from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 12/5/06, niht-hr?fn <nihthraefn at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 5, 2006, at 11:55, Bryan Derksen wrote:
> > What, are you saying I'm fat??
>
> Despite the fact that you're joking, and despite the fact that I'm
> not personally offended, that is a sexist remark. I find it
> especially inappropriate to make jokes at women's expense in a thread
> protesting the idea that women are treated in any way badly on this
> list.

I didn't get his joke, so I can't say that you're wrong... but I
totally don't get the exchange here. What the #$@# does being obese
have to do with being female?

> I really am shocked at the responses on this list. I'd think that the
> proper response would be, "I'm really sorry that you feel this way
> and that we never noticed it before. Is there any way we can make
> help make Wikipedia a more welcoming place for women?" and if the
> women said, "You know, it'd really help to have an all-women mailing
> list where we can talk about things without being ignored or
> dismissed," I'd hope you'd say, "It's a shame it's come to this, but
> if that will help, let's give it a try."

You're making it out like the opposition to the sexist list was a
woman vs men thing. It's not. Yes, you have more men opposing.. but we
have more men in total.

Lets put it another way: We've had women get harassed from their
involvement on the wiki and their presence has attracted a number of
trolls who specifically get their jollies from harassing women.   If
someone suggested that we should exclude women from editing the wiki,
should we "try it"?

> What I really never expected was that the community as it were would
> belittle the concerns brought forward by the women and go so far as
> to make fun of them.

You. Do. Not. Speak. For. All. Women.

If you honestly wish to fight sexism then you need to stop
perpetuating it yourself.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Introducing a new mailing list

body:
On 12/5/06, niht-hr?fn <nihthraefn at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Dec 5, 2006, at 11:55, Bryan Derksen wrote:
>
> > The Cunctator wrote:
> >> On 12/5/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> >>> And _this_ is pure tripe. Do you really think that my position is
> >>> that I
> >>> don't want women to feel safe? If that's what you're implying
> >>> here I'm
> >>> quite offended and suggest you retract it immediately. I've said
> >>> nothing
> >>> remotely of the sort.
> >>
> >> Umm.... (looking desperately to change the direction of the
> >> conversation....) How about those Nazi userboxes?
> >
> > What, are you saying I'm fat??
> >
> > (note, not actually offended on this one :)
>
> Despite the fact that you're joking, and despite the fact that I'm
> not personally offended, that is a sexist remark. I find it
> especially inappropriate to make jokes at women's expense in a thread
> protesting the idea that women are treated in any way badly on this
> list. If Jew jokes were made every other post or so and this was
> considered okay and funny, I wouldn't be surprised if the Jews on
> list wanted a wikijews-l. More likely though, I'd think they'd leave
> the Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects on the basis that the Wikimedia
> Foundation allows rampant anti-Semitism on their mailing lists.
>
> I really am shocked at the responses on this list. I'd think that the
> proper response would be, "I'm really sorry that you feel this way
> and that we never noticed it before. Is there any way we can make
> help make Wikipedia a more welcoming place for women?" and if the
> women said, "You know, it'd really help to have an all-women mailing
> list where we can talk about things without being ignored or
> dismissed," I'd hope you'd say, "It's a shame it's come to this, but
> if that will help, let's give it a try."
>
> What I really never expected was that the community as it were would
> belittle the concerns brought forward by the women and go so far as
> to make fun of them.

I'm not particularly interested in defending the responses -- a number of
them were shockingly inconsiderate and tellingly misguided -- but it did not
help that an invite-only NO MEN ALLOWED list was announced in response to
the question of making Wikipedia a more welcoming place for women.

A not unreasonable interpretation of that is "You're part of the problem,
but you can't be part of the solution."

At least Wikipedia isn't as bad as most physics departments or investment
banking firms. Not that that's really high bar to hurdle.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: George Herbert

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
On 12/5/06, Ivan Krsti? <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
> George Herbert wrote:
> > For the most part, web applications have a highly effectively
> > paralleliseable app and web layer, but the database on many of them
> doesn't
> > scale horizontally as well.
>
> Wikipedia can partition the database across languages (as it does
> already with the largest ones), and when individual languages grow to be
> too large for a single server to deal with, there are other partitioning
> schemes to look at. So it's a bit simpler here, as it's not one
> monolithic data store that's growing without bound.
>
> > Or for a counterexample, Friendster.  I know the poor guy who was doing
> site
> > architecture there for a while, screaming at his bosses that they needed
> to
> > get off MySQL and get a Sun/Oracle box in, and doing unholy things to
> MySQL
> > to try and keep it going, until he just walked away.
>
> And yet an even larger social networking site continues to happily churn
> along with MySQL. Clearly there are examples each way, but in the case
> of WMF, there are also principles that factor into the equation.
>

It's not one monolithic data store, but in the current model, the
en.wikipedia database is a useful test case.  It's a large chunk (I don't
know, guessing a half?  a third?) of the total data in play.

If we start partitioning the per-wiki database, then quite a large number of
potential technologies come into play.  The $640,000 question is whether the
developer effort to partition the database effectively and efficiently will
be more expensive than a single large central server.

I have no problem with people whose principles are to use open source.  I am
all for open source.  I also know, from experience, that there are limits to
the scalability of many workloads beyond which large SMP systems are better
database server choices.

If the WMF workload is one of those types of workload, then the principle to
prefer open source should not be a suicide pact.

If the workload isn't that type, is trivially partitionable, or is
partitionable more affordably than the cost of SMP servers, then it should
be managed that way anyways.

The devil is in the details.

Separate question:

Has anyone developed a MediaWiki test suite, a standard set of web
operations which can be run as a load generator for benchmarking purposes?

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: Gregory Kohs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Discrimination on Wikipedia

body:
Matt Brown writes:

>Missing one important proviso: public relations workers are quite
>welcome to edit wikipedia in a personal capacity. What has been
>prohibited is editing Wikipedia on behalf of a paying client.

Again, see the case of [[Arch Coal]].  Nobody paid or received any
compensation for the authorship of that article.  Still, Jimmy Wales deleted
it and banned the original author.  These quotes from Jimmy Wales don't
sound too welcoming to public relations workers, regardless of their
potential desires to edit from a "personal capacity":

"I deleted the articles and banned Kellen Communications from contributing.
I think that PR-firms editing in a community space is deeply unethical..."

"I think the article is a travesty of NPOV. I am glad that it is undeleted
so that people can see. It is corporate fluff."  (Once again, this was
regarding an article about [[Arch Coal]] that the community eventually
reconstituted into Wikipedia, and for which no money changed hands.
Nonetheless, the user was still banned for 30 years.)

The more excuses and explanations that the community comes up with, the more
obvious it is that you're avoiding the real issue.  Wikipedia unilaterally
has chosen to discriminate against non-volunteer activity in the article
space, despite the likely fact that the credentials and income sources of
90% of editors are never questioned or verified by the community or the
Wikimedia Foundation.  Only those who state that they are being paid in some
way are excluded.  I would argue that if you looked at the original authors
of the New Pages in Wikipedia, 90% had some financial or career "conflict of
interest" that could be found if everyone was exposed to a background
check.  You'd also be interested to know that a public relations firm called
Schwartz Communications created their own article in Wikipedia, and it was
defended for some time by the Wikipedia community.  Why?  Schwartz did some
amorphous pro-bono work for the Wikimedia Foundation.  Talk about a conflict
of interest!

People who have never purchased or sold a pet skunk are unlikely to start an
article about [[Pet skunks]].  The ones who do start such articles don't
seem to get questioned about their income sources, investigated, or banned,
though.  Seems that there's a different standard when an article is about a
corporate entity.  That's discrimination.

--
Gregory Kohs
Cell: 302.463.1354


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
On 12/5/06, Ivan Krsti? <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
> George Herbert wrote:
> > On first glance... GFS doesn't seem relevant to Wikimedia Foundation
> work.
>
> I brought it up because the BigTable design outsources certain
> fault-tolerance worries to GFS, if I recall correctly. It's not a
> necessity by itself, no.
>

Well, obviously BigTable depends on GFS, now that I'm looking at it, but
it's not a "we could use GFS for GFS'es sake" situation, unless I am missing
something.

And as I mentioned, BigTable seems not useful as long as our indexes fit in
RAM, which I hope is the case.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


body:
On 12/5/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/5/06, niht-hr?fn <nihthraefn at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Dec 5, 2006, at 11:55, Bryan Derksen wrote:
> > > What, are you saying I'm fat??
> >
> > Despite the fact that you're joking, and despite the fact that I'm
> > not personally offended, that is a sexist remark. I find it
> > especially inappropriate to make jokes at women's expense in a thread
> > protesting the idea that women are treated in any way badly on this
> > list.
>
> I didn't get his joke, so I can't say that you're wrong... but I
> totally don't get the exchange here. What the #$@# does being obese
> have to do with being female?

Hopefully this will help explain: http://www.mopie.com/0309/15.html

It also has to do with the stereotype of the hypersensitive hysterical
body-image obsessed female:

http://forums.televisionwithoutpity.com/index.php?showtopic=3145970&st=210&p=6572049&#entry6572049


list: commons-l

from_name: Bence Damokos

subject: [Commons-l] Blind move

body:
"using Pywikipediabot<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Using_the_python_wikipediabot>to
upload many files to commons"
He's lucky it works :)

Anyway, I think commonshelper should somehow be able to copy the images
itself (I know the toolserver doesn't have full replication), just
dreaming...

Bence

On 12/5/06, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/4/06, Artur Fija?kowski <wiki.warx at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > So my question is:
> >
> > what to do with such users ?
>
> Make him use CommonsHelper [1] to move images from existing wikipedia
> instead. Make sure he doesn't touch anything that says "fair use",
> though ;-)
>
> Magnus
>
> [1] http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/commonshelper.php
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
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list: foundation-l

from_name: cohesion

subject: [Foundation-l] [Wikichix-l] Moderating an open list

body:
On 12/5/06, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com> wrote:

> I concur. I also respect that some women feel that having a "safe place"
> to discuss issues would be helpful to them. There has been much ridicule
> on this list, and the en list, concerning the hostile atmosphere towards
> women, which would seem to underscore their concerns. Why bring up an
> issue when a large number of men will respond "There's no problem!
> You're just too sensitive!" and dismiss their concerns?

I don't think you would have nearly the negative reaction if you
started a WikipediaWomen-l that was open, and had the stated mission
that it was to discuss solutions to gender bias on wikipedia. Not to
discuss whether there *was* gender bias, but solutions. If people
wanted to flame on about how no one feels excluded based on gender,
moderate them, it's obviously untrue anyway.

We are discussing two things it seems like. A list about gender bias,
and a closed list. I don't think that many people are opposed to a
list about gender bias, some are of course, but a small minority. Many
people are concerned about a closed group.

I would rather this be on wikimedia servers if it is open, this is a
real issue, and I for one would like to learn more about it.

Judson
[[en:User:Cohesion]]


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: niht-hræfn

body:
On Dec 5, 2006, at 12:30, Bryan Derksen wrote:

> niht-hr?fn wrote:
>> On Dec 5, 2006, at 11:55, Bryan Derksen wrote:
>>
>>> The Cunctator wrote:
>>>> On 12/5/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>>>>> And _this_ is pure tripe. Do you really think that my position is
>>>>> that I
>>>>> don't want women to feel safe? If that's what you're implying
>>>>> here I'm
>>>>> quite offended and suggest you retract it immediately. I've said
>>>>> nothing
>>>>> remotely of the sort.
>>>> Umm.... (looking desperately to change the direction of the
>>>> conversation....) How about those Nazi userboxes?
>>> What, are you saying I'm fat??
>>>
>>> (note, not actually offended on this one :)
>>
>> Despite the fact that you're joking, and despite the fact that I'm
>> not personally offended, that is a sexist remark.
>
> Ah, hell. It wasn't even intended to be; my local group of male
> friends
> here in real life use the "are you saying I'm fat?" mock-offense thing
> back and forth quite often between us. The joke was supposed to
> just be
> that it was a complete non-sequitur.
>
> Guys don't like being called fat either, you know.

Okay, good. I've heard that line used to make fun of women's concerns
before, so perhaps I was a little quick to respond...

--Keitei


subject: [Wikitech-l] Block message

body:
I haven't dived the code, but when did fortnights become part of the
block length display code?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&page=User:168.11.96.2

As amusing as I find that, it seems like a bad UI design choice...

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: Artur Fijałkowski

subject: [Commons-l] Blind move

body:
The main problem with moving images using bot is it's blindness...

Mentioned user copied some copyvios from pt.wiki licensed as CC-BY-SA
because he didn't watch those images, but probably simple move images
using linked to license template :(

And this thing I want you to remember:

Never, never, never do this!

We had 2-3 months ago same problem with move of PD images from fr.wiki
- wrong PD template (deprecated {{PD}}), no categories, galleries,
lots of duplicates of images that were already on commons with other
names, overwriting existing images with unrelated content with same
name  ...

Bot is good and nice toy, but it's very dangerous in unexperienced hands...

AJF/WarX


from_name: Puppy

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> 2006/12/5, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com>:
>
>> From what I read below, we are in agreement - yet many women feel it
>> would be beneficial to have somewhere to discuss bias where they do not
>> have to worry about immediately being attacked for even bringing up the
>> bias issue. That is not, as yet, here.
>>
>>
>
> I don't see any indication that people get attacked for bringing up the
> issue. I don't see much attacking going on, although the discussion isn't as
> civil as it should be either - from both sides. But if you see everyone who
> has doubts about the extent of sexism in Wikipedia as attacking you for
> bringing it forward, you are indeed too thin-skinned. Why not see those as
> requests for information instead?
>
>
>
Out of curiosity - would you have said I was "too thin skinned" if you
thought I was a man?
-kc-


from_name: Corum O' Fallamhain

body:
Here, I have a great idea: the best way to avoid anyone being discriminated
against, mocked, ridiculed, dismissed, or otherwise have their self-esteem
injured by viciously prejudiced anonymous strangers on the internet.

Why don't we all *have our very own* mailing lists? Since we'll only be
talking to ourselves, there is no chance of anyone here having their
feelings hurt (unless, of course we decide to start opressing and ridiculing
ourselves). I propose the creation of a new mailing list, "Corum-I", and you
can't join. Just me.


body:
Puppy wrote:
> Andre Engels wrote:
>
>> 2006/12/5, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com>:
>>
>>
>>> From what I read below, we are in agreement - yet many women feel it
>>> would be beneficial to have somewhere to discuss bias where they do not
>>> have to worry about immediately being attacked for even bringing up the
>>> bias issue. That is not, as yet, here.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> I don't see any indication that people get attacked for bringing up the
>> issue. I don't see much attacking going on, although the discussion isn't as
>> civil as it should be either - from both sides. But if you see everyone who
>> has doubts about the extent of sexism in Wikipedia as attacking you for
>> bringing it forward, you are indeed too thin-skinned. Why not see those as
>> requests for information instead?
>>
>>
>>
>>
> Out of curiosity - would you have said I was "too thin skinned" if you
> thought I was a man?
> -kc-
> ____________________
>
In fact, would you have said "as attacking *you* " if you had thought I
was a man?
-kc-


from_name: dmehkeri at swi.com

body:
>
> It's not my problem if you can't tell a complaint from an attack.
>
> I've criticised no person here, only an action. I've provided what I
> hope to be a clear argument about why I think the action is
> intolerable, and with Matt's help, I provided input on how to resolve
> the matter. What else would you like from me?

Nothing! Please, nothing...

Okay, seriously? We're talking about Matt Crypto, right? By referring to other
similar lists, the points he was trying to make were not so much about the
rights men have. I hope I am not putting too much of my own spin on his words
here, but rather he was pointing out that our voices can contribute to the
discussion, and that for women's voices to be heard over ours, it is not
necessary that they exclude us entirely.

Input of the loud, this-is-intolerale-shun-everyone-involved kind might have
contributed to getting the list moved to Wikia, but hosting seems to be such a
minor issue. I like to think I'm not one to post OH-STFU-STOP-ARGUING type
things, but in this case I think no matter what clear arguments we hope to
provide, the tone and the volume will undermine these other points.

Regards,
Dan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Request to mailing list Wikichix-l rejected

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
> Puppy wrote:
>
>> It isn't. You are a little out of date here.
>>
>
> Excellent. I still think it's a bad idea, but if it's not being
> supported in any way by Wikimedia Foundation there's no need to complain
> about it here any more.
>
>
>
 I agree on both points - one more strongly than the other, as I am
still more or less fence-sitting on the idea of the list itself. This
leaves us back at square one, however - the bias and discomfort women
are experiencing here.
-kc-


subject: [WikiEN-l] Handling unreferenced but likely-valid material

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 05/12/06, Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:
>
>>> On 12/1/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The verifiability policy has never been a hardline policy, but a
>>>> guideline and something to aim towards.  When it was first adopted,
>>>> nobody thought it meant that we should summarily delete the 80%+ of the
>>>> encyclopedia that at the time was unsourced.  Instead what it meant was
>>>> that we should begin going through and adding sources to it.
>>>>
>> What if a person picks a random article from the 80% of the encyclopedia
>> that isn't sourced and says "I'm going to delete this unless someone else
>> sources it"?
>>
>
> In my experience, wailing and gnashing of teeth, even when the motive
> was a relatively uncontentious one (as opposed to "OMG CRUFT hey look
> it's unsourced DELETE"...)
>
> A while back, I went through every single article in
> [[Category:Rapists]] and its subcategories, weeding out the
> less-notable "he's a sex offender therefore we need an article on him"
> cases and trying to get rid of the unsourced or flimsily-sourced ones.
>
> Unfortunately, when you have an article saying "so-and-so is a
> rapist", and you cut out all the defamatory-if-untrue material, you
> end up with "John Smith (b. 1941) is an American. {{unsourced}}". So
> how to deal with these?
>
> I slapped prod on them.
>
> {{subst:prod|This article doesn't contain any sources and is
> fundamentally defamatory if untrue; if these claims are removed we
> have a meaningless or contentless article which doesn't assert any
> notability. If it can't be sourced it should be deleted; so if it
> isn't fixed in five days it will be}} (or words to that effect).
>
> I got told I was being disruptive for "not going through normal
> processes" because things "didn't work fast enough" for me, and I
> should have been using {{fact}} like everyone else. Ho hum.
>
> I still recommend the method for "passively bad" articles - it's as
> effective as it gets, assuming one outraged person doesn't go through
> your contribs removing all the prod tags because they're upset. AFD
> has a tendency to say "keep and cleanup" and then you just have the
> same problem sitting there.
>
Excellent solution, may I borrow your prod content for my own use?
-kc-


body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> 2006/12/5, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com>:
>
>
>> Out of curiosity - would you have said I was "too thin skinned" if you
>> thought I was a man?
>>
>>
>
> Of course. I rarely let people's gender influence my judgement on Wikipedia,
> though it might inadvertedly happen elsewhere, because there's so many
> people where I can't be sure of their gender anyway.
>
>
Based on my post? I cite it below, as you have trimmed it from your reply:

2006/12/5, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com>:
>>
>>

> >>> From what I read below, we are in agreement - yet many women feel it
> >>> would be beneficial to have somewhere to discuss bias where they do not
> >>> have to worry about immediately being attacked for even bringing up the
> >>> bias issue. That is not, as yet, here.
Please point to where I am being too thin skinned. Where I am, in fact,
even stating I am hurt or unhappy in any way, valid or not.


from_name: Erica Flynn

body:
I'm catching up on this thread and see names like "Matt" and "Jeff".
Is this a women-only list or not?
Just curious. I do know a woman who calls herself "Frank", so maybe..

Erica
(en:wp:Fang Aili)

On 12/5/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
> Anthere,
>
> Any of these lists which are troublesome or sites wikimedia feels are
> too hot to handle are welcome
> at my server complex, if this will assist the foundation. It sounds like
> Angela is taking over this list, however,
> in the future, I am always happy to assist the foundation in hosting
> some of these more controversial
> topics.
>
> Jeff
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
On 12/5/06, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com> wrote:

> I think you must be confused. I didn't start a list at all. Perhaps you
> were thinking of someone else?

Ha, I don't mean you in particular, but generally, the people that
want this list, maybe I should have used "we". Although after reading
more of what you wrote on other threads you (in particular) are still
undecided. :)

Judson
[[en:User:Cohesion]]


subject: [Foundation-l] Introducing a new mailing list

body:
On 12/5/06, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
> Read this thread and the one on wikien-l.

I know it's a lot of work but please try to be specific.

Some of us have differing cultural backgrounds and whats obvious to
you may not be obvious to me... For example, as someone who's
relationship has with western culture is weak at times (haven't owned
a TV for the last decade, last show I 'watched' was probably Macgyver)
I didn't at all see how the "are you saying I'm fat" thing could be at
all taken as a remotely sexist comment until The Cunctator kicked me
those links. Now I at least have some inkling.

Or another example, I can't fully understand the comments on this
thread about women and men being fundamentally different. But enough
information was given that I can understand how differences in my
background might bring me to different conclusions.

In my life I interact with many men and women, some people are good at
social/organizational issues and some are good at other things. It's
been my experience that while there are more women with skillset A
than skillset B, that doesn't imply that there are no women who are
better at B than most men.  I interact with a number of very technical
women and a number of very social men. So I find in my life that it's
more important to understand how individual people approach an issue
than it is to know what gender they are...

I say that not to imply that the claim that 'woman and men will not be
equal' was wrong, but only to point out that my background is
obviously different and it will bring me to different conclusions.

It is not always important to know who is "right" and who is "wrong",
but it is almost always important that we all understand each other.

So in the interest of understanding each other, please make an extra
effort to explain your positions and to have patience with those of us
who just don't get it as easily as you do. I know I fail at this
myself sometimes... and I apologise for that.

If any of the problems you were faced with were truly simple, they
would be solved already. It will take all of us to solve the hard
problems which remain.

... And please consider carefully before concluding that your concerns
are being simply dismissed.

For example, some folks on these threads have complained about the
stalking from multiply-banned misogynists crazy trolls as an example
of gender bias. Some of the respondants have indicated that they don't
think thats an example of gender bias... I believe this is because
because they see it as just an aspect of the overall problem of
trolling and crazy people which should be attacked as part of our
overall efforts against trolling and crazy people. At least thats my
view. This isn't being dismissive, .. it's just a disagreement about
what to call the problem. Even if we can never agree on what to call
it, it's still possible for us to agree on solutions.


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
On 05/12/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think you meant "that WikiMedia doesn't". We don't have access to
> Google's technology. We don't have [[MapReduce]].

Let's arm Brion so he can storm Mountain View, CA, and demand access
to Google's l33t technologies...

Rob Church


body:
Oops, I was confused by the subject line. Thanks for clearing it up.
Erica

On 12/5/06, Bryan Tong Minh <bryan.tongminh at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Nope, this is foundation-l, a general foundation list.
>
> Bryan
>
> On 12/5/06, Erica Flynn <fangaili at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm catching up on this thread and see names like "Matt" and "Jeff".
> > Is this a women-only list or not?
> > Just curious. I do know a woman who calls herself "Frank", so maybe..
> >
> > Erica
> > (en:wp:Fang Aili)
> >
> > On 12/5/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Anthere,
> > >
> > > Any of these lists which are troublesome or sites wikimedia feels are
> > > too hot to handle are welcome
> > > at my server complex, if this will assist the foundation. It sounds
> like
> > > Angela is taking over this list, however,
> > > in the future, I am always happy to assist the foundation in hosting
> > > some of these more controversial
> > > topics.
> > >
> > > Jeff
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 05/12/06, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com> wrote:
>
>
>>> {{subst:prod|This article doesn't contain any sources and is
>>> fundamentally defamatory if untrue; if these claims are removed we
>>> have a meaningless or contentless article which doesn't assert any
>>> notability. If it can't be sourced it should be deleted; so if it
>>> isn't fixed in five days it will be}} (or words to that effect).
>>>
>
>
>> Excellent solution, may I borrow your prod content for my own use?
>>
>
> Lay on, MacDuff. You may want to add a couple of wikilinks in it to
> relevant policy pages, and be prepared to argue the toss when people
> come complaining...
>
> Oh! Random query. Is it possible for someone to come up with a list of
> articles which are in any of the "Living people", "XXX births" and/or
> "XXX deaths" categories, but no other categories? IE, people tagged
> solely as people and nothing else.
>
>
That would be easy to do with database access by writing a simple query.
Not having any, I could dump the info into a spreadsheet and check
manually... which would be a real pain, so I'm not actually volunteering
although it is a possibility. I know database dumps are available, but
that's all I know about them - perhaps someone could point me to
information concerning that?
-kc-


body:
cohesion wrote:
> On 12/5/06, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com> wrote:
>
>
>> I apologize for being unclear. I meant that the posts which protested
>> the list were largely dismissing any concerns as irrelevant.
>>
>
> I don't think the concerns are irrelevant at all, but I don't see how
> not allowing me to learn about the concerns will help solve them. In
> other words, I don't see how blocking this information off in a closed
> list, which I am not allowed to read because I have the wrong genitals
> will further the cause of helping us get more woman contributors.
>
> Judson
> [[User:Cohesion]]
>
I concur. I also respect that some women feel that having a "safe place"
to discuss issues would be helpful to them. There has been much ridicule
on this list, and the en list, concerning the hostile atmosphere towards
women, which would seem to underscore their concerns. Why bring up an
issue when a large number of men will respond "There's no problem!
You're just too sensitive!" and dismiss their concerns?
-kc-


from_name: Matt R

body:
--- Puppy <puppy at KillerChihuahua.com> wrote:
>  From others, one of who "hopes we'll look back on this and not believe
> how bad it was"
> --
> No need for women-only channels? The problem may be worse than you
> realised...
>
> Below are some of the responses to the announcement of wikichix's founding.

kc, it's entirely not clear, but from the immediate context of the thread it
seems you're saying that all those responses you quoted are examples of
trolling. Disagreement or failure to see a problem isn't trolling.

If the WikiChix are going to have an impact on Wikipedia at large, one of the
things they're going to have to do is talk to men about it at some point. And
in doing that, they're going to have to be willing to give evidence to those
who can't see a problem and otherwise respectfully interact with people who
disagree.

-- Matt

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

___________________________________________________________
Now you can scan emails quickly with a reading pane. Get the new Yahoo! Mail. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html


from_name: Darko Bulatovic

body:
Puppy wrote:
> As did I. However, strong points have been made in favor of a women's
> only list, and reinforced by the unbelievable hostility and trolling
> which this whole issue has received on the en and foundation lists. No
> wonder some women want a safe place where they are not subjected to such
> overt hostility and dismissiveness! Surely it would be a plus for the
> community were we to provide such a safe haven. We may have a stronger
> chance of retaining women contributors, and possibly even manage to clue
> the insensitive jerks who post "boobs" jokes about how that kind of
> thing makes most women want to run far, far away. I have already posted
> on the en list my thoughts concerning perceived reverse discrimination.
>
>
We call that positive discrimination. I agree with you 100%. We chose
mailing lists based on topic, so why not women have their own only
topic? I don't understand this objection. I find it even cool.

Regards,
Darko


from_name: Anthere

body:
I knew this subject will end up a huge troll, I knew it....

Puppy wrote:
> I would have preferred that not be done precipitously, without allowing
> time for discussion. This is what, a two-day-old list, and a few men
> have bitched about reverse discrimination, so oh too bad, let's toss the
> women off the island??? "Peace of the community???' Bullshit. Several
> men have supported the idea of a closed list. At least one woman (me)
> has suggested opening the list. What about the peace of mind of women
> contributors, to have a safe place to discuss issues? Oh, that's a
> "women's topic" so its irrelevant?
`
For the record, I do not appreciate the implication of your email saying
that because the choice is made not to host the list on Wikimedia
servers for the peace of our community, that necessarily implies that
the women concerns are irrelevant. Since I originally agreed for the
opening of that list, and later asked Angela to move it somewhere else,
I tend to take your comment very personnally. I understand you are
upset, but I still do not appreciate that.

So, we have two options. Either a closed list. Or a heavily moderated list.

I am not very happy with a closed list, restricted to women. I am not
very supportive of positive discrimination. Men and women are different,
with different concerns, different sensibilities, different interest,
different approaches to things. I have never been of the opinion we
should try to be "equal" in everything. I do not think we can be. We are
complementing each other. Two parts of a complete piece. We overlap. But
we will never be equal. Trying to push things toward an artificial
equality will not change that. We need input of both parts and imho, to
realise both parts are necessary in the debate. In this, I think the
list should not be restricted to women.

When the proposal was made to open and heavily moderate the list, Angela
comment was quite straight. Very heavy moderation is a good idea. Now,
who does it ? Being myself the (very light) moderator of about half a
dozen lists, I echo her question. Who will take in charge the heavy
moderation ? If you really want women to be safe, you need to approve
requests for joining, which means in many cases, you need to know the
people. First trap. Either you accept anonymous membership by default
and hope all will go well, or you accept only those you know. Which
again is discrimination.
If you want the women to feel real secure, you need to moderate posts
*before* they are posted. Second trap. Are you willing to check all
emails before they are posted ?
If you are the moderator, how do you judge which comments should be
removed and which one kept ? if I wanted to feel *safe*, I would
probably delete several emails on this list from the past days, and at
least a dozen from wikien on the discussion 2 weeks ago. Do you feel
ready to do so for a list on wikimedia servers ? Because as soon as you
get the job, you'll have people complaining that you removed this
message and not that one. And then, in the name of democratie and
equality, you'll find yourself voting on whether to remove a message. or
not.

I have a memory of such an event on the french wiki pump, maybe a year
ago. A clueless visitor had left a honest question. And one of our admin
left a very sexist comment/answer there; I was deeply shocked. Very
deeply, in particular because the visitor... was just a visitor.
I removed the comment. It was immediately restored and I was stormed for
several days for having removed the comment. Which was considered
censorship. Are you ready to face screams and accusations of censorship
for having removed a sexist comment on a wiki ? Are you ready to face
screams and accusation of censorship for removing a message containing a
sexist comment on the list ?

Dunno about you, but me, no more. I choose my fights. I prefer working
as best as possible in the Foundation to show that women can perfectly
do that. That as long as our specific needs are acknowledged and taken
into account (which goes from not bugging us too much when we have our
periods, to paying nanny costs of a volunteer mom), we can do just as
best, if not better.
Wikipedia is plagued by sexism, but at least, it has shown it is an
environment where we have a chance to grow and show our own strengths.

If you really want that list on wikimedia servers, here is what I
recommand you do
1) make it an open list for men and women
2) get the agreement from Eloquence and Jimbo
3) take care of the moderation yourself, do not expect Angela to do it :-)

If you do that yourself, you are a winner.

anthere

No. I don't think so. Its a pity this
> was not discussed in any greater detail, rather than being (like so many
> of the concerns which *led* to this list) being summarily dismissed. I
> also find it telling that the /women's/ concerns were ridiculed and
> dismissed as invalid, yet the /men's/ concerns led to almost immediate
> action. How sadly typical.
>
> Angela wrote:
>
>>I'm not willing to fight about so I'll move the list to Wikia, but
>>it's quite upsetting that despite the clear need for this list,
>>Wikimedia are not willing to support it. Perhaps the old Wikimedia
>>WikiChix list can be made into an open but moderated one.
>>
>>Angela.
>>
>>On 12/5/06, florencedevouard <anthere at anthere.org> wrote:
>>
>>>Hello,
>>>
>>>It seems best for the peace of the community that the Wikichix-l list is
>>>not hosted on Wikimedia servers.
>>>Could you move it to another place please Angela ? A Yahoo Group maybe ?
>>>
>>>Please receive my apologies.
>>>
>>>Ant
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikichix-l mailing list
>>Wikichix-l at wikia.com
>>http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikichix-l
>>


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Categories vs lists vs navboxes (was Re: Deletions,
	lists, etc?)

body:
On 12/4/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Another way to put it: they are tendentious and can even be considered a type of advertising.

Advertising as in "Come and see the great article I wrote"? I don't
see any harm in this, and indeed, it would serve as encouragement to
our readers. I shamelessly add links to articles I write. You could
also call this [[WP:BTW|building the web]]. As long as it's not too
obnoxious, relevant links to groups of articles that Wikipedia has are
valuable.

>We have debated this recently at the mathematics WikiProject, and
apart from calculus, where students may well want to get from one
calculus article to another via a menu of suggestions, and a few
limited list like exceptional Lie groups, there is no enthusiasm at
all.

This may say something about mathematicians :) Now, I just had a look
at [[Trigonometry]], and I really wouldn't have guessed, until I
clicked on the category link that there somewhere between 44 and 53
articles about trigonometry. Wikipedia has such an incredible depth of
material that it seems a shame not to make that more visible. Why not
a navigational box that effectively carves out that part of Wikipedia
as a specialist encyclopaedia on trigonemetry?

Steve


from_name: Gatto Nero

body:
2006/12/5, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com>:
> As did I. However, strong points have been made in favor of a women's
> only list, and reinforced by the unbelievable hostility and trolling
> which this whole issue has received on the en and foundation lists.

Trolling? On foundation-l?
Could you show some examples?

Gatto Nero / Claudio


subject: [Wikitech-l] What does the "undo" link do?

body:
On 05/12/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Should I have posted to mediawiki-l instead?

No.

I'd support adding a "dumb" undo link for current revisions that links
to the edit page for the previous revision...at least, for non
administrators. Rollback should probably take precedence when it's
available.

Rob Church


subject: [WikiEN-l] overzealous image deletion?

body:
On 12/5/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> Thats no different from saying if we dont have an article on Mr John
> C Popular Esquire why dont we just copy the one from the Encyclopaedia
> Brittanica until we get around to writing one. Yes it makes us look
> better
> but it doesnt belong to us. This copyright theft is "justified" as
> "fair use"
> because we allegedly dont steal too much from one place at a time, eg we
> only have pictures of all the Pokemon charcaters, so each one is fair
> use.

I've been assuming that the policy about not applying "fair use" for
these photographs was entirely of Wikipedia's design, and is not
really related to copyright law. You're suggesting that we're actually
breaking copyright law if we do use "fair use" for promotional
photographs instead of going out and taking a new photo. Does anyone
know either way?

> And if we had copied all the articles from EB and hadnt got sued, so you
> think we would be where we are today? People improve things where
> there are
> gaps, and stolen images are not gaps.

Can you steal a promotional image which some B grade hollywood star
desperately wants everyone to use at any opportunity? I certainly
agree with you about people filling gaps - I've taken quite a few
"gap-filler" photos myself - but taking good photos of celebrities is
pretty hard. Here's an example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Jerry_Seinfeld_%281997%29.jpg

We're not even sure that this *is* a free image, and this is at the
better end of the scale of the free celebrity photos we have. And do
you think Seinfeld, his publicist, us, or anyone is really happy that
we have a crappy photo of him rather than a professionally executed
publicity shot? This is sort of the opposite of the victimless crime -
the beneficiary-less act of kindness.

Steve


body:
On 12/4/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> Following recent discussions on wikien-l where a number of women said
> they were not comfortable contributing to the discussion, a new
> mailing list has been created for female wiki editors to discuss
> issues of gender bias in wikis and ways to encourage more female
> editors, and just as a place that females can feel more comfortable
> posting to.

Personally, like others, I'm slightly saddened that there is a need
for this. However, there *being* a need for it, satisfying that need
is the right thing to do. Hopefully one day the list will disband from
lack of use.

Steve


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] tiff files?

body:
On Sun, Dec 03, 2006 at 08:52:31PM +0100, Alfio Puglisi wrote:
> On 12/2/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> > For example, the image http://runeberg.org/img/nfad/0670.4.png is
> > 240 kbytes in 150 dpi 16-level grayscale PNG but only 200 kbytes
> > in 600 dpi bitonal TIFF G4.  The difference between 150 dpi
> > grayscale and 600 dpi bitonal becomes very clear when you try to
> > print the page on a 600 or 1200 dpi laser printer.
>
> Well, you should compare apples to apples. The image you specified
> becames only 58 kbytes wen saved as 1-bit (bitonal) PNG. And bitmapped
> formats like PNG and TIFF have no concept of "dpi"- that's an external
> manipulation made by the printing program. You need to compare images
> with the same pixel sizes.

Well, an inference could be made that when one describes two images
with differing DPI renderings that the *final size in inches* is
expected to be the same, but you're right: that's expecting too much of
the speakers... :-)

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

	(I've been informed that the 'divorce' quote makes me look
	misogynistic, even though Jennifer Crusie is (pretty obviously)
	a female romance novelist.  So I've removed it. :-)


body:
2006/12/5, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com>:
> http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-December/011864.html

Having a worried opinion is a trolling?

If you're used to label as troll everyone who has an opinion different
than yours, then it's useless to continue this discussion.

Gatto Nero / Claudio


body:
cohesion wrote:
> On 12/5/06, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com> wrote:
>
>
>> I concur. I also respect that some women feel that having a "safe place"
>> to discuss issues would be helpful to them. There has been much ridicule
>> on this list, and the en list, concerning the hostile atmosphere towards
>> women, which would seem to underscore their concerns. Why bring up an
>> issue when a large number of men will respond "There's no problem!
>> You're just too sensitive!" and dismiss their concerns?
>>
>
> I don't think you would have nearly the negative reaction if you
> started a WikipediaWomen-l that was open, and had the stated mission
> that it was to discuss solutions to gender bias on wikipedia. Not to
> discuss whether there *was* gender bias, but solutions. If people
> wanted to flame on about how no one feels excluded based on gender,
> moderate them, it's obviously untrue anyway.
>
> We are discussing two things it seems like. A list about gender bias,
> and a closed list. I don't think that many people are opposed to a
> list about gender bias, some are of course, but a small minority. Many
> people are concerned about a closed group.
>
> I would rather this be on wikimedia servers if it is open, this is a
> real issue, and I for one would like to learn more about it.
>
> Judson
> [[en:User:Cohesion]]
>
>
I think you must be confused. I didn't start a list at all. Perhaps you
were thinking of someone else?
-kc-


body:
On 12/1/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
> Well, according to the verifiability policy, content is _not supposed
> to go into Wikipedia at all_ unless it's sourced.
>
> I'd say that content that isn't supposed to be in Wikipedia at all
> can hardly be considered to be "high quality" _for Wikipedia_.
>
> That's going to be my last reply, as it seems to me that basically
> you do not agree with the verifiability policy.

I don't think anyone actually follows the policy (in its strict
interpretation), so I'm not alone. I do believe we should have a
workable policy, and what I'm advocating comes pretty close to what is
actually followed in practice: harmful material must be verifiable,
otherwise warn readers about unverifiable material.

Jimmy Wales has repeatedly insisted that we should enforce the
verifiability policy more strictly. However, he generally does that in
response to "harmful" type material, and his calls haven't had much
effect so far. I would just like us to get to a situation where we
have a workable, sensible policy that everyone follows.

Steve


body:
On 12/1/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> The verifiability policy has never been a hardline policy, but a
> guideline and something to aim towards.  When it was first adopted,
> nobody thought it meant that we should summarily delete the 80%+ of the
> encyclopedia that at the time was unsourced.  Instead what it meant was
> that we should begin going through and adding sources to it.
>
> In general some amount of common sense is required.  Claims that are
> almost certainly true but uncited should be left in and have a citation
> supplied---this is what the {{fact}} tag is for.  Claims that are
> surprising or unlikely should be removed or moved to the talk page,
> pending some verification that they actually are true.  Claims that are
> negative claims about a living individual should be treated in the
> second manner by default.  We wouldn't have a living-persons policy, a
> {{fact}} template, or any number of other such things if our
> verifiability policy were that all unsourced statements should be
> summarily deleted.

What is the advantage of having a policy that says "You must do X",
then interpreting it as "Actually you only have to do X in some
situations"? Wouldn't it be more helpful for everyone, especially
including newcomes, to have a policy that says "Do X in the following
situations"?

A policy that no one really follows is bad news.

Steve


body:
Puppy wrote:
> <snip>
> I apologize for being unclear. I meant that the posts which protested
> the list were largely dismissing any concerns as irrelevant. Secondly, I
> fail to see how you, who are clearly trying to do the best you can in a
> divisive situation, were personally hurt by anything I said.

I was the one who agreed for the list to be open. But also the one who
asked for it to be moved somewhere else. So, practically speaking, I
"tossed the women from the island".

  I apologize
> both for whatever I said which was at fault, and for failing to read my
> own posts clearly enough to be able to recognize the offending content.
> Thirdly, are you saying I was trolling?

Certainly not.

> -kc-

Speaking of moderation. I am receiving the chix list from wikia, but my
posts there are apparently moderated (I can prove my gender if
necessary). I am sorry that I depress Brianna.

It is a daily amazement to me that people can spend so many mails over a
chick issue, and not even one comment on fundraising or budget. Sorry
kc, just not the same priorities.


from_name: Bogdan Giusca

subject: [WikiEN-l] First fair use criterium

body:
I think the first fair use criterium should be more clearly written:
it seems that many people think that the part about a replacement
which could be "reasonably be found or created" excludes the variant
of getting out of the house and taking a picture. :-)

I've been tagging as replaceable a few hundred fair-use images of
public buildings.

There were quite a number of images which had the "no free
alternative found on the internet" as fair use rationale.

Also, so far, I got one disputation:

<<
I have looked for a free alternative of this image, without finding one.
No luck on Flickr or Google. Short of forking out for a digital camera
and going to take the image myself, I can't see how "a free image that
provides substantially the same information might reasonably be found or
created".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_talk:Campbell_College.jpg
>>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
On Tue, Dec 05, 2006 at 12:52:50AM -0500, Ivan Krsti?? wrote:
> Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > My point was merely that he suggested more powerful hardware, and
> > received as a reply, "no, the problem is that we need more powerful
> > hardware".
>
> I really wasn't trying to get involved in a polemic about engineering
> practices. Jeff seems to believe that buying one powerful appliance is
> clearly a better approach than buying six commodity servers, and my
> point was that -- for the Wikipedia use case -- that's at best very
> unclear, and at worst very wrong.

For what it's worth, *my* perception of what jeff said parsed as "buy
*six* powerful appliances".  :-)  Or, more generally, COTS is
wonderful, but is it cost effective now to spec one or two levels
higher of COTS than we have been?

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

	(I've been informed that the 'divorce' quote makes me look
	misogynistic, even though Jennifer Crusie is (pretty obviously)
	a female romance novelist.  So I've removed it. :-)


body:
2006/12/5, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com>:
> You are truly clueless if you think what I'm calling "trolling" is a
> difference of opinion.

That's what I liked to know: what is that you define "trolling"?
Because you linked my first intervention in this issue, when I was
just expressing some doubts about the utility this kind of ML could
have for fighting gender bias.
It could be interesting to know *how* you have read my intervention,
what you have read in it.


body:
I notice that recently there is a new "undo" link appearing when
viewing old diffs. Strangely, it only appears for diffs other than the
latest one. It looks like what it does is let you remove text that was
introduced in an old revision but subsequently "consolidated" by a
later edit. I have two questions about it:

1) Is there any documentation on it, and if so, could that be linked
to from the text that says "The edit was successfully undone. Please
click save to apply this change." (and also from the error message you
get when it can't undo due to intervening edits)

2) What's the rationale behind not making it available for the latest
edit? Presumably this is a political sensitivity about not giving
rollback to everyone, but it's a bit odd to effectively give rollback
for old edits, rather than for all edits, which would be much more
useful. Could we perhaps trial "rollback for everyone"?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] overzealous image deletion?

body:
On 12/5/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Questions of what the law says can only really be answered on a case
> by case basis and generealy need to be quite carefuly defined (for
> example a trivial answer to you question is that it would be illegal
> but that is because you failed to specify the legal system you were
> tlaking about).

Whatever legal system the rest of en Wikipedia operates under -
presumably US law.

> Certainly the most obvious case would be one in which the hollywood
> star did not own the copyright to the photo.

We're talking about publicity shots aren't we? As in, photos that are
provided to the media so they can write puff pieces about
them...presumably the publicist owns the copyright, and presumably it
is legal for the media to use them this way. So presumably also legal
for Wikipedia to use them as the lead image for relevant articles. But
possibly not legal for downstream Wikipedia content reusers...

The interesting issue though is that we probably have permission to
use these types of images without resorting to "fair use", but we
actually prohibit ourselves from using that kind of image: we accept
free images, we accept fair use...but not "permission granted for
Wikipedia". It's a strange one.

> The publicist is free to release a photo under a lisence we can use.

I guess "we can use" is a self-imposed limitation that doesn't have
much to do with the law. These photos probably *are* released under a
license we can use, but we choose not to accept them as they are not
free enough. Causing us to take the weird backdoor route of "fair
use".

Steve


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Discrimination on Wikipedia

body:
Greg Kohs sent me a private reply in which he indicated that his
public replies were not getting through.  If a listadmin blocked him
from posting to the list, can someone tell him so affirmatively?

Thanks.

-george

On 12/5/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> Employees of public relations firms are not a protected class under US
> anti-discrimination law.
>
> Further, such employees, acting as individuals and not agents of their
> firms, are not restricted from editing Wikipedia.
>
> What's been banned is a certain class of commercial speech; no publisher,
> even an "open content" one, is mandated to accept all speech from anyone,
> and in particular the protections of commercial speech producers are far
> more easily legally restricted.
>
> This is a pretty weak legal claim, Greg.  Please stop wasting people's time.
>
>
> -george
>
> On 12/5/06, Gregory Kohs < thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Jim Schuler wisely stated:
> >
> > >Might depend on tax law.  If I remember correctly (it's been 15 years
> since
> > >I dealt with this), 501(c) and 501(c)(3) tax-exempt and private
> foundations
> > >can run afoul of the IRS if there is a clear indication of active
> > >discrimination.
> >
> > But then also stated:
> >
> > >In this case, I don't see any evidence of an active policy
> > >of discrimination...
> >
> > There actually *is* a fairly active policy of discrimination that's been
> > carried out for the
> > past few months.
> >
> > Employees of public relations firms are not allowed to edit Wikipedia.
> >
> > http://blog.bitepr.com/2006/08/jimmy_wales_on_.html
> >
> > The IRS and the appropriate Attorneys General will certainly get involved
> > when an
> > organization operating with tax-deductible funding begins to administer
> > itself in ways
> > that run contrary to its stated public mission.  The State of Florida's
> > Division of Consumer
> > Services was sufficiently concerned about Wikipedia's discrimination
> against
> >
> > commercial interests (in light of the GFDL explicitly stating the license
> > must not
> > limit commercial use of the work), that it contacted Brad Patrick in late
> > November.
> >
> > The earlier comment by Earle Martin that "Wikipedia is a
> privately-operated
> > members'
> > club" is a sad statement of empirical evidence that the Wikipedia
> leadership
> > has
> > clearly lost sight of its being a 501(c)(3) non-profit entity that goes
> well
> > beyond a
> > private club.
> >
> > (Still on a Wiki-break, but this list is just too fascinating.)
> >
> > --
> > Gregory Kohs
> > Cell: 302.463.1354
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> -george william herbert
> george.herbert at gmail.com

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


body:
I am genuinely suprised that any women would want their own seperate mailing
list. After all, in times gone by, men deliberately kept women seperate from
men in virtually all public spheres because after all, women were
"delicate", "fragile", "silly" and incapable of discussing serious issues
with the "more rational" men. The arguments presented here about how women
don't feel welcome here due to the "aggressive atmosphere" or whatever seem
very familiar... since they are the same arguments presented by sexist,
bigoted MEN in the 19th century who thought "frivolous" women weren't
capable of making it doing anything else other than making our tea and
cleaning our houses,. Setting up a seperate list for women is the most
ironic suggestion I've seen for a long time.  That's my 0.02EUR anyway.

Corum.

On 05/12/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Andre Engels wrote:
> > 2006/12/5, Alphax (Wikipedia email) < alphasigmax at gmail.com>:
> >
> >>> Our community is strengthened by having the Wikichicks be part of it,
> >> tell
> >>> everyone their opinions and help on Wikipedia and the other sites
> along
> >> with
> >>> the others. It is not strengthened by putting them on a separate list
> so
> >>> they hear noone and noone hears them. Having them do their thing and
> us
> >> do
> >>> ours is an option. But it's a much worse option than actively working
> >>> together.
> >>>
> >> If a man makes a sexist remark on a mailing list but there are no women
> >> to hear it, is he still a misogynist?
> >>
> >
> >
> > What the hell does that have to do with my remark???
> >
>
> "If a man says something in a forest but there are no women to hear it,
> is he still wrong?"
>
> ...
>
> Yes, putting all the women on one list and all the men on another is
> /such/ a good idea. Then it doesn't matter what the men say, they won't
> be offending any women, will they. </sarcasm>
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
>


body:
--- Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> It is not necessarily their aim to address you or all men.

That may necessarily be their aim, but I stand by my statement, which was:

  "If the WikiChix are going to have an impact on Wikipedia at large, one of
the things they're going to have to do is talk to men about it at some point."

(Perhaps I'd revise "have an" to "maximise their".)

> When you fail to grasp the examples of this problem as they are
> presented, the amount of traffic that this topic generates might serve
> as an indicator that there is an issue for many that needs to be addressed.

What makes you think I fail to "grasp the examples"? I don't deny that many
women find Wikipedia and its satellite fora to have an off-putting atmosphere,
and I am supportive of efforts to change that; however I believe that
segregation is a mistake. Your [[traffic analysis]] doesn't allow for the
possibility that the WikiChix have made an error in setting up their forum. I
think they have (by making it female-only). In all likelihood there would have
been minimal opposition to WikiChix if it had been non-discriminatory.

-- Matt

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

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


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] First fair use criterium

body:
Public buildings is a clear case, but I think the main problem lies with
pictures of people.
Unless you want to commit a felony and stalk them, it's pretty much
impossible to get non-fair use images for small time actors who don't visit
premieres or award ceremonies.

Mgm

On 12/5/06, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
>
> I think the first fair use criterium should be more clearly written:
> it seems that many people think that the part about a replacement
> which could be "reasonably be found or created" excludes the variant
> of getting out of the house and taking a picture. :-)
>
> I've been tagging as replaceable a few hundred fair-use images of
> public buildings.
>
> There were quite a number of images which had the "no free
> alternative found on the internet" as fair use rationale.
>
> Also, so far, I got one disputation:
>
> <<
> I have looked for a free alternative of this image, without finding one.
> No luck on Flickr or Google. Short of forking out for a digital camera
> and going to take the image myself, I can't see how "a free image that
> provides substantially the same information might reasonably be found or
> created".
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_talk:Campbell_College.jpg
> >>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

body:
"The Cunctator" wrote

> Wikichix should not be on the wikimedia servers.

No one yet suggested Wikihunx, the men-only list?

Charles

-----------------------------------------
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from_name: Ivan Krstić

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
George Herbert wrote:
> If there's anything currently in Google which would seriously benefit
> WMF, other than cash, it is likely that we could approach the right
> people and get access to it.

WMF has, up to this point, been committed to building Wikipedia only
with free software. While it's exceedingly likely that we can obtain
some kind of privileged access to Google's technologies, it's also
almost certain those technologies would not be opened up to the public,
thus going against the principles at play here.

That said, there definitely are Google technologies that would be useful
to Wikipedia. BigTable and GFS are examples.

--
Ivan Krsti? <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Discrimination on Wikipedia

body:
On 12/5/06, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/5/06, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Alphax makes the common mistake of confusing the "submission" with the
> > "submitter".  All public relations workers are not welcome to edit in
> > Wikipedia, regardless of the quality of their writing, or even whether
> > independent non-paid editors in good standing have personally vetted the
> > content before it's posted.
>
> Missing one important proviso: public relations workers are quite
> welcome to edit wikipedia in a personal capacity.  What has been
> prohibited is editing Wikipedia on behalf of a paying client.

I just don't understand why that should be.


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2006/12/5, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com>:
>
> From others, one of who "hopes we'll look back on this and not believe
> how bad it was"
> --
> No need for women-only channels? The problem may be worse than you
> realised...
>
> Below are some of the responses to the announcement of wikichix's
> founding.

These comments show that there's people who don't think a women-only channel
is necessary. Somehow I don't see how that is a proof that it *is*
necessary....

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


subject: [WikiEN-l] First fair use criterium

body:
Side note: singular of criteria is criterion. It's Greek, not Latin.

On 12/5/06, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
>
> I think the first fair use criterium should be more clearly written:
> it seems that many people think that the part about a replacement
> which could be "reasonably be found or created" excludes the variant
> of getting out of the house and taking a picture. :-)
>
> I've been tagging as replaceable a few hundred fair-use images of
> public buildings.
>
> There were quite a number of images which had the "no free
> alternative found on the internet" as fair use rationale.
>
> Also, so far, I got one disputation:
>
> <<
> I have looked for a free alternative of this image, without finding one.
> No luck on Flickr or Google. Short of forking out for a digital camera
> and going to take the image myself, I can't see how "a free image that
> provides substantially the same information might reasonably be found or
> created".
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_talk:Campbell_College.jpg
> >>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Attack blogs in WP:LIVING articles

body:
On Tue, 5 Dec 2006 07:37:32 -0500, "david at election.demon.co.uk"
<david at election.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>I do not see the relevance. As I pointed out before, the issue is not
>Milton's notability (she's automatically notable as an MP) but whether
>a critical blog is noteworthy. That depends on whether the criticism
>is targeted at the reason she is notable, or at some other aspect, and
>here it is unquestionably targeted at her political activity.

And the subsidiary issue is, if the incident is considered noteworthy,
do we need to go further than linking to the critic's article (which
we do) and the news source (which we do) and include the critic's
blog, which has a header describing the subject as a "dipstick".

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
--- Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > I'll bear it in mind. One potential product of
> > WikiChix that I would like to
> > read is a list of suggestions as to how WikiBlokes
> > can act, or not act, in
> > order to make Wikipedia more female-friendly.
>
> Here is maybe a misunderstanding.  I can not tell you
> how should act differently.  I cannot even articulate
> why my sister would *never* participate on-wiki.  I
> instrinsically know she would not.  I can't say why.
> Honestly I have not given it much thought before.
> However I am not going to discuss my half-formed ideas
> on a taboo subject with people who are dismissive of
> the idea that such discussion is even worthwhile.
> With people who doubt that there is actually an issue
> at all about women not participating.

There's probably a little misunderstanding. I don't think it's necessary that
such a list of suggestions must be hammered out on wikien-l or foundation-l.
>From what you've said, it seems it would be best created on a deliberately
female-friendly list or wiki. I was just putting forward a suggestion, from a
male view point, as to one thing WikiChix could do that might help improve
things: some sort of  "HOWTO Encourage Women in Wikis" (or a better title)
document, comparable to

  http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/index.html

-- Matt

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

___________________________________________________________
Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail. "The New Version is radically easier to use" ? The Wall Street Journal
http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html


body:
2006/12/5, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com>:

> I read the following:

(I hope you've read the context, too)

> --
>  >Oh. My. God. Which will be the next one? WikiNigger? WikiFaggot?
> --
> as ridiculing the idea, comparing a list for women (not WikiBitches, not
> WikiWhores, not WikiCunts, not some derogatory term) with your
> intentionally offensive terms for blacks and gays.

With this real phrase, I was not ridiculing the idea - even if (as
said) I don't think this idea is really useful to fight bias - but I
was ridiculing the name choosen.
And this because, in my very very very personal opinion, call a woman
"chick" is offensive of her intelligence. As offensive as calling a
black people "Nigger" or a gay "faggot" (and again: I'm gay, just to
explain the context).
It could be an italian way to see this word, but if I'd call "Chix" -
or one of the italian corrispective - a friend of mine (and I have
plenty of female friends), as minimum I'd receive a slap in the face.
As minimum (a more reality adherent image is me receiving a kick in my
balls).

> This has the result
> of implying that women who perceive the need for this list are "less
> than" - as calling a black person a "nigger" implies he or she is "less
> than" and so underlines the bias and bigotry.

Eh? I've read this phrase twice and more, but I'm not sure of what
you're saying, maybe cause of language difficulties (I'm italian...
maybe - if you want - you could try to explain it in a wider way,
privately too).
If you're thinking that I'm implying that women are "less than"
anything, you're totally wrong. I just think that women who perceive
the need for a new ML are bad-adressing their effort: they should want
rather *more politeness and respect for women* in THIS mailing list.

> This is trolling.

I can't get why. Rather a misunderstanding?

> The "Oh.
> My. God." is clearly expressing contempt for the idea.

"Contempt"? Astonishment, rather. And worry.
Because, just as I've said before in this answer, I find (*I*, me
underline) more offensive this list.

> This is trolling.

As said, this is an opinion. If express an opinion is trolling, then
maybe you're not considering some cultural differences which could be
adressed to different lifestyle, different countries of living,  etc
(It's difficult to express what I'm trying to say now in english, for
me)

> A clearly reasoned statement, such as Bryan Tong Minh's post:
> --
[CUT]
> --
> is a disagreement without being trolling. Do you see the difference? Or
> am I being unclear?

No, you've been clear. But I don't think you're totally right (again:
an opinion).


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
Rob Church wrote:
> On 04/12/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
>> Yes, Ivan; that's why Jeff suggested provisioning more powerful
>> platforms.  :-)  That he mentioned throughput is really a red-herring
>> here...
>
> Let's filch a couple supercomputers.
>

Who needs supercomputers when you can use distributed computing?
Wikipedia at Home anyone?

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] mwdumper --ouptut=mysql eats utf-8(?)

body:
Hi,

> However MediaWiki, when $wgDBmysql5 is off, is charset-agnostic to
> MySQL
> and just grabs and sends UTF-8 strings without caring what MySQL
> thinks
> they are. That may, or may not, be the same as what MySQL thinks is
> UTF-8 internally.

Current problem is that it specifies latin1 character set, where it
should be using 'varbinary'/'blob'.
JDBC standards ask to associate proper character set with anything
what is text.

No charset conversion should happen for binary fields.

> Thanks, MySQL!

:-)

> For this reason I recommend sticking with MySQL 4.0 if you want to
> work
> with Wikimedia data...

Or actually updating schema not to use charset-enabled types anywhere.

Cheers,
--
Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
On 12/5/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> Doesn't have enough information to render the site layout because it
> can't access the database, so it has to just print out text without
> any interface widgets.  Substantial parts of the interface are stored
> in the database, like the sidebar and so forth, and rendering the
> interface without them would be a) weird and b) too much work for an
> error message, which people don't expect to be pretty anyway.

Ah, that makes sense, thanks.

Steve


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Hoi,
If the Wikichix are going to achieve their aim is; supporting women who
are put off by the current Wikipedia atmosphere, there influence will be
found in a women who start editing and who otherwise would not or become
disenfranchised with our project. It is not necessarily their aim to
address you or all men.

When you fail to grasp the examples of this problem as they are
presented, the amount of traffic that this topic generates might serve
as an indicator that there is an issue for many that needs to be addressed.

Thanks,
    GerardM

Matt R schreef:
> --- Puppy <puppy at KillerChihuahua.com> wrote:
>
>>  From others, one of who "hopes we'll look back on this and not believe
>> how bad it was"
>> --
>> No need for women-only channels? The problem may be worse than you
>> realised...
>>
>> Below are some of the responses to the announcement of wikichix's founding.
>>
>
> kc, it's entirely not clear, but from the immediate context of the thread it
> seems you're saying that all those responses you quoted are examples of
> trolling. Disagreement or failure to see a problem isn't trolling.
>
> If the WikiChix are going to have an impact on Wikipedia at large, one of the
> things they're going to have to do is talk to men about it at some point. And
> in doing that, they're going to have to be willing to give evidence to those
> who can't see a problem and otherwise respectfully interact with people who
> disagree.
>
> -- Matt
>
> Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
> Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> I notice that recently there is a new "undo" link appearing when
> viewing old diffs. Strangely, it only appears for diffs other than the
> latest one. It looks like what it does is let you remove text that was
> introduced in an old revision but subsequently "consolidated" by a
> later edit. I have two questions about it:
>
> 1) Is there any documentation on it, and if so, could that be linked
> to from the text that says "The edit was successfully undone. Please
> click save to apply this change." (and also from the error message you
> get when it can't undo due to intervening edits)
>

Raimond Spekking wrote:
> werdna at svn.wikimedia.org schrieb:
>> Revision: 17935
>> Author:   werdna
>> Date:     2006-11-26 02:54:01 -0800 (Sun, 26 Nov 2006)
>>
>> Log Message:
>> -----------
>> * (bug 6295) Add a 'revision patching' functionality, where an edit
>> can be undone (with a functionality similar to diff rev1 rev2 | patch -R
>> rev3 -o rev3). This is triggered by including &undo=revid in an edit
>> URL. A link to a URL that will undo a given edit is shown on NEW
>> NON-CURRENT revision headers on diff pages.
>
> It's bug 6925.
>

So if Bugzilla was working...

> 2) What's the rationale behind not making it available for the latest
> edit? Presumably this is a political sensitivity about not giving
> rollback to everyone, but it's a bit odd to effectively give rollback
> for old edits, rather than for all edits, which would be much more
> useful. Could we perhaps trial "rollback for everyone"?
>

Possibly.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
2006/12/5, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com>:

> > Our community is strengthened by having the Wikichicks be part of it,
> tell
> > everyone their opinions and help on Wikipedia and the other sites along
> with
> > the others. It is not strengthened by putting them on a separate list so
> > they hear noone and noone hears them. Having them do their thing and us
> do
> > ours is an option. But it's a much worse option than actively working
> > together.
> >
>
> If a man makes a sexist remark on a mailing list but there are no women
> to hear it, is he still a misogynist?
>

What the hell does that have to do with my remark???

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: Matt R

body:
--- Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not willing to fight about so I'll move the list to Wikia, but
> it's quite upsetting that despite the clear need for this list,
> Wikimedia are not willing to support it.

Besides the opposition from some to having this hosted here, there's also:

   http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Non_discrimination_policy

"The Wikimedia Foundation prohibits discrimination against current or
prospective users and employees on the basis of race, color, gender, religion,
national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, or any other legally
protected characteristics."

-- Matt

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

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


body:
> Fair enough?

Fair enough.
But could I use what happened as an example, rewriting what I've said
in a personal mail about this topic?

Try to imagine all our friction in a context where there is a
women-only-ML. (I'll try to put it simple, damn'd language problems :D
)

I say something that you perceive as an offense.
You go to Wikichix-l and start talking about it... and the issue
become bigger and bigger. The problem is that - talking in a "private"
list - I've not the possibility to explain myself, or to undestand my
error. We said: the problem becomes bigger and bigger
Only then you return to foundation-l. You explain what your problem
is, but this problem is now amplificated. And solve this issue is more
complicate, if not impossibile.

This is why I'm worried about Wikichix. We have problem of
communication... we should be more direct.

Gatto Nero / Claudio


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
George Herbert wrote:
> For the most part, web applications have a highly effectively
> paralleliseable app and web layer, but the database on many of them doesn't
> scale horizontally as well.

Wikipedia can partition the database across languages (as it does
already with the largest ones), and when individual languages grow to be
too large for a single server to deal with, there are other partitioning
schemes to look at. So it's a bit simpler here, as it's not one
monolithic data store that's growing without bound.

> Or for a counterexample, Friendster.  I know the poor guy who was doing site
> architecture there for a while, screaming at his bosses that they needed to
> get off MySQL and get a Sun/Oracle box in, and doing unholy things to MySQL
> to try and keep it going, until he just walked away.

And yet an even larger social networking site continues to happily churn
along with MySQL. Clearly there are examples each way, but in the case
of WMF, there are also principles that factor into the equation.

--
Ivan Krsti? <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D


body:
2006/12/5, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com>:

> Had they all been actually discussing how to address gender bias in what
> they felt were more constructive ways, I would be more inclined to agree
> with you.

The thread wasn't  about  gender bias in general, it was about the creation
of the list. Feel free to start a thread about gender bias in general, but
don't expect it to be discussed in general in reaction to a solution that
ain't a solution at all.

As the examples given did not do so, but instead *invalidated*
> the problem itself, and you are enforcing the perception of the women
> who feel this list is necessary in order to /discuss/ bias rather than
> /prove to a man's satisfaction that they feel discriminated against/, I
> cannot possibly support your assertion.

Again, specific solutions are something different than general problems.

That said, I am still firmly on
> the fence about this issue. I am not, however, dismissing it out-of-hand
> because men don't see that it might help, or that there is a problem to
> be addressed.

So why are you dismissing it? I think "it doesn't help" is the best ground
for dismissal I can think of.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
George Herbert wrote:
> On first glance... GFS doesn't seem relevant to Wikimedia Foundation work.

I brought it up because the BigTable design outsources certain
fault-tolerance worries to GFS, if I recall correctly. It's not a
necessity by itself, no.

--
Ivan Krsti? <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D


from_name: Ryan Wetherell

subject: [WikiEN-l] overzealous image deletion?

body:
Huh?!  That sounds unecessarily arbitrary.

--Ryan

On 12/5/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> At this point another admin speedied it
> because it didn't fit his fair use criteria, namely that book covers
> aren't fair use in articles on books unless they are first edition
> covers or something


body:
2006/12/5, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com>:
>
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> >
> > Yes, putting all the women on one list and all the men on another is
> > /such/ a good idea. Then it doesn't matter what the men say, they won't
> > be offending any women, will they. </sarcasm>
> >
> >
> Point taken; however that isn't the only argument for the list.
>

Okay, getting back I find:

arguments for:
* Women have a friendlier atmosphere to talk without sexist remarks

arguments against:
* Does not make Wikipedia any less sexist or gender biased
* Is discriminating and actually introduces gender bias
* Causes some people not to have a say in discussions because those are on
the 'wrong' list

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


body:
David Mestel wrote:
> I can see that this new list will be separate, but will it be equal?
>

All lists are equal, but some lists are more equal than others.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
On 12/5/06, Jens Frank <jf at mormo.org> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Dec 04, 2006 at 12:46:31PM -0700, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> > Ivan Krsti?? wrote:
> >
> > >Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >>You may wish to consider ordering more powerful platforms. I run 6
> > >>instances of the entire Wikipedia on a single Solera Appliance.
> > >>These servers have throughput of 875 megabyte per second
> > >>
> > >>
> > >
> > >I run a Wikipedia instance on the 366MHz OLPC XO-1
> > >(http://dev.laptop.org/~krstic/xo); it works because I'm the only user.
> > >Neither storage nor disk throughput help when your problem is sheer
> > >load, and you're computationally-bound.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > I also have proxy servers setup and I get about 2000 visitors a day and
> > over 300,000 hits per day.
>
> Just as a comparison: Wikipedia serves 22'000 requests per second and
> over 100 Million visitors per month.

Is that 22,000 requests per second page requests, or total hits per second?

Is there an edits-per-second statistic available?  I went wandering but
didn't find one...

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 12/4/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Following recent discussions on wikien-l where a number of women said
>> they were not comfortable contributing to the discussion, a new
>> mailing list has been created for female wiki editors to discuss
>> issues of gender bias in wikis and ways to encourage more female
>> editors, and just as a place that females can feel more comfortable
>> posting to.
>
> Personally, like others, I'm slightly saddened that there is a need
> for this. However, there *being* a need for it, satisfying that need
> is the right thing to do. Hopefully one day the list will disband from
> lack of use.
>

... whoa. Care to rephrase that?

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
What do you care is someone's called a dipstick? We shouldn't be passing
value judgments, in the most part.

On 12/5/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 5 Dec 2006 11:07:47 -0500, "The Cunctator"
> <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> What do you think should be the circumstances under which we link an
> >> attack blog from an article on a living individual?
>
> >When the attack blog is mentioned in the article.
>
> OK, and in this case it's not.  What is mentioned is that some
> coverage was given in the press to the opposition of Tim Ireland,
> including his blog.  For that, we have a source: the press article;
> and a link: to Tim Ireland's article.  Take three links into the
> shower?  Not me.  Especially when one of them calls the subject a
> "dipstick".
>
> However, I am increasingly of the view that this incident is not
> really significant.  Can anyone list the MPs who have *not* been
> loudly criticised by at least one constituent?
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia has a problem

body:
Poking around some more, I found myself in blissful ignorance of
[[C-Store]].  I lose track of Stonebreaker for a year, and he's off
doing what I had been hoping he'd do...

Has anyone looked into C-Store and the largescale MediaWiki deployment
problem?

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> On 12/4/06, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> If the blog is worth mentioning, it seems worth linking to. Wouldn't make
>> too much sense to mention a blog post without linking to it *somewhere*,
>> eh?
>>
>> But as to whether it's worth a mention at all, I have no idea.
>>
>
> CRAZY TALK.
>
> Seriously, NPOV doesn't mean not linking to opinionated sources if
> they're part of the story. Luna is right.
>

I hear there's these new-fangled <ref> tags...

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject: [WikiEN-l] First fair use criterium

body:
Tuesday, December 5, 2006, 3:34:15 PM, Rich wrote:

> I admit that I've never tried myself, but it seems to me that most of
> these people would be eager to release a free photo. Does actual
> experience prove otherwise? Or has there really not been much of an
> attempt made?

On IMDB, the small time actors have to pay to submit a photo
for the profile.


references:
<dfd0b40612041541i79998338yd6781ddc8bd1127a@mail.gmail.com>
	<8sc9n219njj10l4q9b6p9288rkk1j9l5vo@4ax.com>
	<dfd0b40612041550x1aa68513g1a7518a3f6691f4a@mail.gmail.com>
	<rvd9n294jidsferhvhnc9s9c8b3nmfu0os@4ax.com>
	<dfd0b40612042332g18d6e9d0mfbb29363081a7f58@mail.gmail.com>
	<opnan2dr5j90eu0rf0pq5a9q05r58amko2@4ax.com>
	<dfd0b40612050807n38b7b14audc862068aa8c58ab@mail.gmail.com>
	<otkbn2dhnm06vdqul5sp8o4jeqsfdpafgn@4ax.com>
	<dfd0b40612051232w4d5418a3obcbb8de215af4020@mail.gmail.com>
	<nmmbn2hojl00ku5apkshasscq2ds74upjh@4ax.com>

body:
??

On 12/5/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 5 Dec 2006 15:32:39 -0500, "The Cunctator"
> <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >What do you care is someone's called a dipstick? We shouldn't be passing
> >value judgments, in the most part.
>
> I'll leave you to field the OTRS complaint then :-)
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Rory Stolzenberg

subject: [Wikitech-l] Case sensitivity in article headings?

body:
On 12/5/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> > I see that in the last few weeks, [[:en:Template:lowercase]] has been
> > updated to actually display the title in lowercase with a JavaScript
> > hack.
>
> Stolen from Uncyclopedia, of course. (Or did they use a CSS hack?)
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
> I believe Interiot said he stole it from frwiki.


body:
2006/12/5, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com>:

> It was about a solution to women not being comfortable on WP due to
> bias. Whether that solution is a good one or not was /not/ being
> addressed.

Well, I felt it was, but maybe it just means I and others have not been
clear in our arguments. I think it would be a very bad solution, because it
would not help one iota. If we want to make Wikipedia more woman-friendly,
then Wikipedia is the place to work. That might sound like a triviality, but
someone who finds Wikipedia an unhospitable place for them, will still find
it unhospitable if there is a small secluded corner to talk with others of
the same feeling.

> So why are you dismissing it? I think "it doesn't help" is the best ground
> > for dismissal I can think of.
> >
> I didn't dismiss it. That's what "firmly on the fence" means - that I do
> not support nor oppose it, and am still considering the concept. And I
> have yet to see any reason why it would not help. I have reasons why it
> would, and I have seen concerns that it might hurt the project in other
> ways, but I have not seen any reason given that it would not help.
>

Any action against sexism and gender bias should be taken on Wikipedia (and
the other projects and mailing lists) itself. I don't see how it helps to
have a friendly away place if people have to get back to Wikipedia anyway.
If they feel it's too sexist (I personally do not have the feeling it's
rampant, but it undoubtedly occurs), they will have problems with it with or
without Wikichix. And if they want their discussions to have some practical
effect, they should probably do them elsewhere as well.

If the goal is to get more women on mailing lists, I can see it would
probably be effective. If the goal is to get their voice heard, I'm
doubtful. If the goal is to diminish sexism on Wikipedia and the mailing
lists, I'm quite convinced it is not.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


body:
--- Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I don't see any indication that people get attacked
> > for bringing up the
> > issue. I don't see much attacking going on, although
> > the discussion isn't as
> > civil as it should be either - from both sides. But
> > if you see everyone who
> > has doubts about the extent of sexism in Wikipedia
> > as attacking you for
> > bringing it forward, you are indeed too
> > thin-skinned. Why not see those as
> > requests for information instead?
> >
> A person says they are worried about being attacked
> for bringing up an issue and the response is that
> don't know what it means to be "attacked".  That only
> physical attacks count.  That "worring about being
> attacked" (i.e. feeling intimidated) means she is
> "thin-skined".  Seriously fuck off.

Not cool.

There are attacks (e.g. "seriously fuck off"), and there are "attacks" (e.g. "I
disagree with what you say"). Andre is correct: for the most part, the comments
in this thread have been of the "I disagree with what you say" type. The most
notable exception being your outburst above.

-- Matt

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

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


from_name: Earle Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nazi userboxes

body:
On 05/12/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Earle Martin wrote:
> > As far as I am aware, neither Wikipedia nor the Wikimedia Foundation
> > are the United States.
> >
>
> In the immortal words of Essjay,
> > Wikipedia has no right to free speech. The First Amendment says
> > "Congress shall make no law..."; we are not Congress, we are the
> > cabal.

Which is exactly the point that I was making. Although I must correct
you on one point: there is of course no cabal.

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


body:
> Subscription request
> has been rejected by the list moderator.  The moderator gave the
> following reason for rejecting your request:

> "Hi Cunctator. We're only accepting women at this time. I suggest you
> comment on the existing Wikimedia lists instead. This presence of this
> list isn't meant to prevent men commening - which you can still do on
> wikien-l etc."

Maybe we should have a mailing list just for men, too! And a mailing list
for British people where no Americans are allowed! Or a mailing list
just for atheists where no Christians would be accepted!


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] overzealous image deletion?

body:
On 12/5/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> Then who?

The en.wikipedia community or at least the parts of it that care about
our fair use policy.

--
geni