two people need to show that they tried to "resolve a dispute", and it has to be the same dispute.  Read the first
paragraph.  This is the relevant section, see this heading
"Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute"

Frankly, they never attempted to resolve the dispute.
If I were filing an RfC user, it is the first requirement
to take care of.  I would have made specific proposals
to settle the dispute on the "subjects" target page.
They have completely failed their responsibility in this
section.  Perhaps because they just thought of it as
a step to arbitration and not really an attempt to settle
a dispute.
                   -- Silverback

-------------- Original message --------------

> actionforum at comcast.net wrote:
> > I am still willing to mediate the disputes, my offers for
> > resolution are still open, but I've changed my mind
> > and must demand the page be deleted per the 48
> > hour rule. Here is the page to delete:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Silverback
> >
> > Note, that the only two signed statements in the dispute
> > resolution section, are for different disputes, not the same
> > one. Frankly, neither one qualifies. The Bishonen dispute
> > is settled, he admits it. The worst he can say is that it went
> > on a little further and he asked me to stop and I did.
>
> I see 4 "[u]sers certifying the basis for this dispute". This is a
> 'valid' RfC. I suggest you take this to mediation - perhaps someone can
> help resolve the dispute in a less confrontational way than what RfC
> provides.
>
> Chris
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
-------------- Original message --------------

>> I suggest you take this to mediation - perhaps someone can
> > help resolve the dispute in a less confrontational way than what RfC
> > provides.
> >
> > Chris

I should repeat that I am open to mediation, as I have said
several times.    -- Silverback


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD works Great

body:
On 17/10/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:

> > On 10/17/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> > >1) allow
> > > any user to view the content of deleted pages
> >
> > Not legal.
>
>  It is fair use. Otherwise, explain why it is legal to allow an admin to see
> something but illegal to allow me to see it.
>  Besides, I was referring to articles deleted under AFD et. al. anyway.
> Articles which are illegal to distribute shouldn't be viewable by anyone,
> including admins.

This is where we hit a problem.

In order to ensure that they are effectively cleansed, snd that we're
not just redistributing protected content, we have to make them
not-viewable - it sort of defeats the point if someone can say "huh,
just look at [revision] for the content".

However, for the benefit of the project, we need some way of
overseeing this process - some way of looking at deleted material to
confirm that it was a copyvio, or to see if it should be undeleted, or
whatever.

And we can't split things into "deleted because crap" and "deleted
because copyvio", allowing people to look at one and not the other -
because we'd still need someone to be able to assess the deleted
"copyvio material", check that the process wasn't being abused, &c &c.

So, someone has to have this access capacity. It's a big and diffuse
job, so it can't really be handled efficiently by palming it off on
the handful of developers. Admins are the rational next layer of
people to give the right to - there's enough of them that they can do
the necessary, but not so many of them that the ability to access the
information is being handed out all over the place.

Giving the right of access only to admins is a way of saying "we
intend to limit this capacity to the sole amount needed by the
project", thus showing that we believe we are using this copyrighted
material in an acceptable manner. Giving it to everyone, or even every
registered user, would be far les so - the project doesn't need four
hundred thousand people to be able to review deleted material, meaning
there's no defensible reason for handing out the power to everyone.

On other threads, recently, we've been discussing Special:Checkuser
(and associated database work); there, we're all agreed that
IP-username information is strictly private, could lead to bad things
if thrown around, and so on. But we have a pressing and valid reason,
integral to the project, to use that information. The solution is to
give it to a limited number of users - it's been suggested for them to
be chosen on a case-by-case basis, or to give it to all bureaucrats or
stewards, as they're the largest group of people we would need to have
the right in order to attend to the problem. The analogy here should
be clearish.

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


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

body:
actionforum at comcast.net wrote:
> I am still willing to mediate the disputes, my offers for
> resolution are still open, but I've changed my mind
> and must demand the page be deleted per the 48
> hour rule.  Here is the page to delete:
>
>   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Silverback
>
> Note, that the only two signed statements in the dispute
> resolution section, are for different disputes, not the same
> one.  Frankly, neither one qualifies.  The Bishonen dispute
> is settled, he admits it.  The worst he can say is that it went
> on a little further and he asked me to stop and I did.

I see 4 "[u]sers certifying the basis for this dispute". This is a
'valid' RfC. I suggest you take this to mediation - perhaps someone can
help resolve the dispute in a less confrontational way than what RfC
provides.

Chris


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] page.page_latest updated?

body:
Jeremy Dunck wrote:
> I see that page.page_latest isn't updated when a saving a revision.

It sure is, or else we've got a real nasty bug! ;)

> How often is it updated, and what updates it?

On save, in Article::updateRevisionOn().

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD works Great

body:
On 10/17/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/17/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > geni wrote:
> >
> > >On 10/17/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >>1) allow
> > >>any user to view the content of deleted pages
> > >>
> > >>
> > >Not legal.
> > >
> > According to what law?
> > Ec
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> Articles are not only deleted for being crap, sometimes an article is
> also deleted for containing possibly libellous information or info
> that could violate someone's privacy. Access to such information
> should be limited to a minimum of people. Keeping it as historical
> evidence in case we need it in legal accusations so we can retrace who
> said what and posted what is essential to Wikipedia, which is why
> something is rarely completely purged from the database.

Wikimedia is more of a common carrier and not responsible for libel anyway,
but certainly couldn't and shouldn't be held responsible for libel which is
contained in the historical archive of things which were written by others.

As for any information which would violate someone's privacy, that should be
removed entirely, not kept around for admins to read. Even if you think we
should keep it to use as evidence, which I disagree with, that's not a
reason to allow admins to view it. If we want to keep access to such
information to a minimum of people, then we shouldn't provide access to all
admins.

--Mgm

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD works Great

body:
On 10/17/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/17/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > According to what law?
> > Ec
>
> IANAL
>
> But I suspect the digital millenium copyright act is in there somewhere

If anything, the DMCA would be a *defense* against a lawsuit over this sort
of thing. You don't have to be a lawyer, but you should at least know
something about the law before you make a statement that something would be
illegal.

--
> geni

Anthony


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Placeopedia

body:
I saw another site recently which also integrated Wikipedia results
into its performance (in a way which was not a simple mirror) --
seeing two of these in one day made me think perhaps we'd need a
category for these specifically (I couldn't find one pre-existing), so
I created [[Category:Technologies which use Wikipedia]] for the time
being (not the most elegant name -- in fact I think it is
grammatically incorrect now that I think about it, the whole
which/that thing -- but fortunately at the moment I know of only two
of them so it shouldn't be hard to change). If there are others of
this sort, it would be great to put them into a category of this sort
(assuming one doesn't already exist), though if someone wants to
rename my sad little category, please do...

FF

On 10/17/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> Placeopedia is an online application which integrates Google Maps
> images and Wikipedia encyclopedia articles.See
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placeopedia>
> and<http://www.placeopedia.com/>.
>
> The Board are currently working on a logo licensing contract which
> would permit such sites to use the Wikipedia logo.
>
> A new mailing list for Placeopedia has recently been created at
> <http://www.mysociety.org/mailman/listinfo/mysociety-maps> and they
> would welcome input from Wikipedians on various aspects of the site.
>
> For example, some issues already raised are whether links to
> Placeopedia should be added automatically to all Wikipedia articles
> that have a corresponding entry in Placeopedia. There is already a
> template for this on the English Wikipedia
> (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Placeopedia>) but so far any
> links have only been added manually.
>
> Another issue is whether users of Placepedia should be able to add
> categories to Wikipedia directly from Placeopedia.
>
> If you have an interest in maps, please join the mailing list to help
> answer these Wikipedia-related questions.
> <http://www.mysociety.org/mailman/listinfo/mysociety-maps>
>
> Angela.
> _______________________________________________
> 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] Why AFD works Great

body:
On 10/17/05, Ben E. <bratsche1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The thing is that, since AFD is deleting the crap that most of us want
> deleted (garage bands with no songs, the dead-end road down a block from
> my
> house), we can say that it works most of the time. To prevent it failing
> in
> cases where "save" articles deserve an keeping, but might recieve "nn del"
> votes, all we have to do is spend more time on AfD. If more dedicated
> users/inclusionists spend a bunch of time "voting" for articles that need
> keeping, then the votes of the AFD clique will effectively be canceled. A
> "no consensus" decision is better than a "delete".

I think there are a lot of people with differing opinions who aren't
interested in getting into such an arms race. Even if you think that AFD
works most of the time, I think you still have to admit that it'd be nice if
we could reduce the amount of time people spend on it. I think it was in
elementary school that I first learned that a pure democracy was
unsustainable because it'd require people constantly voting on every little
issue. I was skeptical back then (thinking "that's just what the man teaches
you to keep you down"), but I think AFD is a good example of how true it is.

Just throwing out another idea, but what if we appointed a certain number of
representatives to debate on AFD for us? It'd lessen the waste of time, all
but eliminate the sockpuppetry, foster compromise and discussion among the
representatives, etc. The appointment of representatives could use STV or
some other proportional scheme, so all significant factions would still be
represented. Any user could still comment on a proposal and present evidence
to be considered by the representatives. A quorum could be set - if there
aren't say 6 voters then the time is extended until there are.

I don't really like the fact that AFD has become all about voting and not
about consensus, but I don't think that's going to change. If it isn't, then
let's at least streamline the voting process.

Even if you think AFD provides good results, think about how well it scales.
It doesn't, and ultimately this is a problem which is going to need a
solution.

--[[:en:User:Bratsche|Ben]]

Anthony


from_name: Jeremy Dunck

subject: [Wikitech-l] page.page_latest updated?

body:
I see that page.page_latest isn't updated when a saving a revision.

How often is it updated, and what updates it?


from_name: SPUI

body:
SJ wrote:
> A link to the placeopedia [PP] entry might not be useful on average.
> On the other hand, a geotag, formatted according to Wikipedia
> geotagging-style (once that is settled on), could be added
> automatically.  Then an eager geotagging Wikipedian could quickly find
> the right geo-coordinates via PP, add a PP entry with the appropriate
> title, and thereby update the WP article.

We already have lat/long automatically in all Rambot articles, and
whenever I write an article about a bridge or the like I put it in using
the geolinks-US-fooscale templates.


body:
On 10/17/05, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> SJ wrote:
> > A link to the placeopedia [PP] entry might not be useful on average.
> > On the other hand, a geotag, formatted according to Wikipedia
> > geotagging-style (once that is settled on), could be added
> > automatically. Then an eager geotagging Wikipedian could quickly find
> > the right geo-coordinates via PP, add a PP entry with the appropriate
> > title, and thereby update the WP article.
>
> We already have lat/long automatically in all Rambot articles, and
> whenever I write an article about a bridge or the like I put it in using
> the geolinks-US-fooscale templates.

I put latitude and longitude on a bunch of my images on the commons. It'd be
nice if there was a standard for that, and we could probably tag a large
portion of the images there.


from_name: Snowspinner

subject: [WikiEN-l] So what do we do about this?

body:
[[2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities]]
and its 8 sub-articles, at present, take up 56085 words. This is five
times as much as the whole of our coverage on Immanuel Kant.

The articles are, needless to say, utter crap - full of conspiracy
theory rantings and POV, they read like the collected waste products
of a month of blogging, which is, not coincidentally, exactly what
they are.

All of them have been VfDed on two occasions a year or so ago when
the election actually happened, and survived. In that time, they've
only gotten worse, more bloated, and more absurd.

What can we do about these articles, and other cases of what we might
call POV by volume - [[Jack Thompson (attorney)]] and [[Westboro
Baptist Church]] spring to mind here as well.

My inclination, quite honestly, is to speedy all nine of these
election articles and let people start over. Whatever comes now, a
year after the event, cannot possibly be as appallingly bad as this.

And don't just shoot back with {{sofixit}} - there's no good fix. It
would involve deleting 90% of all 8 of these articles, a change that
would be quickly reverted anyway, and, with the way my editing has
been going, probably lead to my getting another RfC, because they
seem all the rage.

We need some sort of system that's going to untangle this kind of
mess - something that doesn't rely on enough people with a whit of
common sense watchlisting the articles and being willing to angrily
revert the stupid, because, quite frankly, that obviously didn't work
here.

Thoughts? Jimbo in particular?

-Snowspinner


from_name: geni

body:
Are they a copyvio?
--
geni


from_name: Carbonite

subject: [WikiEN-l] So what do we do about this?

body:
I wish you the best of luck with trying to improve these articles, but I
hope you're up for a challenge. The amount of resistance to even the
smallest change in these articles is simply staggering. I can't even imagine
what would happen if they were speedied. Fire and brimstone instantly comes
to mind.

Good luck!
Carbonite

On 10/17/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> [[2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities]]
> and its 8 sub-articles, at present, take up 56085 words. This is five
> times as much as the whole of our coverage on Immanuel Kant.
>
> The articles are, needless to say, utter crap - full of conspiracy
> theory rantings and POV, they read like the collected waste products
> of a month of blogging, which is, not coincidentally, exactly what
> they are.
>
> All of them have been VfDed on two occasions a year or so ago when
> the election actually happened, and survived. In that time, they've
> only gotten worse, more bloated, and more absurd.
>
> What can we do about these articles, and other cases of what we might
> call POV by volume - [[Jack Thompson (attorney)]] and [[Westboro
> Baptist Church]] spring to mind here as well.
>
> My inclination, quite honestly, is to speedy all nine of these
> election articles and let people start over. Whatever comes now, a
> year after the event, cannot possibly be as appallingly bad as this.
>
> And don't just shoot back with {{sofixit}} - there's no good fix. It
> would involve deleting 90% of all 8 of these articles, a change that
> would be quickly reverted anyway, and, with the way my editing has
> been going, probably lead to my getting another RfC, because they
> seem all the rage.
>
> We need some sort of system that's going to untangle this kind of
> mess - something that doesn't rely on enough people with a whit of
> common sense watchlisting the articles and being willing to angrily
> revert the stupid, because, quite frankly, that obviously didn't work
> here.
>
> Thoughts? Jimbo in particular?
>
> -Snowspinner
> _______________________________________________
> 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] Why AFD works Great

body:
On 10/17/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> According to what law?
> Ec

IANAL

But I suspect the digital millenium copyright act is in there somewhere

--
geni


subject: [Wikitech-l] page.page_latest updated?

body:
On 10/17/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Jeremy Dunck wrote:
> > I see that page.page_latest isn't updated when a saving a revision.
>
> It sure is, or else we've got a real nasty bug! ;)

Ugh, OK, I made two mistakes at the same time.  :-/

Thanks for putting up with me.


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] So what do we do about this?

body:
Snowspinner wrote:

> [[2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities]]
> and its 8 sub-articles, at present, take up 56085 words. This is five
> times as much as the whole of our coverage on Immanuel Kant.
>
> The articles are, needless to say, utter crap - full of conspiracy
> theory rantings and POV, they read like the collected waste products
> of a month of blogging, which is, not coincidentally, exactly what
> they are.

The best solution I've been able to come up with is to just slap NPOV
and factual-dispute tags on these sorts of things, nearly indefinitely
(or at least until such unlikely time as they don't deserve them).  Then
we might have crappy articles in the encyclopedia, but at least we warn
our readers right up front about it.

-Mark


body:
On 10/17/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > I put latitude and longitude on a bunch of my images on the
> > commons. It'd be
> > nice if there was a standard for that, and we could probably tag a
> > large
> > portion of the images there.
>
> How do you do that out of interest? GPS? Can you give an example URL.

Nah, I just did it by hand using one of those map sites (I think it was
mapquest). And now that I'm looking, I did it with a lot fewer pictures than
I thought I did. I can't find an example, and I swear I looked up the
information on http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Vetstadium.jpg and
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:DSCF0281.JPG. Anyway, this search
function on mediawiki really sucks, I don't yet have my images on commons
well organized, and I have an assignment for a class due in 4 hours, so I'm
going to have to bail on finding an example for now.

I actually managed to create a replica of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Capemaypoint.JPG using google earth. It
had the same angle and zoom and everything. I had this displayed on a
subpage of my user page, and I thought it was pretty damn neat, but it was
deleted by Kelly Martin. I think I still have the image on a hard drive
somewhere, but it's not on my main drive.

Lots of UK place articles have UK grid refs and so on which could be
> extracted,
> although they need conversion. I would add more geo data if there
> were standard
> templates etc. I do have a GPS card somewhere, but I wish my camera
> had it built in.

Yeah, I'd love to have a camera that could just add it to the metadata.

I am very keen on adding geolocation data to wikipedia. The google
> maps interface
> is nasty though - more interested in building it into WP itself.

In the really long term I'd love to see an open content mapping site. In the
meantime I think we should stick to using templates if we're going to link
to non-open content sources. This way we can change the source if anyone
ever does come out with something open.

OK, back to work. 3 hours and 50 minutes left.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD works Great

body:
Justin Cormack wrote:

> Fair enough - my though is if we get 10 times as many people on patrol
> can we use it as a requested articles feed? It might need a process,
> or even just a feed into requested articles (where the URL could have
> been dumped). I admit I have stopped looking at new articles now though.

I do occasionally use it as a requested-articles feed, and have written
several fairly lengthy articles starting from sub-stubs.  Honestly,
though, there is no shortage of requested articles, so the link-only
articles aren't really providing much of a service---if I wanted to
write an article and was not sure on what to write, there is a very
lengthy page already on Wikipedia for requested articles.  I'm not
inclined to allow people who create link-only articles to get their
requests somehow automatically moved to the front of the queue just
because they're not allowed to be deleted.

Which is to say, I half-agree---if people are so inclined, feel free to
turn a sub-stub into a real article.  But if not, it's no great loss if
it gets deleted.  If you feel particularly badly about it, add it to
[[Wikipedia:Requested articles]] after you delete it.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] So what do we do about this?

body:
On Oct 17, 2005, at 9:49 PM, geni wrote:

>>
>
> don't be too certian after a year it will probably only be the real
> fanatics who do any real creation.
>

Yeah, but they'll have to go combing the archives of blogs instead of
the front pages. It'll slow them down.

-Snowspinner