from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
> > MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> > > Also without AFD, there's still too many articles that can't get
> > > speedied because of a technicality. "More than one person bvut still
> > > vanity" and "advertising" come to mind. They're deleted 99% (figure of
> > > speech) of the time and AFD research shows those are the kind of
> > > deletions often uncontested.
> > >
> > > How are we going to get rid of non-speediable crap without AFD?
> > > How is everyone going to have input (the wiki way)?
> > >
> > > Turning off AFD even for one day will cause too much of a mess.
> > > Sure, we can clean it up eventually, but why open your bag of trash
> > > indoors when the garbage man is waiting outside?
> >
> > That's what you think the result of the experiment will be. But we
> > *don't know* because we haven't done it.
>
> True that last bit was my opinion, but we can't speedy something which
> doesn't fit the criteria (that's a fact). You haven't addressed my
> questions on how to deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted,
> but is not actually speediable (like obvious band vanity, blatant
> adverts and the like).
>
> Can you please address those questions?

My idea is to treat article deletion like the rest of page editing.
AfD came about originally because deletion was not reversible, so it
was necessarily A Big Deal. Once deletion was made reversible (Brion?)
deletion didn't need to be a Big Deal.

So the elements of my experiment would be:
1. Turn off AfD.
2. Make deletion/undeletion a common power.
3. Follow the rules for edit/reversions to police whether deletions
are done properly.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Account creation spike on enwiki after anonymous page
	creation got disabled

body:
On 12/9/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/9/05, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I made a plot[1] of account creations on the English Wikipedia based
> > on Newuserlog data, there has been quite a spike since anonymous page
> > creation got disabled, although the numbers are a bit inaccurate since
> > it has also been in the press lately.
>
> Damn you!  I was going to do that! :)

I wonder how this is going to affect our percentage of ghost accounts...


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:

>On 12/9/05, Jtkiefer <jtkiefer at wordzen.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Yes but unfortunately as it is now edit summaries are always viewable to
>>anyone even when deleted which the vandals have figured out and are now
>>using to get away with slander and privacy policy violations which it
>>takes a developer to remove.  If something like this is implemented
>>admins should have the ability to also hide the edit summary from being
>>seen by non admins
>>
>>
>
>Locked revisions would have their edit summaries obscured (it would
>appear as "(edit summary obscured for legal reasons)" or something
>like that).
>
>
Why should revisions like that be kept at all? It sounds like what
you're proposing is just a way to mix deleted revisions in with
undeleted revisions in the article history, rather than having a
separate group of deleted revisions you have to click a link to see.

Wikipedia's content is commonly mirrored. If these "hidden" revisions
don't go along with the published databases they're as good as deleted
anyway. If they do go along with it, then they're not "hidden."


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Libel law

body:
On 09 Dec 2005 16:48:00 +0100, Claus F?rber <claus at xn--frber-gra.muc.de> wrote:

> Even worse, noting stops you from suing a US editor in US courts for
> infringment of UK laws, especially UK IP laws. A US judgment based on UK
> substantive law can easily be enforced in the US.

Indeed, US courts will enforce UK law, except when such enforcement
violates US law.  That's why we don't enforce UK libel judgments;
doing so would violate our Constitution.  UK judgments of some other
nature, those we'll enforce.

Kelly


body:
On 12/9/05, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> I wonder how this is going to affect our percentage of ghost accounts...

Indeed.  We've over doubled our account create rate, to the point that
actually looking at those accounts is problematic.

Kelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] Harlan Ellison

body:
Daniel R. Tobias wrote:

>The latest prominent "WikiEnemy" to emerge: Harlan Ellison.  (See the
>talk page of his article for a big, vitriolic anti-Wikipedia rant
>allegedly authored by him.)
>
>
>
A year ago he got the article on himself "temporarily" reduced to a stub
via complaints to Jimbo pending some sort of behind-the-scenes
resolution of whatever it was that he was complaining about. That
resolution apparently never came so a couple of months later I restored
all the deleted material. Perhaps he's bearing a grudge over that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Harlan_Ellison#Direct_contact_with_Ellison_.2F_stubbing_the_article
has what few details were put on Wikipedia about it.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> 1. Only admins can see deletion history (required for legal reasons I
> believe so copyvios can be hidden).

We need a way to lock revisions from public view, separately from
deleting the article.  A locked revision would remain in the edit
history (showing the date and editor who made it) but would not be
viewable (nor could a diff be constructed against it) except by an
administrator.  The ability to lock (and unlock) revisions needs to be
restricted to admins.  That would take care of the libel and copyvio
issues.

It's almost enough to get me coding again.

Kelly


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Articles for Creation vs. Requested Articles

body:
On 12/8/05, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> G'day Andrew,
>
> > On 08/12/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> >>What exactly is an "eternal stub", anyway?  I thought by definition a
> >>stub was able to be expanded.
> >
> > An eternal stub is one that is eternally able to be expanded... but
> > no-one ever does.
>
> Or *can*.
>
> Can God create a permastub not even He can expand?
>
>
> --
> Mark Gallagher
> "What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
> - Danger Mouse

There are an awful lot of people confuse short articles with stubs.
Just because it's short doesn't mean it's bad.

Of course, just because it's a stub doesn't mean it's bad (compared to
nothing) either.  After all, most mainstream encyclopedias contain
stubs too.

Anthony


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel law

body:
G'day Anthony,

> Libel, at least so far as it consists of false information, has no
> place in Wikipedia.  This has nothing to do with UK law, though.  If
> we're talking about true information, then I'd argue that Wikipedia
> *should not* bow down to the UK or any other legal authority if there
> is any possible way for it to avoid coming into their jurisdiction.

On the other hand, we shouldn't publish stuff just because it's true,
either (this is the cue for the "you deletionist vandal!" crowd to start
making a ruckus on this issue, too).  In Australia, one can defend
against a defamation suit if a) the information is true, *and* b) it's
in the public interest for the information to be published.

Truth in an of itself is not a defence, neither is "important if true".
   This additional burden presumably makes Australian law as nightmarish
and evil as UK law (they hate freedom!), but is something I think it
would do us no harm to heed.  We should not be publishing defamatory
information just because it's true, even if we really really dislike the
subject.  The truth of a statement is not sufficient for its inclusion
in an encyclopaedia.

(Admittedly, WP:NOR can cover most instances of this, since if the
information is verifiable, someone else will have already made the call).

> If use of the seven dirty words is illegal in Pennsylvania, should
> Wikipedia develop a policy around that situation?  I think we can all
> agree that it absolutely should not.

Good point.

<snip />

Cheers,

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

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel law

body:
G'day Andrew,

> On 08/12/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>>Frankly, I think it's ridiculous to think that the UK government is
>>going to give judgements against people simply for editing a page in a
>>section completely unrelated to libellous content
>
> I may be confused here, but I was under the impression we were
> discussing being sued _in a UK court_, not _by the UK government_.
> Very different things; HMG really doesn't give a damn about us and is
> very unlikely to unless we do something insanely stupid like publish
> Vanguard patrol details.

You forget, Anthony's American.  Americans don't realise that the UK
(or, indeed, any Western country) is a democracy with separation of
powers and everything.

Did you know that the Queen personally presides over all criminal cases,
and the accused gets no rights?  After trial she heads 'round to a
randomly-chosen subject's house (that's right, subject; there are no
"citizens" in the Commonwealth), and forces one unlucky couple to
provide her with tea and crumpets for an hour, while her dogs climb over
all the furniture.  Then she rides atop a double-decker bus all the way
home to Buckinham Palace, and if the men she passes en route don't tip
their fashionable black bowler hats, they are roundly whipped.

Americans: this is true.  That's why so many Englishmen (not British
people; all UKers are English) try to sneak into the country across the
barrier between the USA and Canada.

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

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from_name: Brian

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
>True that last bit was my opinion, but we can't speedy something which
>doesn't fit the criteria (that's a fact). You haven't addressed my
>questions on how to deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted,
>but is not actually speediable (like obvious band vanity, blatant
>adverts and the like).

>Can you please address those questions?

>Mgm

Uncontested deletions answers these observations nicely I think:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_reform/Proposals/Uncontested
_deletions

I've suggested this here before, I think it's a good way to tune out a lot
of the garbage that falls in between speedy deletions and what AFD should be
spending it's time on.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, Jtkiefer <jtkiefer at wordzen.net> wrote:
> Yes but unfortunately as it is now edit summaries are always viewable to
> anyone even when deleted which the vandals have figured out and are now
> using to get away with slander and privacy policy violations which it
> takes a developer to remove.  If something like this is implemented
> admins should have the ability to also hide the edit summary from being
> seen by non admins

Locked revisions would have their edit summaries obscured (it would
appear as "(edit summary obscured for legal reasons)" or something
like that).

Kelly


from_name: Geoffrey Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Some more unscientific findings

body:
I've been spending some of my time over the last few days looking for
articles on Wikipedia that could be added to [[Wikipedia:Good articles]],
& noticed an interesting pair of statistics.

The first statistic comes from the results of a number of Random page
tests that have been performed & recorded over the past. From the list
at [[Category:Random Page Tests]], & adding to this my own survey of
20 pages found at random & Alphax's survey of 10 he posted to the
list, I came up with a sample of 230 pages, 16 of which the participants
rated as Good or better, which works out to a proportion of a little
more than 5%. This sample is large enough I feel (based on my own
admittedly feeble knowledge of statistics) to suggest that about 5% of
all Wikipedia articles are of "good" quality or better.

Now while some people will use this as proof that Wikipedia badly needs
improvement and eoter rant that we need to work on our quality, or
dismiss this finding as belaboring the obvious, a little math will show
that if the 5% figure is correct then there ought to be at least
42,000 articles that are Good in quality -- or better. That's not a
bad statistic, especialy when one considers some proprietary encyclopedias
don't have that many articles *in total*.

The second statistic comes from my search for Good articles. Now I
admit that I like to find the easiest solutions to problems, & the
hardest way to find Good articles would be to click on the "Random
article" link, & hope that at least every 20th article is worth listing.
A far easier way would be to find the articles that have gone thru
the Featured Articles Candidate process, & examine the rejects to determine
whether any would be a "Good article." And so last night I started to
add up all of the articles listed in [[Category:Old requests for peer review]]
& found this category contained only 1328 articles. In other words, for
every *40* Good articles in Wikipedia, only *1* article gets any
special attention to be singled out for consideration and review!

And it's a plausible assumption that a good chunk of the articles
submitted to Peer review should never have been considered a "Good
article" to begin with -- which makes the number of Good articles found
& considered for this process even smaller.

Let's stop making assumptions, and do some more math: more articles
are listed & debated on AfD than on Peer review. It's hard not to
conclude from that simple calculation that Wikipedians are more motivated
to remove an article than to improve it. Small wonder, then, that so
many people complain about the quality of the articles on Wikipedia:
that's  what they look for -- the bad articles instead of the good.

I know this would be unenforceable, but wouldn't it be a good policy
that before an editor nominates an article to AfD, they have to also
nominate an article to Peer review? And that before an editor adds to
the debate at AfD, they have to contribute to the debate at either
Peer review or Featured articles candidates? Maybe that might make some
people complain about those fora like some people complain about AfD now,
but it just might help uncover more of those 42,000 unrecognized Good
articles.

Geoff


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
Basically, I agree with Keith here.
We need some centralized discussion. Not only is does it take a lot
less time for admins to manage one central place and delete what needs
to be deleted, it's also easier to refer people to that place.

Also without AFD, there's still too many articles that can't get
speedied because of a technicality. "More than one person bvut still
vanity" and "advertising" come to mind. They're deleted 99% (figure of
speech) of the time and AFD research shows those are the kind of
deletions often uncontested.

How are we going to get rid of non-speediable crap without AFD?
How is everyone going to have input (the wiki way)?

Turning off AFD even for one day will cause too much of a mess.
Sure, we can clean it up eventually, but why open your bag of trash
indoors when the garbage man is waiting outside?

No matter what method you use, deletion is always going to have some
ill-will with it. It's something that can't be avoided until we all
reach common ground, and stop taking deletions personal.

As Keith said, you can use AFD without any ill-feelings by simply
bringing forth good arguments.

Mgm

On 12/9/05, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
> David,
>
> I would have no problem with adding a requirement to notify the original
> author as part of a requirement for nomination. We should also look at
> systems where communities possibly affected by a decision are advised of the
> decision. Posting  articles on relevant noticeboards  is one way of doing
> it.
>
> We have a situation where Wikipedian A disagrees with Wikipedian B over all
> sorts of issues such as schools, webcomics, etc. We have to look at ways of
> trying to reach some sort of common ground and involving the community as
> much as possible in the decision. Ultimately, we have to delete some
> articles that just aren't suitable for Wikipedia and we should have a
> process where as many people
>
> Ultimately, I have looked at RfAr. As far as I can see most of the cases
> relate to pushing POV on particular pages. That would continue whether or
> not we continued with AfD or some other system.
>
> Regards
>
>
> Keith Old
>
>
> Keith Old
>
>
> On 12/9/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> >
> > Keith Old wrote:
> >
> > > What I think is what would happen is that more articles would end up
> > being
> > > speedy deleted with the author often not even having a say. Nor would
> > they
> > > have the chance to improve their articles in response to criticism.
> >
> >
> > The creator often doesn't have a chance now, because the AFD regulars
> > think it's too much like work to notify them.
> >
> >
> > > Personally, I don't go to Articles for Deletion to win arguments or to
> > salt
> > > the earth. Nor do the vast majority the hundreds of other people who
> > > participate in the process. From my experience most people on AfD are
> > > amenable to good argument. We should Assume Good Faith regarding
> > > participants in Articles for Deletion.
> >
> >
> > See current RFAr. It blatantly encourages an atmosphere of bad faith and
> > that's damaging.
> >
> >
> > - d.
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Next experiment: switch off AFD for a month. (was
	Guardian in defense of Wikipedia)

body:
> AfD is ugly and quickly becoming completely useless.  And it takes up
> so much of the energy of some of our most intelligent editors.  Let's
> take a one month holiday from it and see what happens.  The 5000 or so
> articles that won't be deleted are only equivalent to three days
> normal growth.

I don't see how you can refer to 5000 articles that need deletion as
being equivalent to something as positive as growth.

What you are forgetting is that such articles can be found by Google
and thus by readers. Those 5000 articles will damage not only
Wikipedia's credibility, but also use Wikipedia resources.

Also, quite a lot of them would simply be against basic policy, yet
not speediable, meaning we'd basically being allowing stuff in against
policy, which others would see as a reason to drop in more.

Ignoring a problem won't make it go away.

Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages and GFDL

body:
>I'm wondering how many US copyright lawyers are participating in this
>discussion.
>
>While we're all speaking out of our butts, let me add that simply
>explicating that by submitting to Wikipedia you're willing to accept
>authorship credit under the collective name of "Wikipedia
>contributors" would likely handle any legal considerations.
>
>But IANAL. And it's not like lawyers actually know anything. It's all
>whistling Dixie until a court rules.

It's less about authorship and more about accountablility.
We need those names so we know who to hold responsible if the info is wrong.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel law

body:
geni wrote:

>On 12/7/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On 12/7/05, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>geni wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>On 12/7/05, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>Is there any thoughts on private individuals?  Are we open to libel
>>>>>>suits if we edit a page containing a libellous statement and fail to
>>>>>>remove it completely from the edit history?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>I don't think there are any legal presidents in that area.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>No, but it would be nice to hear people's opinions, and also nice to
>>>>hear if any legal opinion had been given to Wikipedia regarding this.
>>>>Look at it this way:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Under US law, we aren't liable for libellous statements that are made
>>>by other people.  UK law might differ, but to the extent it does
>>>that's not really all that interesting to most people on this list -
>>>the foundation is a US company (with, according to Kelly Martin, no
>>>legal presense in the UK).
>>>
>>>
>>It may come as a surprise to you, but many of us on the list are not
>>Americans, and we find that kind of attitude deeply offensive.  It may
>>be true enough that the specific provisions of UK law may not be
>>interesting to most of us, but if you substite the Wikipedian's own
>>country for UK the resulting total will not be insignificant.  This is
>>precisely the kind of arrogant attitude that goes into the image of the
>>"Ugly American".
>>
>>The fact that Wikipedia's servers are primarily in the United States
>>naturally caries certain legal implications.  We all know that.  That
>>the law of the United States is in any way superior is not one of those
>>implications.  Sometime we would appreciate a little less bushshit, and
>>more of a recognition that the United States is only one country in the
>>same world as the rest of us,
>>
>The UK situation is pretty simple. Don't try and use truth as a
>defence except as a last resort and watch out for inciteing racial
>hatred laws.
>
Canada has had it's own problems on that one.  Most of it is a product
of Jewish overreaction to nut cases like Ernst Zundel.  When David
Ahenakew went onto his questionable rant on a single occasion,
persecuting him in court went well over the top.

Ec


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Letter about Wikipedia and libel in Editor & Publisher

body:
See "Wikipedia Here to Stay, Warts and All" by Peter Ekman, former
financial columnist for the New York Times in Moscow.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001656000

Sarah


from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
>From: Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com>
>
>On 12/9/05, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > If we got rid of AfD, we'd have to sort through the Deletion logs,
>
>
>Only for a short while.  After a few waggy fingers and blocks, the
>administrators performing inappropriate out-of-process deletions would
>stop.  Trust me on this.  Calvinball.

Here's an even better idea; let's not mess with something that's working
reasonably well.

Jay.


from_name: Carl Witty

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia on PDAs (was J2ME Client for
	Wikipedia)

body:
On Sun, 2005-12-04 at 01:03 +0000, David Gerard wrote:
> The Treo 650 runs PalmOS 5.4.x - what browser and version does it include?

The built-in browser says "palmOne Blazer v4.0" in its About box.  It
works quite well for dozens of web sites I've tried, except for
Wikipedia.

I also have a copy of Xiino 3.4.1E; this works fine for reading
Wikipedia articles.  (The en front page looks a bit strange, because it
keeps the two-column format, resulting in very narrow columns on the
Palm screen.)

(Sorry for the delayed response.)

Carl Witty


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia on PDAs (was J2ME Client for Wikipedia)


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: BBC R4,
	now at 17:35 UTC (was BBC Radio 4 "PM" interview17:40ish UTC )

body:
G'day Tony,
> The piece is at 36'40" and starts with a woman's voice reading the
> introduction to the Wikipedia article on the PM program.  Then there's
> a telephone interview with David Gerard, with his strong Australian
> accent very evident.  It finishes at around 41'.
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/shows/rpms/radio4/pm.ram

Strong Australian accent?  You're joking!

David: you sound like a bloody Pom.  I insist you return home at once to
re-claim the accent that is your birthright ...

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

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body:
G'day Andrew,

> On 08/12/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>>What exactly is an "eternal stub", anyway?  I thought by definition a
>>stub was able to be expanded.
>
> An eternal stub is one that is eternally able to be expanded... but
> no-one ever does.

Or *can*.

Can God create a permastub not even He can expand?

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

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from_name: rudy at stealthaccess.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] So, is there a lag in getting posted?

body: please advise.


from_name: Mark Wagner

body:
On 12/9/05, Geoffrey Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
>And so last night I started to
> add up all of the articles listed in [[Category:Old requests for peer review]]
> & found this category contained only 1328 articles. In other words, for
> every *40* Good articles in Wikipedia, only *1* article gets any
> special attention to be singled out for consideration and review!

> I know this would be unenforceable, but wouldn't it be a good policy
> that before an editor nominates an article to AfD, they have to also
> nominate an article to Peer review? And that before an editor adds to
> the debate at AfD, they have to contribute to the debate at either
> Peer review or Featured articles candidates?

Since you used [[User:Carnildo/The 100]] as one of your sources, I've
got some relevant statistics that aren't immediately obvious from
looking at the table:
* Of the 100 articles I examined, none of them was something I'd be
willing to submit to FAC.
* Of the 100 articles I examined, three of them are in good enough
shape that I'd be willing to submit them to peer review, if I knew
enough about the subject.
* Of the 100 articles I examined, all had gotten past newpages patrol.
** I speedy-deleted one of them as a vanity bio
** I listed one on VfD as a vanity band listing
** I listed one on VfD as a potentially vanity bio
** I listed an article related to the potential vanity bio on VfD for
being non-notable
** I listed one on WP:CP as a copyvio
** I speedy-deleted one as a re-creation of a VfD'd hoax

Submitting something to peer review implies a major commitment of
time: it may involve a trip to the library for reference books.  It
may involve contacting other Wikipedians for relevant pictures.  It
will certainly involve learning more about the subject than you though
possible.

Submitting something to VfD does not involve much time, particularly
for vanity articles: a couple of minutes searching Google, a couple
more minutes reading any results it comes up with, and maybe one
minutes for the mechanics of actually submitting the article to VfD.

The reason that far more articles are being listed on VfD than are
being listed on peer review is twofold: Listing something on VfD
involves a much smaller time commitment, and there is much more
material suitable for deletion than is suitable for listing on peer
review.  At a rough estimate, a VfD listing takes 20 minutes over five
days, while a peer review listing takes 5-10 hours over the course of
a week.  Based on my sample of articles that had not already been
listed on VfD by newpage patrol or RC patrol, there are two bad
articles for every good article.  If you include the listings from
newpages patrol and RC patrol, the ratio gets far higher.

--
Mark


from_name: Jtkiefer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:

>On 12/9/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
>
>>1. Only admins can see deletion history (required for legal reasons I
>>believe so copyvios can be hidden).
>>
>>
>
>We need a way to lock revisions from public view, separately from
>deleting the article.  A locked revision would remain in the edit
>history (showing the date and editor who made it) but would not be
>viewable (nor could a diff be constructed against it) except by an
>administrator.  The ability to lock (and unlock) revisions needs to be
>restricted to admins.  That would take care of the libel and copyvio
>issues.
>
>It's almost enough to get me coding again.
>
>Kelly
>
>
Yes but unfortunately as it is now edit summaries are always viewable to
anyone even when deleted which the vandals have figured out and are now
using to get away with slander and privacy policy violations which it
takes a developer to remove.  If something like this is implemented
admins should have the ability to also hide the edit summary from being
seen by non admins

-Jtkiefer


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Libel law

body:
On 09 Dec 2005 16:48:00 +0100, Claus F?rber <claus at xn--frber-gra.muc.de> wrote:
> Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> schrieb/wrote:
> > Nothing stops you from suing a US editor in UK courts.
>
> Even worse, noting stops you from suing a US editor in US courts for
> infringment of UK laws, especially UK IP laws. A US judgment based on UK
> substantive law can easily be enforced in the US.

The First Amendment certainly stops you from suing a US editor in US
courts for violating unconstitutional UK laws.

US IP laws already cover pretty much everything they constitutionally
can (some would argue and beyond that).

Anthony


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Creating a monster ... part 17

body:
I wonder where we are, right now?

A) Wikipedia prominence

If what WP in its collective wisdom decides to do is prima facie news, to
other media, then we have all the prominence we need for practical purposes.
A word-of-mouth strategy has worked, basically.  Which web sites can match
that?  A mere handful, I suppose.

B) Wikipedia integrity

This is a basic, clearly.  We want to think

(i) the data is safe

(ii) the vandals are just contemptible and bounce off

(iii) soft security works because the community is of one mind about making
it work

(iv) the community is no more factionally riven than the world outside, and
in fact rather less when it comes to the shared mission

(v) forks are not a big threat to the project.

This is mostly true.  The webcomics fracas surely counts as a genuine
forking moment, though.  As for

(vi) POV pushing gets shown up for what it is

there is much less room for complacency.

C) Wikipedia standards

I was away while the Siegenthaler thing blew up.  Like other high-profile WP
issues, it could have been a lot worse.  (Journalists seem to have a model
of media power that makes them the most reactive, don't they?)  I know from
my own experience that more and more people are looking themselves up and
requiring page corrections; which is going to help accuracy, rather than
hinder.

My own view is that it is always possible to squeeze nonsense out of a given
set of pages, eventually.  The fact is that there will always be more
nonsense introduced elsewhere.  We probably do more patrolling of 'orphans',
'uncategorised pages', and also pages untouched for long periods. 'Churn
rate' matters

Writing standards - ah, well that's a sore point.  Internet authors are no
stylists, in general.  Puffing (press-release stuff, academic institutions
promoting themselves) seems to be more of an issue than straight spam.

D) Community and frictions

If not us, who? I don't know whether the average Wikipedian is any more
foolish or anti-social than in the past (weighted average over
contributions).  Younger, if I'm any judge.  Civility seems to be taking
something of a battering, except between those who know each other where it
is pretty good.  The problems appear principally to be about scaling, but
the pessimist versions of 'laws' on scaling are I think refuted by the daily
advance of the content on the site.

I feel this is where clear sight is most needed, right now.  Do the
partially-broken things need the radical fix or the tweak?  The trouble with
assenting to the radical solution is that it smacks of subjective burnout.
There have always been the 'dark side' issues: the trolls, know-nothing and
slasher and frivolous editors, those who really can't leave their agenda at
the door.  The history of the site actually shows that they can inflict
damage, but that's about it.  This appears to be a time to point to WP's
resilience, and also the _patient_ way successful innovation has been taking
place.  The good physician needs to have a six-month time scale, rather than
six days; and so should we.

E) Wikipedia hardware

Aaagh!  Ouch!  That stings!

Charles


from_name: Keith Old

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
People should give serious thought to the consequences of such actions
before they post. All that would happen is that we would end up with one
hell of a mess.

In any case, those people who are so concerned about AfD should come up with
a serious proposal that would work better. As yet, I have not seen such a
proposal.

Regards

*Keith Old*

User: Capitalistroadster

On 12/9/05, Jtkiefer <jtkiefer at wordzen.net> wrote:
>
> The Cunctator wrote:
>
> >Of course, the rules against vandalism and the 3RR would apply. People
> >who arbitrarily or abusively delete articles would be treated just
> >like any other abusive editor.
> >
> >
> I shudder at the thought of it, Wikipedia would turn into chaos, trolls
> would go wild, in short I am extremely opposed to the idea of turning
> off AFD for even a day.
>
> -Jtkiefer
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/8/05, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
> What would happen to those articles which do exist which require longer
> consideration before we make a decision whether to delete, keep, redirect or
> merge?
>
They'd probably grow a talk page.

> We need to give serious thoughts to how processes intermerge before we look
> at making such a significant change to our processes.
>
It's just an experiment.  Instead of arguing about what might happen,
let's just try it for a while and see what happens.

> Regards
>
>
> *Keith Old*
>
> User:Capitalistroadster

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Basically, I agree with Keith here.
> We need some centralized discussion. Not only is does it take a lot
> less time for admins to manage one central place and delete what needs
> to be deleted, it's also easier to refer people to that place.
>
> Also without AFD, there's still too many articles that can't get
> speedied because of a technicality. "More than one person bvut still
> vanity" and "advertising" come to mind. They're deleted 99% (figure of
> speech) of the time and AFD research shows those are the kind of
> deletions often uncontested.
>
> How are we going to get rid of non-speediable crap without AFD?
> How is everyone going to have input (the wiki way)?
>
> Turning off AFD even for one day will cause too much of a mess.
> Sure, we can clean it up eventually, but why open your bag of trash
> indoors when the garbage man is waiting outside?
>
Why not spend the day organizing the mess that's already there?  The
biggest problem with AFD is that the same questions get asked over and
over and over again.

Anyway, I don't understand how turning AFD off for one day would cause
a mess.  It'd just double the number of nominations the next day.
Considering the growth rate, that's going to happen sooner or later
anyway.  Might as well get a feel for how it's going to work.

> No matter what method you use, deletion is always going to have some
> ill-will with it. It's something that can't be avoided until we all
> reach common ground, and stop taking deletions personal.
>
How do we reach common ground?  Certainly not by just keeping things
the way they are now.  You could probably eliminate 99% of the
ill-will surrounding deletion by simply giving people access to the
content that was deleted.

> As Keith said, you can use AFD without any ill-feelings by simply
> bringing forth good arguments.
>
> Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Also without AFD, there's still too many articles that can't get
> > > speedied because of a technicality. "More than one person bvut still
> > > vanity" and "advertising" come to mind. They're deleted 99% (figure of
> > > speech) of the time and AFD research shows those are the kind of
> > > deletions often uncontested.
> > >
> > > How are we going to get rid of non-speediable crap without AFD?
> > > How is everyone going to have input (the wiki way)?
> > >
> > > Turning off AFD even for one day will cause too much of a mess.
> > > Sure, we can clean it up eventually, but why open your bag of trash
> > > indoors when the garbage man is waiting outside?
> >
> > That's what you think the result of the experiment will be. But we
> > *don't know* because we haven't done it.
>
> True that last bit was my opinion, but we can't speedy something which
> doesn't fit the criteria (that's a fact). You haven't addressed my
> questions on how to deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted,
> but is not actually speediable (like obvious band vanity, blatant
> adverts and the like).
>
> Can you please address those questions?
>
> Mgm

How do you deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is
not actually speediable?  Here's a thought - make it speediable!

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel law

body:
Steve Block wrote:

> I mean, taking it a step further, although Wikimedia may be exempt from
> a writ in the UK courts, if one was to aimed at Wikimedia from the UK
> courts with editors named on the suit, the best recourse from my reading
> of the law is that courts allow a full apology, retraction and some sort
> of small financial settlement rather than have a lawsuit.  Would
> Wikimedia be happy to comply with that even though it is likely exempt
> from the suit itself?

Apologies and retractions from whom?  If I make an alegedly libellous
statement Wikimedia the mechanisms are certainly there to remove such
statements from the site, but that doesn't mean that I have personally
apologized or retracted or agreed to an out of court financial
settlement.  It can only speak on behalf of the organization as a whole.

> Basically, I am asking whether the policy is shoot libel on sight.

That's an over-generalization. It may not be clear that a particular
statement is libelous.

Ec


from_name: Snowspinner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On Dec 9, 2005, at 11:30 AM, JAY JG wrote:
>
> Here's an even better idea; let's not mess with something that's
> working reasonably well.

OK.

So, AFD's still fair game for messing with then?

-Phil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel law

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>[shrug] Our editor who lost still has a ?250,000 outstanding judgement
>preventing them from ever entering the UK on pain of Nasty Legal
>Consequences. If the Foundation gets hit, well, there might be fun
>problems if we happen to have set up squids in London, being as they
>would be seizable property...
>
All the more reason to divide assets among different jurisdictions, and
support the autonomy of national chapters.

>It may not be a killer to anything, but it's not going to be pleasant
>nor is it going to be the sort of thing the Foundation's PR will do
>well out of.
>
No amount of PR would have helped McDonald's in the McLibel case even
though they won in court.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On Dec 8, 2005, at 11:48 PM, Keith Old wrote:

>
> We need to give serious thoughts to how processes intermerge before
> we look
> at making such a significant change to our processes.

No. We really don't. Because serious thought on Wikipedia has always
amounted to navel-gazing, and perhaps some fiddling while Rome
smolders. We need for the problem to become a real one. Then we can
figure out what it is, and actually create a solution. A hypothetical
solution to a theorized result of an experiment we're only discussing
conducting is sufficiently removed from any  notion of reality as to
be a vapid philosophical exercise.

Turn off AfD. See what happens. if it's a disaster, we turn it back
on and say "Well, shit, that was interesting." If it's not a
disaster... we say "Well, neat, that was interesting." Really,
there's only about three letters difference in the reactions.

-Phil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Harlan Ellison

body:
On Dec 9, 2005, at 9:03 AM, Daniel R. Tobias wrote:

> The latest prominent "WikiEnemy" to emerge: Harlan Ellison.  (See the
> talk page of his article for a big, vitriolic anti-Wikipedia rant
> allegedly authored by him.)

Harlan Ellison once e-mailed my favorite undergrad professor in a
blinding rage because a student at my college had been writing a
paper, wanted to mention "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," and
posted to USENET asking if anyone knew of an online copy. The student
wasn't actually one of my professor's, so he was a bit puzzled...

The point of this story is that if Harlan Ellison is frothing, you
can safely conclude that the moon has not crashed into the Earth. But
little else.

-Phil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel law

body:
Steve Block wrote:

> Andrew Gray wrote:
>
>> Basically, in the eyes of the UK court system, what needs to happen is
>> that something is published in the UK, and that it can be defaming to
>> someone with standing in the UK.
>>
>> "Published" has been construed to mean "made available to be read by a
>> third party" - the classic example is that sending a letter in an
>> envelope isn't publishing, since there's one recipient, but sending a
>> postcard is, since the postman can read it... the logical extension of
>> this is that something published on a server in Thailand by a guy in
>> Kenya can be grounds for someone in Cuba to sue, if someone in London
>> reads it even once, but this (thankfully) has not been ruled on by a
>> court as yet. At least, I don't *think* it has, but IIRC there's an
>> Australian court that did something similar.
>
> Didn't the Lennox Lewis & ors v. Don King make exactly this point?
> That even though the comments were made on American websites, they
> were downloadable in the UK, and so had been published here.

There have been similar rulings on that point, but relating to
copyrights instead of libel, in both Australian and Canadian courts.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Why should revisions like that be kept at all?

We have to retain the edit history for GFDL compliance.

> It sounds like what
> you're proposing is just a way to mix deleted revisions in with
> undeleted revisions in the article history, rather than having a
> separate group of deleted revisions you have to click a link to see.
>
> Wikipedia's content is commonly mirrored. If these "hidden" revisions
> don't go along with the published databases they're as good as deleted
> anyway. If they do go along with it, then they're not "hidden."

We may have to exclude the text of locked revisions from database
dumps, then.  That's not totally infeasible, just requires a few
changes to the code used to generate database dumps.

Kelly


list: foundation-l

from_name: Patrick, Brad

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising study

body:
Study concludes donors repulsed by "hard sell" - "slick" doesn't go over
well.

http://www.publicagenda.org/research/pdfs/charitable_impulse.pdf

Bradford A. Patrick, Esq.
Fowler White Boggs Banker
501 E. Kennedy Blvd.
Suite 1700
Tampa, FL  33602-5239
(813) 228-7411 main
(813) 222-3336 direct
(813) 229-8313 fax
bpatrick at fowlerwhite.com

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list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising study


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] I'm requesting to be unblocked

body:
>My account, Silver Marmot, was blocked from editing pages. The reason given
>was that my account was too similar to a user named "Marmot." I looked him
>up and saw that he must have done a lot of vandalism and stuff. At any rate,
>I am not the user "Marmot" and would like to be allowed to edit articles
>again. Thanks.

I've unblocked the account, as you clearly aren't MARMOT. I've also
placed a note to this effect on [[WP:ANI]].

But please do grit your teeth and be as polite as possible in edit
summaries :-) Working productively with people you think are idiots is
probably *the* most important skill you can have on Wikipedia.

The relevant policy pages are [[Wikipedia:Civility]] and
[[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]]. Brusqueness in edit summaries is
regarded as particularly bad because they can't be edited.

- d.

[[cc to list]]


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] bot issue

body:
can someone look at this and tell us what we should do here ?

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_bot_status#en:User:KocjoBot

Thanks

Anthere


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > How do you deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is
> > not actually speediable?  Here's a thought - make it speediable!
> >
> > Anthony
>
> Giving admins more responcibilities is never a good idea.
>
>
> --
> geni

I'm not suggesting giving admins more responsibilities.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On Dec 9, 2005, at 12:36 PM, geni wrote:

> On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>> How do you deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is
>> not actually speediable?  Here's a thought - make it speediable!
>>
>> Anthony
>
> Giving admins more responcibilities is never a good idea.

Is this another one of those things we're asserting by blanket
default without evidence?

-Phil


from_name: Steve Block

subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel law

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:
> On 12/8/05, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
  >
>>Basically, I am asking whether the policy is shoot libel on sight.
>
>
> Libels should be removed as soon as they are discovered.

The next question, obviously, is which country's definition of libel do
we use?

--
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from_name: Martin Osterman

body:
Interesting commentary.

I think that he fails to take into effect that articles can be rolled back
and reverted if libel is detected.  It'd probably be easier just to create a
special tag (or use the NPOV tag) and mark it as a "speedy NPOV" or somesuch
to insure it gets taken care of.

My pennies for the day.

--Martin Osterman

On 12/9/05, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> See "Wikipedia Here to Stay, Warts and All" by Peter Ekman, former
> financial columnist for the New York Times in Moscow.
>
>
> http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001656000
>
> Sarah
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
*Martin Osterman*

Student Manager, Ball State Weather Station (http://www.bsu.edu/weather)
Contributor, Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org)
Amateur Photographer (http://martino84.deviantart.com)


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Does WP have legal advice?

body:
The problem as I see it is that the Wikimedia Foundation might not
want to appear to be passing out legal advice to our contributors ...

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] UK libel law and reusers

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 12/8/05, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
>>Okay then, let me try another tack which has occurred to me given the
>>Wikipedia stance on "fair use".
>>
>>How is a commercial reuser going to feel when it is issued with a writ?
>
>
> Probably not very good.  What do you suggest we do about this?

Remove libel.  As I responded to Kim, the next question is which libel
laws we have to wrry about.  In which countries are suits likely to be
brought?  Australia and the United Kingdom look likely candidates, any
others?

--
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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel law

body:
Justin Cormack wrote:

>On Thu, 2005-12-08 at 09:35 -0500, Chip Berlet wrote:
>
>(snip lots of interesting stuff)
>
>
>>Given Wikipedia's editing policy, it is unlikely to qualify for the safe
>>harbor protection under the CDA. Amazon.com does not edit posts, and thus
>>is essentially immune from suit. While the other case found an editor
>>liable, that was because it appeared from the complaint that he had
>>participated in the libeling. Wikipedia, unfortunately, falls between the
>>two extremes.
>>
>>
>Technically Wikipedia (or the Wikimedia foundation) doesnt edit,
>individuals do, and therefore might have grounds for being a carrier
>only (provider of a wiki space for contributions). It might be necessary
>to stop Jimbo editing though for this to be the case.
>
Under that reasoning that might also apply to Angela and Anthere.  They
could nevertheless act in response to a specific official complaint.  In
the absence of such a complaint they cannot be presumed to know about a
libel in one of 850,000 articles.

Ec


from_name: Arwel Parry

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia is "gold dust" (Guardian article
	and	leader)

references:
<p06230913bfbdf66eaa30@192.168.116.8>
	<op.s1g8gaddr18sbe@mainframe.mshome.net>
	<op.s1g8gaddr18sbe-xscV+lpWsrXe8AuGaXSDWeTW4wlIGRCZ@public.gmane.org>
	<fb7fdd9c0512081235m63c6cefbp84f969032fea4dcd@mail.gmail.com>
	<fb7fdd9c0512081235m63c6cefbp84f969032fea4dcd-JsoAwUIsXosN+BqQ9rBEUg@public.gmane.org>
	<cdk3vsJmDLmDFwVL@cartref.demon.co.uk>

body:
In message <cdk3vsJmDLmDFwVL at cartref.demon.co.uk>, Arwel Parry
<arwel-wfA80NnNzEcG2Il/BtU0GPXRex20P6io at public.gmane.org> writes
>
>
>In message
><fb7fdd9c0512081235m63c6cefbp84f969032fea4dcd-JsoAwUIsXosN+BqQ9rBEUg at pub
>lic.gmane.org>, MacGyverMagic/Mgm
><macgyvermagic-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w-XMD5yJDbdMReXY1tMh2IBg at public.gman
>e.org> writes
>>Yes, this kind of articles makes me wish the guardian had an edit button.
>>Does anyone know how to reach the person who wrote it to get it corrected?
>>
>>Mgm
>
>"It is the policy of the Guardian to correct significant errors as soon
>as possible. Please quote the date and page number. Readers may contact
>the office of the readers' editor by telephoning +44 (0)20 7713 4736
>between 11am and 5pm UK time Monday to Friday excluding public
>holidays. Send mail to The Readers' Editor, 119 Farringdon Road, London
>EC1R 3ER. Fax +44 (0)20 7239 9997. Email:
>reader-ckTX/lAc7te9FHfhHBbuYA at public.gmane.org"

Hmph! That's an interesting feature of the mailing list software. The
actual email address is reader (at) guardian.co.uk

It'll also be interesting to see if this gets to the list without being
moderated, since it's the third posting I've made recently...

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > I'm not suggesting giving admins more responsibilities.
> >
> > Anthony
>
> Expanding speedy is doing exactly that.
> --
> geni

You're really going to have to explain this one.  It is the
communities responsibility to expand the criteria for speedy deletion,
not the admins.  What responsibility am I suggesting giving admins
that they didn't have before?

I suppose we're adding a new ability for admins, the ability to delete
[whatever is defined in the new speedy deletion criterion].  But even
that isn't a responsibility.

So, can you try explaining what you're saying a little better?  I
really don't understand.  (Phil's point is valid too, sometimes it is
a good idea to give admins certain responsibilities, but in this case
I don't even see what the new responsibility is.)

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/9/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Is this another one of those things we're asserting by blanket
> > default without evidence?
> >
> > -Phil
>
> Never is going too far but it should very much be an option of last
> resort. There are a number of reasons why it is a bad idea:
>
> 1.Shortage of admin manpower. Remeber those stats that came out last
> month? We have maybe 200 admins reasonably active in an admin capacity
>
If everyone wants something deleted, an admin is going to delete it
anyway.  Not putting the article through AfD first *reduces* the
manpower required by everyone, and doesn't affect the manpower
required by admins.

> 2. Adminship is meant to be no big deal. I would prefer it if people
> stoped trying to make it so
>
Adding a new criterion for speedy deletion doesn't make adminship a big deal.

> 3.The constantly riseing standards at WP:RFA are not going to be
> helped by increaseing admin responcibilities/powers.
>
Again, I don't understand this.  The new criteria for deletion should
still be cut and dry.

> 4.It appears that we may be getting more wheel wars. Increaseing the
> number of subjective descissions will not help that.
> --
> geni

Yes, you've confused what I've said.  I think we should add more
*objective* criteria to the speedy deletion candidates, not
*subjective* ones.  Turning off AfD for a while would cause that to
happen.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
David,

What I think is what would happen is that more articles would end up being
speedy deleted with the author often not even having a say. Nor would they
have the chance to improve their articles in response to criticism.

Personally, I don't go to Articles for Deletion to win arguments or to salt
the earth. Nor do the vast majority the hundreds of other people who
participate in the process. From my experience most people on AfD are
amenable to good argument. We should Assume Good Faith regarding
participants in Articles for Deletion.

We have agreed procedures for deletion that to my way of working work well
most of the time. It isn't perfect but few human institutions are.

Regards

*Keith Old*

User:Capitalistroadster

On 12/9/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
> Jtkiefer wrote:
> > The Cunctator wrote:
>
> >> Of course, the rules against vandalism and the 3RR would apply. People
> >> who arbitrarily or abusively delete articles would be treated just
> >> like any other abusive editor.
>
> > I shudder at the thought of it, Wikipedia would turn into chaos, trolls
> > would go wild, in short I am extremely opposed to the idea of turning
> > off AFD for even a day.
>
>
> No, I mean just turn it off, not Cunc's plan. See Tony Sidaway's email
> for the numbers: AFD is not the last barrier against the downfall of
> Wikipedia, it's now just somewhere people try to win arguments and salt
> the earth. It would result in only a few more articles staying around
> and a lot less querulousness and bad faith to newcomers.
>
>
> - d.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > On 12/9/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > > I'm not suggesting giving admins more responsibilities.
> > > >
> > > > Anthony
> > >
> > > Expanding speedy is doing exactly that.
> > > --
> > > geni
> >
> > You're really going to have to explain this one.  It is the
> > communities responsibility to expand the criteria for speedy deletion,
> > not the admins.  What responsibility am I suggesting giving admins
> > that they didn't have before?
> >
> > I suppose we're adding a new ability for admins, the ability to delete
> > [whatever is defined in the new speedy deletion criterion].  But even
> > that isn't a responsibility.
> >
> > So, can you try explaining what you're saying a little better?  I
> > really don't understand.  (Phil's point is valid too, sometimes it is
> > a good idea to give admins certain responsibilities, but in this case
> > I don't even see what the new responsibility is.)
> >
> > Anthony
>
> The areas which you expand into involve more subjective descission. Of
> course this could largely be delt with by knocking out orphans. Go
> through AFD sometime and look at the correlation between unanimiuos
> deletes and orphans.
> --
> geni

I never said which areas I would expand to.  I'd suggest looking at
what articles "everyone agrees should be deleted" and then coming up
with objective criteria to describe them.  Surely this can be done,
and while it might take a while to come up with good criteria, that's
a one time job which will save countless hours of time wasted on AfD
in the future.

Of course, a "unanimous delete" on AFD is not necessarily an article
which "everyone agrees should be deleted", it's merely one that
everyone who hasn't gotten frustrated with AFD agrees should be
deleted.  There's no subjective decision that has to be made to delete
"obvious band vanity".  After all, the fact that it's "band vanity" is
"obvious".

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel law

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 12/8/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 08/12/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Frankly, I think it's ridiculous to think that the UK government is
>>>going to give judgements against people simply for editing a page in a
>>>section completely unrelated to libellous content
>>>
>>>
>>I may be confused here, but I was under the impression we were
>>discussing being sued _in a UK court_, not _by the UK government_.
>>Very different things; HMG really doesn't give a damn about us and is
>>very unlikely to unless we do something insanely stupid like publish
>>Vanguard patrol details.
>>
>>
>Read what I said again, noting the word "judgements".  Judgements are
>given by courts, and courts are part of the government.
>
True enough to a point, but now you're questioning the concept of
judicial independance.  No court wants to be considered a paet of
government.  Even accepting your premise there can be no judgement
unless there is a complaint.  I read Andrew's comment as referring to
the initial prosecution of a case as being done by private persons.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] list moderation hiccups

body:
Arwel Parry wrote:

>It'll also be interesting to see if this gets to the list without being
>moderated, since it's the third posting I've made recently...

Your posts keep ending up in the mod queue, but when I go into the
admin interface it says you're not moderated. I tried moderating then
unmoderating you ... we'll see what happens with the next one!

- d.


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

subject: [WikiEN-l] Experiment on new pages

body:
> "I'm afraid we're going to get regulated media as a
> result of that. And I -- I tell you, I think if you
> can't fix it, both fix the history as well as the
> biography pages, I think it's going to be in real
> trouble, and we're going to have to be fighting to
> keep the government from regulating you."
>
> People can decide for themselves if they think that
> some "libel" (i.e. 'uncorrected cruft') in one article
> will equate to a wider climate of presumably dire and
> draconian "government" regulation. I think the claim
> is beyond ridiculous, and throwing Kelly's little
> laundry list of media errors into the equasion,
> Siegenthaler's comments are almost indistinguishable
> from an attack on *free media from the point of view
> of *corporate media.
>
> No doubt he is sincere, but his interests *seem to be
> in protecting the institutional, and not the emergent.
> In that context, being diplomatic to Siegenthaler for

Well, I doubt that. His editorial shows that he was able to browse the
revision history of his article and found out the user who inserted
the incorrect statements. It shows that he has technical skills enough
to use the Wikipedia interface and also knows what an "Internet
Protocol address" is. Average 78 year old retired journalists doesn't
understand stuff like that, Seigenthaler apparently does. That makes
me wonder why he didn't correct the errors in his article himself?
Maybe his editorial wouldn't have been published had it read "A
Wikipedia entry about me as incorrect for 132 days, until I came by
and fixed it. Wikipedia rocks!"?

Sorry for the speculation and conspiracy theorizing, but to me it
seems that the purpose of his editorial was to raise hell. An example
of a journalist not reporting news, but creating it himself.

In the real world, things like that are bound to happen. Name one
organisation that hasn't been criticised as harshly as the current
printed media attack on Wikipedia. The media makes their living on
"scandals" like these. There is no reason to panic! Restricting page
creation to only registered users in an attempt to remove possibly
libellous statements from Wikipedia sounds like 100% pure and
irrational panic to me. It also makes it seem like Wikipedia's rule
makers are more concerned with what the media thinks than our own
community thinks - since there is no way in hell such a proposal would
have gotten a majority in democratically held vote.

--
mvh Bj?rn


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 12/8/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> It certainly won't change until there's a solution which actually
> makes sense, such as an editable history section like I suggested.
> Putting authorship information in the comment column, and not in the
> authorship column?  I can see why people don't do that, it doesn't
> make any sense.

There is no "author" column.  That column indicates the "editor" of
the article.  The editor of an article need not be, and quite probably
is not, its author.

Kelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
> Replacing AfD means instead of a decision being located in a central spot
> where it is open and accountable, you will have decisions being made by one
> or two people. You will then end up with hellacious disputes at Undeletion
> and accusations of Admins acting in bad faith.
>
> While there may be grounds for expanding the Criteria for Speedy deletion,
> there are always going to be cases where more careful consideration is
> required.
>
> Regards
>
> Keith Old
>
> User:Capitalistroadster

So turn off AfD, and then we can find out what those cases are.  Maybe
there will be some types of articles which we can't come up with
objective criteria.  Fine, then we come up with subjective criteria
and let people vote on whether or not the article meets those
criteria.  Yes, it means AfD would be back, but only for a subset of
articles, and in a much more streamlined form.

We can sit here talking about it, or we can just try it and see.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Yes, you've confused what I've said.  I think we should add more
> > *objective* criteria to the speedy deletion candidates, not
> > *subjective* ones.
>
> If totaly objective criteria don't turn up much outside maths
>
I find it hard to believe that we can't come up with objective
criteria for articles that everyone agrees should be deleted.
Verifiability, for instance, is an objective criterion.

> >Turning off AfD for a while would cause that to
> > happen.
> >
>
> No it would not. It would simply start an all out fight between the
> inclionists and the deletionists.
> --
> geni

Well, we certainly have different theories on what would happen.
Let's try it out and see.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/9/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> > Why should revisions like that be kept at all?
>
> We have to retain the edit history for GFDL compliance.
>
Not really.  The GFDL only requires that the authors are listed in the
history.  And even then, that only applies to authors whose
contributions aren't deleted.  And of course Wikipedia doesn't comply
with the GFDL anyway, so it really doesn't matter.


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Foundation-l] Anons cannot create pages on english wikipedia?

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Ilya Haykinson <haykinson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> When I found Wikipedia, I had no intentions of registering. At some
>> point when I created my first article (err...stub) I was just an anon.
>> I only registered after I saw how that new article got picked up by
>> the community and expanded and made usable:  I got hooked watching the
>> history of that first article.
>>
>
> Recruitment like that is certainly a benefit and should be considered (the smaller the wiki, the
> more important recruitment is). But we also have to consider the bad effects as well. At least on
> the larger wikis the bad effects on anon article creation seem to greater than the positive. The
> larger wikis also have a much higher reader to editor ratio, so concentrating more effect on
> improving existing articles vs creating new ones that themselves need to be maintained may in fact
> be the better course of action.
>
The way I read your answer, you assume that all improvement is coming
from our existing editors. I do not know what you base this on. Do you
have some sources for that that prove this assertion ??
>
>> When you first approach the Wikipedia community it seems overwhelming,
>> and registering is a pretty big step.
>>
>
> If setting aside 10 to 20 seconds to create an account is too big of a step, then that person
> really should not be increasing the maintenance burden on the community. Smaller wikis excepted
> since the likelihood of any one reader becoming an editor is much greater than on larger wikis.
>
It is not the time that it takes that IS the big step.

You misrepresent the problem with vandalism on smaller projects. It
takes quite some time and doing before there is a vibrant community.
This is the time when a starting project is most vulnerable to vandals.
The vandals drive people away and this often results in abandoned
projects. The problem that exists is with a perceived problem, a problem
that we have had from the beginning. We have always replied that we have
a particular percentage of stubs and this has proved to be constant. We
have always had a percentage of quality articles and this proved to be
constant. We have always had a percentage of problematic articles and
that proved to be constant too. Now the problem is that this cannot be
helped. We can work hard to improve our quality and we do. But thinking
that we can get absolute good quality is an achievable goal is like
believing in Santaclaus. When people say that doomsday will come if we
do not achieve this, they are spreading FUD. It is not helpful, if
anything I fear the measures needed to get this unattainable goal may
fracture and ultimately destroy our community.

In several answers I have read it is put forward that people may be
willing to provide sources but only for the stuff that they ARE working
on. Many also state that they are not willing to find sources for stuff
that is already there. Consequently there are 600.000 articles in the
English language wikipedia that will probably not be annotated. We may
not get new articles from anonymous users but it is much harder to check
anonymous changes. So yes, we have an experiment going. That is all the
good that can be said about it.

I have read people say that when on patrol they get bored because not
enough is happening... If anything the one thing that makes patrolling
for problems a hardship, is the performance of our system.
>
>> I highly suspect that a large
>> number of people who registered did so after the success of an article
>> they created as an anon -- like me -- and wouldn't have created the
>> article if they had to take a step of registering.  Becoming part of a
>> community is not something that some people take lightly, especially
>> as active and complex a community as Wikipedia is.
>>
>
> Having a user account does not a community member make. We all have all sorts of user accounts on
> the Internet. That does not mean we belong to communities associated with those accounts.
>
> -- mav
Having made the step to have a user account like described is a big step
towards becoming a community member. That is the point that you try to deny.

Thanks,
    GerardM


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] WikiPress: Wikipedia and German Wikipedia DVD

body:
One interesting thing I read:  "The publisher only uses articles from
writers who are known to be reliable. However, on the previous DVD
were at least a hundred copyrighted articles taken from a DDR Lexika.
After the slip-up was discovered, Directmedia immediately replaced the
DVD image."

On 12/9/05, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> Tim 'avatar' Bartel wrote:
> > Hi wikipedians,
> >
> > perhaps the German speaking wikipedians are interested in the release of
> > the book "Wikipedia" by Directmedia and the latest Wikipedia DVD with
> > ~300.000 articles (in German only!) and ~100.000 images from de and commons.
> >
> > You can find information here:
> > http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiPress
> >
> > And you can download the stuff here:
> > http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiPress/Download
> >
> > Bye, Tim.
> >
> Quick note: I ordered one for myself at DirectMedia, and two as
> christmas presents at amazon.
>
> The DirectMedia arrived about a week ago; I'm still waiting for the
> amazon ones. Sold out?
>
> Magnus
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Preformatted blank articles? (was Experiment on new
	pages and GFDL)

body:
On 12/9/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> > Right.  It's not perfect.  Just better.  At least if someone is lazy
> > and doesn't attribute something and then someone else catches them, it
> > can be fixed.
> > If we added a "references" field to the edit page, even if it was
> > optional, the number of attributions would probably increase even
> > more.  The field would be unformatted, so someone could of course type
> > "I just knew it" or "copied from some website" or even "poop" for
> > their reference, but it'd be one more thing to look into if someone
> > put their reference as "Wikipedia".
>
>
> I put forward an idea a while ago which people weren't too keen on, but
> I think it's time for it to be presented again: when a new article is
> created, prefill it with text. e.g.
>
>
>
> A '''pagetitle''' is ... (say what the article is about, with a bit of
> introductory detail)
>
> ==More detail==
>
> (If there's more to say about it, put in sections with == == on the name
> of each section)
>
> ==See also==
>
> ==References==
> * (List the sources you used in writing this article)
> *
> *
>
> ==External links==
> * (List the few most relevant external web pages on the subject (home
> pages, etc) that you know of)
>
>
>
> While this would just be wikitext, and any experienced Wikipedia regular
> could of course format an article how they liked, new editors would be
> presented clearly with what we expect from a new article.
>
> With this in place, I think we could even allow anons to create articles
> again on en:. They certainly wouldn't just put "so what do you want me
> to type?"
>
> I'm not sure if Mediawiki has new article prefill as yet, but it can't
> be that hard. The prefill wikitext could even be a Mediawiki: space message.
>
> (Example of a new article I created today: [[XCB]]. I have something
> like the above template in my head when I write an article.)
>
>
> > Now, adding a references section would preferably add a column to a
> > database table.  Whether or not that would require scheduled downtime,
> > I don't know.
>
>
> Sounds like much more work than the above. The above would set out that
> we do expect references and so on. Ultimately, I think guiding new
> editors in how to do the right thing would work better than trying to
> force a given article format in the database.
>
>
> - d.
>
> [cc: to wikitech-l]

Hmm, you're really talking about something completely different from
me, though.  First of all, this would be for all edits, not just new
articles.  But secondly, whatever you put in that field wouldn't go
into the article at all, it'd go into the article history (next to the
comments field or something).  Unlike references in the article
itself: 1) we'd encourage people to put their reference for *every
edit*, not just major references, 2) the edit would be forever tied to
the reference, 3) you could include sources which wouldn't go in the
references section (from another article, from memory), 4) there'd be
no complaints about spamming (I've seen references to web pages
removed because they were considered ads), 5) In cases where the
source you use is already in the references section, you'd be able to
note that you used that source for *this edit* too.

I guess there is an argument that this would be redundant work for
those who already put references in the ==References== section, but in
my experience that represents a very small portion of edits, whereas
the vast majority of edits should mention a source somewhere.  Of
course the best argument is that this should just go in the comments
section, which is why I'm somewhat hesitant about whether or not it's
a good idea.


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel law

body:
Steve Block wrote:

>> Untrue statements should be removed.
>>
>> True statements which do not add encyclopedia value should be removed.
>
>
> Okay.  You mentioned also that we shouldn't have guidelines on libel
> on Wikipedia.  I already added those in a proposal at
> [[Wikipedia:Libel]].  Should they be removed?

These two guidelines in particular have nothing to do with libel---they
are simply guidelines for writing a quality encyclopedia article.  It's
not as if the reason we don't want untrue or unencyclopedic statements
is because we're afraid of being sued for libel.  Rather, it is because
we want to write good encyclopedia articles.

-Mark


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 08/12/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
>
>> What exactly is an "eternal stub", anyway?  I thought by definition a
>> stub was able to be expanded.
>>
>
> An eternal stub is one that is eternally able to be expanded... but
> no-one ever does.
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>
A workflow-based idea: how about auto-marking "eternal stubs" (defined
by a year of no edits with a stub notice present) with a template
warning that they will be deleted on a given date in another year's time
if they have still not been edited? The deletion could be done
automatically by the software: the process would be stopped
automatically, and the timer canceled, by removing the template, and
also removing the stub notice would prevent the article from being
marked again.

This would have the effect of removing stagnant dross automatically,
whilst keeping anything even slightly controversial, since all that
would be required would be to make a single edit to keep the stub.

Category pages could be used by the various clean-up crews to make sure
that any article-worthy stubs were expanded and the templates removed.

The same "auto-delete after x time if template not removed" principle
could also be used for things like license problems on images.

-- Neil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
Travis Mason-Bushman wrote to Tony Sidaway:

>Coming from someone who's consistently opposed good faith efforts to make it
>easier for admins to get rid of crap wiki pages, and, in fact, is at this
>very moment proposing to not allow crap-but-not-speedy-crap wiki pages to be
>deleted at all for a month, I find that statement quite amusing.

Keith Old wrote to The Cunctator:

> People should give serious thought to the consequences of such actions
> before they post. All that would happen is that we would end up with one
> hell of a mess.
> In any case, those people who are so concerned about AfD should come up with
> a serious proposal that would work better. As yet, I have not seen such a
> proposal.

I don't doubt Keith or Travis's good faith at all, but I do think the
above is a good example of the attitude of assumption of bad faith by
outsiders the AFD process currently seems to foster - and particularly
the hostile reaction to most suggestions of change. This in itself is
enough reason to suffer a month's AFD fodder passing, to see if it
gets any better.

- d.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Experimenting with "anon editors" - a new proposal -
	require comment

body:
OK, here's another idea for an experiment to reduce vandalism and make
edit patrolling easier - require users that aren't logged in to enter
something into the comment field.  Encourage these editors in text
next to the comment field to describe their change and explain where
they got the information from.  Tell them that unverifiable
information will be deleted.

Sure, some will put "blah" in there or some other nonsense, but
that'll show up in recent changes and it'll draw attention.  Some will
outright lie about what they're doing (putting "fix spelling" when
they're really deleting text or whatever), but this will be obvious to
anyone viewing the diff.  It won't stop vandalism, but it'll make it
easier to detect.

Feel free to comment on this experiment proposal.


from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A note on how the list moderation works

body:
On 08/12/05, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> So who do you mean, and is that who let your latest message through?
>

I let his/her latest message through, because I wanted to reply to it.
Am I the "only decent mod"? Nah, he/she's probably talking about
Fennec, who's much nicer than me.

~Mark Ryan


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Account creation spike on enwiki after anonymous page
	creation got disabled

body:
I made a plot[1] of account creations on the English Wikipedia based
on Newuserlog data, there has been quite a spike since anonymous page
creation got disabled, although the numbers are a bit inaccurate since
it has also been in the press lately.

[1]: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Account_creations_on_the_English_Wikipedia.png


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Account creation spike on enwiki after anonymous page
	creation got disabled


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Account creation spike on enwiki after anonymous page
	creation got disabled


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: elisabeth anderl

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Uzbek wiktionary

body:
Sabine Cretella wrote:

> Hi, by chance I had a look at uz.wiktionary.org - it is being
> vandalised (or better spammed with urls) regularly, but up to now has
> no obvious contents. wouldn't it make sense to block it from being
> edited? Or at least find someone who looks after it once a month to do
> the clean-up (having admin rights)?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Sabine
>
>
>
> ___________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger: chiamate
> gratuite in tutto il mondo http://it.messenger.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wiktionary-l mailing list
> Wiktionary-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l

Hello Sabine,
I constantly report those spam entries on meta, also other small
Wiktionaries are affected (also other small Wikiprojects).
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spam_blacklist#4t7e.5C.info
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spam_blacklist#www.010b.info
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spam_blacklist#www.e16.info
Please report spam also there.

I agree with you to protect those pages. (unfortunately no one has sysop
rights there).
I made the proposal to protect the pages that are always spamed here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Vandalism_reports#zya9.info_spammer
(See the list of usually spammed pages there)

Best regards, Elisabeth Anderl (aka Spacebirdy)
http://is.wiktionary.org/wiki/Notandi:Spacebirdy


subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel law

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:
> On 12/9/05, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
>>Kelly Martin wrote:
>>
>>>On 12/8/05, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>>
>>  >
>>
>>>>Basically, I am asking whether the policy is shoot libel on sight.
>>>
>>>
>>>Libels should be removed as soon as they are discovered.
>>
>>The next question, obviously, is which country's definition of libel do
>>we use?
>
>
> Untrue statements should be removed.
>
> True statements which do not add encyclopedia value should be removed.

Okay.  You mentioned also that we shouldn't have guidelines on libel on
Wikipedia.  I already added those in a proposal at [[Wikipedia:Libel]].
  Should they be removed?

--
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from_name: Amilcar do Carmo Lucas

subject: [Wikitech-l] A new script to add to the maintanace directory

body:
Hi,

I've converted the delete-idle-wiki-users.pl script to PHP, corrected some
errors, updated it to 1.5.3 and here it is, please accept it.

--
Amilcar Lucas
Webmaster
The KDevelop project

PS: I'm not subscribed


from_name: Keith Old

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
Tony,

At the moment we have a process where these debates are centrally located
and where the communities that may be affected can be advised. I do this for
Australia related deletions for example.

If we got rid of AfD, we'd have to sort through the Deletion logs,

Under that system, articles can be deleted with hardly anyone knowing.
Further, if you are a newby, you are not necessarily going to know where to
go to have your say.

It would be less user friendly and less accountable than the existing
system. That is why I strongly oppose it.

I simply add: if in doubt don't change.

Regards

*Keith Old*

Keith Old

On 12/9/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/9/05, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
> > David,
> >
> > What I think is what would happen is that more articles would end up
> being
> > speedy deleted with the author often not even having a say. Nor would
> they
> > have the chance to improve their articles in response to criticism.
>
> Yes.  Those non-speedy candidates that are deleted out-of-process and
> are capable of being articles of some kind can be speedy undeleted
> again under the undeletion policy.  This isn't rocket science.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
> > Also without AFD, there's still too many articles that can't get
> > speedied because of a technicality. "More than one person bvut still
> > vanity" and "advertising" come to mind. They're deleted 99% (figure of
> > speech) of the time and AFD research shows those are the kind of
> > deletions often uncontested.
> >
> > How are we going to get rid of non-speediable crap without AFD?
> > How is everyone going to have input (the wiki way)?
> >
> > Turning off AFD even for one day will cause too much of a mess.
> > Sure, we can clean it up eventually, but why open your bag of trash
> > indoors when the garbage man is waiting outside?
>
> That's what you think the result of the experiment will be. But we
> *don't know* because we haven't done it.

True that last bit was my opinion, but we can't speedy something which
doesn't fit the criteria (that's a fact). You haven't addressed my
questions on how to deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted,
but is not actually speediable (like obvious band vanity, blatant
adverts and the like).

Can you please address those questions?

Mgm


from_name: Justin Cormack

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On Fri, 2005-12-09 at 10:03 -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
> My idea is to treat article deletion like the rest of page editing.
> AfD came about originally because deletion was not reversible, so it
> was necessarily A Big Deal. Once deletion was made reversible (Brion?)
> deletion didn't need to be a Big Deal.

Its not quite reversible yet:

1. Only admins can see deletion history (required for legal reasons I
believe so copyvios can be hidden).
2. Deleted stuff goes away eventually in database purges. I think,
although I may be wrong.

If 2 is a non issue, admins could be given free deletion and restore
without afd, but not normal users.

Justinc


subject: [Foundation-l] Sources and sourceability

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>I want to outline my position here, so that there is no misunderstanding,  as
>there seems to be.
>
>1. I am NOT saying that every fact in Wikipedia must be sourced or  removed.
>2. I am saying that every fact in Wikipedia should be SOURCEABLE.
>3. I am not saying that everyone must give their sources whenever they  edit.
>4. I am saying that we can encourage people to work on a project to find
>sources for each fact, just like we have encouraged people to fix commas or
>categorize stubs.
>5. I am not saying that people who cannot source should be discouraged from
>editing.
>6. I am saying that we should encourage people to find sources, for their
>own work and for other's work as well.
>7. I am saying that there are many different types of sources, and we  should
>find ways of including them. (BTW, in a previous job I worked extensively
>with oral histories, which are a wonderful source of information, even if they
>must always be verified).
>7. Finally, I am saying that high quality is NOT something we can  compromise.
>
>
That's a very nice bulleted summary of exactly what our policy on
sources should be, IMO. =]

-Mark


from_name: Peter Danenberg

subject: [Wikitech-l] Hooking

body:
> Why are there so few hooks in MediaWiki?

     Imbalanced forward pack, I'm afraid; locks and flankers
are in order, but the front row needs some work.

     In good sadness, though, did you  have  something  like
Apache's bucket brigades in mind?

--
Peter Danenberg                                           .
wikisophia.org                                           ..:


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 09/12/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-12-09 at 10:03 -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
> > My idea is to treat article deletion like the rest of page editing.
> > AfD came about originally because deletion was not reversible, so it
> > was necessarily A Big Deal. Once deletion was made reversible (Brion?)
> > deletion didn't need to be a Big Deal.
>
> Its not quite reversible yet:
>
> 1. Only admins can see deletion history (required for legal reasons I
> believe so copyvios can be hidden).

Deleted *material* can only be seen by admins. The revision history,
however, is visible; all users can see dates, modifiers and edit
summaries of deleted revisions even though they can't see the content.

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


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Inactive wikis

body:
These wikis are regularly monitored for vandalism.

Mark

On 09/12/05, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:
> There is a list of inactive wikis which should be locked at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Inactive_wikis which are currently spam
> traps, with many more to be added. I was wondering if this was still a
> Steward privilege, or if we need to ask developers to lock these?
>
> Amgine
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
What would happen to those articles which do exist which require longer
consideration before we make a decision whether to delete, keep, redirect or
merge?

We need to give serious thoughts to how processes intermerge before we look
at making such a significant change to our processes.

Regards

*Keith Old*

User:Capitalistroadster

On 12/9/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/9/05, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > If we got rid of AfD, we'd have to sort through the Deletion logs,
>
>
> Only for a short while.  After a few waggy fingers and blocks, the
> administrators performing inappropriate out-of-process deletions would
> stop.  Trust me on this.  Calvinball.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Claudi Meneghin

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] creation of Ligurian wikipedia (maybe already sent,
	sorry)

body:
  Sirs,
      I am now asking the creation of a Ligurian Wikipedia, with domain:

      http:/lij.wikipedia.org

      (SIL code: lij )
      since  there is wide consent to its creation (16 support 3 against) and  support enough from native speakers (5 in my count, 8/12/05).

      I am compelled to talk about the fact that this  requests, on the appropriate metawiki page, has subdued an odd history:
      1) discussion, with progressive increasing consensus;
      2) moved to section 5.1,   'approved, but in need of native speakers', then native speakers subscribed, and some opponent as well;
      3) the page was moved back to 'discussion ongoing' (odd, by  chapter about 'procedures': this fact arouse of course criticism.
      4)  since wiki-conditions were all fulfilled, I moved the page to 'approved requests'.

      Summing up, since there is wide consensus, and wiki-rules for creation are fulfilled, I would ask this creation.

      Best regards,

      Claudio Meneghini

---------------------------------
 Appel audio GRATUIT partout dans le monde avec le nouveau Yahoo! Messenger
 T?l?chargez le ici !


from_name: Snowspinner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On Dec 9, 2005, at 2:16 PM, geni wrote:
>
> Tell you what lets go to the other extream and let admins deleted what
> ever they like for a week. Would make RC patrol much less of a
> problem.

If the turn-off-AFD idea is a disaster, we can try this next.

-Phil


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Well, we certainly have different theories on what would happen.
> > Let's try it out and see.
> >
> > Anthony
>
> Tell you what lets go to the other extream and let admins deleted what
> ever they like for a week. Would make RC patrol much less of a
> problem.
>
>
> --
> geni

Wouldn't that give admins more responsibilities?