from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] [pdqbanker@justice.com: SECOND NOTICE - VIOLATION OF COPYRIGHT - BOMIS.COM DBA WIKIPEDIA.ORG]

body:
If you read this, I guarantee you will be entertained.  I don't
guarantee much in this world, but I'll stand behind this one.

----- Forwarded message from legal services division <pdqbanker at justice.com> -----

From: "legal services division" <pdqbanker at justice.com>
Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2003 00:06:45 -0700 (PDT)
To: jwales at bomis.com, brion at pobox.com
Subject: SECOND NOTICE - VIOLATION OF COPYRIGHT - BOMIS.COM DBA WIKIPEDIA.ORG

ATTENTION: WHOM IT MAY CONCERN [Associates, Courts, &c]
ATTENTION: Jimmy Wales, Bomis.com [purports Wikipedia]
ATTENTION: Brion Vibber, USC [purports Wikipedia.org]
[We apologize to those only now being notified of this]
[Ombudsman, note: We will need interState cooperations]

YOU ARE RECEIVING THIS E-MAIL MESSAGE, BECAUSE:

1.

Wikipedia.org has failed to remove all public remarks
on all its websites purporting its public encyclopedia
abusive of the author, his article, submittal thereof,
American Standard Metric Time, his legal copyright to
have published only correct renderings, his supply of
further required submittal of information, his right to
supply that information by the route preferred by said
Wikipedia.org itself (over contentious Editors), his
reports of abuse of said article and rights, and his
right as a decent citizen and peer, to not be slandered
and scurrilously characterized and assaulted in public,
to not be irreverently insinuated with the commanders
in chief of the war between the USA and Iraq, for the
purpose of the same said article;... UNDER THE LAWS OF
CALIFORNIA, OF THE INTERNET, THE USA AND PER THE FIRST
NOTICE (COPY ENCLOSED, EXPANDED).

EG: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandalism_in_Progress
PRESENT: "... He has also vandalised the Talk:American
Metric Standard (an already fictional page ...".

(It is recognized that many other items have dropped
off for time and length but the above webpage remains
evident that required corrections were not completed,
maybe were not possible in the system built for said
Wikipedia.org and its "public" "encyclopedia".)

2.

Furthermore, during this same interval that Wikipedia
abuses remained published (on-web), just two days ago
the author survived murderous assassination in public
(at night) by two unknown thugs bludgeoning his head
with laden beer bottles (illegal in the place; and he
does not eat alcohols nor associate), 10-20 contusions
and one bulbous laceration, and falsely accusing him by
sexual slur essentially that of Wikipedia Editors'
falsity and slander published by and on Wikipedia.org,
and discussing that they did not find his wallet.

(It may be excessively coincident, the Wikipedia.org
web-server was solidly crashed or hacked the same day:
This reeks like a mafia operation balance of payments,
albeit Wikipedia Editors are world wide and the most
culpable in this incident in terror-prolific Ireland;
Also, the Wikipedia parent includes babes.bomis.com.)

Whereas Wikipedia.org failed to comply with the listed
demands to remove said published malicious and sexual
slanders, under timely notice, Wikipedia and bomis.com
and collaborative institutions, can and shall therefor
be entertained as complicit and potentially accessory.
Such magnitude of assault has not happened prior upon
the author, and there was no instigation here. As this
occurred in Honolulu, the trial shall commence here in
Honolulu, not California, at the perpetrators' expense.

We append note that the author is presently of sound
mind and body despite the duress in injuries sustained.

IN SUMMARY: Wikipedia.org is not a public encyclopedia
but an encyclopedic adult forum of topical discussions.

/rkp
Lanthus Corporation legal division
_______

FOREWORD EXPANSION TO FIRST NOTICE:

Whereas: Official Wikipedia editing member "ST?D/??RE"
AKA "User:Jtdirl" (having a personal page pretending a
doctor's degree as well as numerous other perniciously
suspect credits) deliberately vandalised, initially by
insertion into said submitted article, his impertinent
gibberish for the rotations and revolutions of Earth
and Sun, equating 1 centigrad of Earth rotation to 1
Km, without recognition of the solar meridian in the
author's explained equations of daytime (Jtdirl failed
to see the Earth going around the sun additionally to
rotating on its axis, or significantly differentiate
365.25 solar days from 366.25 sidereal rotations per
year---if there exists even reason to compare). Jtdirl
then appended unconscionable remarks for ridicule: eg.
on sphericity of the Earth being a "false assumption",
which the author then pared for clarity of statement.

Whereas: Subsequently two official Wikipedia editing
members "User:Mintguy" and said prior "User:Jtdirl",
further vandalized said article (of Jtdirl's already
vandalised form), by its deletion, false assertion of
violation of copyright, and invitations by redirection
of public "encyclopedia" readers to their explanations
rife with slanders, sexual slurs, rantings against the
author, and other barratries, and especially to their
one combined paragraph of ribaldry (unlike members who
post their own separate paragraphs these two posted one
indistinguishable paragraph, the second linking also to
his personal page interest in "gay rights"). The author
returned to Wikipedia to view changes and adjust said
impertinent mistaken insertion to minimal correctness
if yet irrelevant, but found this barratry committed by
now-several editing members.

CONTINUED FROM FIRST NOTICE: [EDITED]

From:   "legal services division"
<pdqbanker at justice.com>
Date:   Mon Mar 24 15:01:46 2003 (PST)
To:   jwales at bomis.com
Cc:   brion at pobox.com, license-violation at gnu.org,
support at sourceforge.net, reception at sandiego.gov,
legal at Lanthus.net
Subject:   FIRST NOTICE - VIOLATION OF COPYRIGHT -
BOMIS.COM DBA WIKIPEDIA.ORG
Message-Id:
<20030324150148.11881.h015.c014.wm at mail.justice.com.criticalpath.net>
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Dear [...]

Whereas: Purported "wikipedia" "public" "encyclopedia"
website content misrepresents and misinterprets the
content of the reference source website: [by following]

Whereas: Your official members (those with personal
pages: "Jtdirl, JohnOwens, Salsa Shark") repeatedly
removed the copyright notice-information, supplied by
the article author per your website request;

Whereas: Your members repeatedly libeled said posting
of said required copyright information, labeling that
specifically as, "Jtdirl (removing garbage vandalism by
[IP of the author]...; JohnOwens (Reverting; personal
threats? Tsk tsk.); JohnOwens (There's a "history", you
know....); Salsa Shark (Revert barratry & vandalism)";

Whereas: You are in violation of said US copyright;

Whereas: You have refused---and notified us that you
are, refusing---ordinary submitted corrections thereto
and therewith;

Whereas: You are prohibited from referring in violation
thereto and thereof, whether by name or linkage;

Therefor: You are required to remove and delete and
expunge, every of your links to the website: This
includes every article, every page, every paragraph,
every comment, every phrase, every reference by name or
by number, that is exposed to the public Internet; And
not make these public again:

This includes (per your purported "wikipedia"):
1. your encyclopedic articles pages,
2. your "Older versions" pages,
3. your "Discuss this page" pages,
4. your "Wikipedia:Votes for deletion" pages AKA
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion
5. your "Talk" pages,
6. your "Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress" pages,
7. your "Older versions" of these above said pages,
8. your other encyclopedic articles pages that link to
the same, wherever you have persistently kept abusive
content, or not removed it upon first notice,
9. and any other comments and references thereto pages,
10. In all languages; on all servers;
As these are public.

Furthermore, we are reviewing the legality of your
specific statement regarding the author, wherein your
publication states, "this unfortunate soul wears
himself out adding to these pages on the hour, every
hour. (Every friggin' hour!) ST?D/??RE 03:55 Mar 15,
2003 (UTC)". We believe the word infracts the Internet
Children Protection provisions (which are not all Law
at this time) as it is not kept locked from public view
but was in fact pointed-to by your posted primary
redirect reference replacing the author's article; and
that it was not given in the interest of your Internet
services to the public. Yet it persists despite prompt
notification of your abuse; the verbage is "flaming"
irrelevant to the discussion of deletions; and your
publication chose to link the author's and thirty or so
other encyclopedic articles to the same "flames",
viewable by children and adults---many of whom do not
hold your views on what is ethical on the Internet.
[NB: We believe that the word, friggin', as such, is
the same as the word, frigging, especially in the light
of the data on the said "ST?D/??RE" personal page
averring "Interests: ... gay rights,..."]

We also found that your tracker (sourceforge.net) is
crude: Several days ago I clicked on a link purporting
as having been submitted by "Salsa Shark"---but found
in its stead, the content of our client: Thus you have
rife misattribution errors through your use of said
tracker. (We reported it promptly, and your webmaster
did adjust it to present separate links, though his
comments pretended "un-refreshed history" which could
not have caused a mis-linkage, unless technically, we
suspect, your system relates links "relatively" via
multiple databases, thereby miscorrelating history.)

If you do not have control of purported "wikipedia"
then [the] remarks just e-mailed (ENCLOSED) shall be
considered legal harassment via the Internet.

You were given ample information, responses, necessary
warnings, each step along the way---the author himself
posted his article and copyright-information correctly
and prominently---we are sorry that you did not heed
any of the warning signs, but chose to abuse the author
and his rights repeatedly each step of the way [...].

[We also note that Wikipedia.org does not maintain
listed contacts and addresses with netsol.com WhoIs]

/rkp
_____

On Mon, 24 Mar 2003 12:11:00 -0800 (PST), Jimmy Wales
wrote:

> Content-Disposition: inline
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> Message-Id: <20030324062810.D4855 at joey.bomis.com>
> In-Reply-To:
<20030321133214.4825.h013.c014.wm at mail.justice.com.criticalpath.net>; from pdqbanker at justice.com on Fri, Mar
21, 2003 at 01:32:11PM -0800
> Subject: Re: flames against "American Metric Time"
> X-Received: 24 Mar 2003 14:46:34 GMT
> From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
> References:
<20030321133214.4825.h013.c014.wm at mail.justice.com.criticalpath.net>
> Delivered-To: justice.com%pdqbanker at justice.com
> Return-Path: <jwales at bomis.com>
> Received: (cpmta 2017 invoked from network); 24 Mar
2003 06:46:34 -0800
> Received: from 130.94.122.196 (HELO joey.bomis.com)
> 	by smtp.c014.snv.cp.net (209.228.35.69) with SMTP;
24 Mar 2003 06:46:34 -0800
> Received: from joey.bomis.com
(jwales at localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1])
> 	by joey.bomis.com (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id
h2OESABC005212
> 	for <pdqbanker at justice.com>; Mon, 24 Mar 2003
06:28:11 -0800
> Received: (from jwales at localhost)
> 	by joey.bomis.com (8.12.8/8.12.8/Submit) id
h2OESA6t005211
> 	for pdqbanker at justice.com; Mon, 24 Mar 2003 06:28:10
-0800
> Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 06:28:10 -0800
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> To: pdqbanking division <pdqbanker at justice.com>
> User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i
>
>
> You are banned from wikipedia.  If you post anything
> further, I will
> vigorously pursue legal action against you.
>
> --Jimbo

_____________REFERENCE (netsol.com)___________

Registrant:
Bomis (BOMIS-DOM)
   4455 Lamont St, Suite 3
   San Diego
   CA,92109
   US

   Domain Name: BOMIS.COM

   Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
      Wales, Jimmy  (JW13135)		internic-mgr at BOMIS.COM
      Bomis, Inc.
      4455 LAMONT ST STE 3
      SAN DIEGO, CA  92109-4516
      US
      619-273-9361 619-273-9363

   Record expires on 16-Nov-2003.
   Record created on 15-Nov-1996.
   Database last updated on 24-Mar-2003 15:08:10 EST.

   Domain servers in listed order:

   JOEY.BOMIS.COM               130.94.122.196
   S.NS.VERIO.NET               192.67.14.15

____________OTHER ADDRESSES GIVEN_______________

Registrant:
Bomis, Inc. (3APES-DOM)
   3585 Hancock St. Ste. A
   San Diego
   CA,92110
   US

   Domain Name: 3APES.COM

   Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
      Wales, Jimmy  (JW13135)		internic-mgr at BOMIS.COM
      Bomis, Inc.
      4455 LAMONT ST STE 3
      SAN DIEGO, CA  92109-4516
      US
      619-273-9361 619-273-9363

   Record expires on 06-May-2003.
   Record created on 06-May-1999.
   Database last updated on 24-Mar-2003 17:36:47 EST.

   Domain servers in listed order:

   JOEY.BOMIS.COM               130.94.122.196
   ZUUL.BOMIS.COM               130.94.121.27
____________________# # # #___________________

Mr. Raymond Kenneth Petry, Director
pdqbanking legal services division of Lanthus
Corporation
Lanthus Surrogate Executive Accessions Management
1-8019982364 1-2063507450
1-206-350-7450

------- End of forwarded message -------

Mr. Raymond Kenneth Petry, Director
pdqbanking legal services division of Lanthus Corporation
Lanthus Surrogate Executive Accessions Management
1-8019982364 1-2063507450
1-206-350-7450
_________________________________________________
FindLaw - Free Case Law, Jobs, Library, Community
http://www.FindLaw.com
Get your FREE @JUSTICE.COM email!
http://mail.Justice.com

----- End forwarded message -----


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Nick Reinking

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: server down

body:
On Mon, Apr 07, 2003 at 12:40:12AM -0700, Jason Richey wrote:
> Moving the mailing lists to a different machine would be fairly easy
> to do.  The only troubles that might arise (that I foresee) are these:
>
> * We have limited rack space in the colo.  All of our current servers
>   are either 1U or 2U rackmount servers.  A standard tower-type server
>   would be a bit of a squeeze in there...
>
> * we are almost out of IP  addresses in our current block of allocated
>   IPs, I don't recall how easy it is for us to have another block
>   routed to our cage.
>
> * our remote power control unit is nearly full.  This is currently our
>   only means of rebooting a machin that has lost internet connectivity
>   (aside from a 200 mile drive by your truly).  Of course, this isn't
>   necessarily a deal-breaker, just a thought.  If anybody has a IP
>   based KVM switch available... :)
>
> * come to think of power, I'm not sure how many watts we have going
>   into that cage either.  Of course, this is also something that can
>   be fixed if our current setup doesn't have enough power.
>
> That's my piece...
>
> Jason Richey
>
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
> > On Sunday 06 April 2003 05:00 am, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> > > aparently, the wikipedia server is down.  This hasn't been reported on the
> > > list, although this might have been because the email server is down too.
> >
> > You might be surprised to know that the Wikipedia encyclopedia and the
> > Wikipedia mail server are both on the same box.
> >
> > Could all the mailing lists work just fine on a separate cheapo AMD K6-II 500
> > MHZ Linux box with two 4 gig hard drives, 256MB of SDRAM and a couple network
> > cards? If so, I hereby donate such a dinosaur to serve as a mail server (of
> > course I'll have to test these components to see if they still work so the
> > specs may change - somebody else will have to configure the mail server part
> > though).
> >
> > Not being able to talk to each other as a group during a crash like this isn't
> > exactly an optimal way to run a project the size of Wiki(p/m)edia.
> >
> > -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

I would be willing to host the mailing lists on my server
(www.twoevils.org).  It is a 2x PII 233MHz, 256MB RAM, with about 40GB
of disk space.  I'm running Postfix, so it would have to work with that,
but otherwise, I don't have any problems with it.  It is connected to a
1Mbit DSL line, so it has quite a bit of bandwidth.

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [pdqbanker@justice.com: SECOND NOTICE -
  VIOLATION OF COPYRIGHT - BOMIS.COM DBA WIKIPEDIA.ORG]

body:
At 05:29 AM 4/7/03 -0700, Jimbo wrote:
>If you read this, I guarantee you will be entertained.  I don't
>guarantee much in this world, but I'll stand behind this one.
>
>
>
>----- Forwarded message from legal services division
><pdqbanker at justice.com> -----
>
>From: "legal services division" <pdqbanker at justice.com>
>Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2003 00:06:45 -0700 (PDT)
>To: jwales at bomis.com, brion at pobox.com
>Subject: SECOND NOTICE - VIOLATION OF COPYRIGHT - BOMIS.COM DBA WIKIPEDIA.ORG
>
>ATTENTION: WHOM IT MAY CONCERN [Associates, Courts, &c]
>ATTENTION: Jimmy Wales, Bomis.com [purports Wikipedia]
>ATTENTION: Brion Vibber, USC [purports Wikipedia.org]
>[We apologize to those only now being notified of this]
>[Ombudsman, note: We will need interState cooperations]

<snip rest>

Ye gods and little fishes!

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: server down

body:
On Sun, 2003-04-06 at 08:27, Torsten Bronger wrote:
> In this context I have a question: I have very often problems with
> the connection speed to Wikipedia, especially the time when the
> first bytes flow after a page request.  Is this a problem on my side
> or is the Wikipedia server sometimes just swamped?

Actual data transfer should be very fast (try downloading the database
dumps! :) but the initial connection may be slow, especially on the wiki
itself. The wiki has to grab the page data from the database, render it
into HTML, and only then can send you a web page, so there's an initial
delay, which can be uncomfortably long if the db is highly loaded.

Sometimes the output buffering is such that it will send the very
beginning of the page in one chunk, and then the rest of the page
shortly thereafter; this could also result in seemingly slow transfer
speeds.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: copyrightexpired.com (fwd)

body:
It looks pretty neat.  I wish his website did not say this:

>They cannot be used for any commercial purpose without my prior
>consent.

If they really are 'copyright expired', then he can't make that kind
of claim.  Presumably, with a domain like that, he's interested in
tending to the "intellectual commons", and ought not to make such
claims.

--Jimbo


list: wikien-l

from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: wikipedia privacy

body:
koyaanis qatsi wrote:

>Toby wrote:

>>If you want to retain your anonymity, then, your
>>*only* recourse is your ISP, since only they
>>can make the link between your IP number and
>>your identity.  Wikipedia shouldn't fool
>>anybody about that.  We know your IP address,
>>and so does every other site that you visit.
>>Never think otherwise.

>Well, there are always VPNs and free & publicly
>available web proxies.  Oops, I thought otherwise.
>;-)

Fair enough, but the proxy knows where you came from.
Even anon.penet.fi got raided by the police.

Some hackers know how to put up enough barriers and misdirection
that their identities can be safely hidden on the Net.
Ordinary users don't and are not anonymous, even though it normally appears so.
The hackers that truly are anonymous will still be anonymous
even if the IP addresses that came to Wikipedia are displayed.

There is another possibility, which you've mentioned in another post,
and I will respond to it there.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia privacy

body:
koyaanis qatsi wrote:

>Oh, it's not hypothetical at all; they'll even
>"detain" (or, more properly, "disappear" [and q.v.
>Argentinian history for those not understanding that
>term]) people for something as innocuous as
>contributing to certain charities.  It happened
>recently with an Intel employee.

All the more reason that we should not give people the impression of anonymity
when their IP addresses are, in fact, being logged by us indefinitely.

>I'd argue that now is the time to be proactive, while
>it's still legal.  I think it woul be great to encrypt
>*all* IP addresses in the database, and to *chronjob
>scrap server logs every 24 hours.

Despite what I've said in other posts, I actually agree with you.
But this is a significant undertaking, to consistently attempt to
provide secure anonymity for our contributors.  I will support it ...
... BUT, until it's done, we should make IP addresses visible
and make it clear on the every edit page that contributions
are NOT anonymous yet.

IOW, you're proposing to change the reality, and that's fine with me.
But I am proposing to insist that reality match appearances.
Indeed, regardless of whether IPs are encrypted in the database,
whatever's in the database should be shown publicly.
If that's an encrypted ID, great -- we have anonymity.
If that's not encrypted, then people realise that they're not anonymous.
The fundamental principle to avoid fooling people --
which is actually a basic wiki principle in general --
is to make the information in the database publicly available.
Then if we want to provide anonymity -- and it is a good idea --
then the only way to give even the *appearance* of anonymity
is to actually provide anonymity in *reality* -- by encrypting IPs
before putting them into the database, as you suggested.

-- Toby


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Streamline the sysop recruiting process

body:
sannse wrote:

> I think Notheruser and Ams80 might have been missed?
> They have requested and been backed for sysops.

I didn't miss those two, but:

* I didn't want to do anything hasty toward the end of a week.
* I'm getting lazy ;-)

How about creating a Button that sysops can use to promote
other sysops? I'm getting tired of writing and checking SQL queries. Also, I don't want to become a gatekeeper :-(

We could (maybe?) hash out some rules, like:

1. Must be nominated and seconded (i.e., takes N votes where N >= 2? or N >= 3?).
2. Can't nominate or second anyone till you've been a sysop
for N days (N > 30 days? N > 90 days? N > 12 months?)

Note: I don't particularly care one way or another, and I'm
not trying to start a debate. I'm just trying to find a way
to avoid work! ^_^

Ed Poor
One of that tiny group of "developers"


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

body:
> (Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>):
> If you read this, I guarantee you will be entertained.  I don't
> guarantee much in this world, but I'll stand behind this one.
>
> [Snipped]

Hilarious.  If this guy actually makes it to a real court, let
me know.  I'd love to see this guy in front of a judge.


subject: Notheruser is now a sysop (was: [WikiEN-l] Sysop position request)

body:
Notheruser is now a sysop.

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia privacy

body:
Axel Boldt wrote:

>The Cunctator wrote:

>>There is nothing in the GFDL that makes anonymous edits problematic.

>There sure is.

I can see the argument that the GFDL requires
that we keep track of every contributor --
I buy that "the Wikipedia community" is insufficient.
What I don't understand is the difference between
a pseudonymous ID like "maveric149" and a pseudonymous ID
like "12.246.119.xxx" (which is not *anonymous* either).
These are names used by the individual Daniel Mayer on various occasions,
but even if we didn't know that the person behind them was really Mayer,
still they remain the names that he used when contributing the work.
Or, what's the difference between a pseudonymous ID like "Koyaanis Qatsi"
and a pseudonymous ID like "66.157.145.251"?
These are names used by an individual whose real name we *don't* know,
but again they're the IDs that he chose to use when contributing.

Even if we adopt KQ's suggestion of encrypting IP addresses,
then we should be all right if we confirm from contributors
that their contributions will be logged under a given random ID.
The edit page can say (in wiki markup):

----
Your contribution will be logged under the identifier ~~~.
Depending on how your Internet service provider works,
future contributions by you may or may not have this same identifier,
and future contributions logged under this identifier
may or may not always be from you.
If that's OK, then you can sumbit your contribution now.
But if you wish to choose your own unique identifier,
then you can [[Special:Login|register]] before submitting your contribution.
If you've already registered, then you can [[Special:Login|log in]].
----

IOW, we provide them with a pseudonym, or they may choose their own.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] The "wikidown" address

body:
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:

>The "wikidown" address just got spammed. Since there's no way
>to get off of spammers' lists once on, that pretty much demands
>that we change it. Further, whatever means we are using to
>announce that address to human beings should probably be fixed
>to make it less friendly to address-sucking bots.

Would it be possible to have somebody (or somebodies) from outside Bomis
run chronjobs that regularly check whether Wikpedia is down,
then paging you if it turns out that it is?
If that works, then we'd never have to publish a special address.

-- Toby


from_name: Anthere

body:
--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> I think your worries are just as sensible as mine
> ;-)
>
> I worry about making too much of a hierarchy. We
> already have...
>
> An Elite:
> * Dictator-for-life: Jimbo Wales (controls URLs,
> bandwidth, machines; sets policy)
> * Developers: can delete or alter any page, any
> time, without a trace! same for blocking, promoting,
> renaming users)
> * Sysops: can delete pages or protect them from the
> lower classes; can block IP's.
>
> A Lower-class:
> * Signed-in users - cannot be blocked, except by a
> developer
> * Anonymous (IP) users - can be blocked by any sysop
>
> This looks to me like 5 levels of power. Some people
> don't like us having that many levels. Some people
> profess to trust those in the top 2 levels (the Gang
> of Five); some make no such profession of trust.
>
> Although I worry about the long-term future of
> Wikipedia, so far it has weathered all storms. (Ah,
> that's easy for you to say, "Uncle Ed", sitting in
> your ivory tower... Yeah, you have a point...)
>
> Ed Poor

Mav proposition : a 6 level of power, depending on
each wikipedia decision

An Elite:
> * Dictator-for-life: Jimbo Wales (controls URLs,
> bandwidth, machines; sets policy)
> * Developers: can delete or alter any page, any
> time, without a trace! same for blocking, promoting,
> renaming users)
> * Upper sysops: can delete pages or protect them
from the lower classes; can see everyone IP's, block
IP's of anyone.

La bourgeoisie
> * Lowers sysops: can delete pages or protect them
from the lower classes; can block IP's of anonymous
only. Don't see users IP.

> A Lower-class:
> * Signed-in users - cannot be blocked, except by a
> developer
> * Anonymous (IP) users - can be blocked by any sysop

Toby proposition

An Elite:
> * Dictator-for-life: Jimbo Wales (controls URLs,
> bandwidth, machines; sets policy)
> * Developers: can delete or alter any page, any
> time, without a trace! same for blocking, promoting,
> renaming users)
> * Sysops: can delete pages or protect them from the
lower classes; can see everyone IP's, block IP's of
anyone.

> A Lower-class:
> * Signed-in users and anonymous - can see everyone
IP's. Can be blocked by any sysop.

Very lower class, lower class or lower sysop
(depending on the place and my mood)

Here, lower class

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body:
> (Oliver Pereira <omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk>):
> Hello list,
>
> This chap David Goldman has a website called copyrightexpired.com, where
> he has some old images that he has scanned. I'm forwarding our
> correspondence to the list, just to clutter it up and annoy everyone.
> *cough* I mean, because I'm not sure about copyright laws, and would like
> to get the opinions of people here just to make sure his pictures are all
> right to release under the GNU Free Documentation License.

If they are, as he claims, all published before 1922, then they are
in the public domain.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

body:
I think a simplified system would help. May I suggest:
*Dictator for life has ultimate rights, only one to block developers
*Developers have all the rights of dictator for life; except can block anyone except developers
*Logged in users (still no email required) can edit pages
*Anonymous people can only view the encyclopedia.
This still has 5 classes, but really only 2 1/2 classes of editors. Alternatively, we could have only 2 classes: Dictators-for-life and logged in users, but this presents several problems. No offence to Jimbo, but we shouldn't put *too* much exclusive power with him. However, if there are more than one dictators for life, they could ban eachother (or if they couldn't be banned...) and many bad things *could* happen.  I agree that every editor needs a talk page (like someone said in another post) but I think that all editors should be logged in.
 "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:I think your worries are just as sensible as mine ;-)

I worry about making too much of a hierarchy. We already have...

An Elite:
* Dictator-for-life: Jimbo Wales (controls URLs, bandwidth, machines; sets policy)
* Developers: can delete or alter any page, any time, without a trace! same for blocking, promoting, renaming users)
* Sysops: can delete pages or protect them from the lower classes; can block IP's.

A Lower-class:
* Signed-in users - cannot be blocked, except by a developer
* Anonymous (IP) users - can be blocked by any sysop

This looks to me like 5 levels of power. Some people don't like us having that many levels. Some people profess to trust those in the top 2 levels (the Gang of Five); some make no such profession of trust.

Although I worry about the long-term future of Wikipedia, so far it has weathered all storms. (Ah, that's easy for you to say, "Uncle Ed", sitting in your ivory tower... Yeah, you have a point...)

Ed Poor
Wikipedia Developer and Sysop
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

---------------------------------
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body:
Oops! I meant "can't...until you've been a SIGNED-IN CONTRIBUTOR for N days". I trust you, sannse, to nominate sysops, for what it's worth :-)

Ed Poor


body:
I know I should already know this, but what is the current process for actually making someone a sysop (not determining if they should be a sysop). Isn't the current system of determining who should be a sysop working? Why does it need to be automated?
 "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
sannse wrote:

> I think Notheruser and Ams80 might have been missed?
> They have requested and been backed for sysops.

I didn't miss those two, but:

* I didn't want to do anything hasty toward the end of a week.
* I'm getting lazy ;-)

How about creating a Button that sysops can use to promote
other sysops? I'm getting tired of writing and checking SQL queries. Also, I don't want to become a gatekeeper :-(

We could (maybe?) hash out some rules, like:

1. Must be nominated and seconded (i.e., takes N votes where N >= 2? or N >= 3?).
2. Can't nominate or second anyone till you've been a sysop
for N days (N > 30 days? N > 90 days? N > 12 months?)

Note: I don't particularly care one way or another, and I'm
not trying to start a debate. I'm just trying to find a way
to avoid work! ^_^

Ed Poor
One of that tiny group of "developers"

---------------------------------
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body:
Anthere wrote:

>Toby proposition

>An Elite:
>* Dictator-for-life: Jimbo Wales (controls URLs,
>  bandwidth, machines; sets policy)
>* Developers: can delete or alter any page, any
>  time, without a trace! same for blocking, promoting,
>  renaming users)
>* Sysops: can delete pages or protect them from the
>  lower classes; can see everyone IP's, block IP's of
>  anyone.

>A Lower-class:
>* Signed-in users and anonymous - can see everyone
>  IP's. Can be blocked by any sysop.

I'd really rather that the sysops were Bourgeoisie (middle class).
And to make that really work, we need to promote more people to that level.
It's an elite now only because it's too dam' small.
Frankly, I almost agree with Ed's old idea of forced promotions.

-- Toby


from_name: Sascha Noyes

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

> We append note that the author is presently of sound
> mind and body despite the duress in injuries sustained.

Yeah right, this is just too funny.

Best,
Sascha Noyes
- --
Please encrypt all correspondence.
PGP key available from:
http://individual.utoronto.ca/noyes/snoyes.asc
- --
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQE+kdISgzJdfX+cTW8RAkWuAJ41/TUEgWUX5lGoQcEDcCIguNLyawCghupr
6QrgwJ2gS/hOfUOfVqJ7jus=
=3w7X
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


body:
I think your worries are just as sensible as mine ;-)

I worry about making too much of a hierarchy. We already have...

An Elite:
* Dictator-for-life: Jimbo Wales (controls URLs, bandwidth, machines; sets policy)
* Developers: can delete or alter any page, any time, without a trace! same for blocking, promoting, renaming users)
* Sysops: can delete pages or protect them from the lower classes; can block IP's.

A Lower-class:
* Signed-in users - cannot be blocked, except by a developer
* Anonymous (IP) users - can be blocked by any sysop

This looks to me like 5 levels of power. Some people don't like us having that many levels. Some people profess to trust those in the top 2 levels (the Gang of Five); some make no such profession of trust.

Although I worry about the long-term future of Wikipedia, so far it has weathered all storms. (Ah, that's easy for you to say, "Uncle Ed", sitting in your ivory tower... Yeah, you have a point...)

Ed Poor
Wikipedia Developer and Sysop


from_name: koyaanis qatsi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia privacy

body:
Toby writes:
> IOW, we provide them with a pseudonym, or they may
choose their own.

I like this suggestion.  And, IMHO, if someone is
reading  and not writing, there's no reason to log
anything.  Just my opinion--and a suggestion that
would take a lot of coding and so probably not get
implemented anyway.  The coders are already quite
generous with their time; I'm not sure this would
necessarily be a priority.

kq

__________________________________________________
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Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://tax.yahoo.com


from_name: sannse

body:
Ed wrote (in part):

> How about creating a Button that sysops can use to promote
> other sysops? I'm getting tired of writing and checking SQL queries. Also,
I don't want to become a gatekeeper :-(

Sounds good.  Would people still request sysop status in the same way?

> We could (maybe?) hash out some rules, like:
>
> 1. Must be nominated and seconded (i.e., takes N votes where N >= 2? or N
>= 3?).
> 2. Can't nominate or second anyone till you've been a sysop
> for N days (N > 30 days? N > 90 days? N > 12 months?)

Both sound like sensible rules.  I see the sense in excluding very new
sysops from voting (and that would of course include me at this point).

>Ed Poor
> One of that tiny group of "developers"

Who are *very* much appreciated :)

Regards,

sannse


from_name: Oliver Pereira

body:
Hello list,

This chap David Goldman has a website called copyrightexpired.com, where
he has some old images that he has scanned. I'm forwarding our
correspondence to the list, just to clutter it up and annoy everyone.
*cough* I mean, because I'm not sure about copyright laws, and would like
to get the opinions of people here just to make sure his pictures are all
right to release under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2003 13:40:21 -0400
From: David Goldman <dgoldma2 at twcny.rr.com>
To: Oliver Pereira <omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: copyrightexpired.com

That would all be fine. Let me know if you need exact publication dates for
any certain image. They are all published before 1922. The only ones that I
don't have documentation on are the Tiere der Urwelt cards from Germany
(some of the color images). There appearance suggests pre WWI but no date
has been confirmed.
David

----- Original Message -----
From: "Oliver Pereira" <omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk>
To: "David Goldman" <dgoldma2 at twcny.rr.com>
Sent: Monday, April 07, 2003 1:03 PM
Subject: Re: copyrightexpired.com

> Dear David,
>
> Thank you for replying to my question about your website,
> copyrightexpired.com. I'm sorry that I've taken so long to reply. I was
> wondering, since neither of us is a lawyer, would it be all right for me
> to quote your message on the Wikipedia mailing list, so that someone there
> with more legal expertise can check if our using your images in the
> Wikipedia would be all right? There are some complications in the GNU Free
> Documentation License which I don't fully understand, so I'd feel more
> comfortable if we could get another opinion.
>
> If we did use your images, we would credit you in the associated image
> information page, and put a link back to your website there. We don't
> generally put credits in the article pages themselves, where the images
> are shown, for space reasons. However, clicking on an image takes you to
> the associated image information page, where the credit would be given.
> Does that sound all right to you?
>
> Thanks again,
>
> Oliver Pereira
>
>
> On Thu, 6 Mar 2003, David Goldman wrote:
>
> > Hi, the images at that web site are found in books and magazines old
enough
> > to be considered in the public domain. But it is merely my understanding
and
> > not based on any formal legal research. I like the idea of the Wikipedia
and
> > welcome you to use any of the images on my site that you find useful.
Since
> > I have other sites that show pictures belonging to practicing artists,
I
> > thought it prudent to try and have people contact me before using any
images
> > in general. I would appreciate a reference back to my website on any of
the
> > illustrations that you use.
> > Best regards,
> > David Goldman
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Oliver Pereira" <omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk>
> > To: "David Goldman" <dgoldma2 at twcny.rr.com>
> > Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2003 10:06 PM
> > Subject: copyrightexpired.com
> >
> >
> > > Dear Mr. Goldman,
> > >
> > > I have just discovered your website, copyrightexpired.com, and have
some
> > > questions about it. You say on your main page that the site contains a
> > > "sampling of my collection of Prehistoric Animal images published
prior to
> > > 1923", and the domain name suggests that the images are no longer
> > > copyrighted. However, you then go on to state conditions under which
users
> > > may or may not use the images. Presumably you would only be able to do
> > > this if you owned the copyrights. Is this the case?
> > >
> > > I would be interested in using the images in an online collaborative
> > > encyclopaedia, called the "Wikipedia". Ideally, images included in the
> > > Wikipedia should be released under the terms of the GNU Free
Documentation
> > > License by the copyright holder, if there is one. If you are the
copyright
> > > holder, would you consent to do this?
> > >
> > > Thank you for your help in answering my questions,
> > >
> > > Oliver Pereira
> > >
> > > --
> > >
> > > See:-
> > >
> > > copyrightexpired.com:
> > > * http://www.copyrightexpired.com/
> > >
> > > Wikipedia:
> > > * http://www.wikipedia.org/
> > >
> > > +-------------------------------------------+
> > > | Oliver Pereira                            |
> > > | Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
> > > | University of Southampton                 |
> > > | omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
> > > +-------------------------------------------+
> > >
> >
> >
>
> +-------------------------------------------+
> | Oliver Pereira                            |
> | Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
> | University of Southampton                 |
> | omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
> +-------------------------------------------+
>


body:
Ed wrote:

> Oops! I meant "can't...until you've been a SIGNED-IN CONTRIBUTOR for N
days". I trust you, sannse, to nominate sysops, for what it's worth :-)

Thanks :)

But if we were to use an automated system of some sort, I think your
original suggestion was better (even if it wasn't what you meant ;)

Of course we have many good contributors who choose not to be sysops for
whatever reason, and with the current system there is no problem in them
nominating others.   But with an automated system I can see situations where
a problem contributor might nominate another problem contributor, or someone
could make an second account to nominate themselves (even with a delay on
eligibility).

Or maybe I just worry too much

sannse


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: server down

body:
On Monday 07 April 2003 05:00 am, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Yes, that would be more than enough to host the mail (and perhaps the
> backup dumps?). Best talk to Jimbo and Jason about transporting and
> setting up hardware.

Cool. Do what you want/can with the hardware but 4 gigs for the /home
directory for mailing lists archive and Wikipedia backups would be a bit
tight, no?

> As Lee has suggested, it might also be good to have some stuff at a
> separate provider in case the hosting is knocked out altogether.

I think that would be the best solution - esp given Jason's email about space
and IP address constraints. We really should reserve all the space and IPs we
can get for production boxes used for webserver and database functions.

It would also be great if this could be used at piclab as Lee suggested since
that would save me 30 bucks in shipping (Lee and I live about 30 minutes from
each other) and the mail server would be easy for Lee to fix if needed. How
much bandwidth would all the mailing lists suck anyway? IMO it would be best
to keep them all on the same box wherever they end-up.

>What, you didn't enjoy your nice relaxing 22-hour break from routine? :)

If it weren't for Wikipedia downtime/slowness I would rarely get a chance to
clean my apartment, do laundry or finish school work :-)

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

PS I just want to thank Jason for driving the 200 miles and spending the time
needed (on a Saturday!) to fix the Wikipedia server. Thank you Jason!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Streamline the sysop recruiting process

body:
On Monday 07 April 2003 02:43 pm, Anthere wrote:
> Mav proposition : a 6 level of power, depending on
> each wikipedia decision
>
> An Elite:
> > * Dictator-for-life: Jimbo Wales (controls URLs,
> > bandwidth, machines; sets policy)
> > * Developers: can delete or alter any page, any
> > time, without a trace! same for blocking, promoting,
> > renaming users)
> > * Upper sysops: can delete pages or protect them
>
> from the lower classes; can see everyone IP's, block
> IP's of anyone.
>
> La bourgeoisie
>
> > * Lowers sysops: can delete pages or protect them
>
> from the lower classes; can block IP's of anonymous
> only. Don't see users IP.
>
>
> > A Lower-class:
> > * Signed-in users - cannot be blocked, except by a
> > developer
> > * Anonymous (IP) users - can be blocked by any sysop

Eh? I don't remember calling for two types of sysops. I've only advocated for
sysops to have the ability to block vandals who have happened to log-in. The
particular method by which I proposed this was simple; allow sysops the
ability to see the IPs of logged-in users.

I still think this is the best solution. Perhaps our previous disagreement was
based on the above misunderstanding? I would have opposed a two-level sysop
scheme too.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

WikiKarma
The usual at [[April 1]]


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Streamline the sysop recruiting process

body:
On Monday 07 April 2003 02:43 pm, Poor Edmund wrote:
> How about creating a Button that sysops can use to promote
> other sysops? I'm getting tired of writing and checking SQL queries. Also,
> I don't want to become a gatekeeper :-(

This is how it was in phase II. I liked it since I could promote somebody soon
after they posted a request for Adminhood on the mailing list. Right now
there is a bottleneck at the developer level that IMO simply should not exist
and is limiting the growth of the Admin ranks.

> We could (maybe?) hash out some rules, like:
>
> 1. Must be nominated and seconded (i.e., takes N votes where N >= 2? or N
> >= 3?). 2. Can't nominate or second anyone till you've been a sysop
> for N days (N > 30 days? N > 90 days? N > 12 months?)

I don't think we need hard and fast rules on this yet - our informal process
of people asking for the upgrade on the language-specific mailing lists to
ask for the upgrade seems to work. Most requests are accepted without worry
but some are rejected (like TMC or a ultra green newbie that nobody knows).

We just need to get rid of the bottleneck at the developer level. IMO there is
no need to leave people in suspense after asking to be an Admin - this gives
the impression that Adminship is something special and tightly restricted to
a very select few. I can only imagine that such a perception would tend to
make people think twice before asking. The only non-newbie users who should
think twice before asking are users who tend to get into more than their fair
share of edit wars and POV disputes or who are otherwise not viewed as being
trustworthy.

Oh and automatically sysoping users based on some computational criteria such
as age of user account and/or number of edits made would be like handing out
hand guns to everybody on their 18th birthday. Cry havoc!

At one time I was an advocate of auto-sysoping but my views on this have
changed. I now think that human judgment should be filter at this level.
Otherwise we might find ourselves with TMC, Clutch and Two16-like Admins.
True these users are now banned and would also have been banned if they were
Admins, but as Admins they would have done far more damage before getting
banned.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

WikiKarma
The usual at [[April 2]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wrong list! (was Streamline the sysop recruiting process)

body:
Hello people! This is a potential policy issue that could affect the WHOLE
project. So please discuss this on the right list (hint: it doesn't have a
language code in the address).

Thanks!

--mav


body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Eh? I don't remember calling for two types of
> sysops. I've only advocated for
> sysops to have the ability to block vandals who have
> happened to log-in. The
> particular method by which I proposed this was
> simple; allow sysops the
> ability to see the IPs of logged-in users.

Here
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-April/002351.html

extract
"BTW, when I say "policy" while posting to WikiEN-l I
usually mean policy for en.wiki. There does seem to be
consensus for allowing sysops to see the IP numbers of
logged-in users on en.wiki but there obviously is no
consensus for this to be a global policy. This feature
could be turned-off by default and decided on a
language-by-language basis as far as I'm concerned. On
en.wiki at least, there are enough sysops and enough
people watching the sysops to ensure proper checks and
balances. Jimbo is also fluent in English so it is
easy for him to investigate alleged abuses."

You suggested that the discussed policy was only for
english wikipedia. You mentionned the fact policy
could be decided differently on other wikis. In short,
that means that there could be two different types of
sysop depending on which wikipedia one is sysop

For example, were this type of rule changed decided on
the english wikipedia, but not on the french
wikipedia, an english sysop could see my ip on the
english wikipedia, but me, on the french could not see
the ip of that english person.

Right ? This is a two level sysophood.

And likely, if rules begin to be different between
wikipedias, users will have to start remembering which
rules are followed on which wikipedias.

> I still think this is the best solution.

I still do not.
For privacy sake
For giving even more power to sysops than they already
have

Were ips given, it could at least be displayed for
everyone. You cannot expect an occasional user (not
very up to date in terms of rules) to guess some
people (quite a lot of people) see things that he
doesnot. People often expect database admin to see
this info, but they also know these latter are
submitted to an ethics of discretion.

And I still believe this is a very dangerous option,
which could limit the freedom of editing of some
people.
I think next step will be to require people to give
their body information, maybe identity card number,
picture, phone number and so on.
This is a bad move

> Perhaps our
> previous disagreement was
> based on the above misunderstanding? I would have
> opposed a two-level sysop
> scheme too.

Good. And so I think this type of change is a
wikipedia wild change, not an english restricted
change.

Let's make it simple : change nothing !

note : I made an effort to write wikipedia instead of wiki...

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://tax.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: server down

body:
On Mon, 2003-04-07 at 22:59, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> On Monday 07 April 2003 05:00 am, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > Yes, that would be more than enough to host the mail (and perhaps the
> > backup dumps?). Best talk to Jimbo and Jason about transporting and
> > setting up hardware.
>
> Cool. Do what you want/can with the hardware but 4 gigs for the /home
> directory for mailing lists archive and Wikipedia backups would be a bit
> tight, no?

Presently, mailing list archives come to 450 megs, while complete
database dumps total just shy of a gig. It would be trivial to toss in
another hard drive if/when needed.

> It would also be great if this could be used at piclab as Lee suggested since
> that would save me 30 bucks in shipping (Lee and I live about 30 minutes from
> each other) and the mail server would be easy for Lee to fix if needed.

If that's something Lee is willing to set up, that sounds great to me.
So long as there's not a major meteor strike in the Pacific that takes
out the whole of California. :)  I don't know if Lee would want to be
hosting the wiki backup dumps on his line for public download, though;
they're serious bandwidth suckers.

>  How
> much bandwidth would all the mailing lists suck anyway? IMO it would be best
> to keep them all on the same box wherever they end-up.

As a very very rough estimate, about half a gigabyte per month. (Taken
by multiplying the size of the March 2003 list archives for the big 3
wikien-l, wikipedia-l, and wikitech-l by their numbers of subscribers,
and padding the resulting figure of ~380MB.) Assume growth.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Anthere wrote:
>You suggested that the discussed policy was only for
>english wikipedia. You mentionned the fact policy
>could be decided differently on other wikis. In short,
>that means that there could be two different types of
>sysop depending on which wikipedia one is sysop

Eh? There would only be one type for any one language. Just like right now
there is only one type of user per language /even though/ the 'move this
page' feature is off by default expect on the more active languages. So with
your reasoning there is already two different types of normal logged-in
users.

But this is now a moot point since the idea of having this set on a
per-language basis has been dropped in favor of discussing this in terms of a
Wikipedia-wide policy. In short, this issue has grown past being considered
as just a en.wiki policy.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

WikiKarma
The usual at [[April 3]]


body:
On Mon, 2003-04-07 at 09:51, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> How about creating a Button that sysops can use to promote
> other sysops? I'm getting tired of writing and checking SQL queries. Also, I don't want to become a gatekeeper :-(

Comments please to:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_details_special_page

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Streamline the sysop recruiting process

body:
On Mon, 2003-04-07 at 09:51, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> How about creating a Button that sysops can use to promote
> other sysops? I'm getting tired of writing and checking SQL queries. Also, I don't want to become a gatekeeper :-(

Comments please to:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_details_special_page

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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in_reply_to: <E506B3FF6BC1254C9AC1B948C380BC280F440F@sm-nyny-xm05.nena.wdpr.disney.com>; from Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com on Mon, Apr 07, 2003 at 04:08:49PM -0400

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> * Developers: can delete or alter any page, any time, without a
>trace! same for blocking, promoting, renaming users)

We should distinguish strongly between "can" as in "technically able"
and "can" as in "approved by policy".  Developers technically "can" do
those things, but either shouldn't at all (deleting things without a
trace) or shouldn't except under the specific guidance of policy.

--Jimbo


in_reply_to: <20030407215331.GA8692@math-rs-n01.ucr.edu>; from toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu on Mon, Apr 07, 2003 at 02:53:31PM -0700

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
> I'd really rather that the sysops were Bourgeoisie (middle class).
> And to make that really work, we need to promote more people to that
> level.  It's an elite now only because it's too dam' small.
> Frankly, I almost agree with Ed's old idea of forced promotions.

Although I think the analogy is stretched and perhaps dangerous in
some ways, I would say that I endorse the notion of sysops as middle
class as opposed to an elite.

--Jimbo


body:
> We just need to get rid of the bottleneck at the
> developer level. IMO there is
> no need to leave people in suspense after asking to
> be an Admin - this gives
> the impression that Adminship is something special
> and tightly restricted to
> a very select few. I can only imagine that such a
> perception would tend to
> make people think twice before asking. The only
> non-newbie users who should
> think twice before asking are users who tend to get
> into more than their fair
> share of edit wars and POV disputes or who are
> otherwise not viewed as being
> trustworthy.

Really :-)

One thing that imho differenciate sysop from
developper is this

* developper have power to see and to make things,
without the others knowing, and without them being
able to reverse these actions. Such as looking for a
user ip, and permanent deletions. These are
necessarily people who have to trust strongly

* sysops have special powers over others, but no
powers that cannot be tracked (sorry, checked) by
other sysops, and no power that can not be "reversed"
by other sysops. If a sysop ban an ip, this action can
be undone by another sysop just as easily. If a sysop
delete a page, this action can be undone by another
sysop (not so easily though).
Consequences : it is better to trust sysops, but that
is not required, since any bad action by a misguided
sysop can be repaired by another sysop. That is
balance. And any user who feel he has been abused can
ask another sysop to revert what was done by the first
sysop.

But...knowing someone ip is not reversible. It is
permanent.

If a sysop considers a person to be a vandal, and
begin to track his ip; and that person ask another
sysop to stop the tracking, and make the first one
"forget" the ip, the second will be unable to do
anything.

That's where I would draw the limit of sysophood. When
it comes to know or to be able to do something other
sysops have no leverage upon.

__________________________________________________
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Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://tax.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia privacy

body:
Oliver Pereira wrote:
> I'm going to ask something terribly controversial now. What sort of
> serious encyclopaedia allows anonymous contributions anyway?

Wikipedia.  :-)

I do agree, though, that at some point we will want to have a "sifter"
project or similar in order to create a Wikipedia release version 1.0.

--Jimbo


from_name: Torsten Bronger

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: server down

body:
Halloechen!

Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> writes:

>> (Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>):
>>
>> Could all the mailing lists work just fine on a separate cheapo AMD K6-II 500
>> MHZ Linux box...
>
> I'm sure hardware isn't the problem, just convenience.  But it might not
> be a bad idea for maybe the wikitech list and possibly the wikidown address
> to be run on a different host, maybe even a different colo site (like at
> Piclab or even some freemail service).

Maybe on Wikipedia's Sourceforge project page?

Tschoe,
Torsten.


subject: ATTN Jason -- Re: [Wikitech-l] test.wikipedia.com indexed by Google

body:
On Tue, 2003-04-08 at 08:34, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
> Googling for something for the Polish Wikipedia I discovered that
> the test site test.wikipedia.com is indexed by Google robots even with
> edit pages.
>
> We surely don't want this to happen ?

I forgot that even exists... That's on the old server, which I have no
control over. It should be removed entirely, or at least the DNS pointed
at the new server.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject:
ATTN Jason -- Re: [Wikitech-l] test.wikipedia.com indexed by
	Google

body:
On Tue, 2003-04-08 at 11:29, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> While we're at it, I should probably make a LocalSettings option
> for test.wikipedia.org to send "noindex" metas for /all/ pages.

# robots.txt for http://test.wikipedia.org/

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wiki
Disallow: /w

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: wiki at luto.de

subject: [Wikitech-l] Error after deleting files

body:
Hi there,

I just tried to delete a file and got the following error message:

"Warning: cannot add header information. Headers already sent by
(output started at Article.php:1058) in OutputPage.php on line 317"

This error repeats on lines 318-324, the link that showed up in my
browser is
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?action=delete&image=Niederlande_
wappen_klein.gif

The same problem is with a text file Brion uploaded some time ago
(Apostrophe test, see
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Seiten%2C_die_gel%F6scht_werde
n_sollten).

I think there is a problem with cookies or any header data but I did
not dig in the code yet. Maybe some of code wizards can take a look
:-)

Cheers

Thomas aka Urbanus


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: server down

body:
> It would also be great if this could be used at piclab as Lee
> suggested since that would save me 30 bucks in shipping (Lee and
> I live about 30 minutes from each other)...

Alas, /I/ live in Sacramento, but Piclab is a rackmount in
San Antonio, TX.  Pretty much all ISPs are just rack farms these
days; an actual PC is not something they can easily accommodate.
But I do have broadband and lots of disk space at home, so I
might be able to mirror some backup there, but my home machines
won't work as servers.

I'm sure we'll come up with a system that works, though.
--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia privacy

body:
Hello,

On Mon, 7 Apr 2003, Toby Bartels wrote:

> I can see the argument that the GFDL requires that we keep track of
> every contributor -- I buy that "the Wikipedia community" is
> insufficient. What I don't understand is the difference between a
> pseudonymous ID like "maveric149" and a pseudonymous ID like
> "12.246.119.xxx" (which is not *anonymous* either).

The difference is that a user name identifies a user, while an IP address
only identifies the computer they happen to be working on at the time, or,
worse, only what ISP they are using. The IP address is therefore not an
identifier of a person, because many different people can use the same IP
address at different times. Of course, the same applies to the user name
if someone allows their account to be used by someone else, or if their
account is hacked, but this only happens very rarely.

> Your contribution will be logged under the identifier ~~~. Depending on
> how your Internet service provider works, future contributions by you
> may or may not have this same identifier, and future contributions
> logged under this identifier may or may not always be from you.

That last point is important. If contributions with this "identifier" may
be from different people, then by definition it is not an identifier at
all. As a mathematician, you should know this. :)

I'm going to ask something terribly controversial now. What sort of
serious encyclopaedia allows anonymous contributions anyway?

As far as I know, none. Okay, so the fact that nobody else has done it
before is not itself a strong argument. We're *supposed* to be pioneers
here, after all! But I think that a lot of people are put off the
Wikipedia because of a perception (partly justified, I think) that if
people can just drop in at any time, post something, and then slink away
again without anyone seeing who they are, then it's going to end up
containing a lot of nonsense. If we made people give their real names,
then I think people would be less inclined to post incorrect information.
I think people would take the project more seriously, and although we
would lose a few contributors, I think we would gain just as many by
appearing to be a more serious project. And for the same reason, the new
contributors would largely be terribly sensible people who had previously
dismissed the project as being too silly for them. So quite likely they
would, on average, be better contributors.

Okay, I do have sympathy with those who argue that people who post
political information that their government might not approve of should be
free to do so without fear of being harassed by their government. But I
think that the aim of the Wikipedia should be to become a serious
encyclopaedia more than a refuge for political dissidents. Since we are
only supposed to be adding verifiable information, anything which an
oppressed person in one country could add should also be available in
other countries, and so could easily be added by someone in another
country who is less fearful of their government.

Oliver

P.S. - Any opinions expressed in this e-mail are entirely those of section
346 subsection 8730-a of my brain, and do not reflect the views of any
other sections thereof, some of which are far more liberal and/or
paranoid, but I like to give them all an airing from time to time. ;)

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


from_name: The Cunctator

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

body:
On 4/4/03 5:27 PM, "Axel Boldt" <axelboldt at yahoo.com> wrote:

> --- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, 2003-04-04 at 13:52, Axel Boldt wrote:
>
>>> In order to be allowed to distribute a modified version of a
>>> GFDL document, you have to list the person responsible for
>>> the modification (section 4B).
>>
>> No; the GFDL states you have to list "one or more persons or entities
>> responsible for authorship of the modifications".
>>
>> Note: "entity". "The Wikipedia Contributors" is such an entity.
>
> No. If Helga makes an edit somewhere, then the vast majority of the
> "Wikipedia Contributors" won't even know about it, and even if they
> did, they certainly have never agreed to be "responsible" for her work.

The point is that they have, by agreeing to submit to Wikipedia. The
warning/disclaimer makes it pretty clear (and if necessary, could be more
explicit) that your contributions may be changed out of recognition by
someone else.

> You might just as well use "Humanity" as the entity. Clearly, that's
> trying to circumvent the intended meaning of clause 4B.
>
>> Note also "one or more persons". Not "every person".
>
> If Helga makes a modification, then there is only one person, Helga,
> responsible for it. "Every person" and "one or more persons" is the
> same in this case.

Your interpretation depends on an unusual parsing of the relevant phrase.

You're interpreting the quotation as

    one or more (persons or entities responsible for authorship of [all]
    the modifications)

in which case "one or more" == "every", leaving nothing to the discretion of
the original authors, whereas a more logical interpretation (because it
allows "one or more" to have meaning) is

    (one or more persons or entities) responsible for authorship of the
    modifications

in which case it just means that you need to credit at least <someone> as
the author, to the discretion of the original authors.

>> There is nothing in the GFDL that makes anonymous edits problematic.
>
> There sure is.

Again, there isn't. There may be something about anonymous edits that upsets
you (and others), but that's a different story.


body:
> (Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>):
> On Tue, 2003-04-08 at 08:34, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
> > Googling for something for the Polish Wikipedia I discovered that
> > the test site test.wikipedia.com is indexed by Google robots even with
> > edit pages.
> >
> > We surely don't want this to happen ?
>
> I forgot that even exists... That's on the old server, which I have no
> control over. It should be removed entirely, or at least the DNS pointed
> at the new server.

While we're at it, I should probably make a LocalSettings option
for test.wikipedia.org to send "noindex" metas for /all/ pages.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


body:
>...I would say that I endorse the notion of
> sysops as middle
> class as opposed to an elite.
>
> --Jimbo

No offence jimbo, but there might be a conflict of
interest here. As was said in 1984, the goal of the
High is to maintain their position as the High. I
support the opinion that sysops should have more
rights, but I'm just the Middle trying to become the
High. Maybe there should be a new middle class that
can do some things, like deleting pages and rolling
pages back, but not perminant things, and they
couldn't query the server.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia privacy

body:
Oliver Pereira wrote:

>
>>I do agree, though, that at some point we will want to have a "sifter"
>>project or similar in order to create a Wikipedia release version 1.0.
>>
>
>That sounds an interesting idea. But who would be responsible for
>determining what gets into the released version? Would it be some sort
>of... cabal? ;)
>
Not if it could be wireless!   :-)


subject: [WikiEN-l] tiny change to code

body:
Could one of the developers make it so that at the
bottom of the userpages, there is a link to the talk
page? For some reason it's not there, but it seems to fit.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com


from_name: Jason Richey

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: server down

body:
That's a good point...  The primary problem is that our servers (or
most of them, anyway) have video on-board, and only one serial port
(the video port takes the place of the second one).  I'm sure the
motherboards have internal connections for an extra serial port
(actually, I'm not quite "sure"), but we haven't looked very far into
going that route.

Add all that to the fact that I've never set up a serial console on
Linux, and I don't even remember how to make a null modem cable (of
course, I still remember how to BUY one), and you can see why we
haven't tried that yet.

I'm always willing to listen if someone can point me to a refresher
course...

Jason

Jens Frank wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 07, 2003 at 12:40:12AM -0700, Jason Richey wrote:
> >
> > * We have limited rack space in the colo.  All of our current servers
> >   are either 1U or 2U rackmount servers.  A standard tower-type server
> >   would be a bit of a squeeze in there...
> >
> > * we are almost out of IP  addresses in our current block of allocated
> >   IPs, I don't recall how easy it is for us to have another block
> >   routed to our cage.
> >
> > * our remote power control unit is nearly full.  This is currently our
> >   only means of rebooting a machin that has lost internet connectivity
> >   (aside from a 200 mile drive by your truly).  Of course, this isn't
> >   necessarily a deal-breaker, just a thought.  If anybody has a IP
> >   based KVM switch available... :)
>
> Linux can be set up to use a serial console. The most PCs still have
> two serial ports. If you assign the console to port A, port B can
> be used to access the console of another server. Having two servers
> would allow us to set them up in this way. If the web server hangs
> with "Give root password for system maintenance mode" you can
> connect to the server using e.g. minicom and fix it.
>
> High-End solution would be the use of a terminal server, but this
> is much more expensive, uses rack space and require an additional
> IP.
>
> KVM's are for windows users ... :-)
>
> 	Regards,
>
> 		JeLuF
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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


from_name: Hunter Peress

subject: [Wikitech-l] Pleas support offsite images

body:
Over these last few months, it has been frustrating when GFDL righteous wikipedians nix each
others images because of fear of copyright violation. This respect for the GFDL which is extremely
vigorous, but I feel it is also very harmful to wikipedia.

To alleviate some of this, we should allow the inclusion of offsite images. This is perfectley
acceptable. Take http://news.google.com for example, which is greatly improved by the addition of
any image seen fit, also note that not a single image there is hosted on google. I emailed them,
and they  said that what they do eg:  <img src="http://anotherserver/file.jpg"/>  is completely
within the realm of copyright policy.

So, the only issue that might remain is that I have observerd a corpus of people who go to great
lengths to discourage minor copyright violations, I believe that this is to appease the forces
that be so that they will have confidence in turning wikipedia into a marketable, paper product.

In response to the common arguments that might arise from them , I strongly feel that when its
time for these forces that be to publish wikipedia, that these forces should dish out the money to
ensure (by whatever means they choose) that the offsite images are suitably dealt with.

Thus, I hope that we discontinue going to great lengths to halt the nature of the internet within wikipedia.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://tax.yahoo.com


in_reply_to: <1049826015.32759.2.camel@frank.vibber.org>; from brion@pobox.com on Tue, Apr 08, 2003 at 11:20:16AM -0700

body:
I removed the VirtualHost entry for that name from the old server, so
surfers going to that name will end up at www.bomis.com.  I'm not
quite sure why that is...  The Apache setup on that machine is a
little strange.

do you want the name test.wikipedia.com pointed to the new server?

Jason

Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Tue, 2003-04-08 at 08:34, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
> > Googling for something for the Polish Wikipedia I discovered that
> > the test site test.wikipedia.com is indexed by Google robots even with
> > edit pages.
> >
> > We surely don't want this to happen ?
>
> I forgot that even exists... That's on the old server, which I have no
> control over. It should be removed entirely, or at least the DNS pointed
> at the new server.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>

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


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Tue, 8 Apr 2003, Jason Richey wrote:
> I removed the VirtualHost entry for that name from the old server, so
> surfers going to that name will end up at www.bomis.com.  I'm not
> quite sure why that is...  The Apache setup on that machine is a
> little strange.

Thanks! As long as they're not going to an old test site and thinking they
can edit articles...

> do you want the name test.wikipedia.com pointed to the new server?

Could do; no big rush, though.

One amusing thing I did notice: do a google search on "wikipedia totally
offline". Google picks the most annoying times to reindex, doesn't it? :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

subject: [Wikitech-l] test.wikipedia.com indexed by Google

body:
Hello all,

Googling for something for the Polish Wikipedia I discovered that
the test site test.wikipedia.com is indexed by Google robots even with
edit pages.

We surely don't want this to happen ?

Regards,
Kpjas.


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Problem with Dietary Fiber on idolatry article

body:
I am having some problems with User:Dietary Fiber, on the
Idolatry article.  He started off by repeatedly criticising
the article for pushing a religious point of view (which it
clearly did not do).  He then went off-topic in the TALK
page for this article, so I moved the off-topic part of
this discussion over to his own home page so we could
discuss things there; that is Wikipedia protocol.  In
response, he deleted the discussion and labelled it as
SPAM, and went back to attacking me!  This is a classic
behavior of a troll, if not the very definition of one.

He all of my attempts to dialogue, and fabricated a quote
from me, and then attacked the position in this quote.
Despite how angry I was at this, I tried again to clarify
the issues that he seemed to be confused on.  In the end,
he responded by creating another fake position, and
criticised me for things I never said, and beliefs that I
never have had.

His most recent slander is this:
> Is it appropriate to refer to all idol "worshipers" as
> idolators, as RK suggests elsewhere?
> [[User:Dietary Fiber|Dietary Fiber]]

I never wrote any such thing.  In fact, I was the one who
contributed material to this article, and to the article on
Religious pluralism, on why so many liberal Christians and
liberal Jews now have the OPPOSITE beliefs.  But Dietary
Fiber just doesn't care. He is attacking positions I do not
have, claiming that I am pushing these positions in the
article, and then criticising me for those beliefs!

I don't know what he is up to, but I smell a troll. I would
keep a close watch on him.

In frustration,

Robert (RK)

=====
"I prefer a wicked person who knows he is wicked, to a righteous person who knows he is righteous".
The Seer of Lublin [Jacob Isaac Ha-Hozeh Mi-Lublin, 1745-1815]

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://tax.yahoo.com


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
Actually, sysops can query the server; they are limited to "read-only" queries, however.

What I was suggesting was that some Wikipedians other than the Developers have the technical ability to:
* grant "sysop rights" to users
* block a signed-in vandal

I don't think a sysop blocking a signed-in vandal should need to see their IP address. Even I as a developer never bothered to look up the IP of the half-dozen or so users I've been told to block. I just ran an UPDATE query in the database.

Similarly, with promoting a contributor to sysop, I think Brion or Magnus could add a page called "Nominate user for sysop". After enough sysops nominated a user, they would automatically get sysop rights.

The point is, I don't want to do Gatekeeper Functions any more. Not only is it time-consuming (up to 10 minutes per operation), but the task of determining whether a person is a foe or a friend should not be centralized on 4 or 5 people.

And, yes, mav, I know I should put this on the main list, but I only subscribe to this one, so I hope anyone who responds will cross post back to wikien-l. And yes, Brion, I know you made a meta-page, but...

lazily, but non-hierarchically,

Ed Poor


from_name: John R. Owens

subject: [WikiEN-l] tiny change to code

body:
On Tue, 8 Apr 2003, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

> Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 15:13:17 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] tiny change to code
>
> Could one of the developers make it so that at the
> bottom of the userpages, there is a link to the talk
> page? For some reason it's not there, but it seems to fit.

	That's odd, I see one on User: pages. Though it's called "Discuss
this page", maybe that's why you think there isn't one?

--
John R. Owens http://www.ghiapet.homeip.net/


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:George Washington (was: Weezer and Michael banned)

body:
I banned User:George Washington because I'm pretty sure
it's the same guy, based on jtd's comment to mav.

See http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Maveric149&diff=812726&oldid=812709

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Poor, Edmund W.
Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2003 10:05 PM
To: 'wikien-l at wikipedia.org'
Subject: Weezer and Michael banned (was: Michael's threats)

Okay, it took me a day and a half to get around to it, but I
locked both of Weezer's user accounts.

Ed Poor

P.S. I hate doing this. I guess no one else likes doing it,
either, which is why I generally wind up being the one who runs
the "update queries" to enforce the bans.

P.P.S. Does a hangman walk home whistling, afterward? (Right now, I have a headache...)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Odd article?

body:
	Something really strange is happening when I try to look at the
article [[Laurent]] which was recently created. It crashes my browser
(Galeon 1.2.9/Mozilla 1.3) whenever I try to look at it. I did a database
query on it before the last crash, it's number 207611 I think (from
memory), and the text in it looks normal. But when I try to get it, both
Galeon and raw Mozilla crash, in different ways -- Galeon freezes up, not
using clock cycles meanwhile; Mozilla dies instantly. On the other hand,
it seems to work just fine in Lynx (I tried to wget it, but that didn't
work, but neither does anything else; I'm guessing Wikipedia filters on
HTTP-client to prevent excessive slurping?) Looking at the source now that
I've got it, the only thing that seem at all irregular about the contents
(the HTML, not the Wikicode) is that it's all in <pre> tags. (Disclaimer:
I haven't looked at HTML source of Wikipages before, so I'm not entirely
certain what would be irregular.)

	So, anybody have any idea why this would be, whether it's an issue
with Wikipedia or my browser (well, obviously it's at least in part my
browser, since Lynx works fine, but it's not doing everything Galeon tries
to do), and what we can do about it either way?

	If you want to see the source I'm looking at, send me an email at
my own address and I'll attach a copy to you; don't want to clog up the
list with that.

--
John R. Owens http://www.ghiapet.homeip.net/
It's easy to find something worth dying for.  Do you have anything worth
living for?
				--Lorien


subject: [WikiEN-l] Odd article?

body:
	Something really strange is happening when I try to look at the
article [[Laurent]] which was recently created. It crashes my browser
(Galeon 1.2.9/Mozilla 1.3) whenever I try to look at it. I did a database
query on it before the last crash, it's number 207611 I think (from
memory), and the text in it looks normal. But when I try to get it, both
Galeon and raw Mozilla crash, in different ways -- Galeon freezes up, not
using clock cycles meanwhile; Mozilla dies instantly. On the other hand,
it seems to work just fine in Lynx (I tried to wget it, but that didn't
work, but neither does anything else; I'm guessing Wikipedia filters on
HTTP-client to prevent excessive slurping?) Looking at the source now that
I've got it, the only thing that seem at all irregular about the contents
(the HTML, not the Wikicode) is that it's all in <pre> tags. (Disclaimer:
I haven't looked at HTML source of Wikipages before, so I'm not entirely
certain what would be irregular.)

	So, anybody have any idea why this would be, whether it's an issue
with Wikipedia or my browser (well, obviously it's at least in part my
browser, since Lynx works fine, but it's not doing everything Galeon tries
to do), and what we can do about it either way?

	If you want to see the source I'm looking at, send me an email at
my own address and I'll attach a copy to you; don't want to clog up the
list with that.

P.S. to list moderator(s): Ignore first submission of this, I forgot to
set my From: email address appropriately.

--
John R. Owens http://www.ghiapet.homeip.net/
It's easy to find something worth dying for.  Do you have anything worth
living for?
				--Lorien


subject: [WikiEN-l] Odd article?

body:
	Two points, now that I've followed up with a bit more research
on that [[Laurent]] article. The <pre> tag around the whole thing
(apparently because every paragraph is started with spaces or a tab) is
the only thing that sets it apart from other articles that work just fine.
And the cur_id of 207611 was correct.

--
John R. Owens http://www.ghiapet.homeip.net/
Tu'Pari:	Are you Ambassador G'Kar?
G'Kar:		This is Ambassador G'Kar's quarters, this is Ambassador
	G'Kar's table, this is Ambassador G'Kar's dinner.  Which part of
	this progression escapes you?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia privacy

body:
On Tue, 8 Apr 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Oliver Pereira wrote:
> > I'm going to ask something terribly controversial now. What sort of
> > serious encyclopaedia allows anonymous contributions anyway?
>
> Wikipedia.  :-)

Oh, yes, sorry. I really meant to ask, "What *other* serious
encyclopaedia", of course. :) But if you want to allow anonymous
contributions, then I will go along with it, since you're the boss...

Unless, of course, this is incompatible with the GFDL, in which case it's
not possible to go along with both the anonymous edits and the GFDL, and
we'll have to give up one or the other!

To be honest, I hadn't really familiarised myself with the details of the
GFDL before I signed up here. But I'm looking at it now. And it looks to
me as if Axel Boldt has a valid point.

But first, I must admit that the definition of what constitutes a
"Document" is unclear to me. I'm not sure whether each article counts as a
Document, or just the Wikipedia as a whole. I'll assume that it means the
Wikipedia as a whole. Fortunately, I don't think my argument is much
affected by which meaning is used. (Phew!)

Every time anyone makes a single, solitary edit to the Wikipedia, their
actions make modifications to the Wikipedia (the Document), and so the
resulting updated Wikipedia *immediately* falls under the definition of a
Modified Version. The section of the GFDL on modifications says that we
have to identify "one or more persons or entities responsible for
authorship of the modifications". The modifications being here those
brought about by that single, solitary edit. In practice, almost every
edit will be made by a single person, but an edit could be made by two or
more people collaborating at the same keyboard. By the terms of the GFDL,
at least one of these people must be listed. If there is only one person,
then this person (and not just the computer they were at!) must be listed.
In the case of my starting the stub at [[Prussian blue]], two authors were
involved in just the one edit, although I only named one of them - myself.
I think this satisfies the terms of the GFDL. (Unless the article itself
is the Document, in which case the number of authors of the Document was
at that time less than five, so both authors would have had to be listed
to satisfy the terms. So I broke the terms. Sorry.)

So, in conclusion, every edit has to be attributed to someone! Okay, to
"one or more persons or entities". But basically I think this means the
person who did the edit. One *could* play word games and say that we are
all just components of the Collective known as the "Wikipedia community",
and in this case we could just label each edit as being by the "Wikipedia
community". But I agree with Axel Boldt that isn't what the licence meant,
and that if it did, we might as well just put "Humanity". I think that
without playing word games, the licence is asking us to list the
individual responsible.

Q.E.D. ;)

> I do agree, though, that at some point we will want to have a "sifter"
> project or similar in order to create a Wikipedia release version 1.0.

That sounds an interesting idea. But who would be responsible for
determining what gets into the released version? Would it be some sort
of... cabal? ;)

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


subject: Satisying the GFDL (Was: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia privacy)

body:
On Tue, 8 Apr 2003, Oliver Pereira wrote:

> So, in conclusion, every edit has to be attributed to someone!

Oh, and section 4B also states that this must be on the "Title Page",
which is defined as "the text near the most prominent appearance of the
work's title, preceding the beginning of the body of the text". So, the
Main Page. Basically, it says we have to list the person responsible for
the last edit on the Main Page. Oh yes, along with "at least five of the
principal authors of the Document". Seriously! Look, I know it's crazy,
but I didn't write these terms. I'm just reporting them. Don't shoot the
messenger! But that *is* what it says we have to do.

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: server down

body:
On Mon, Apr 07, 2003 at 12:40:12AM -0700, Jason Richey wrote:
>
> * We have limited rack space in the colo.  All of our current servers
>   are either 1U or 2U rackmount servers.  A standard tower-type server
>   would be a bit of a squeeze in there...
>
> * we are almost out of IP  addresses in our current block of allocated
>   IPs, I don't recall how easy it is for us to have another block
>   routed to our cage.
>
> * our remote power control unit is nearly full.  This is currently our
>   only means of rebooting a machin that has lost internet connectivity
>   (aside from a 200 mile drive by your truly).  Of course, this isn't
>   necessarily a deal-breaker, just a thought.  If anybody has a IP
>   based KVM switch available... :)

Linux can be set up to use a serial console. The most PCs still have
two serial ports. If you assign the console to port A, port B can
be used to access the console of another server. Having two servers
would allow us to set them up in this way. If the web server hangs
with "Give root password for system maintenance mode" you can
connect to the server using e.g. minicom and fix it.

High-End solution would be the use of a terminal server, but this
is much more expensive, uses rack space and require an additional
IP.

KVM's are for windows users ... :-)

	Regards,

		JeLuF


body:
Hello Ed,

I'm posting your message (see below) here on the main list as well, since
you said it should be there...

But I'm not sure I'm entirely happy with the idea that someone should
become a sysop just from having the right number of supporters. I can
easily imagine that a large enough group of sysops could support one
person who is not trusted by the rest of the sysops. Would there be an
"Oppose user for sysop" button as well? Both buttons could update counts
without displaying the names of the people who have voted, so people would
feel free to express their lack of trust in a nominee without anyone
(apart from the developers) finding out and subsequently holding a grudge
against them...

Ah, I'm being very evil today, aren't I? ;)

Oliver

On Tue, 8 Apr 2003, Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> Actually, sysops can query the server; they are limited to "read-only"
> queries, however.
>
> What I was suggesting was that some Wikipedians other than the
> Developers have the technical ability to:
> * grant "sysop rights" to users
> * block a signed-in vandal
>
> I don't think a sysop blocking a signed-in vandal should need to see
> their IP address. Even I as a developer never bothered to look up the IP
> of the half-dozen or so users I've been told to block. I just ran an
> UPDATE query in the database.
>
> Similarly, with promoting a contributor to sysop, I think Brion or
> Magnus could add a page called "Nominate user for sysop". After enough
> sysops nominated a user, they would automatically get sysop rights.
>
> The point is, I don't want to do Gatekeeper Functions any more. Not only
> is it time-consuming (up to 10 minutes per operation), but the task of
> determining whether a person is a foe or a friend should not be
> centralized on 4 or 5 people.
>
> And, yes, mav, I know I should put this on the main list, but I only
> subscribe to this one, so I hope anyone who responds will cross post
> back to wikien-l. And yes, Brion, I know you made a meta-page, but...
>
> lazily, but non-hierarchically,
>
> Ed Poor
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: [WikiEN-l] Streamline the sysop recruiting process


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
> Actually, sysops can query the server; they are limited to "read-only"
> queries, however.

Which is a bad thing until we set a timeout on queries. God knows how many
times the server has hung because of some out of control query.

> What I was suggesting was that some Wikipedians other than the Developers
> have the technical ability to:
> * grant "sysop rights" to users
> * block a signed-in vandal

1) As long as some sysop actions are hard to revert (delete page too long
to use, no log of page protections, no IP block expiry) we should keep the
sysop process controlled. It's OK if it takes a few days to appoint a new
sysop. But I agree that some kind of nomination/voting process would help.

2) Yes, but only for new users. Established users who have a track record
of valid contributions should only be bannable after a decree by Jimbo.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Tue, Apr 08, 2003 at 03:58:28PM -0700, Hunter Peress wrote:
> Over these last few months, it has been frustrating when GFDL righteous wikipedians nix each
> others images because of fear of copyright violation. This respect for the GFDL which is extremely
> vigorous, but I feel it is also very harmful to wikipedia.
>
> To alleviate some of this, we should allow the inclusion of offsite images. This is perfectley
> acceptable. Take http://news.google.com for example, which is greatly improved by the addition of
> any image seen fit, also note that not a single image there is hosted on google. I emailed them,
> and they  said that what they do eg:  <img src="http://anotherserver/file.jpg"/>  is completely
> within the realm of copyright policy.
>
> So, the only issue that might remain is that I have observerd a corpus of people who go to great
> lengths to discourage minor copyright violations, I believe that this is to appease the forces
> that be so that they will have confidence in turning wikipedia into a marketable, paper product.
>
> In response to the common arguments that might arise from them , I strongly feel that when its
> time for these forces that be to publish wikipedia, that these forces should dish out the money to
> ensure (by whatever means they choose) that the offsite images are suitably dealt with.
>
> Thus, I hope that we discontinue going to great lengths to halt the nature of the internet within wikipedia.

NO !!!

Wikipedia must remain free.

I sometimes wonder if it isn't one of our proprietary competitors
who send people with such suicidal ideas.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Special pages caching

body:
I've monkeyed around a bit with the caching of content for the slow but
simple special pages (now Wantedpages, Lonelypages, Allpages -- the
top-level index -- and Popularpages, Shortpages, and Longpages; but
these latter three I haven't yet updated on the english wiki).

Sooner or later these should get rewritten to be quickly updatable.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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