subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
On 9/7/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Snowspinner, I'm sorry that I harassed you, and that you feel so hurt by
> articles being deleted, but if people feel that something is not notable
> enough to belong in Wikipedia - and AFAICT, this is still a valid reason
> for voting to delete something (actually, I don't think you even *need*
> to provide a reason when voting) - then they will vote, "nn. webcomic,
> delete".
>

Well and honestly, one of the big problems with VfD is that it involves/d
people voting on things they knew very little about, usually. I think it is
worth reiterating that it is the job of the *article content* to establish
notability, not the job of the voters. In an ideal VfD world, one would
blame the articles for how they were voted, not the voters.

When I was pretty new here, a philosopher who I thought is notable enough
for Wikipedia ended up on VfD once. I of course complained on the voting
page and tried to convince people that he was notable and got angry that
nobody was deferring to my judgment on it. Some smarter fellow than I came
along and actually took what I said and *put it into the article*. After
which point it was clear the article was notable and the article was kept.
In this case, VfD was actually a positive process in article improvement --
something not too uncommon, I think, and an aspect of VfD which has been
somewhat underemphasized in the calls for deletion reform.

FF


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikijunior as a new Sister Project

body:
I'm reposting here a comment that was posted in
[[b:Talk:Wikijunior]]:

    During the upcoming September 18 Wikimedia
Foundation board meeting,
    the Board will discuss registering a seperate
domain for Wikijunior,
    presumably wikijunior.org. Presumably Wikijunior
will still be
    developed on Wikibooks, but it will go live on a
seperate site.
    Alternatively, we could have en.wikijunior.org for
viewing, and
    en2.wikijunior.org for editing, which would allow
for a greater ease
    in developing pages, as they could be part of a
freeform
    encyclopedia (on limited topics), rather than the
isolated books
    they are now. If we were to develop off Wikibooks,
I'd like us to
    retain most, if not all of the structure of
Wikibooks, it's worked
    well so far. -- user:zanimum
<http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Zanimum>

What I'm asking is why such a proposal is not going
through the normal
vetting process required of any new project proposal
or is Wikijunior
already considered to be a Wikimedia sister project
already?  I
appreciate the efforts of Zanimum, but I certainly
think that before a
new project domain is started, the full extent of an
idea like this
should be fully vetted, and even a formal vote should
take place, like
happened to Wikinews and is going to happen soon with
Wikiversity.  The
purpose of the vote is to mainly get a show of support
for the project
(I have no doubt that there is some major support from
several people on
Wikibooks, for instance, regarding Wikijunior).  The
vote also help
critics to try and correct major problems with the
proposal.  In
particular, there doesn't even seem to be any movement
at all on
Wikibooks to get rid of Wikijunior, and it pretty much
stays in its own
little corner of Wikibooks quietly undergoing a
metamorphisis, such as
the current content clean-up campaign on the
Wikijunior Solar System at
the moment.

This amounts to, IMHO, another stealth new project
proposal that is
going through the back door.  I've complained enough
about the new
project proposal process here that I've had people
telling me to
essentially shut up and don't bug people on this list
about it.  At the
same time, I think projects like this need more work
on how everything
is going to be put together before it should be
started on its own
seperate wiki, and I've seen no reason why Wikijunior
should get any
special attention other than it seems like a pet
project of some board
members.

--
Robert Scott Horning

---------

A pet project of who ?

I doubt very much the decision of creating or not
creating a new wikijunior project will be taken during
that meeting. If it does, it will not be following
policy, so will be invalid.

Hmmm, first, I am just discovering this on the agenda
(I heard recent discussions here and there about this,
but absolutely not involving the board itself).

Second, and most important, there are written rules
for proposal of new projects (I think I authored a big
part of it), these are generally approved and they
absolutely not make it possible for the board to just
decide alone such a creation. See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_project_policy

(note with attention the little paragraph about
closing projects. Thanks).

Third, I believe that any participants of the meeting
are aware there is no way such a decision should be
taken by them. This, regardless of them being board
members, officers or chapter members. First, because
the policy mentions only two bodies, board of
Foundation and community. Second because chapters do
not have "power" over content". And we all know this.
So, a vote during the 18th of september to decide a
creation or not just does not make sense.

So, please do not worry about that :-)

However, it could be a topic of discussion :-)

Anthere

PS: since you mention you do not support current
policy for new project proposal, please take the time
to explain why here :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:New_project_policy.
There are no comments from you right now. Please
provide feedback on what you do not appreciate. Not
that this policy was set up after the Wikispecies
fiasco, to avoid this from happening again. So, while
my policy proposal was probably not the best one we
could think of, it was certainly better than nothing.
It has already been followed for wikinews and now will
be for wikiversity.

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list: wikimedia-l


list: wikien-l

from_name: Ryan Delaney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:

> In fact, I personally think this is the *only* way to call attention
> to such questionable articles. As I've pointed out on Talk pages,
> there is a backlog of something like 30-50,000 articles tagged for
> {{cleanup}}. Simply tagging something questionable for
> {{cleanup-importance}} only adds to the hidden pile. If an article may
> not be important enough, putting it up on AFD brings it to the
> attention of hundreds of Wikipedians - "Hey, look, there's this
> article I can't make heads or tails of and it may not be encyclopedic.
> What do y'all think?"
>
> Is this is the *best* way to do that? Probably not. But as long as the
> {{cleanup}} process is hopelessly broken, AFD is the only effective
> means of getting a questionable article in the limelight.
>
> -FCYTravis

This is not going to do anything except making AFD even more bogged down
than it already is. Have patience- there are lots of articles in need of
cleanup, but such is the nature of this project. As the topics covered
in our circle of knowledge expands, the circumference will always be
getting bigger, too.

-Ryan


from_name: steve v

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
The issue raised regarding backlog and tagging instead
of action are quite valid, and quite to the point. But
some background on the cleanup is needed. As one of
the people who jumpstarted WP:CU along with Cimon
Avaro, Angela, and others, I have a bit of a different
view on "hopelessly broken" and the like.

Cleanup was a purpose-driven fork of VFD, which at the
time was extremely overused --a differnt type of
backlog. VFD's overuse violated the basic laws stating
limits on Wiki page use and possibly the law of
thermodynamics as well. Its the basic problem of
Wikipedia using a platform which served us fine till
now, but doesnt quite scale in certain areas than
others. Theres some finite limit on how much
high-traffic editing a particular page can handle,
though that has greatly been improved with section
editng, etc. This reminds me of the quote about
supercomputers being 'machines for turning computation
problems into I-O problems.' As WP probably has more
direct human processing power ever assembled for focus
on a single project, (aka a supercomputer) its always
a question of handling the output data.

That requires a proper means to handle the processing
(people programming) through policy and process. These
need to scale up --not down, and these social
processes (i.e. people protocols) need to be broader
in their intelligent application, not narrowed in
accord with red-button clearance models.

Summing up, there are technical limitations imposed by
the nature of wiki for cross-article (and cross-wiki)
applications. There are social limitations imposed by
our current (flexible but non-definitive) social
policy-making structure, and process limitations
imposed by our current (small core) administration
structure. These have always been problems and the
only thing the community can ever really do is play
catch-up.

Anyway, thats some generalized background.
SV

--- Travis Mason-Bushman <travis at gpsports-eng.com>
wrote:

> On Sep 7, 2005, at 11:37 AM, Fastfission wrote:
>
> > I think it is worth reiterating that it is the job
> of the *article
> > content* to establish
> > notability, not the job of the voters. In an ideal
> VfD world, one would
> > blame the articles for how they were voted, not
> the voters.
> >
> > In this case, VfD was actually a positive process
> in article
> > improvement --
> > something not too uncommon, I think, and an aspect
> of VfD which has
> > been
> > somewhat underemphasized in the calls for deletion
> reform.
>
> In fact, I personally think this is the *only* way
> to call attention to
> such questionable articles. As I've pointed out on
> Talk pages, there is
> a backlog of something like 30-50,000 articles
> tagged for {{cleanup}}.
> Simply tagging something questionable for
> {{cleanup-importance}} only
> adds to the hidden pile. If an article may not be
> important enough,
> putting it up on AFD brings it to the attention of
> hundreds of
> Wikipedians - "Hey, look, there's this article I
> can't make heads or
> tails of and it may not be encyclopedic. What do
> y'all think?"
>
> Is this is the *best* way to do that? Probably not.
> But as long as the
> {{cleanup}} process is hopelessly broken, AFD is the
> only effective
> means of getting a questionable article in the
> limelight.
>
> -FCYTravis
>
>
> Travis Mason-Bushman
> Public Relations Director
> GAINSCO/Blackhawk Racing
> travis at gpsports-eng.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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from_name: Benjamin Webb

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: New project licensing

body:
James D. Forrester <james at ...> writes:

>
> No, based on the inability for almost all people in the world to legally
> contribute based on that licence (many countries have no legal scope for
> a person to relinquish their work into the public domain, including the EU).
>
> CC-BY is effectively the same, FWIW, and I would counsel the use of that
> instead. CC-BY 2.5 even allows the crediting of an overall collective
> organisation in lieu of the individuals (i.e., "this is released under
> the Creative Commons Attribution licence; please credit WikiTree").
>

CC-BY does sound like a good option, but would "Copyrighted Free Use" have the
same problems as public domain?


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brian

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Assisting Google's language recognition?

body:
This doesn't sound like the correct mailing list for that.

/Alterego

On 9/7/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The "official contact" would probably be this mailing list, or an
> individual developer (you can tell who they are here because they
> speak more authoritatively about things).
>
> Having said that, I hope you don't mind if I stray quite a bit from
> the TaH and ask if you know what's up with the Google in Your Language
> program? It seems that queries have not been being responded to for
> quite some time now except occasionally by seemingly-automated
> responses, and whoever is currently coordinating the program doesn't
> seem to check the Usenet group for Google translators anymore as they
> once did.
>
> Also, the group is getting EXTREMELY difficult to sift through, with
> the hundreds of posts by people asking for gmail invites, or wanting
> to translate gmail into their language -- is there a way to hide those
> annoying messages so that we can read about more expedient issues?
>
> Cheers
> Mark
>
> On 07/09/05, Evan Martin <evanm at google.com> wrote:
> > On 9/3/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> > > Evan Martin wrote:
> > > > I believe this is correct. We've had problems in the past with
> > > > overloading wikipedia so the crawl has been throttled way back.
> > >
> > > Throttled back to what? I remember having problems in late 2003 and
> > > early 2004, but we have 30 times as much hardware now, so we could
> > > handle a proportionally higher crawl rate, say 10 or 20 requests per
> > > second. That is, unless one of the other system administrators wants
> to
> > > disagree.
> >
> > We've upped the rate a bit. Please let me know if it causes any
> problems.
> >
> > (Also, is there an official contact for this sort of thing? That is:
> > who knows / gets to make the final decision of whether wikipedia can
> > handle more load?)
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
>
>
> --
> SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
> QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
> POSSIT MATERIARI
> ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Michael Turley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Quality tags

body:
On 9/7/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 07/09/05, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> > Trying to think laterally for the moment.  If articles were rated on a scale
> > of 1 to 100 for excellence, the lower rungs of the ladder would correspond
> > to poor articles, of various types: stubby, badly written, failing when
> > judged by policy (NPOV, NOR, CYS), non-encyclopedic.  This could be the
> > basis of an automated clean-up/deletion mechanism also, but would need
> > perhaps one other ingredient (to make a kind of 2-d plot).  What should that
> > be?
>
> Quality of form vs. quality of content?
>
> The one is ranging from an unwikified orphan stub to a polished,
> linked, well-referenced 5,000 word article article; the other deals
> with comprehensiveness, NPOV, accuracy, &c.

I'm certainly not always the best or most dedicated contributor, but
whenever I make a significant edit, I try to cite sources and post
references.  Even when I don't, I make use of the edit summaries to
explain my edits.

Since I regularly contribute to Wikipedia, I think it's clear that I
don't object to my contributions being re-edited mercilessly.

However, the more I consider these proposed article rating schemes,
the more I dislike the idea of my contributions being graded by those
who feel it is their right do so without any real feeling of
obligation to actually improve the article instead.  If these ideas
develop in the direction I fear they will (based on my observation of
and participation in the various deletion forums), I am certain to
decrease or cease my participation.

In other words, I'm willing to put my writing on the table for anyone
to re-edit at will.  I am far less willing to place it in a shooting
gallery for random drive-by snipes to take pot shots at.

I already feel hostility regarding good faith contributions from the
deletion forums.  There is already significant negativity in the way
we treat some new users who do not yet understand how Wikipedia
functions.  I fear that any article rating forum will almost certainly
bring with it further negativity that I'm not interested in.

The Wiki process and participation by many dedicated users assures
that the quality of our articles improves over time.  I don't see a
rating system as essential to the drive toward quality content.  In
fact, I think it will likely drive users away, decreasing the value of
the Wiki process.

Being re-edited, revised, or reverted is more than enough of a
"rating" of my work.  I can already tell how much the community
respects my efforts by the rough proportion of what remains of my
contributions months later.

Whatever article rating scheme develops (and there is almost certain
to be one, based on the support I see here for one), please take care
to prevent it from being a negative experience, especially for new
users who frequently aren't ready for or accustomed to the high
standards we all strive to achieve.
--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Wikimania 2006: City applications ,
	a cheerful note

body:
On 9/7/05, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:

> Come on, BE BOLD!

ie. do something ;)  (Hey, I'm workin' on it...)

No, but really, thanks for that Delphine. By the way, is the budget
available for Wikimania 2005 - just to give a sense of what priceline
we're thinking of, how much sponsorship you got etc..?

Cormac


from_name: fdo

subject: [Foundation-l] Edition toolbar missing

body:
Hi
I have installed mediawiki version 1.4.9 successfully in a linux server.
 MediaWiki <http://wikipedia.sf.net/> (*http://wikipedia.sf.net/*): 1.4.9
PHP <http://www.php.net/> (*http://www.php.net/*): 4.2.2 (apache2filter)
MySQL <http://www.mysql.com/> (*http://www.mysql.com/*): 4.0.17-standard All
works fine but EDITION toolbar, it is not displayed
I have enabled in preferences "show edition toolbar"
I have enable JavaScript in FireFox and Explorer

And at the end no one can see edition toolbar.

Later I made a new clean installation of mw1.4.6+enotifwiki3.11 and the
problem is the same, all works fine but edition toolbar is not shown.

Any idea?


subject: [Foundation-l] Edition toolbar missing


from_name: Delphine Ménard

body:
Re-hi all.

i just wanted to chip in a few cheerful ideas in this whole thing.

As you're building the bid for your country/city, remember that there
are no problems, there are only solutions (it's a French saying).

Accomodation too expensive? Let us find sponsors.

No network in the facility? Let us build one.

Airport is really far away? Let us rent buses and do shuttles.

No real local community in that city of yours? Time to build one
around Wikimania.

No local sponsors? There's always someone who will pay for lunch for
one day, or for promotion material to have their name on the website,
or throw in a party for a few hundred wikimedians.

Unanswerable technical and logistical questions? Try us, we've done it before.
[[m:User:Akl]]  [[m:User:Austin]] [[m:User:Elian]]  [[m:User:Notafish]]

Come on, BE BOLD!

Cheers,

Delphine
--
~notafish


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Lingala Wikipedia

body:
Hi all,

I would like to draw your attention to the Lingala Wikipedia

http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/

As you can see, the interface is not just in Lingala, but rather there
is a slash after the Lingala rendering of each message, followed by a
translation into French.

Now, while I don't think it's a good thing, I would grudgingly accept
the fact if it were real Lingala-speaking people who were responsible,
however:

Most of it is the work of http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Moyogo and
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bombo .

Moyogo lists his/her level of Lingala as "ln-1" -- a basic command of
Lingala, while Bombo lists his/her level of Lingala as "ln-0" --
cannot understand Lingala.

Now that in itself seems like an issue to me, but there is more:

There are quite a few very long pages on ln.wiki, HOWEVER nearly all
of them are written ENTIRELY in French, or with only a sentence
translated.

Some of the longest:

http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swisi -- actually entirely in English, not French
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molongo_ya_nkot%C3%A1_ya_leta_mokili --
only page title translated, entire article is in French
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217 -- again, entirely in English
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisakoli_ya_molongo_ya_makoki_ya_moto --
in Lingala, but is a verbatim copy of the UDHR
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ing%C9%9Bl%C9%9B%CC%81t%C9%9Bl%C9%9B --
entirely in French
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politiki_bya_K%C9%94%CC%81ng%C9%94-Kinshasa
-- entirely in English
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litaue -- actually in Dutch (!)

Now, even if the interface in French is really a nessecity, it can be
accessed from "preferences" where one may choose a non-default
interface language.

The French and English articles I listed above are only the beginning.
I excluded the few which were partly translated, and obviously those
few which were 100% Lingala.

I think the question we should be asking ourselves is : what will
somebody in Kinshasa think coming across this website? It claims to be
the Lingala version of Wikipedia, but the interface is bilingual, and
most of the articles are in French. It will be of little to no help to
a monolingual Lingala speaker.

I don't know what action needs to be taken, but I'm pretty sure that
something should be done.

The main reasons that this is different from mi.wiki (uses lots of
English) and na.wiki (uses lots of English as well) are that:

1) interface messages are bilingual or not translated, unlike the
other two where they are either fully translated, or not;
2) most pages are in English or French, unlike the other two where
most pages are in the right language, even if that means they're
substubs;
2) when confronted about these facts by an anonymous user, the
administrators stated that it's important that French is in the
interface because most of the contributors have poor Lingala. Keep in
mind that there are only 3 active contributors, one of whom seems to
speak pretty good Lingala.

Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Project: This wikipedia-related article is a stub...

body:
On 9/7/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Stan Shebs wrote:
> > The conclusion that I take away from this thread is that yes,
> > each wikipedia has its own culture and preferred practices, and
> > it would be extraordinarily useful to have articles describing
> > all that. Even just a translated summary of distinctive policy
> > pages would be helpful to people who are not fluent in the other
> > WP's language. For instance, if I were interested in whether the
> > Russian WP accepts "fair use" images, an English WP article on
> > the Russian WP would probably be a more reliable way to find out
> > than by posting an English-language question on the Russian
> > equivalent of village pump.
> >
>
> The perfect place for all this of course is on Meta :)
>

I probably agree that this info should be on meta, but the main thing
is that it exists. I have often wondered about what kinds of things
individual language projects have faced in terms of problems/disputes
and how they have resolved them. Or if any initiatives for
collaboration, like the Balkan NPOV project, or any others have worked
particularly well (or badly). Or if there is anything that the project
has figured out that other projects might be interested in (like
simplified vs ancient (?) chinese characters, for example). It would
be great for this kind of information to get flowing around as much as
the foundation stuff that has recently been discussed (on
foundation-l). It might be a nice addition to Quarto, for example..

Cormac / en:Cormaggio


from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Zoe's Abuse of Power as a Sysop

body:
I don't think Zoe's actions were unwarranted; Zoe is a trustworthy
administrator and I have only known her to use her administrator
powers fairly. However, it seems there has been a misunderstanding.
Felix, can you tell us what browser you are using (such as Internet
Explorer, Firefox, or Opera)? Also, what operating system do you use
(such as Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS or Linux)? Your edits are
inserting phantom new lines, like this following link shows:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Moriori&diff=22666230&oldid=22664586

To avoid this (on talk pages at least), you could try creating a new
section by clicking the "+" tab up the top of the page beside "edit
this page". That creates a new section, and you can specify the
section title, and it inserts the section title and puts the two
equals signs either side for you. That way, you should be able to
avoid mucking up other sections on the same page inadvertently.

~Mark Ryan


from_name: Dan Grey

subject: [Foundation-l] What? Why? Who?

body:
On 07/09/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Angela wrote:
> >>Sorry, I should've been clear. I forwarded the mail in its entirety.
> >>There was no "extended reply".
> >
> >
> > No, the extended reply was sent to me after I asked for one from the
> > right people. :)
>
> I should point out that Angela and I know people at the BBC; we spent
> two weeks there last fall.  That's how Angela already knew the answer to
> this before you asked. :-)
>
> --Jimbo

I'm just applying our usual standards of verifiability and no original research:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research#The_role_of_expert_editors

On the other hand, I can barely remember what this argument is about...

Dan


subject: [Foundation-l] What? Why? Who?


from_name: Boris Lohnzweiger

body:
Roger Luethi wrote:

> However, short articles do get put up for deletion regularly based on that
> criterion.

> The respective German guidelines are indeed written in a fairly similar
> spirit to the English ones. They don't seem to advocate the deletion of
> small stubs. But the folks who frequent [[de:Wikipedia:L?schkandidaten]]
> tend to have a different view.

Annoyingly, it's true that a few users at de: seem to do nothing else then filing requests for deletion. I don't ignore that fact. One even picked the user name "L?schantrag" (='request for deletion') but is on the verge of being blocked AFAIK. What I wanted to point out is that these outrages by no means reflect the spirit of the German WP. The community is aware of the "L?schwahn" a few people have fallen prey to and the way they can harm the project e. g. by daunting off newcomers writing their first article.

Btw, I have written about 80 stubs for de: (and expanded most of them to full-size articles by now!) and only got one rfd ever and that one was pretty well justified. My experience: as long as your stubs contain the very basic facts about the subject ("where?", "who?", "when?", "why?")
they are 100% delete-o-maniac-proof.

Regards,
Boris

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subject: [WikiEN-l] One Where We Blew It

body:
On 9/6/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> We blew it by creating webcomics inclusion guidelines that were just
> plain stupid, based on Alexa rankings and not on any sort of artistic
> or critical notability.

Alexa rankings are good for sorting external links and getting rid of
the dodgy ones. Articles like [[Harry Potter]] attract a lot of people
whose sites don't seem to get any hits apart from those they get from
Wikipedia. Alexa allows us to get rid of such sites (sure, it's
arbitrary, but we don't have time to assess each site on its merits).
However, I don't think Alexa rankings are useful for much more than
that. They are not accurate (how many people do you know use the Alexa
toolbar?) and they do not reflect the fact that high traffic does not
mean high quality or high relevance.

~Mark Ryan


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[Foundation-l] Donation drive stopped early with insufficient
	funds collected

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
>>My recommendation is that the German chapter continue to work closely
>>with the Foundation and NOT go out and randomly accept a hosting offer
>>and buy random servers.
>>
>>
>I did not suggest that they randomly accept a hosting offer or buy random
>servers. Of course they need to work closely with the foundation and developers
>on these issues. But, we?ve all been in the *exact* same situation since our
>first co-organized fund drive in October 2004.
>
I agree that ill-considered hosting arrangements could compromise the
credibility of the entire project, or that poorly chosen equipment could
be incompatible with what already exists. At the same time it is
reasonable to expect that what funds are raised in Germany should be
spent in Germany.

>>The building of a coherent global network is a significant technical and
>>organizational challenge that many good people are working hard on,
>>
>>
>The German chapter has been in limbo for almost a year now as to how they can
>help globally. It has been my observation that the trustees of that chapter
>want to help globally but the issues relating to what can and can?t be done
>with that money outside of Germany has been a major reason why little has been
>done with that money outside that nation. Please correct me if I?m wrong.
>
>So I simply suggested that everybody consider setting aside the issues that
>have been stopping action for nearly a year. I did *not* suggest that any rash
>decisions be made or that things get decided unilaterally or randomly. But I
>did suggest that issues relating to legal ownership (a major bottleneck - in my
>observation - so far) can be worked out in due time. As is, the great majority
>of the money is just sitting there.
>
Admittedly, I have not followed what happens to funds very closely. I
have no technical knowledge about servers so I don't participate in
those discussions, and I'm not in Germany so that puts me further from
what happens with their funds. As long as Wikipedia could operate with
two servers in San Diego there was not much to worry about in the
ownership of the servers. The size of the recent fund drive, however,
makes it clear that we are not far away from a million dollar annual
budget. AFAIK there are no models for a wiki with that size of budget.

I think that the wikification of budgets will seem even stranger than
the wikification of an encyclopedia. It comes as no surprise when a lot
of people who have embraced the wiki way are oblivious to issues of
accounting and finance. I did notice that there was an item in the
budget to pay for external auditors, but before we get to that we need
to deal with internal audits. This could perhaps be through an audit
committee of Wikipedians who are independent of the money management,
and who are given full access to all the information that they need
including acess to receipts, cancelled checks, bank records and whatever
else they may find relevant.

I believe in a dispersed ownership where each national organization has
fiscal autonomy, and full ownership rights in whatever equipment it
purchases. A German organization should be accountable to the broader
membership as a condition of having the right to use our trademarks, but
it should be in such a way that it has no obligation or effect on the
reporting requirements of the parent organization to the U.S. Internal
Revenue Service.

If any national organization gets into legal trouble of any remotely
imaginable kind the organization should be such that no other national
organization is affected. This holds especially true for the
organization in the litigious climate of the United States where you
don't need to do something wrong to get sued.

>>I do not think it is wise to give advice like this.
>>
>>
>Then can you suggest a way for the process to be moved along?
>
>Either the German chapter can help us with global issues, or their fundraising
>page needs to be changed to tell exactly what money donated to the German
>chapter can be used on and what it can?t. So far, everything seems to give the
>impression that money donated to the German chapter can be used to help with
>global needs. *That* is why I?ve been drafting budgets and coordinating fund
>drives that include the German chapter as a means to help us attain global
>goals. So I merely suggested a way that that could be done.
>
What are our understandings on this? Co-ordinated fund-raising makes
sense. It is also understandable that there would be global needs, but
there still needs to be a definition of what needs are global.

>As more and more chapters get tax exempt status, this will be more and more of
>an issue. This issue needs to be worked out ASAP, before over half the money
>generated in fund drives goes to chapters instead of directly to the
>foundation.
>
In some countries tax exempt status depends on the funds so collected
being spent for needs in that country.

Mav, I know that you are working very hard at this, and that you are
approaching the task in an autonomous and independent manner, though at
times I do wonder whether you're in over your head. I would have loved
to have heard you views on this in Frankfurt, and was very disappointed
that you could not be there.

Ec


from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Reading articles

body:
On sr:, we are starting with reading articles. It can be interesting
to people who prefer to hear (not to read) articles, and, of course,
to blind people. We are starting with the list "Articles which all
Wikipedias should have" (or whatever is the name of that article).

Did anyone start something similar (except Wikinews, of course)?


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 06/09/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:

> The conclusion that I take away from this thread is that yes,
> each wikipedia has its own culture and preferred practices, and
> it would be extraordinarily useful to have articles describing
> all that. Even just a translated summary of distinctive policy
> pages would be helpful to people who are not fluent in the other
> WP's language. For instance, if I were interested in whether the
> Russian WP accepts "fair use" images, an English WP article on
> the Russian WP would probably be a more reliable way to find out
> than by posting an English-language question on the Russian
> equivalent of village pump.

I've just - entirely by coincidence - encountered [[en:Japanese
Wikipedia]]; I suspect this is pretty much an excellent example of
what you want. Contains the usual history section - milestone
articles, media coverage, awards - but also a "Characteristics" page,
which tells us they don't accept fair use, they delete copyvios out of
the history, and - interestingly - that "An article will be deleted if
it countains the name of a private citizen unless they are a public
figure."

The last is certainly one an external user wouldn't have expected, and
this is the sort of thing these pages could be very useful for
generally...

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] One Where We Blew It

body:
On 07/09/05, Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:

> After all, I haven't seen anyone argue on VfD that a village of 100
> people in Africa or Asia is not notable: that's difficult to claim
> when there are so many existing articles about communities of that
> size -- or smaller -- in the U.S.

I have a vague recollection of having seen a small Eastern European
town or two be VfDed, though I suspect that was more through it being
a substub and contextless than it being "nn. little foreign place."

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


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Reading articles

body:
On 9/7/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> On sr:, we are starting with reading articles. It can be interesting
> to people who prefer to hear (not to read) articles, and, of course,
> to blind people. We are starting with the list "Articles which all
> Wikipedias should have" (or whatever is the name of that article).
>
> Did anyone start something similar (except Wikinews, of course)?

Yes. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisound for links to all of
them (and please add the Serbian one there too). It is already
happening in German, English, Spanish and Hungarian.

Angela.


body:
On 9/7/05, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:

> ie. do something ;)  (Hey, I'm workin' on it...)

Was I that obvious? Lol, I was worried that people would let
themselves be put off by minor problems. We have a month to build this
together and overcome difficulties.

> No, but really, thanks for that Delphine. By the way, is the budget
> available for Wikimania 2005 - just to give a sense of what priceline
> we're thinking of, how much sponsorship you got etc..?

The forecast budget was of 100K euros, including payment for
accomodation for 200 people, food for 300 people. The final budget, on
which I am still working, was covered in part by people's
particpation, in part by sponsorships. (30 000 euros from Gurunet,
5000 USD by Social Text, 2500 euros by Doccheck, 1000 Euros by Sun for
he party). The final budget will be less than 100K euros, but this is
an acceptable figure.

This said, I don't think we should start comparing what prices were
what etc. For all you know next year there's going to be 500 of us, or
100, you can't really take this figure as a comparative one.

We're going to be working to find the necessary sponsorship if the
location suits our needs. It should also be much easier next year than
it has been this year to raise awareness and get sponsors for
Wikimania. We're growing bigger ;-). The sponsors this year seem to
have liked what we did and the press coverage was great, which allows
for a greater potential. Don't let yourself be  put off by figures,
try to find the best location ever ;-).

Delphine
--
~notafish


from_name: Dorożyński Janusz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki dump organization

body:
Hi everybody!

	I'm newbie on this list, so apologize for any from
me :-))

I think my problem is important for people who have like me
local xAMP+M environment (for me x => W :-)) ) and want time
to time load wikis dumps. All was all right since June 23rd,
when was published last .sql dumps of "my" polish wiki.  I
load cur table into db for 10 minutes (300 pages per
second). Now I find only .xml file. First, I completely not
understand this change. For production needs, for example to
restore db, .xml files vs. .slq file are out of range. For
people like me too. Nowhere was any help how to use that new
solution. When I at last find here help (from Brion post),
no successful happens.
gzip -dc pages_current.xml.gz | php importDump.php
stops after loading appr. 15000 pages (from about 190000)
when executing 47 row of importDump script (1.5rc2).
Then I found 2979 bug about 47 row, the bug is still open
(for 1.5rc4 too), and 3182 bug, open too.

Next I try Kates importDump.phps, things were long time fine
and in progress, unfortunate for pages 142000 php was
suddenly terminated without any message but from Windows.
While php was work I watched const. increase consuming of
memory reported by bug 3182, however not so drastic or
failing the php. And next very important - flow of data
through gzip & php is drastic low - appr. 5 p/s. vs. 300 p/s
when I import .sql dump. I think export to .xml goes same
slow and not acceptable for production needs. Are really
wikis db's dumping to .xml? and if needed are restoring from
xml?

So, is any chance that people can take from
download.wikimedia.org .sql dumps? Xml dumps are completely
useless for them.

	Janusz 'Ency' Dorozynski


from_name: Dariusz Siedlecki

body:
2005/9/7, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com>:
> Come on, BE BOLD!

No, maybe next year ;).

--
Pozdrawiam,
Dariusz "Datrio" Siedlecki


subject: [WikiEN-l] Quality tags

body:
On 07/09/05, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> Trying to think laterally for the moment.  If articles were rated on a scale
> of 1 to 100 for excellence, the lower rungs of the ladder would correspond
> to poor articles, of various types: stubby, badly written, failing when
> judged by policy (NPOV, NOR, CYS), non-encyclopedic.  This could be the
> basis of an automated clean-up/deletion mechanism also, but would need
> perhaps one other ingredient (to make a kind of 2-d plot).  What should that
> be?

Quality of form vs. quality of content?

The one is ranging from an unwikified orphan stub to a polished,
linked, well-referenced 5,000 word article article; the other deals
with comprehensiveness, NPOV, accuracy, &c.

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


from_name: Roger Luethi

body:
On Wed, 07 Sep 2005 17:02:27 +0200, Boris Lohnzweiger wrote:
> Annoyingly, it's true that a few users at de: seem to do nothing else

Those "few users" sure set the tone on deletion discussions.

> the verge of being blocked AFAIK. What I wanted to point out is that
> these outrages by no means reflect the spirit of the German WP. The

They appear to reflect the spirit on [[de:WP:LK]] quite well.

There are several examples just among those listed for deletion today:

* [[de:Castorama]] (two sentences on a French retailer)
* [[de:Barstede]] (two sentences on a place in Germany)
* [[de:Rollins Band]] (band stub)

Each has been listed by a different editor (two of them admins). For
each case, the motivation given for deletion was insufficient content,
_not_ notability. There weren't exactly many other editors complaining
about this "outrage", either.

In two cases, the articles were given 7 days to improve (common
procedure on WP:de). Castorama was still pending when I checked, with
discussion going forth and back. It might be instructive to try and
vfd [[en:Castorama]] in the English WP (exact same content, except for
the language).

And that's only for today, with cases that are fairly tame -- not much
would be lost with the deletion of any of these stubs. I have seen the
same pattern with stubs that in my opinion were quite useful. In most
cases, stubs deserving an article end up being expanded rather than
deleted, so the end result is positive. But it is a fact that WP:de is
not a friendly place for short stubs, at least compared to WP:en.

Roger


from_name: Tom Cadden

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikisqualking

body:
I know that Skyring specialises in Wikistalking, but reading his preposterous edits, maybe we should have a new category for him - "Wikisqualking". It seems to be his new technique, endless complaints with himself as the victim, given that he cant stalk me right now on Wikipedia.

Suffice to say that as with Pete's standard claims in all the various edit wars he had been involved with, and the arbitration committee discussions that his behaviour has necessitated, his claims are pananoid and nonsensical.

BTW what is the running total of sockpuppets he is up to now? Has he surpassed 30 yet since his ban? It was moving rapidly in that direction when I left.

Discussing things with Pete (in so far as anyone's communication on Wikipedia with him ever qualified for the term 'discussion' since he ignored everyone's comments ad nausaum) reminds one of Lloyd George's description of how negotiating with de Valera was like trying to pick up mercury with a fork.

(Oh dear. I suppose writing this will mean that the list will be overrun by more Skyring wikisqualking now, how he is just a poor honourable Aussie whom has been innocent picked on by Jimbo, the ArbCom (twice), Petaholmes, Adam Carr, John Kenney, everyone on the Government of Australia page, yada yada yada.)

Have fun with him.

Thom

aka jtdirl/fear eireann

PS: maybe in his honour Wikipedia should create a special verb - to skyring, meaning 'to ignore all rules, hound people who don't agree with one, and when banned launch waves of sockpuppets onto Wikipedia, all while portraying oneself as the innocent victim of everyone else's intrigue.'

Skyring <skyring at gmail.com> wrote:
On 9/4/05, James D. Forrester wrote:
> If what we do is fair and just, then that is not our
> intent, merely a happy by-product. Wikipedia is not a democracy, and not
> a bureaucracy, and the Committee serves to upload neither potential
> set-up, nor any other community model. There is a massive range of
> options to go through in the dispute resolution processes before that of
> Arbitration is reached, all of which in their own ways are fair and just
> (and, in most cases, disproportionately, but not inappropriately,
> unfair, being weighted towards the wronger and against the wronged, as
> it were); by the time one is in Arbitration, the application of fairness
> and justice has seemed to have been unproductive.
>
> On the other hand, we seek as much information as possible from all
> sides when evaluating cases.

My problem with all this is that you don't necessarily evaluate the
information. In the case of Jim Duffy and myself you listened to him
squawking that I'd made more than a hundred edits on his articles, one
after the other, and accepted his claim that this was wikistalking.

But did you look at my edits? Go to
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Presidential_Inauguration_%28Ireland%29&diff=15106980&oldid=15106944
Presidential Inauguration (Ireland)] and look at the diffs. Jim Duffy
wrote the article single-handed and I then made fourteen edits on it.
My very first one was to correct "President of the United Kingdom" to
"President of the United States" and the following edits are all good
ones, some of them correcting really silly mistakes. As anyone can
see.

This wasn't wikistalking, this was wikiduty.

Jim Duffy's problem is that he doesn't like to admit making mistakes,
and he reverted all my changes! I think that I was quite justified in
taking a good look at his other articles, and surprise, surprise, I
found a lot more errors and fixed them.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Jim Duffy is a good editor
and he produces some excellent work based on superb research. But he
makes silly mistakes now and again - I don't know why, maybe he was in
hour 48 of a day long wikisession or something - and if I come along
and polish up his articles, it's for the good of the project.

I was wrong in the "enfeebled mind" edit summary I made when I fixed
the "President of the United Kingdom" thing, and for that and any
other slights, I apologise. But I'm never going to apologise for
correcting an obvious error in Wikipedia, and I trust that my outrage
at being suspended for a year for doing the right thing is
understandable.

--
Peter in Canberra
_______________________________________________
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from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
Pawe? Dembowski wrote:
> Does this include disambiguation pages? If so, it's not a very good
> estimate, since they *should* be short...

Yes, I think [[Special:Shortpages]] includes disambiguation pages.
And also redirect pages where #redirect is spelled in lower case.
I was able to remove entries from [[Special:Shortpages]] by
changing the spelling to upper case #REDIRECT.

So, we still need a better tool to measure the level of stubs.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
> On 9/6/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Maybe you want to check [[WP:N]]. Just because something exists doesn't
>>make it notable.
>
>
> This is the same [[WP:N]] that starts with a big note that there is no
> Wikipedia policy on notability, right?
>

As you can see from what you quoted, I never said it was a policy. You
asked for guidlines, so I provided you with one, official or not.

As for your love of [[Elf Only Inn]], I see that (as of 11:00 UTC, 7th
September 2005]] you have made a grand total of ZERO edits to that
article. Stop bitching about the fact that an article was deleted, and
expand the thing.

--
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
Ryan Delaney wrote:
> Alphax wrote:
>
>> As you can see from what you quoted, I never said it was a policy. You
>> asked for guidlines, so I provided you with one, official or not.
>>
>> As for your love of [[Elf Only Inn]], I see that (as of 11:00 UTC, 7th
>> September 2005]] you have made a grand total of ZERO edits to that
>> article. Stop bitching about the fact that an article was deleted, and
>> expand the thing.
>>
>>
>>
> While we're talking about policies and guielines, would you say that
> [[WP:CIVIL]] applies to the mailing list, or is this a free for all...? ;-)
>

Maybe I should just violate [[WP:NPA]] and call Snowspinner a... nah.

Snowspinner, I'm sorry that I harassed you, and that you feel so hurt by
articles being deleted, but if people feel that something is not notable
enough to belong in Wikipedia - and AFAICT, this is still a valid reason
for voting to delete something (actually, I don't think you even *need*
to provide a reason when voting) - then they will vote, "nn. webcomic,
delete".

It is neither your job, nor mine, nor the purpose of Wikipedia to
increase the "notability" of something. Wikipedia is pretty big on the
internet, and we have (or used to have) standards which meant that
Wikipedia was being used as a measure of notability of a topic elsewhere
on the Internet, and in the wider media in general.

As it has been pointed out in another thread:

Fastfission wrote:
> Well, recognizing that Wikipedia itself is becoming a cultural object,
> wouldn't it make sense at the very least to say "When it is more notable
> than its inclusion in Wikipedia would be"? ;-)
>
> Put more simply, if I were in EB, it would be pretty amazing and the most
> notable thing about me ("Otherwise unnotable man included in Encyclopedia
> Brittanica," the headlines would proclaim). However if I was more notable
> than my inclusion into EB would be, then it wouldn't be any big deal if they
> had an article on me -- it might even be expected, if they specialized in
> breadth.
>
> Of course, the problem with this is that it is self-reinforcing policy! That
> is, if the standard for inclusion to Wikipedia went down, then the
> likelihood of having a Wikipedia article about something would go up, which
> would in turn affect a standard for inclusion based on the likelihood of an
> article being in Wikipedia... and so on.
>

It's a slippery slope once we say abolish such meta-guidlines as
notability and encyclopedic potential. Wikipedia is NOT a web directory,
and for many articles (not all, but many nonetheless) on webcomics, that
is all the article is being used for. As I said before:

Alphax wrote:
> We are here to document the state of things, nothing more. That is the
> essence of NPOV, the policy which (along with Freedom of content)
> Wikipedia is founded upon.
>

To me, staying neutral means "we don't write about something until it is
notable outside of the community it originated in", because otherwise we
are pushing that communitie's POV that the subject of the article is
notable outside of that community.

--
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body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> Boris Lohnzweiger wrote:
>
>> Roger wrote:
>>
>>
>>> The German WP doesn't keep articles
>>> just because the subject is notable. If an article is too short, it
>>> will get deleted unless someone expands it (IIRC a time limit of a few
>>> days is quite common).
>>>
>>
>> This is not correct. There are a number of two or three line articles
>> that have been on the German Wikipedia for at least a year and nobody
>> is planning to delete them. According to German WP deletion rules
>> shortness doesn't justify a deletion and deletion is only a means of
>> last resort ("letztes Mittel") if other measures fail. If it weren't
>> that way, would we have almost 300,000 articles then?
>>
> The conclusion that I take away from this thread is that yes,
> each wikipedia has its own culture and preferred practices, and
> it would be extraordinarily useful to have articles describing
> all that. Even just a translated summary of distinctive policy
> pages would be helpful to people who are not fluent in the other
> WP's language. For instance, if I were interested in whether the
> Russian WP accepts "fair use" images, an English WP article on
> the Russian WP would probably be a more reliable way to find out
> than by posting an English-language question on the Russian
> equivalent of village pump.
>

The perfect place for all this of course is on Meta :)

--
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from_name: Amgine

subject: [Foundation-l] [Fwd: [Wikinews-l] Wikinews Licensure Poll]

body: Forgot to send this here too...


body: Forgot to send this here too...


from_name: Paweł Dembowski

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: a crazy idea...

body:
Anthere napisa?u:

> Dan Grey wrote:

>> On 30/08/05, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
>>
>>>Hi all,
>>>
>>>When I thought about some of the latest discussions on the list and
>>>meta-wiki here, I had a little crazy idea.
>>>
>>>The Wikimedia Foundation website was created a few months ago because we
>>>wanted something clean and clear to present to outside visitors. People
>>>shouldn't have to dive in the mess on meta-wiki for getting information
>>>about Wikimedia.
>>>
>>>However, this plan didn't work out in my opinion. WMF wiki isn't
>>>regularly updated, people aren't sure what should be on meta and what on
>>>wmf, content is duplicated on meta-wiki, translations have to be
>>>regularly moved from meta to the wmf wiki and so on.
>>>
>>>In my opinion, there are three options:
>>>* we can continue like this and try to make the best out of it
>>>* we can drastically reduce the number of pages on WMF, limit the
>>>translations and make it a very simple information site (similar to what
>>>was done on http://www.wikimedia.de, the german associations site)
>>>* or we can reunify meta-wiki and the WMF wiki under
>>>http://www.wikimedia.org
>>>
>>>Before some of you call now "impossible", I'd like you to think about
>>>it. We've managed to build an encyclopedia which is visited by thousands
> I have not been able to make up my mind. So I wait for feedback :-)
> ant

I fully support elian's idea.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: a crazy idea...


from_name: Nicholas Moreau

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikijunior as a new Sister Project

body:
The reasons that I'm pushing for a seperate domain for Wikijunior is:

- We need a stable version for kids, that kids and adults alike can't
vandalise.

- We need a more kid-friendly skin and navigation for the MediaWiki, so
curious kids don't get sidetracked in "Recently uploaded images" and the
like.

- We need more attention for the project. We've got at least 55 contributors
just to the Solar System book, which is fantastic, but we need perfection.

As Wikijunior develops past say, 50 books, we would benefit from a seperate
editing wiki. While we're creating seperate and publishable reference works,
the ability to merge them into one greater encyclopedic form.

On Robert's suggestion of Wikijunior being a "stealth" proposal, we've been
around since mid-2004, I've had something relating to the project docked on
the front page of the English Meta essentially daily since then, and the
publicly accessible Board meeting minutes mention the creation of the
project.

As for the assumption this is a pet project of "some board members", they've
certainly helped us with their say in discussions and votes, but so have
many, many other people.

Nick/Zanimum


subject: [Foundation-l] a crazy idea...

body:
On 8/30/05, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:

> In my opinion, there are three options:
> * we can continue like this and try to make the best out of it
> * we can drastically reduce the number of pages on WMF, limit the
> translations and make it a very simple information site (similar to what
> was done on http://www.wikimedia.de, the german associations site)
> * or we can reunify meta-wiki and the WMF wiki under
> http://www.wikimedia.org

> Test wikipedias would be moved from meta to somewhere else, as well as
> the mediawiki documentation (there is now a dedicated mediawiki wiki) to
> not clutter up recentchanges anymore.

I've been thinking this over for a few days, and I believe the option
of reunifying meta and the Foundation wiki makes most sense. The
separation means little to external people and only causes extra work
for internal people. If we need pages to be uneditable, we can just
protect them rather than hiding them on a less visited, less wiki,
site.

If the test wikis and help pages are moved elsewhere, I think meta can
become useful again, and that the inclusion of all the Foundation
pages there would be preferable to the current situation.

Angela.


subject: [Foundation-l] a crazy idea...


from_name: Cormac Lawler

body:
On 9/7/05, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/7/05, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > ie. do something ;)  (Hey, I'm workin' on it...)
>
> Was I that obvious? Lol, I was worried that people would let
> themselves be put off by minor problems. We have a month to build this
> together and overcome difficulties.
>
> > No, but really, thanks for that Delphine. By the way, is the budget
> > available for Wikimania 2005 - just to give a sense of what priceline
> > we're thinking of, how much sponsorship you got etc..?
>
> The forecast budget was of 100K euros, including payment for
> accomodation for 200 people, food for 300 people. The final budget, on
> which I am still working, was covered in part by people's
> particpation, in part by sponsorships. (30 000 euros from Gurunet,
> 5000 USD by Social Text, 2500 euros by Doccheck, 1000 Euros by Sun for
> he party). The final budget will be less than 100K euros, but this is
> an acceptable figure.
>
> This said, I don't think we should start comparing what prices were
> what etc. For all you know next year there's going to be 500 of us, or
> 100, you can't really take this figure as a comparative one.
>
> We're going to be working to find the necessary sponsorship if the
> location suits our needs. It should also be much easier next year than
> it has been this year to raise awareness and get sponsors for
> Wikimania. We're growing bigger ;-). The sponsors this year seem to
> have liked what we did and the press coverage was great, which allows
> for a greater potential. Don't let yourself be  put off by figures,
> try to find the best location ever ;-).
>
> Delphine
> --
> ~notafish

Thanks Delphine. Any chance you could give a general breakdown on how
much accommodation and conference rooms were? I know it's all
changeable and sponsorship will help, but just to know what's ok and
what's ridiculous..

Cormac


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: new request for ASL/English wikipedia

body:
> There are two main ASL writing systems: Stokoe, and SignWriting. If you
> can work out how to make either of these (or any other system I don't
> know about, but is common amongst deaf users of ASL) work with
> Wikipedia, you've got a good chance of getting a consensus to start a
> new Wikipedia for ASL as a first-class written language. Otherwise, all
> you have is the visual equivalent of spoken-word readings of articles in
> other languages: they may be interesting and even useful, but since
> they're not interactive and Wiki-linked, they're not a Wikipedia.

Would an automatic converter like simplified Chinese/traditional
Chinese be possible to convert it to other sign languages?

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


from_name: Kate

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: technical issues management

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:

> As I understand your plan, 'Wikimedia web' product on bugzilla will be
> closed/deleted and bug moved to otrs.

i've created a new bugzilla product, "Issues".  i don't think "Wikimedia
websites" will disappear, since it's still a reasonable method to report
problems, whereas Issues is only editable by developers.

bugs get opened in issues when someone sends a problem report to OTRS.
at the moment they're assigned to me, but i'll probably create another
mailing list (announce-only, like wikibugs-l) for it.

> What about an issue reported to
> the noc that then need to be moved to bugzilla ?

someone can open a bug in bugzilla on behalf of the person who mailed
noc about it. (or just tell them to do that.. as long as it gets moved
somehow).

> Looks like dev/sysadmin will have to look at both interfaces if they
> want to get the full history of the problem.

well, the idea is that only one person has to look at OTRS, and any
other developers can see all current issues in bugzilla (via the Issues
product).  the reason i used OTRS for that is to act as a 'filter'
between users reporting problems, and extracting actual issues which
need to be solved from that.

> You can probably set up bugzilla to have several virtual admin teams
> (dns, squids, apaches, hardware, kennisnet). All new messages could be
> assigned to the issue manager with an 'unconfirmed' status he will then
> give out the bug to one of the virtual teams that can then deal with the
> problem.

would each team be a mailing list?  i was thinking of an all-developers@
list to assign bugs to by default (at the moment they're assigned to me,
but that's not a very good solution).

> > the issues manager can then formulate a list of tasks required to resolve each
> > issue, and place them on a wiki page somewhere (probably split by particular
> > people, and tasks for all developers).  there's then a central place to look to
> > know what needs to be done.  further, this can be used to produce a list of
> > open and resolved problems on the site, and what was done to fix them, to keep
> > users and the board better informed of what's going on.  (for example, a weekly
> > 'issues summary' mail to the list).
>
> Isn't what http://wp.wikidev.net/ is for ? Some troublechecking guide
> would probably be useful.

i was going to use wikidev for it, but i think it's more useful for that
to go on bugzilla now.  of course, documenting things on wikidev is
still a good idea ;-) (and the server admin log shouldn't go away).

> > this can also be used as central point of contact for communications with
> > outside partners, such as Kennisnet and Lost Oasis (although purely for
> > technical matters, not negotiations).

> Just one last thing: what about issues being reported on IRC ? Should
> users be redirected to the new interface ? If so we might as well
> moderate the channel.

well.. if people want to report issues via IRC, it's fine, but i think
the general attitude should be that if it's not sent to noc@, there's no
guarantee it'll get fixed.  the user doesn't have to do that, of course
- a developer who happens to be on IRC, or whatever, can open a new
ticket.  i definitely don't want to start ignoring people trying to
report problems, however they do it, since the idea of this is to make
it _easier_, not _harder_...

kate.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: technical issues management


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Quality tags

body:
You think so? That's usually when I brand myself as something separate from
the "unappreciative masses"; elitism as a coping mechanism. ;-)

FF

On 9/7/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
> We're a top-50 website - having millions of random readers clicking a
> "Rate
> this article" tab and giving their perceptions is, to me, inherently
> interesting. If writing I've contributed substantially to gets low ratings
> from LOTS of people, then I fear I must wear such critique from the people
> we are after all writing this thing for and see how I may improve myself
> ...
>
>
> - d.
>
>


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
>Annoyingly, it's true that a few users at de: seem to do nothing else then filing requests for deletion. I don't ignore that fact. One even picked the user name "L?schantrag" (='request for deletion') but is on the verge of being blocked AFAIK. What I wanted to point out is that these outrages by no means reflect the spirit of the German WP. The community is aware of the "L?schwahn" a few people have fallen prey to and the way they can harm the project e. g. by daunting off newcomers writing their first article.
>
>
Unfortunately at nl: a couple of the newer users are very fanatical when
it comes to deleting as well. For us at nl: a new development and I find
myself for the first time in my almost 2 years wikimedia contributing
time to have to watch the page for articles put up for deletion :( Hope
we can convince to do it another way.

Waerth/Walter


from_name: Phroziac

body:
There's already enough cruft on the main page.

On 9/7/05, MAURICE FRANK <megaknee at btopenworld.com> wrote:
> Message: 4
> Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2005 14:14:27 -0500
> From: Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Zoe's Abuse of Power as a Sysop
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <47683e96050907121459d14d88 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>  With
> any
> troublesome user, you need to consider two things -
> does the user's
> value to
> the project outweigh the trouble of dealing with them,
> and does the
> cost (to
> the community) of an admin acting in the spirit of the
> law rather than
> the
> letter of the law outweigh the benefit of a "simple"
> solution.
>
> I challenge you to print this on en-Wikipedia's home
> page, so that no user can deny realising it nor claim
> that readers don't know it. This is so that nobody
> thereafter will have any basis go round arguing that
> you hide the way you work. So you'll be better off,
> won't you?
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________
> Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
signature


subject: [Wikitech-l] new mailing list: issues-l

body:
hello.

i have create a new mailing list, issues-l
(http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/issues-l).  notifications of
new site issues will be sent to this list.  developers might want to
subscribe to it.

kate.


body:
On 9/7/05, Evan Martin <evanm at google.com> wrote:

> (Also, is there an official contact for this sort of thing?  That is:
> who knows / gets to make the final decision of whether wikipedia can
> handle more load?)

The "official contacts" would be Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> and
Domas Mituzas <domas.mituzas at gmail.com>.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chief_Technical_Officer
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hardware_Officer

But, asking on this mailing list may be better since others on the
development/sys admin team may have opinions on the matter.

Angela.


from_name: MAURICE FRANK

body:
Message: 4
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2005 14:14:27 -0500
From: Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com>
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Zoe's Abuse of Power as a Sysop
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Message-ID:
<47683e96050907121459d14d88 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
 With
any
troublesome user, you need to consider two things -
does the user's
value to
the project outweigh the trouble of dealing with them,
and does the
cost (to
the community) of an admin acting in the spirit of the
law rather than
the
letter of the law outweigh the benefit of a "simple"
solution.

I challenge you to print this on en-Wikipedia's home
page, so that no user can deny realising it nor claim
that readers don't know it. This is so that nobody
thereafter will have any basis go round arguing that
you hide the way you work. So you'll be better off,
won't you?

___________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
Snowspinner wrote:
>
> On Sep 7, 2005, at 7:00 AM, Alphax wrote:
>
>>
>> As for your love of [[Elf Only Inn]], I see that (as of 11:00 UTC, 7th
>> September 2005]] you have made a grand total of ZERO edits to that
>> article. Stop bitching about the fact that an article was deleted, and
>> expand the thing.
>
>
> A) I actually hate the comic

Yes, it has it's moments...

> B) Since when is contributing to an article a necessary element in
> thinking it should be kept?
>

It's not.

Anyway, I've started a Vote for Undeletion... maybe the deleted material
can be merged back into the history ;)

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

body:
Benjamin Webb a ?crit :
> James D. Forrester <james at ...> writes:
>
>
>>No, based on the inability for almost all people in the world to legally
>>contribute based on that licence (many countries have no legal scope for
>>a person to relinquish their work into the public domain, including the EU).
>>
>>CC-BY is effectively the same, FWIW, and I would counsel the use of that
>>instead. CC-BY 2.5 even allows the crediting of an overall collective
>>organisation in lieu of the individuals (i.e., "this is released under
>>the Creative Commons Attribution licence; please credit WikiTree").
>>
>
>
> CC-BY does sound like a good option, but would "Copyrighted Free Use" have the
> same problems as public domain?

Said like this, yes.

We are now trying to write a proper and simple license for Wikinews.
Have a look if you want to get ideas.


from_name: Arne Klempert

subject: [Foundation-l] a crazy idea...

body:
On 9/7/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/30/05, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
>
> > In my opinion, there are three options:
> > * we can continue like this and try to make the best out of it
> > * we can drastically reduce the number of pages on WMF, limit the
> > translations and make it a very simple information site (similar to what
> > was done on http://www.wikimedia.de, the german associations site)
> > * or we can reunify meta-wiki and the WMF wiki under
> > http://www.wikimedia.org
> [...]
> I've been thinking this over for a few days, and I believe the option
> of reunifying meta and the Foundation wiki makes most sense.

Sorry, I strongly disagree. IMHO the most important problems with the
foundation wiki are
* the lack of navigation
* outdated pages
* the issue that it is a wiki

The foundation wiki is a mess, and I don't see how it would help to
put it together with a website that's more messy.

> The
> separation means little to external people and only causes extra work
> for internal people.

We need a place on the web where people, who are not (yet) wiki
experts can find reliable (I don't mean "reliable" in the wiki sense
which actually means "sometimes reliable, sometimes not") information
about us.

Let's think about how to achieve this, and not how to replace a mess
with another one (bigger or smaller).

Some ideas that could help:
* Look out for a content management system (a wiki is not a cms). In
the best case one  that is able to handle multilingual content
(switching to default language if translation is not up to date)
* Think about which pages we really need (a real concept would help)
* Think about reducing the number of languages (which would be less
important if we find a cms that can handle multilingual content as
described above)
* Looking for people who take the responsibility for the website.

-- Arne (akl)


subject: [Foundation-l] a crazy idea...


from_name: Ryan Delaney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Quality tags

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>We're a top-50 website - having millions of random readers clicking a "Rate
>this article" tab and giving their perceptions is, to me, inherently
>interesting.
>
This is really interesting. How about something like, "Did you find what
you were looking for?"

Wikipedia isn't a service, really, but maybe it wouldn't hurt to think
of it as one. Right now, I think it's possbile that Wikipedia editors
are more in touch with the issues that affect editors and totally out of
touch with people who actually use the damn thing as a reference. All
this debate about VfD/AfD or what is and isn't a speedy or whether
[[WP:BEARD]] should be moved to BJAODN is probably not what your average
Wikipedia reader is thinking about. More reader feedback might be a way
to give us an idea of how good a job we are doing.

- Ryan


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Nicholas Moreau <nicholasmoreau at gmail.com> wrote:

> The reasons that I'm pushing for a seperate domain for Wikijunior is:
>
> - We need a stable version for kids, that kids and adults alike can't
> vandalise.
>
> - We need a more kid-friendly skin and navigation for the MediaWiki, so
> curious kids don't get sidetracked in "Recently uploaded images" and the
> like.
>
> - We need more attention for the project. We've got at least 55 contributors
> just to the Solar System book, which is fantastic, but we need perfection.

For the above reasons, I do not object to having a separate site for publishing
snapshots of WikiJunior content that was developed on Wikibooks. However,
longer term we may instead want to have an internal ?Publish this book/article?
feature as part of a future reader validation function. ?Publishing? would
create a static copy of the most recent validated item.

> As Wikijunior develops past say, 50 books, we would benefit from a seperate
> editing wiki. While we're creating seperate and publishable reference works,
> the ability to merge them into one greater encyclopedic form.

Large Wikipedia wikis do perfectly well with thousands of edits per day by a
great many people participating in a lot of WikiProjects (both different and
related). So the ?benefit? prediction is pure speculation if not proved wrong.

> On Robert's suggestion of Wikijunior being a "stealth" proposal, we've been
> around since mid-2004, I've had something relating to the project docked on
> the front page of the English Meta essentially daily since then, and the
> publicly accessible Board meeting minutes mention the creation of the
> project.

It is essentially a parent WikiProject on Wikibooks not unlike the tree of life
WikiProject and its daughter WikiProjects on the various Wikipedias.

I don?t see any pressing need to fork off this effort from Wikibooks and thus
impoverish that project. WikiJunior has helped a invigorate Wikibooks, which
has long suffered from inadequate software features and the much greater
demands placed on contributors (creating a book with x pages is a bit harder
than creating a set of related encyclopedia articles that filled the same
space).

What we need are MediaWiki features that better facilitate wiki book creation.
On the top of the list for me would be the ability to search within a single
book (searching within a category could do this and also benefit the other
projects), easily create new pages in the same book with all navigational links
auto-generated, and have auto-indexing and auto-assist annotation features.
Having a book-specific RC would also be nice (I see this can already be done
per category from the [Related changes] link; being able to see Related changes
one or two levels below the current cat would also be nice).

-- mav

______________________________________________________
Click here to donate to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.
http://store.yahoo.com/redcross-donate3/


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Quality tags

body:
Michael Turley (michael.turley at gmail.com) [050908 05:06]:

> However, the more I consider these proposed article rating schemes,
> the more I dislike the idea of my contributions being graded by those
> who feel it is their right do so without any real feeling of
> obligation to actually improve the article instead.  If these ideas
> develop in the direction I fear they will (based on my observation of
> and participation in the various deletion forums), I am certain to
> decrease or cease my participation.
> In other words, I'm willing to put my writing on the table for anyone
> to re-edit at will.  I am far less willing to place it in a shooting
> gallery for random drive-by snipes to take pot shots at.

That's a tricky one.

However, people will already hold opinions of the quality of a bit of
writing.

The initial idea is to gather the data and not do anything with it
(separate the data-gathering and the applications). Just see what the
numbers say.

We're a top-50 website - having millions of random readers clicking a "Rate
this article" tab and giving their perceptions is, to me, inherently
interesting. If writing I've contributed substantially to gets low ratings
from LOTS of people, then I fear I must wear such critique from the people
we are after all writing this thing for and see how I may improve myself
...

- d.


from_name: Evan Martin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Time spent in page rendering

body:
On 9/7/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Jeremy Dunck wrote:
> > According to the hardware orders page[1], a major bottleneck is page rendering.
>
> See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Profiling/20050822. I don't think I'd
> call any of it a bottleneck, optimisation aimed at reducing average page
> view time or CPU load is hard work. I suspect there are hotspots, but
> not in our code, in the PHP VM. I think the best way to reduce page view
> time at this stage would be to optimise that, or to produce a JIT compiler.

I've often wondered this, so this is a great opportunity to jump in.
Why not cache prerendered versions of all pages?  It would seem that
the majority of hits are reads.  One approach I've seen elsewhere is
to cache a page the first time it's loaded, and then have writes
invalidate the cache.  (That way you're not caching pages nobody looks
at.)

It seems the total content of wikipedia isn't that big.

One tricky part is that writes to page B can affect page A if page A
has a link to B.  A reverse index of links would solve this, though I
don't know how bit it'd be.

(PS: Sorry to be a back seat driver -- I know how frustrating it is
when someone else tries to tell you they know your problem space
better than you do.  So if this is a stupid suggestion, feel free to
tell me so; I'm mostly interested in the why/why not answer.)


from_name: Domas Mituzas

body:
Hola,

Tim Starling used to be "official" earlier, but now he's the most performance/scalability oriented (...and performing) guy here :)
And yes, this list usually contains us all. Or #wikimedia-tech on Freenode, where we usually lurk and respond.

Domas

----------------snip snip
> (Also, is there an official contact for this sort of thing?  That is:
> who knows / gets to make the final decision of whether wikipedia can
> handle more load?)
The "official contacts" would be Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> and Domas Mituzas <domas.mituzas at gmail.com>.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chief_Technical_Officer
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hardware_Officer

But, asking on this mailing list may be better since others on the development/sys admin team may have opinions on the matter.

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


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
"Alphax" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:431EC855.9050406 at gmail.com...
> Phil Sandifer wrote:
>> On 9/6/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
[snip]
> As for your love of [[Elf Only Inn]], I see that (as of 11:00 UTC, 7th
> September 2005]] you have made a grand total of ZERO edits to that
> article. Stop bitching about the fact that an article was deleted, and
> expand the thing.

As far I can see it, the problem is not that web-comic articles are being
deleted because the articles themselves are missing some vital ingredient:
they are being deleted because the subject fails to meet some arbitrary
external standard (Alexa, is that right?) which has not been demonstrated to
correlate with Wikipedia-style noteworthiness. So expanding the article will
do no good, because it has already been decreed that the subject thereof is
unworthy.

As with many other subject areas, the impression is given of a small clique
of "web-comic experts" who hover over AfD savagely rending any
web-comic-related articles unlucky enough to fall into their path. The
resultant mosh is what keeps me, and probably many others, from attempting
to join in the procedure.
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]
Happy to exaggerate for pseudo-comic effect (pun intended :-)


body:
Where is my LART...

> This doesn't sound like the correct mailing list for that.

This list is correct for any wikimedia operational tech issues. Hence the name, wiki tech.

Domas


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Quality tags

body:
David Gerard wrote

> We're a top-50 website - having millions of random readers clicking a
> "Rate
> this article" tab and giving their perceptions is, to me, inherently
> interesting.

And more so if each vote is only a small increment/decrement.

Charles


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Lingala Wikipedia

body:
On 9/8/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litaue -- actually in Dutch (!)

Actually, it is in Afrikaans (and a literal copy of [[af:Litaue]],
including the on Lingala not working template and the on Lingala not
existing internal images).

> I don't know what action needs to be taken, but I'm pretty sure that
> something should be done.

Personally, I have little problems with the bilingual interface,
although I would assume that it gets changed once the 'real' Lingala
editors start getting to be the majority.

However, the articles that are in English or French seem to me to not
be the intention of a Lingala Wikipedia. There may be one or two
exceptions (perhaps some pages about the language itself?), and one
could put a page there that one intends to translate, but that latter
should also not be more than 1 or 2 pages per editor.

I think the pages should be either removed, or replaced by stubs in
Lingala, with perhaps a link to the English or French article for more
information.

Andre Engels


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikisqualking

body:
On 9/8/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Tom Cadden wrote:
> > I know that Skyring specialises in Wikistalking, but reading his
> > preposterous edits, maybe we should have a new category for him -
> > "Wikisqualking". It seems to be his new technique, endless complaints
> > with himself as the victim, given that he cant stalk me right now on
> > Wikipedia.
> >
>
> YHBT. YHL. HAND.

Huh? (And no, I realise what the abbreviations mean)

Ian


from_name: Nick Boalch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Looking at the real world

body:
Skyring wrote:
>> However, wikien-l is not the place to query your ban by the Arbitration
>> Committee; it is not a community matter, but one for the Board, and
>> Jimbo in particular. Feel free to email them about it. Certainly, feel
>> free to cease emailing /us/ about it, unendingly and pointlessly.
>
> Protesting injustice is never pointless, James. The USA was founded in
> such a spirit.

You seem to forget that [[WP:NOT]] the USA.

Best wishes,

Nick

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3420
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Looking at the real world

body:
> Protesting injustice is never pointless, James. The USA was founded in
> such a spirit.

Ah, the old "spirit of the founders" appeal.  If I recall correctly,
you're from Australia, aren't you?

> You've already admitted here that the process is unfair; you can't
> seriously expect me - or anyone else - to have much respect for
> Wikipedia's version of due process after that.

We don't want your respect; we want you to go away.  I would have
thought that the ArbComm's decision had made that clear.

--
 Sean Barrett     | If everyone would just close their eyes and
 sean at epoptic.com | visualize world peace, imagine how quiet and
                  | serene it would be until the looting started.


from_name: Pawe³ Dembowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Lingala Wikipedia

body:
> I think the pages should be either removed, or replaced by stubs in
> Lingala, with perhaps a link to the English or French article for more
> information.
> Andre Engels

There are already links to those and they're called interwiki..

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Portal namespace

body:
Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> Hi,
> We requested a new 'portal' namespace about one year ago but this came
> to nothing. Some days ago, we discovered the English and German
> Wikipedia are now using this namespace (sic!) so we requesting to be
> able to do same [1]. The French word for portal is 'portail'.
> Regards,
>
> Aoineko
>
> [1]
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Le_Bistro/30_ao%C3%BBt_2005#Un_espace_de_nom_pour_nos_portails

Done:
 namespace 100 : Portail
 namespace 101 : Discussion_Portail

Announcing it on the local village pump.

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Reading articles

body:
Milos,

The project first gained traction with the German Wikipedians, and the
English Wikipedia picked up the pace on the "Spoken Wikipedia."
English has focused more on selected featured articles.

See: [[en:WikiProject_Spoken_Wikipedia]]

I actually prefer the name Spoken Wikipedia, since Wikisound could be
confused with a project for sound recordings in the future.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On 9/8/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> On sr:, we are starting with reading articles. It can be interesting
> to people who prefer to hear (not to read) articles, and, of course,
> to blind people. We are starting with the list "Articles which all
> Wikipedias should have" (or whatever is the name of that article).
>
> Did anyone start something similar (except Wikinews, of course)?
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
Jack Lynch wrote:

>This thread is a very good argument for getting rid of VfD. The main
>thing I (and everyone I know who reads it) like about the wikipedia is
>the access to detailed information on absurdly obscure info. If
>someone searches for a web comic, it instantly becomes notable and
>encyclopedic. What are the deletionists thinking??? Wiki is not paper,
>and if you keep deleting, it won't be anything special as far as
>encyclopedias go, either.
>
>
Amazingly, I'm in full agreement with Sam. :)

Just the other day I stumbled across an article on VfD for which the
entire text of the justification given for its nomination was:

"NN, D"

I'm hardly a newbie, but even for me it took a few minutes to figure out
that "NN" meant non-notable. I checked the edit history of the editor
who'd made the nomination and found about a dozen identical VfDs for
other articles made at the same time. I voted "keep" on every last one
of them because in my opinion the _nominations themselves_ were not
adequate. I didn't even bother reading the actual articles and for all I
know based on the justification given the nominator hadn't read them
either - he apparently didn't even bother to take the time to type out
whole words. Got accused of violating WP:POINT, of course, but I
completely stand by my actions.

How about a policy whereby VfDs that don't adequately explain why the
nominator made it can be summarily deleted? If someone proposes deleting
an article they should at least show that they put effort into
determining whether deletion was warranted.


from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On Tue, 6 Sep 2005, Jeff Heikkinen wrote:

> Guettarda wrote:
> > Felix
>
> (lots of wise things)
>
> > Ian
>
> It's funny, I could copy/paste that, change a few words here and there,
> and it would be the perfect response to Mr Frank as well. And from what
> I've seen, nearly every other seriously disruptive user. Interesting how
> they seem to fall in such similar patterns.
>
What I've noticed is that in nearly every case all of them claim to be
the victim of an Admin abusing their power; if they were to begin their
appeal here with something along the lines of "I think there has been a
mistake" or "there has been a misunderstanding", I'd expect that they
would receive a far more sympathetic hearing.

I know: preaching to the choir; flies, honey & vinegar.

Geoff


from_name: Traroth

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Lingala Wikipedia

body:
I don't know what can be done as long as no lingala
speaking people contribute to this wikipedia. Remove
articles in french and english is a solution to the
"purity" problem of this wp, but with the risk to
discourage the few participants (and it's not a
solution for the real problem : only 107 articles on
this wp). Actually the question is: What is the
purpose here ? How to improve the dynamism of this wp
?

Traroth

--- Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> a ?crit :

> Hi all,
>
> I would like to draw your attention to the Lingala
> Wikipedia
>
> http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/
>
> As you can see, the interface is not just in
> Lingala, but rather there
> is a slash after the Lingala rendering of each
> message, followed by a
> translation into French.
>
> Now, while I don't think it's a good thing, I would
> grudgingly accept
> the fact if it were real Lingala-speaking people who
> were responsible,
> however:
>
> Most of it is the work of
> http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Moyogo and
> http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bombo .
>
> Moyogo lists his/her level of Lingala as "ln-1" -- a
> basic command of
> Lingala, while Bombo lists his/her level of Lingala
> as "ln-0" --
> cannot understand Lingala.
>
> Now that in itself seems like an issue to me, but
> there is more:
>
> There are quite a few very long pages on ln.wiki,
> HOWEVER nearly all
> of them are written ENTIRELY in French, or with only
> a sentence
> translated.
>
> Some of the longest:
>
> http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swisi -- actually
> entirely in English, not French
>
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molongo_ya_nkot%C3%A1_ya_leta_mokili
> --
> only page title translated, entire article is in
> French
> http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217 -- again,
> entirely in English
>
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisakoli_ya_molongo_ya_makoki_ya_moto
> --
> in Lingala, but is a verbatim copy of the UDHR
>
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ing%C9%9Bl%C9%9B%CC%81t%C9%9Bl%C9%9B
> --
> entirely in French
>
http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politiki_bya_K%C9%94%CC%81ng%C9%94-Kinshasa
> -- entirely in English
> http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litaue -- actually in
> Dutch (!)
>
> Now, even if the interface in French is really a
> nessecity, it can be
> accessed from "preferences" where one may choose a
> non-default
> interface language.
>
> The French and English articles I listed above are
> only the beginning.
> I excluded the few which were partly translated, and
> obviously those
> few which were 100% Lingala.
>
> I think the question we should be asking ourselves
> is : what will
> somebody in Kinshasa think coming across this
> website? It claims to be
> the Lingala version of Wikipedia, but the interface
> is bilingual, and
> most of the articles are in French. It will be of
> little to no help to
> a monolingual Lingala speaker.
>
> I don't know what action needs to be taken, but I'm
> pretty sure that
> something should be done.
>
> The main reasons that this is different from mi.wiki
> (uses lots of
> English) and na.wiki (uses lots of English as well)
> are that:
>
> 1) interface messages are bilingual or not
> translated, unlike the
> other two where they are either fully translated, or
> not;
> 2) most pages are in English or French, unlike the
> other two where
> most pages are in the right language, even if that
> means they're
> substubs;
> 2) when confronted about these facts by an anonymous
> user, the
> administrators stated that it's important that
> French is in the
> interface because most of the contributors have poor
> Lingala. Keep in
> mind that there are only 3 active contributors, one
> of whom seems to
> speak pretty good Lingala.
>
> Mark
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

___________________________________________________________________________
Appel audio GRATUIT partout dans le monde avec le nouveau Yahoo! Messenger
T?l?chargez cette version sur http://fr.messenger.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Collapsing Histories

body:
"Edward Z. Yang" <edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com> wrote in message
news:42FD1FA9.4030901 at thewritingpot.com...
> There are certain pages in Wikipedia where vandalism makes history pages
> very ugly.
[snippety-snip]

I like your ideas, and I have a further suggestion: why not copy a trick
from "Enhanced RecentChanges" and add collapsible sections?

You could collapse multiple edits by a single user into one line, with a
clickable arrow to reveal the details. You could do something similar with
your "rollback=>hide" idea: only display the rollback line with an arrow
which can reveal the edits which were rolled back.

Am I making sense?
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: mail->news gateway

body:
"Kate" <keturner at livejournal.com> wrote in message
news:20050810074904.E780BDFD84 at rose.local...
> i've set up a mail->news gateway for the mailing lists at
> news.wikimedia.org.  it only allows reading, not posting to the lists.  as
> well as carrying (and archiving) all lists, it may be useful when Gmane is
> down or having issues.

Just picked this message up after my holiday, and the server doesn't seem to
respond.

Has it been rescinded?
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Delphine Ménard

body:
resending to the list, sorry for double Cormac :)

On 9/7/05, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks Delphine. Any chance you could give a general breakdown on how
> much accommodation and conference rooms were? I know it's all
> changeable and sponsorship will help, but just to know what's ok and
> what's ridiculous..

Accomodation was the price people paid, +/- a few cents when we made
the prices a round number.

Conference rooms were cheap, and I am not going to tell you how cheap
:P. Please, don't go that way, there is nothing ridiculous, there are
different countries, different currencies, different prices. Where you
might lose on one side, you might win on another. Don't stress
yourself about prices, England is expensive, but who knows, maybe
we'll get more sponsors than everywhere else. Or we can camp in the
New Forest ;-).

best,

Delphine

--
~notafish


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Portal namespace

body:
On 9/8/05, Ashar Voultoiz <hashar at altern.org> wrote:

> Done:
>  namespace 100 : Portail
>  namespace 101 : Discussion_Portail
>
> Announcing it on the local village pump.

Yo!!!! Merci, grazie, danke, thank you :-)

Delphine
--
~notafish


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] new mailing list: issues-l

body:
Kate wrote:

> i have create a new mailing list, issues-l
> (http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/issues-l).  notifications of
> new site issues will be sent to this list.  developers might want to
> subscribe to it.

What stupid name is that for a list, and what on earth are "new
site issues" supposed to mean?  A have an issue with this name.
Doesn't wikitech handle technical issues, foundation-l handles
policy issues, and juriwiki-l legal issues?  Search
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_list for the word issue,
and it pops up on every mailing list there is.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se