body:
Did blocking not work in this case? Or was it genuinely different
users with different IPs? In that case, there would appear to be no
immediate solution, until we implement some kind of change filtering
for anons. ie: Anon makes a change, non-anon approves the change,
change actually appears. Obviously again a last resort mechanism for
heavily vandalised pages where we really really want to let good faith
anons edit the article (like for FAs).

Steve

On 2/3/06, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:

> With regards to semi-protection, we need to rethink our rules about limiting
> the semi-protection of feature articles to 15 minutes. The feature article
> for Thursday was being vandalised every couple of minutes by a different new
> user name but with the same item featuring plenty of pictures of vaginas and
> penises.


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Thanh Ngo

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: How to add/edit an article serverside

body:
Thanks. I am looking into the file. Meanwhile, please dig up into your
script repository and let me know if you find it ;).

Best,
-Thanh

Rob Church wrote:
> Hmm, seems I remember writing something like this to mass-create a ton
> of pages in a test wiki a while ago. I'll dig up the script and see
> about putting it somewhere. An import text file script could be
> useful.
>
> Meanwhile; look at, for instance; the
> maintenance/InitialiseMessages.inc file. There's a chunk in this which
> shows how to create/edit an article with code running from the command
> line.
>
>
> Rob Church
>
> On 03/02/06, Thanh Ngo <ntthanhvn at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>I am new to MediaWiki. Don't know if anyone asked this before (I looked
>>into the codes and looked around for a while). This problem raises when
>>I want to add a bunch of articles into MediaWiki.
>>
>>Suppose that I have a bunch of text files in wiki's format. How can I
>>add them to MediaWiki with one article for each text file. And then, how
>>can I edit some of those articles when their corresponding text files
>>are changed (I know which files are changed)? By how here, I mean what
>>functions should I call and under what dependencies? Also, I like to
>>have those article added/editted under admin/sysop authorization.
>>
>>Thank your in advance for your help.
>>
>>Best,
>>-Thanh
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikitech-l mailing list
>>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>>


list: wikien-l

from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Counter Vandalism Unit? Whaa?

body:
"The Cunctator" wrote

>"Semi-protection" is also something that bothers me no end. As does
the concept of needing to "semi-protect" talk pages.

WP's openness does (still) need good advocates.

Charles


from_name: Igor Chudov

subject: [Wikitech-l] Extension to allow editing only by AUTHORIZED USERS???

body:
I run a couple of wikis. Both are used as glorified help pages for
certain projects. One is made by one person (me), and another is
created by several persons.

In any case, beyond a limited list of people, we have no interest in
having outsiders contribute, at the time. And spam is very time
consuming. SpamBlackList does not work well (complains about too long
regexp) etc.

So. I would like to know if there is some extension that limits who
can contribute, to, say, a list of sysops.

thanks

--


from_name: Uwe Brauer

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: markup in talk pages

body:
>>>>> " " == Rob Church
>>>>> <robchur at gmail.com> writes:

    > That is completely and entirely up to you. A wiki is a freeform,
    > free-range canvas...and if it's yours, it's yours to lay out how
    > you want.

Although that was my first impression unfortunately on various Talk
pages it was pointed out that I should follow a certain convention
(whose documentation was well not very easy to access, but this is a
different topic)
    > A sensible convention, however, at least for wikis using MediaWiki, is
    > to use section headings to split up discussions into smaller threads.
    > One can even add a section to a talk page using the "+" link near the
    > edit button. Sections can be edited alone, meaning there's less markup
    > to look at, and it's easier to locate what it is you're responding to
    > in the text box.

I agree completely and IMHO one of the severe inconveniences with the
wikipedia talk pages is the lack of a sophisticated threading system
(see for example http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LiquidThreads).
In my eyes a compromise would be to use subsections headings for
replys however that was strongly refused and even deleted on those
Talk pages.

    > Of course, there's nothing stopping you doing that *and* using
    > ----. Ah, decisions.

Ah, freedom :(

Uwe Brauer


from_name: Philip Welch

body:
> On one end of the spectrum is the concept that any "non-authorized"
> edit is vandalism--that seems absurd for Wikipedia, but it's the
> standard at, say, Encyclopedia Britannica or a newspaper, the Nupedia
> project, etc.
>
> At the other end of the spectrum is that there is no such thing as
> vandalism, just edits that are less helpful than others.
>
> We should try to function as close to the latter end as possible.
>
> The very word "vandalism" I think is a somewhat false analogy, since
> there's no permanent damage in Wikipedia. It's just as easy, easier in
> fact, to remove unwanted edits than to add them. It's the exact
> reverse of, say, spraypainting a wall or scratching your name in a
> subway car window -- much easier to add than to remove.
>
> By creating the crime of vandalism we make people into criminals.
>
> By creating categories of good users we create categories of bad
> users.
>
> By creating restrictions, rules, trials we create mechanisms for
> conflict.

So what do you suggest we call it when someone blanks the featured
article and overwrites it with "COCK COCK COCK COCK COCK FUCK ASS
COCK GAY LOLWTFBBQ"?

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: daleyl at peak.org

subject: [WikiEN-l] use of "vandalism" as a political weapon

body:
It seems quite apparent that the charge of "vandalism" is being used as
way of imposing ideological conformity.  It only takes two "editors" to do
this.

For instance to call Fidel Castro a mere student "activist", after he had
killed several times at the University of Havana, is simply POV. And then
to block a person for merely changing "activist" to "lethal activist" is
absurd and shows political bias.  I suggest that the two editors who did
this be demoted or chastized....

A friend of the Jigue


from_name: Nick Boalch

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> If semi-protection stops vandalism happening in the first place, great!

With all due respect, that's a stupid position. By logical extension of
it we'd semi-protect all articles. Then we'd notice that vandalism still
happened, so we'd fully protect all articles ('great, it stops vandalism
happening in the first place!').

Page protection of any kind is against what the whole project stands
for. It's a *necessary* evil, but people need to remember that it's
still evil.

Cheers,

N.

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3456
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


from_name: geni

body:
On 2/3/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> Maybe it's time to start enforcing the rules. It seems a bit odd to
> have rule-enforcers breaking rules.
>

The foundation know how to complain. There are complicateing factors
(the logo image should not be on commons for a start) here. As soon as
they come up with a coherent position we will act on it.

> Nope!

Looks like it is going to stay semi protected then. With the amount of
trafic some articles get these days a reverting vandalism after 1
minute is too long a delay.

--
geni


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>What most of the people on this thread fail to recognize is that
>creating anti-vandalism paramilitaries *encourages* vandalism.
>
That's just a ludicrous point of view - the vast majority of vandals
I deal with neither know nor care about WP internal process. If they
did, they would be able to introduce vandalism in much more subtle
ways, for instance by stacking vandalistic edits behind legitimate
changes by a sockpuppet, mixing vandalism in with a good edit, using
plausible sounding edit summaries, etc. Instead, they tend to add
the first thing that comes to mind, usually scatological.

I get my data about vandals' habits from twice-daily reviews of a
19,000 item watchlist; where do you get your data from?

Stan


body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>On 03/02/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
>
>
>>>At the other end of the spectrum is that there is no such thing as
>>>vandalism, just edits that are less helpful than others.
>>>
>>>We should try to function as close to the latter end as possible.
>>>
>>>The very word "vandalism" I think is a somewhat false analogy, since
>>>there's no permanent damage in Wikipedia.
>>>
>>So what do you suggest we call it when someone blanks the featured
>>article and overwrites it with "COCK COCK COCK COCK COCK FUCK ASS
>>COCK GAY LOLWTFBBQ"?
>>
>
>"Uninventive"?
>
I know! I know! It's a "cry for help", and the Foundation should
offer free but non-judgmental therapy.

Stan


from_name: Sean Barrett

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

The Cunctator stated for the record:
> What most of the people on this thread fail to recognize is that
> creating anti-vandalism paramilitaries *encourages* vandalism.
>
> Calling any less-than productive edit "vandalism" by definition
> encourages vandalism.
>
> On one end of the spectrum is the concept that any "non-authorized"
> edit is vandalism--that seems absurd for Wikipedia, but it's the
> standard at, say, Encyclopedia Britannica or a newspaper, the Nupedia
> project, etc.
>
> At the other end of the spectrum is that there is no such thing as
> vandalism, just edits that are less helpful than others.
>
> We should try to function as close to the latter end as possible.
>
> The very word "vandalism" I think is a somewhat false analogy, since
> there's no permanent damage in Wikipedia. It's just as easy, easier in
> fact, to remove unwanted edits than to add them. It's the exact
> reverse of, say, spraypainting a wall or scratching your name in a
> subway car window -- much easier to add than to remove.
>
> By creating the crime of vandalism we make people into criminals.
>
> By creating categories of good users we create categories of bad users.
>
> By creating restrictions, rules, trials we create mechanisms for conflict.
>
> I'm not saying that there should be no mechanisms for continuing to
> improve the quality of Wikipedia -- but that we are going down the
> wrong road now.
>
> There's always been a steady amount of less-than helpful edits. But
> calling them all vandalism, doing things like "sprotecting" pages,
> creating militias, only abets the problem.

==See also==
* [[Proof by assertion]]

added "see also" section ~~~~

- --
 Sean Barrett     | They can have my DeLameter when they
 sean at epoptic.org | pry it from my cold, dead tentacle.
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from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] process for contributing mediawiki extensions?

body:
Moin,

On Friday 03 February 2006 12:22, Rob Church wrote:
> No one list is necessarily better than the other, but I'd be inclined
> to recommend announcing on mediawiki-l regardless, since a MediaWiki
> extension might be of use to several others using the software.

I think I'll do that.

> If you consider the extension is potentially useful to Wikimedia, or
> you're announcing the update of one we already use, I'd be inclined to
> advocate mentioning it here (wikitech-l) too.

I think (of course! Thats why I created it :-) it is usefull for the
wikipedia/wikimedia, but since it is currently not in use I always found
it a bit odd to announce it here.

> The possibilities are endless when it comes to getting the message
> across.

Yes, but of course I'd not want to annoy people or "spam" the list with
announcements: While there were about 40 releases in the last year, but I
did sent only about 4 or 5 anouncements. But getting it to more
"ordinary" users of mediawiki might be a good idea.

Best wishes,

Tels

--
 Signed on Fri Feb  3 13:01:45 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "My other computer is your Windows box." -- Dr. Brad (19034) on
 2004-08-13 at /.

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Philip Welch stated for the record:

>> On one end of the spectrum is the concept that any "non-authorized"
>> edit is vandalism--that seems absurd for Wikipedia, but it's the
>> standard at, say, Encyclopedia Britannica or a newspaper, the Nupedia
>> project, etc.
>>
>> At the other end of the spectrum is that there is no such thing as
>> vandalism, just edits that are less helpful than others.
>>
>> We should try to function as close to the latter end as possible.
>>
>> The very word "vandalism" I think is a somewhat false analogy, since
>> there's no permanent damage in Wikipedia. It's just as easy, easier in
>> fact, to remove unwanted edits than to add them. It's the exact
>> reverse of, say, spraypainting a wall or scratching your name in a
>> subway car window -- much easier to add than to remove.
>>
>> By creating the crime of vandalism we make people into criminals.
>>
>> By creating categories of good users we create categories of bad  users.
>>
>> By creating restrictions, rules, trials we create mechanisms for
>> conflict.
>
>
> So what do you suggest we call it when someone blanks the featured
> article and overwrites it with "COCK COCK COCK COCK COCK FUCK ASS  COCK
> GAY LOLWTFBBQ"?

I call it "better than adding a link to a [[Last Measure]] Web site."

- --
 Sean Barrett     | They can have my DeLameter when they
 sean at epoptic.org | pry it from my cold, dead tentacle.
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body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>
>The very word "vandalism" I think is a somewhat false analogy, since
>there's no permanent damage in Wikipedia.
>
Actually, that's not true. The permanent damage is the loss of time.
When I spend a minute bringing up an article, looking at a diff,
checking history and contribs to see if there is more, that's a
minute that I'm not adding facts or checking them, and that minute
is gone forever.

Volunteers' time is our most precious resource - don't throw it
away so casually.

Stan


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A school teacher's wiki-like classroom experiment

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> This is excellent:
>
>     http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2006-02-02/goods_next.php
>
> It may also be a good experiment to suggest to teachers in general if
> they're trying to explain Wikipedia.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________

Who launched the latest rumor that Mitch Kapor was a co-foundor ?

:-)

ant


from_name: Robert Clark

subject: [Wikitech-l] Cologne Blue: Discuss this Page

body:
I am looking for a way to modify the link in the sidebar of the Cologne Blue
skin so that if a page already has a discussion the link reads "View
Discussion", otherwise it reads "Start Discussion"

it seems all I need is an if statement in cologneblue.php around the section
below, but I dont know what function to call to see if the page exists or
not.  I have tried exists() but it always returns the same value

>From colgneblue.php:

   $s .= $this->menuHead( "qbpageoptions" );

   $s .= $this->talkLink()
     . $sep . $this->commentLink()

Any ideas anyone?

Thanks in advance,

Rob


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one

body:
On 2/3/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> It was
> not very "diplomatic" to just go out and say that it's already been
> discussed on wikien, what I'm saying is that all this could have een
> avoided if all parties had had a more civil tone.

Well if I said that, or gave the impression that the discussion had
solely been on wikien-l, then yes, I could have handled it much
better.  I don't think it's wrong to discuss things on this mailing
list, though of course it should also be discussed on the wiki.  Where
a discussion takes place in more than one place, I think it's
appropriate to refer to both discussions.  I avoid discussing
DRV-related things solely there because few people seem to be aware of
the page or involved in it so it's difficult to get a valid consensus
view by discussion solely on that page.


body:
On 2/3/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> "Semi-protection" is also something that bothers me no end. As does
> the concept of needing to "semi-protect" talk pages.

On this subject, see my recent edit on talk:George W. Bush.

Although vandalism has been slashed by semi-protection on that
article, non-vandalism edits also seem to be down by about 60%.  Does
that mean that semi-protection is wrong for George W. Bush?  I think
the jury is still out, but it appears that there is considerable
collateral damage associated with semi-protection.


from_name: Brock Batsell

body:
On Feb 3, 2006, at 1:05 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:

> The Cunctator wrote:
>
>> Wikipedia's still great, I love it, but really. The Wikipedia Counter
>> Vandalism Unit?
>>
> Do you even look at RC, and not just work on one or two articles?
> Vandalism is coming in the top, sides, bottom, front, and back, and
> it's sucking up editor time that should be spent on actual content.
> It's not just the popular GWB or the less-obvious-but-still-popular
> "poop deck" that are the targets; there are hundreds of vandals
> bashing on completely random pages, and inserting subtle errors as
> well as obvious ones. As I mentioned on this mailing list not long
> ago, a vandal erased a random chunk of an article while I wasn't
> looking, the fair-use images in that part were declared orphans
> and then deleted, all before I got back from vacation (good thing I
> had my own backups).
>
> If you have a solution that's not based on wishful thinking,
> convince us that it's workable; in the meantime, please stop
> throwing rocks at the people who are trying to keep this place
> from turning into a graffiti-covered restroom.
>
> Stan

I was going to write a reply earlier, but decided to hold off on the
off chance I might become uncivil.  Thankfully, you summed up my
feelings quite nicely, Stan.  Many thanks.

Regards,
[[en:User:Bbatsell]]
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from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
I'm not particularly found of that last line "Try to add something and see
how it lasts", but at least he hammers on the fact you always need to cross
check and that even in a class of ninth-graders cooperative editing works
better than one thinks.

Mgm

On 2/3/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> David Gerard wrote:
> > This is excellent:
> >
> >     http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2006-02-02/goods_next.php
> >
> > It may also be a good experiment to suggest to teachers in general if
> > they're trying to explain Wikipedia.
> >
> >
> > - d.
> > _______________________________________________
>
> Who launched the latest rumor that Mitch Kapor was a co-foundor ?
>
> :-)
>
> ant
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Jimmy Wales

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
>>From the article:
>
>>Last November, false information was appended to the Wiki biography
>
> of American journalist John Seigenthaler Sr., suggesting he played a
> role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The erroneous facts made
> their way into the mainstream media as truth.
>
> Is this true? I hadn't heard that anyone had actually relayed the
> information as truth. There was speculation about how many millions of
> internet viewers had believed the article (without any of them
> correcting it), but I hadn't heard this.

It is 100% false.  The simple fact remains that *now* this little tidbit
is permanently on the Internet, because *Seigtenthaler* published in USA
Today and went on multiple television news programs to talk about it.

Had it done nothing, it would be like any of millions of other little
vandalisms of Wikipedia that are fixed and in the history, but never to
be seen again.

There are other factual errors as well.  It is not true that "Last
November, false information was appended" -- in fact the false
information was *removed* in *October*.  Other outlets like to report
that it took Seigenthaler 4 months to get us to correct it -- whereas it
was corrected within minutes of course.

--
#######################################################################
# irc: jwales on irc.freenode.net | http://www.wikicities.com/        #
# office: +1-727-231-0101         | Free Culture Communities          #
#######################################################################


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Semiprotection and [[George W. Bush]] (was The Counter
	Vandalism Unit? Whaa?)

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Although vandalism has been slashed by semi-protection on that
>article, non-vandalism edits also seem to be down by about 60%.  Does
>that mean that semi-protection is wrong for George W. Bush?  I think
>the jury is still out, but it appears that there is considerable
>collateral damage associated with semi-protection.

As examples of bad cases making bad rules, [[George W. Bush]] is the
winner. It is *the* most edited article on en.wikipedia, by what? 5:1
over the next one? It pretty clearly has *too many* editors for the
live version ever to be a usable encyclopaedia article.

Remember that *most articles are not controversial*. And that Kim
Bruning and Gmaxwell's data indicates there are only a couple of
hundred articles out of 900,000 that have more than a hundred editors.
Kim's idea that we should just declare those couple of hundred
articles prima facie pathological until proven otherwise strikes me as
an *excellent* one.

Saying anything about the value of semiprotection based on such
articles only really applies to such articles. And semiprotection
should be thought of as an extreme measure, but [[George W. Bush]] is
a pathological article.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one

body:
> "process-committed administrators" are not conservatives. They just
> want you to stick to policy. You are of course free to change that
> policy by the normal root. Discusion to hammer out a soild policy
> suggestion. Presenting it to anyone who cares to try and gain a
> consensus and perhaps some further modification in order to do so.
> Then depending on the level of support either institute it or hold a
> final vote to see if you can get enough support to do so.

Is it just me, or would things go a lot better if experimentation was
part of the policymaking process? This is what Proposed Deletions is
doing and it seems like a far better idea than arguing ad infinitum
about improving our deletion processes.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Password security

body:
Walter Vermeir wrote:
> Andrew Gray <shimgray at ...> writes:
>
>>It strikes me that announcing in advance "Hey, guys, a number of
>>accounts INCLUDING n SYSOPS have blank passwords and can easily be
>>taken over..", then not fixing it for a while, is a recipe for
>>disaster. It's not that hard to generate a list of users with admin
>>privileges, and presumably neither is it impossible to write a short
>>script to try 800 logins...
>
>
> But there can not be many sysop or higher accounts with no password (I hope).
>
> Using no password, especially when you are sysop is highly irresponsible and
> those users should be de-sysoped.
>
> When there are no accounts left that are anything else then normal users then
> blank password could be enabled again for 2 weeks or so to give those users the
> time to pick a password.
>
> How can users who have no access anymore to there account regain access Brion?
>
> Make a bugzilla ticket?
>

There are certainly sysops on en: who don't have email addresses entered
- should /they/ be desysopped?

There are certainly plenty of people who haven't entered email
addresses, and complain "I've lost my password, can you reset it for me"
- but how can we be sure that they are the owner of the account, if they
never entered an email address?

One solution, possibly not the best, is to force people to enter an
email address, and send an "activation token" to that address. At
present email is the only way people have of recovering passwords; we
need to either give them another way, or make email part of the signup
process.

--
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] Here's an interesting one

body:
John Lee wrote:

>> Any administrator, on his cognizance or at the request of a user, should be
>> able to evaluate a deleted article, and if he thinks it was deleted by
>> mistake he can clean it up, and if he thinks necessary he can take it
>> through AfD. Having a forum for the purpose just creates a focal point
>> for all the bad faith in the wiki in one oozing cesspit.
>
> I've been pushing Tony to put forth a real replacement for DRV for a
> long time, and I'm glad he did. This is a solution I'd like to see
> implemented. I think admins can be trusted with this.

I agree, for what it's worth. I'd like to see this tried out, at least.

Cheers,

N.

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3456
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


from_name: Fastfission

body:
On 2/3/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> Silly, silly me, thinking the Wikipedia Militia was bad. They've even
> got their own freaking logo! Which, if I'm not mistaken, is a gross
> copyright vio.

The logo page (see, i.e. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:CVU2.PNG)
has a link to a diff with a discussion of the permissions; they
apparently did consult the foundation people who did not raise any
explicit objections though they withheld the right to raise objections
in the future when they have a more coherent logo use policy. So in
this particular issue they seem to have already scoped it out a bit,
and I'm sure if the foundation decides it is a problem they'll do
something about it.

As for the project itself, I don't see it adding "process"; it seems
like a way to centralize certain resources and participation, which I
don't think is negative in any way.

FF


from_name: Steve Bennett

references:
<fbad4e140602021541r48eedac6p@mail.gmail.com>
	<drvh7u$so2$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<fb7fdd9c0602030434y72cecf88g9bb1707e28d9bbdf@mail.gmail.com>

body:
>From the article:
>Last November, false information was appended to the Wiki biography
of American journalist John Seigenthaler Sr., suggesting he played a
role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The erroneous facts made
their way into the mainstream media as truth.

Is this true? I hadn't heard that anyone had actually relayed the
information as truth. There was speculation about how many millions of
internet viewers had believed the article (without any of them
correcting it), but I hadn't heard this.

Steve

On 2/3/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not particularly found of that last line "Try to add something and see
> how it lasts", but at least he hammers on the fact you always need to cross
> check and that even in a class of ninth-graders cooperative editing works
> better than one thinks.


body:
On 2/3/06, Nick Boalch <n.g.boalch at durham.ac.uk> wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> With all due respect, that's a stupid position. By logical extension of
> it we'd semi-protect all articles. Then we'd notice that vandalism still
> happened, so we'd fully protect all articles ('great, it stops vandalism
> happening in the first place!').

It's simply a question of balance. Stopping vandalism is great.
Stopping legitimate edits is bad. Losing one legitimate edit for every
100 vandalistic edits is great (see GWB). Losing one legitimate edit
for every one vandalistic edit is not so great.

> Page protection of any kind is against what the whole project stands
> for. It's a *necessary* evil, but people need to remember that it's
> still evil.

And on same pages it's more necessary than others.  It's obviously
least necessary on pages that receive regular attention and no
vandalism. It's more necessary on pages that receive little attention
and intermittent vandalism. It's even more necessary on pages that
receive constant vandalism with such frequency that even vandalism
response rates of five minutes are unacceptable.

Steve


body:
On 2/3/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:

> Although vandalism has been slashed by semi-protection on that
> article, non-vandalism edits also seem to be down by about 60%.  Does
> that mean that semi-protection is wrong for George W. Bush?  I think
> the jury is still out, but it appears that there is considerable
> collateral damage associated with semi-protection.

Non-vandalism edits by anonymous or new users? Or non-vandalism edits
overall? I've noticed many times that making a change to an article
stimulates other changes to different parts of the same article. Just
something about it popping up on watch lists.

If this is the case, it presumably just means that the editors who
would have made changes while fighting vandalism went off and made
other edits elsewhere. I wouldn't worry about [[GWB]] suffering from a
lack of attention :)

Steve


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
What most of the people on this thread fail to recognize is that
creating anti-vandalism paramilitaries *encourages* vandalism.

Calling any less-than productive edit "vandalism" by definition
encourages vandalism.

On one end of the spectrum is the concept that any "non-authorized"
edit is vandalism--that seems absurd for Wikipedia, but it's the
standard at, say, Encyclopedia Britannica or a newspaper, the Nupedia
project, etc.

At the other end of the spectrum is that there is no such thing as
vandalism, just edits that are less helpful than others.

We should try to function as close to the latter end as possible.

The very word "vandalism" I think is a somewhat false analogy, since
there's no permanent damage in Wikipedia. It's just as easy, easier in
fact, to remove unwanted edits than to add them. It's the exact
reverse of, say, spraypainting a wall or scratching your name in a
subway car window -- much easier to add than to remove.

By creating the crime of vandalism we make people into criminals.

By creating categories of good users we create categories of bad users.

By creating restrictions, rules, trials we create mechanisms for conflict.

I'm not saying that there should be no mechanisms for continuing to
improve the quality of Wikipedia -- but that we are going down the
wrong road now.

There's always been a steady amount of less-than helpful edits. But
calling them all vandalism, doing things like "sprotecting" pages,
creating militias, only abets the problem.


references:
<fbad4e140602021541r48eedac6p@mail.gmail.com>
	<drvh7u$so2$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<fb7fdd9c0602030434y72cecf88g9bb1707e28d9bbdf@mail.gmail.com>
	<f1c3529e0602030604r1c41a4d5i6f432152f9375fbd@mail.gmail.com>

body:
It sounds like they misunderstood even the basic facts of the story.

(Gosh, newspaper prints false information under veneer of truth!
But... I thought these things only happened on the internet!)

FF

On 2/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> >From the article:
> >Last November, false information was appended to the Wiki biography
> of American journalist John Seigenthaler Sr., suggesting he played a
> role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The erroneous facts made
> their way into the mainstream media as truth.
>
> Is this true? I hadn't heard that anyone had actually relayed the
> information as truth. There was speculation about how many millions of
> internet viewers had believed the article (without any of them
> correcting it), but I hadn't heard this.
>
> Steve
>
> On 2/3/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm not particularly found of that last line "Try to add something and see
> > how it lasts", but at least he hammers on the fact you always need to cross
> > check and that even in a class of ninth-graders cooperative editing works
> > better than one thinks.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Has any thought been given to detecting potentially vandalistic edits
and quarantining them for review by experienced editors? I know there
are bots and tools to do this after the fact, but what about before
it? What I like about this idea is that it wouldn't suffer from the
typical "build a better rat trap, get smarter rats" problem, since
most of our vandals are (I believe) first-timers.

So, why not just have MediaWiki apply a simple heuristic for detecting
vandalistic edits? Presumably edits containing more than one
consecutive !, words like "gay", "penis" or "loser" are unlikely to be
genuine. It should then silently quarantine them (possibly even
attempting to fool the vandal into believing that his misdeed has paid
off).  There are probably all sorts of rules you could come up with,
including anons substantially reducing the length of pages, adding
nothing but a single URL etc.

Might temper some of those "but Wikipedia must be free!" complaints.

Steve

On 2/3/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
> >Although vandalism has been slashed by semi-protection on that
> >article, non-vandalism edits also seem to be down by about 60%.  Does
> >that mean that semi-protection is wrong for George W. Bush?  I think
> >the jury is still out, but it appears that there is considerable
> >collateral damage associated with semi-protection.
>
>
> As examples of bad cases making bad rules, [[George W. Bush]] is the
> winner. It is *the* most edited article on en.wikipedia, by what? 5:1
> over the next one? It pretty clearly has *too many* editors for the
> live version ever to be a usable encyclopaedia article.
>
> Remember that *most articles are not controversial*. And that Kim
> Bruning and Gmaxwell's data indicates there are only a couple of
> hundred articles out of 900,000 that have more than a hundred editors.
> Kim's idea that we should just declare those couple of hundred
> articles prima facie pathological until proven otherwise strikes me as
> an *excellent* one.
>
> Saying anything about the value of semiprotection based on such
> articles only really applies to such articles. And semiprotection
> should be thought of as an extreme measure, but [[George W. Bush]] is
> a pathological article.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Guettarda

body:
On 2/3/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
>
>
> I ask those who support the CVU: 1) how does it help Wikipedia in ways
> that a non-organisational structure couldn't? and 2) is the good it
> does really more significant than the dislike it creates among other
> Wikipedians?
>
> --
> Sam

1. I'd hazard a guess that the CVU builds a spirit of community among people
who want to focus on fighting vandalism and gives recognition to an
essential task which really gets very little recognition
2. Dislike it creates?  Seriously?  I wasn't aware of any until this thread
popped up (as opposed to people who have issues with Cool Cat).

Ian


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

body:
On 2/3/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
>
> So what do you suggest we call it when someone blanks the featured
> article and overwrites it with "COCK COCK COCK COCK COCK FUCK ASS
> COCK GAY LOLWTFBBQ"?

That could probably go under less-than-productive edits (it's a
stretch, though).

What is rather worse is the truly malicious users.  Can anyone really
claim that inserting child abuse allegations into [[Wikipedia]] is
merely a "less helpful" edit?

I think it is not too unreasonable to suppose that Wikipedia has made
enemies, and will continue to make enemies; nor to allow that these
people may be disruptive in ways more significant than the average
page-blanker.

Kirill Lokshin


from_name: BRIAN ROBERGE

subject: [WikiEN-l] blocks

body:
I got blocked and I live in an apartment with brother and he is a Wikipedia, but I like to say Wikipedia vandalizer. He is the one who got blocked we just share a computer,
so could you guys unblock me please. Thank You.

Truly, BDR_23

February 3, 2006

3:52 PM

My IP address is 24.118.74.124.


from_name: Brian

subject: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one

body:
Philip L. Welch wrote:

>Is it just me, or would things go a lot better if experimentation was
>part of the policymaking process? This is what Proposed Deletions is
>doing and it seems like a far better idea than arguing ad infinitum
>about improving our deletion processes.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch

I think that's a great idea, properly setup live tests could give us
experience that no amount of debate could. I wish we were more open to those
kind of live tests.....


from_name: Jesse W

body:
On Feb 3, 2006, at 1:55 PM, Fastfission wrote:
> On 2/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Incidentally, I have frequently noticed people making changes to
>> statistics like city populations, incrementing them by small amounts.

> The best way to deal with this in my opinion is to always have the
> reference for the statistics handy.
Exactly right!  That's why
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JesseW/References_proposal is a good
idea.  If we can simply go directly to the external source when someone
changes something, we can at least export our errors to that of picking
sources, which is a major improvement...

Jesse Weinstein


body:
On 2/3/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> I ask those who support the CVU: 1) how does it help Wikipedia in ways
> that a non-organisational structure couldn't?

Organization always is more productive than lack thereof. In theory an
organized approached to watching for vandalism should work better than
an unorganized one. Wikipedia is highly organized. It's a flexible
organization, and entirely voluntary, but it's organized. This list is
a form of organization. So are administators, arbcom, featured
articles, collaborations of the week, village pump, and, my favorite,
reference desk.

and 2) is the good it
> does really more significant than the dislike it creates among other
> Wikipedians?

I don't have any way to quantify this. Honestly I didn't even know
there were people who spent time worrying about these things until
this thread. I've never been struck either way by it. Have they be
infringing on the rights of others? Have they been colluding to do
anything negative to the encyclopedia? If not, then I say lay off. If
it's just a matter of your personal interpretation of what their name
implies, I'd first have to wonder how common it was. I never came away
with the conclusions you did.

I might also say that I also don't see any evidence that vandalism has
increased in the face of anti-vandalism efforts. And anti-vandalism
efforts, in my understanding of the term, simply means monitoring for
vandalism, undoing vandalism, and blocking repeat offenders. What's so
wrong about that? What's so wrong about organizing that?

FF


body:
On 2/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Incidentally, I have frequently noticed people making changes to
> statistics like city populations, incrementing them by small amounts. I
> have no idea if this is this as-yet-unnamed type of unhelpful edit or
> someone with access to more recent stats. I try not to let it stop me
> sleeping though.

The best way to deal with this in my opinion is to always have the
reference for the statistics handy. That way you can always revert and
say, "Sorry, that's not what the reference says. Provide a new one if
you want, but the numbers have to match up." Personally, I'm less
concerned that the figures are "right" and more concerned that they
match our cited reference for them, because if they are wrong in the
latter case it isn't our fault.

I've seen people up company employee rolls by 1 person -- I assume it
is a somewhat unhelpful way of celebrating getting a new job.

As for a name... howabout... number bumping? Not very harmonious,
sounds somewhat like mathematical fornication...

FF


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Europanto

body:
Alfredo Carpineti wrote:
> I would like to start a Wikipedia in a language called Europanto. I
> attached the Wiki article that explain it better than I can. Looking
> foward for hearing from you.

A joke language? Gimme a break.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: So much for books as reliable references!

body:
Michael Snow wrote:

> Delirium wrote:
>
>> Stan Shebs wrote:
>>
>>> Actually, it's sort of interesting that this is news. While it's
>>> common practice to have peer review for scholarly books, the "peer"
>>> part of the term should be a hint that it's not the publisher doing
>>> the checking! My guess is that our reverence for the printed page
>>> is such that we just assume no one would dare to print without
>>> being certain of its correctness.
>>
>> In many fields the peer-review of even scholarly books is not all
>> that high.  In the sciences, journal articles hold much more weight
>> than books, because there's a perception that anybody can get a book
>> published.
>
> I'm not so sure that the peer review of journal articles is
> necessarily that much better. I recently dealt with a situation in
> which the submitter of an article was able to specifically request
> that his article not be forwarded to one of the logical candidates for
> peer-reviewing it, because he anticipated that this person would give
> an unfavorable review. Cherry-picking your reviews hardly counts as
> rigorous scholarship in my book.
>
> The theory of peer review is nice, but even in academia the execution
> is often shoddy and politically skewed. Practices at different
> journals vary, of course, so the reputation of the journal needs to be
> considered beyond just the question of whether it qualifies as
> peer-reviewed.

This past week the CBC has featured the story of Dr. Ranjit Chandra who
faked results about multivitamin benefits for the elderly.  He has since
left the country, but seems to be doing well running a non-existent
university in Switzerland, and selling his multivitamins in India.  See
http://www.cbc.ca/nl/story/nf-chandra-retraction-20050302.html
http://www.cbc.ca/national/news/chandra/
http://www.sethroberts.net/ (bibliography) and
http://www.sethroberts.net/articles/chandra/1992_Effect_of_Vitamin_and_Trace_Element_Supplementation_on_Cognitive_Function_in_Elderly_Subjects.pdf

One quotation from the third part of the programme.

> The former editor of the British Medical Journal, Richard Smith, says
> there's a good reason for that.
>
>
> "Anybody who knows about peer review knows that sometimes it will pick
> up a fraudulent study, but it's by no means guaranteed to do so,"
> Smith says. "And that's largely because it starts from a position of
> trust. So if somebody says there were 200 patients, then you assume
> there were 200 patients. You don't say, 'Well show me their records
> and show me their photographs, I need to see them.' The whole thing is
> based on trust."
>
The pharmaceutical industry in particular has a reputation for making
its studies look good.

It is never safe to say that a peer-reviewed article is ipso-facto valid.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] OpenID Support

body:
evan at wikitravel.org wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 31, 2006 at 04:33:38PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
>> Just FYI, I'm not even going to think about external identification wackiness
>> like OpenID  until we've finished the Wikimedia single-login system (my big
>> project for February). So don't get discouraged if I don't comment. ;)
>
> Brion,
>
> Why not use OpenID FOR the Wikimedia single-login?

It doesn't solve our specified requirement (single Wikimedia-wide namespace so a
single username works on all 600+ Wikimedia wikis transparently, no muss no fuss).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: US Congress Staff Editing Wikipedia

references:
<20060131034941.0D6EB1AC592A@mail.wikimedia.org>	<43DEFFA5.5070600@earthlink.net>
	<dror1d$qjv$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> We were talking about what we'd like the Congress to do, not WIPO.
> Come to think of it, there's a
>
>step Congress could take towards harmonization that would be more useful for us: to reduce the term
>of copyright to the Berne Convention minimum of life + 50 years.
>
Interesting comment from someone whose country only recently moved up to
life + 70. ;-)

Ec


body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>I wouldn't go so far as to say that I'd like to see the US make fair
>use more restrictive - although frankly it probably wouldn't matter
>all that much in my daily life.
>
>But making it more clear when the answer is "No."  That'd be
>tremendously helpful to Wikipedia, in that it'd resolve a lot of
>conflict, and I really don't see how it'd hurt anything.
>
Another interesting possibility would be a use-it-or-lose-it provision.
If there has been no properly authorized publication of a copright work
in the last 10 years, any reprinting is fair use.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] So much for books as reliable references!

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> David Gerard wrote:
>
>> http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113858811205659673-1oPuv_I9jyv2P9k_u8qNN_3obQM_20070130.html?mod=rss_free
>>
>>
>> Publishers Say Fact-Checking Is Too Costly
>> By JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG
>> Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
>
> Actually, it's sort of interesting that this is news. While it's
> common practice to have peer review for scholarly books, the "peer"
> part of the term should be a hint that it's not the publisher doing
> the checking! My guess is that our reverence for the printed page
> is such that we just assume no one would dare to print without
> being certain of its correctness.
>
> Alas, now all the POV-pushers will point to this as evidence that
> every source they dislike must be in error.

This is probably good news for us.  It helps to burst the bubble of
truth that surrounds reputable publications.  I would not feel it
unethical to exploit such incidents and the Chandra incident for our own
purposes.  We encourage all readers and editors to check facts that we
present, and ask them to make corrections.  For many of these other
publications you need to be somebody before your criticism will be heard.

Ec


list: foundation-l

from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [Foundation-l] Narrative vs. Selective bias

body:
On 2/2/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> Selection is a strong force.  There are very few articles
> describing the world from a Neanderthal's point of view.

Bound up in NPOV is the requirement to cite sources.  I haven't seen
many articles from the NPOV (Neanderthal Point Of View).

This may change when Bush gets round to writing his autobiography...

--
Sam, who notes that he is outside American politics and makes snide
jokes at all sections of American society equally, regarding this as
his birthright


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: geni

body:
On 2/3/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
> >Although vandalism has been slashed by semi-protection on that
> >article, non-vandalism edits also seem to be down by about 60%.  Does
> >that mean that semi-protection is wrong for George W. Bush?  I think
> >the jury is still out, but it appears that there is considerable
> >collateral damage associated with semi-protection.
>
>
> As examples of bad cases making bad rules, [[George W. Bush]] is the
> winner. It is *the* most edited article on en.wikipedia, by what? 5:1
> over the next one? It pretty clearly has *too many* editors for the
> live version ever to be a usable encyclopaedia article.
>
> Remember that *most articles are not controversial*. And that Kim
> Bruning and Gmaxwell's data indicates there are only a couple of
> hundred articles out of 900,000 that have more than a hundred editors.
> Kim's idea that we should just declare those couple of hundred
> articles prima facie pathological until proven otherwise strikes me as
> an *excellent* one.
>
> Saying anything about the value of semiprotection based on such
> articles only really applies to such articles. And semiprotection
> should be thought of as an extreme measure, but [[George W. Bush]] is
> a pathological article.
>
>
> - d.

Problem is we can't predict where we are going to get hit next. Did
you know that Louis Braille was going to get hit on the 4th of January

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one

body:
On 2/3/06, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
> I've been pushing Tony to put forth a real replacement for DRV for a
> long time, and I'm glad he did. This is a solution I'd like to see
> implemented. I think admins can be trusted with this.
>
> John Lee
> ([[User:Johnleemk]])

The flaw is that with 800 admins to shop around with we risk haveing
to repeat a heck of a lot of AFD votes. Neutraliseing missbehaveing
admins is tricky.

--
geni


body:
On 2/3/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> The foundation know how to complain. There are complicateing factors
> (the logo image should not be on commons for a start) here. As soon as
> they come up with a coherent position we will act on it.

FWIW (very little, I expect), I believe the Board and officers are
currently looking into their image use policy.

--
Sam


from_name: SJ

subject:
[Foundation-l] Call for Participation : Wikimania 2006,
	the annual Wikimedia Conference

body:
Dear all,

I am happy to announce that submissions are currently being accepted
for the second annual Wikimedia Conference.  The primary deadline for
submitting an abstract is April 15, 2006.  The conference will be held
from August 4-6, 2006 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, on the Harvard
Law School campus.

  http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_papers   <-- full text of the CfP
  http://cfp.wikimania.wikimedia.org/     <-- where to submit abstracts

If you have an idea for speakers, tutorials, or panels, please add
them to the list:
  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006/Program_ideas

=== Please translate this notice and distribute it widely. ===

Looking forward to an amazing conference,
      SJ


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Call for Participation : Wikimania 2006,
	the annual Wikimedia Conference


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Call for Participation : Wikimania 2006,
	the annual Wikimedia Conference


body:
On 2/3/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> there are rather a lot of othr images
> that need to go.

Yes.

--
Sam


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Fwd: Re: Wikimedia Committees: open meeting,
	February [5]

body:
An open Wikimedia meeting is announced for this Sunday at  21:00 UTC.
Forwarded from foundation-l.

 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_meetings
 IRC: #wikimedia-meeting  on irc.freenode.net
 Web: http://irc.wikicities.com/meeting/

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Angela <beesley at gmail.com>
Date: Feb 3, 2006 4:25 AM
Subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Committees: open meeting, February [5]
To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org, internal-l at wikimedia.org

The time most favored by those voting was 21:00 UTC Sunday 5th.

Details of the meeting are at

Some suggested topics that need to be covered include:
    * scope of work for each committee
    * need for subcommittees and procedures to create them
    * membership procedures
    * roles within committees: chair, member, consultant
    * decision-making processes
    * ways to deal with confidential information
    * interaction and communication between the committees and to the Board
    * legal liability of committee and their members

I'm hoping the committee organizers will make the effort to attend,
but anyone else with an interest in Foundation matters is very
welcome.

Angela.
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] RIP: Prince Roy of Sealand

body:
Jan. 31, three days ago, marked the passing of someone whose life and
work have managed to touch many on this list -- Paddy Roy Bates, known
in refined circles as Prince Roy of Sealand.

After claiming HM Fort Roughs as the Principality of Sealand[1] in
1967, Prince Roy defended it against physical and legal attacks in the
years that followed, including a mass forgery of Sealand passports.

Sealand and its aura of mystique provided the perfect, slightly
surreal, backdrop for the rollout of HavenCo[2] Limited in 2000, a
data center set up in "the world's only true free market environment";
as well as the Wikipedia micronation wars through which many of us
became familiar with this story.

The Principality will remain under control of Prince Michael, who has
been Prince Regent since 1999.

++SJ

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealand
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HavenCo


from_name: evan at wikitravel.org

subject: [Wikitech-l] OpenID Support

body:
On Mon, Jan 30, 2006 at 04:43:19PM -0800, Jonathan Daugherty wrote:
> # Any thoughts or concerns?  I'm busy preparing some things and then
> # I'll attach a .diff to the bug ticket above.
>
> I've uploaded the patch to the ticket at
>
>   http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3060

Hi, Jonathan. I'm at RecentChangesCamp right now, and I've just heard
a good presentation about OpenID and Mediawiki.

I think this sounds like a really cool patch, and I'm going to check
it out, but I think from my point of view, the most important
application for Mediawiki users is single-signon for multiple wikis.

Mediawiki as a consumer of identities, and not a producer, isn't very
useful for this.

I also want to point out that there are now thousands of small, large,
and medium-sized wikis using Mediawiki, and that they'd probably all
benefit from a federated signon solution.

Also, OpenID seems to me prima facie as a pretty good solution to
single-signeon for Wikimedia. It seems like identity on Wikimedia
sites is really tied to a particular site. People say, "I'm X from
French Wikibooks" or "I'm Y from English Wiktionary"; I think
Wikimedians could absolutely live with namespacing around a "base"
project.

So I wonder: considering that single-signon is such a hugely requested
feature for Mediawiki, and considering that OpenID is a lightweight
solution that would allow SSO not only for Wikimedia sites but for
Mediawiki sites across the Web, would we Mediawiki developers think
about using this solution along with or instead of custom-built
solutions that require access to the same backend database?

I'm going to try to work with this patch to get an optional piece of
code that's suitable for checking in to CVS.

~ESP


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Counter Vandalism Unit? Whaa?

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> If you have a solution that's not based on wishful thinking,
> convince us that it's workable; in the meantime, please stop
> throwing rocks at the people who are trying to keep this place
> from turning into a graffiti-covered restroom.

Vandalism really is a problem and I really think we should do all we can
to help out people who do the tedious grunt work such as watching RC
patrol, and writing the fantastic scripts which some people have done
which detects vandalism. Also bear in mind that the majority of people
who help out with the CVU aren't admins - and being an admin has a
number of tools which help out with dealing with vandalism (after all,
that's largely what adminship is for).

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


subject: [Wikitech-l] OpenID Support

body:
On Tue, Jan 31, 2006 at 04:33:38PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Just FYI, I'm not even going to think about external identification wackiness
> like OpenID  until we've finished the Wikimedia single-login system (my big
> project for February). So don't get discouraged if I don't comment. ;)

Brion,

Why not use OpenID FOR the Wikimedia single-login?

~ESP


from_name: rmFine32 at aol.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] Email Validation

body:
I thought I saw on meta.MediaWiki a hack to validate the email
addresses of those opening an account before they are granted
priviligies, but somehow I can't find the code. Any pointers or sharing
of code that will do the job would be appreciated.


from_name: Anonymous

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Narrative vs. Selective bias

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Anonymous (junk164) wrote:
>
>> The current formulation of the Neutral point of view policy does
>> not make the above distinction clear, thus leading one to
>> believe that eliminating narrative bias (judgments about views)
>> will make the article itself unbiased.
>
> This observation would be relevant if there were any examples
> where the current NPOV policy has misled Wikipedia.

Let's assume there are no such examples. Wouldn't disambiguating the
policy still be an improvement?


from_name: Keith Old

body:
On 2/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Personally, I think the CVU and semi-protection are great. I can't
> stand reverting vandalism (could anything be more tedious than
> cleaning up after annoying teenagers?), but I hate to see articles
> I've worked on vandalised too.
>
> If the CVU get off on cleaning it up and actually do something about it,
> great!
>
>
> If semi-protection stops vandalism happening in the first place, great!
>
> Process schmrocess.
>
> Steve
>
> On 2/3/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 2/3/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Wikipedia's still great, I love it, but really. The Wikipedia Counter
> > > Vandalism Unit?
> > >
> > > Let's just strap on the jackboots and start humming Beethoven's 5th.
> > >
> > > Silly, silly me, thinking the Wikipedia Militia was bad. They've even
> > > got their own freaking logo! Which, if I'm not mistaken, is a gross
> > > copyright vio.
> > >
> >
> > Sure but we tend not to worry about that as long as it stays within
> > wikimedia projects. Otherwise there are rather a lot of othr images
> > that need to go.
> >
> > > "Semi-protection" is also something that bothers me no end. As does
> > > the concept of needing to "semi-protect" talk pages.
> > >
> > > Wikipedia doesn't need protection. It needs participation. It's not a
> > > piece of china, folks.
> > >
> >
> > Ummm are you going to sit there refreshing your talk page once a
> > second to catch all the vandalism at GWB?
> >
> > > Neither is it some kind of dystopian arcology that needs paramilitary
> > > posses threatening people around every corner.
> > >
> > > <crazy old guy rant>There's TOO MUCH PROCESS going on in articles
> > > these days. Too many damn boxes!</rant>
> >
> > [[WP:CVU]] are hadly process heavy. More and better vandles require
> > better tactics to deal with them. Nothing stopping you doing RC patrol
> > the old fashioned way.
> >
> > --
> > geni
> > _______________________________________________
>
> Hear, hear.

We need to improve our methods of countering vandalism. If the Counter
Vandalism Unit does this, more power to their arms. The help desk receives
plenty of complaints about vandalism every day which I and other people
respond too.

With regards to semi-protection, we need to rethink our rules about limiting
the semi-protection of feature articles to 15 minutes. The feature article
for Thursday was being vandalised every couple of minutes by a different new
user name but with the same item featuring plenty of pictures of vaginas and
penises.

We had at least three complaints on the help desk and probably plenty more
people turned off by it. We should allow the feature article to be
semi-protected for 24 hours if need be.

Having a feature article is a reward for the hard work of editors in
researching and writing a quality article. Their moment in the sun shouldn't
be spoiled by mindless vandalism. This would allow experienced editors to
continue to improve the article but would stop vandals from giving visitors
a bad impression of Wikipedia.

Regards

Keith Old

Keith Old
User:Capitalistroadster

> WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Philip Welch

body:
>> Calling yourselves the "Counter Terrorism Unit" doesn't do a good
>> job of that.
>
> I really rather doubt that the vast majority of vandles have that
> level of awareness of the internal operation of wikipedia

Anyone who does have that level of awareness about Wikipedia's
internal operations and yet continues to vandalize us is not someone
we're going to make friends with anyway until they realize that
they're in the wrong and that we have every right to oppose vandalism.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Committees: open meeting, February 1

body:
The time most favored by those voting was 21:00 UTC Sunday 5th.

Details of the meeting are at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_meetings#Open_meeting.2C_February_2006

Some suggested topics that need to be covered include:
    * scope of work for each committee
    * need for subcommittees and procedures to create them
    * membership procedures
    * roles within committees: chair, member, consultant
    * decision-making processes
    * ways to deal with confidential information
    * interaction and communication between the committees and to the Board
    * legal liability of committee and their members

I'm hoping the committee organizers will make the effort to attend,
but anyone else with an interest in Foundation matters is very
welcome.

Angela.


body:
On 2/3/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> Do you even look at RC, and not just work on one or two articles?
> Vandalism is coming in the top, sides, bottom, front, and back, and
> it's sucking up editor time that should be spent on actual content.
> It's not just the popular GWB or the less-obvious-but-still-popular
> "poop deck" that are the targets; there are hundreds of vandals
> bashing on completely random pages, and inserting subtle errors as
> well as obvious ones. As I mentioned on this mailing list not long
> ago, a vandal erased a random chunk of an article while I wasn't
> looking, the fair-use images in that part were declared orphans
> and then deleted, all before I got back from vacation (good thing I
> had my own backups).
>
> If you have a solution that's not based on wishful thinking,
> convince us that it's workable; in the meantime, please stop
> throwing rocks at the people who are trying to keep this place
> from turning into a graffiti-covered restroom.

I think you misunderstand the opposition to the "CVU".  I very much
doubt anyone is questioning the importance of fighting vandalism!  I
think the opposition comes from three main aspects:

1) The name implies (though the page itself explicitly denies) that
the Unit is The Way vandalism is fought.  I know this is explicitly
denied, but it is implied, and many people won't read all the way
down.  My solution: use [[Wikipedia:RC Patrol]] to co-ordinate RC
patrol.
2) The images imply (though the page denies) that the Unit is
sanctioned by the Foundation.  The images actually are in violation of
the WMF's visual identity guidelines IMO.  Solution: remove the
images.
3) There exists a category for members.  This again implies that only
those members are "qualified" RC patrollers.  Whilst *I* understand
that that is not intended, that is nonetheless a point that comes
across.

Note that I do not say these things out of dislike for those
affliliated to the CVU.  I admire the work they do.  I just have
misgivings about the manner in which they organise themselves.  Too
often I have seen people replying to criticism of the way the
organisation is run with "but look at all the work we do reverting
vandalism".  But that misunderstands the reason for the opposition.

I ask those who support the CVU: 1) how does it help Wikipedia in ways
that a non-organisational structure couldn't? and 2) is the good it
does really more significant than the dislike it creates among other
Wikipedians?

--
Sam


body:
On 2/3/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> What most of the people on this thread fail to recognize is that
> creating anti-vandalism paramilitaries *encourages* vandalism.
>

They are no more paramilitaries than any other editor

> Calling any less-than productive edit "vandalism" by definition
> encourages vandalism.

I assume CVU uses our standard difintion of vandalism. I assume you
have read the page.

>
> On one end of the spectrum is the concept that any "non-authorized"
> edit is vandalism--that seems absurd for Wikipedia, but it's the
> standard at, say, Encyclopedia Britannica or a newspaper, the Nupedia
> project, etc.
>
> At the other end of the spectrum is that there is no such thing as
> vandalism, just edits that are less helpful than others.
>
> We should try to function as close to the latter end as possible.
>

So? CVU don't set the rules.

> The very word "vandalism" I think is a somewhat false analogy, since
> there's no permanent damage in Wikipedia. It's just as easy, easier in
> fact, to remove unwanted edits than to add them. It's the exact
> reverse of, say, spraypainting a wall or scratching your name in a
> subway car window -- much easier to add than to remove.
>

However not not everyone does removal. Thus those who do want to find
the problems and remove them with the minnium of effort.

> By creating the crime of vandalism we make people into criminals.
>

Umm no. I'm pretty sure that vandaliseing wikipedia is not a criminal
offence. Even in the COURT OF TRENTON NEW JERSY

> By creating categories of good users we create categories of bad users.
>

Umm yes and?

> By creating restrictions, rules, trials we create mechanisms for conflict.
>

People don't need mechanisms for content. Trust me on this.

> I'm not saying that there should be no mechanisms for continuing to
> improve the quality of Wikipedia -- but that we are going down the
> wrong road now.
>
> There's always been a steady amount of less-than helpful edits. But
> calling them all vandalism, doing things like "sprotecting" pages,
> creating militias, only abets the problem.

We don't call all less-than helpful edits vandalism.

--
geni


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 03/02/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:

> > At the other end of the spectrum is that there is no such thing as
> > vandalism, just edits that are less helpful than others.
> >
> > We should try to function as close to the latter end as possible.
> >
> > The very word "vandalism" I think is a somewhat false analogy, since
> > there's no permanent damage in Wikipedia.
>
> So what do you suggest we call it when someone blanks the featured
> article and overwrites it with "COCK COCK COCK COCK COCK FUCK ASS
> COCK GAY LOLWTFBBQ"?

"Uninventive"?

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


body:
On 2/3/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> So what do you suggest we call it when someone blanks the featured
> article and overwrites it with "COCK COCK COCK COCK COCK FUCK ASS
> COCK GAY LOLWTFBBQ"?

Bad Editing Category 5 Section D sub-section g clause iii

--
Sam


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [Wikitech-l] process for contributing mediawiki extensions?

body:
On 2/3/06, edward <molasses-one at shaw.ca> wrote:
> I have developed a couple of MediaWiki extensions and I was wondering how I
> would go about finding out if they would be useful to the MediaWiki
> community, and if they are, how I might go about contributing them to the
> MediaWiki project?

Rob's suggestions are good. You might also consider putting them on MediaZilla:
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/
..which is mainly for bug reporting but is also useful for tracking
enhancements (set "severity" to "enhancement"). This will also
automatically notify the relevant mailing lists and people on IRC.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


body:
On 2/3/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think you misunderstand the opposition to the "CVU".  I very much
> doubt anyone is questioning the importance of fighting vandalism!  I
> think the opposition comes from three main aspects:
>
> 1) The name implies (though the page itself explicitly denies) that
> the Unit is The Way vandalism is fought.  I know this is explicitly
> denied, but it is implied, and many people won't read all the way
> down.  My solution: use [[Wikipedia:RC Patrol]] to co-ordinate RC
> patrol.

Problem is they are not doing RC patrol in the clasical sense (remeber
RC patrol was not originaly pure anti vandalism.)

> 2) The images imply (though the page denies) that the Unit is
> sanctioned by the Foundation.  The images actually are in violation of
> the WMF's visual identity guidelines IMO.  Solution: remove the
> images.

The images do not imply that except to the tiny percentage of people
who have some idea about the reltionship between wikipedia the
foundation and the logo.

> 3) There exists a category for members.  This again implies that only
> those members are "qualified" RC patrollers.  Whilst *I* understand
> that that is not intended, that is nonetheless a point that comes
> across.
>

Oh dear. It would then appear that people are going to think we have
only 126 people "qualified" to counter systemic bias.

> Note that I do not say these things out of dislike for those
> affliliated to the CVU.  I admire the work they do.  I just have
> misgivings about the manner in which they organise themselves.  Too
> often I have seen people replying to criticism of the way the
> organisation is run with "but look at all the work we do reverting
> vandalism".  But that misunderstands the reason for the opposition.
>
> I ask those who support the CVU: 1) how does it help Wikipedia in ways
> that a non-organisational structure couldn't?

Try thinking about people a second. People who are prepared to sit
there day after day fighting off vandalism are a little different from
others. Oh a lot of people go through a vandle fighting stage but they
burn out on that. That means we need a constant stream of new
recruites and ways to try and get the old hands stay on. CVU helps
with both. We know from "internet wars" that there are a fair number
of combat orentated internet users. CVU takes that and channels it
into something useful.

>and 2) is the good it
> does really more significant than the dislike it creates among other
> Wikipedians?

On the basis that the average wikipedian is unlikely to have many
dealings with it I'm going for yes.

--
geni


body:
On 2/3/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Problem is they are not doing RC patrol in the clasical sense (remeber
> RC patrol was not originaly pure anti vandalism.)

Maybe I'm being stupid, but I can't separate fighting vandalism from
fighting all the other junk that Wikipedia gets.  Aye, they're
different, and categorised differently, but if I see a copyvio I'm
going to tag it, if I see an AfD-worthy article, I'll AfD it.  Are you
suggesting that these activities should be ignored by this group of
users?

> > 2) The images imply (though the page denies) that the Unit is
> > sanctioned by the Foundation.  The images actually are in violation of
> > the WMF's visual identity guidelines IMO.  Solution: remove the
> > images.
>
> The images do not imply that except to the tiny percentage of people
> who have some idea about the reltionship between wikipedia the
> foundation and the logo.

With respect, Minister, I disagree.

> > 3) There exists a category for members.  This again implies that only
> > those members are "qualified" RC patrollers.  Whilst *I* understand
> > that that is not intended, that is nonetheless a point that comes
> > across.
> >
>
> Oh dear. It would then appear that people are going to think we have
> only 126 people "qualified" to counter systemic bias.

A project entitled a "project" gives a wholly different impression to
one labelled a "unit".

> > Note that I do not say these things out of dislike for those
> > affliliated to the CVU.  I admire the work they do.  I just have
> > misgivings about the manner in which they organise themselves.  Too
> > often I have seen people replying to criticism of the way the
> > organisation is run with "but look at all the work we do reverting
> > vandalism".  But that misunderstands the reason for the opposition.
> >
> > I ask those who support the CVU: 1) how does it help Wikipedia in ways
> > that a non-organisational structure couldn't?
>
> Try thinking about people a second. People who are prepared to sit
> there day after day fighting off vandalism are a little different from
> others. Oh a lot of people go through a vandle fighting stage but they
> burn out on that. That means we need a constant stream of new
> recruites and ways to try and get the old hands stay on. CVU helps
> with both. We know from "internet wars" that there are a fair number
> of combat orentated internet users. CVU takes that and channels it
> into something useful.

I am missing a key part of your logic: how does the CVU encourage
users to start RC patrolling in a way that a less organisational page
wouldn't?
>
> >and 2) is the good it
> > does really more significant than the dislike it creates among other
> > Wikipedians?
>
> On the basis that the average wikipedian is unlikely to have many
> dealings with it I'm going for yes.

I didn't say "the average Wikipedian", I said "other Wikipedians".  Difference.

--
Sam


from_name: Ron Ritzman

body:
On 2/3/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> qoutes:

> > "Anybody who knows about peer review knows that sometimes it will pick
> > up a fraudulent study, but it's by no means guaranteed to do so,"
> > Smith says. "And that's largely because it starts from a position of
> > trust. So if somebody says there were 200 patients, then you assume
> > there were 200 patients. You don't say, 'Well show me their records
> > and show me their photographs, I need to see them.' The whole thing is
> > based on trust."

In other words, "assume good faith".


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

> <snip>
>
>Any administrator,
>on his cognizance or at the request of a user, should be able to
>evaluate a deleted  article, and if he thinks it was deleted by
>mistake he can clean it up, and if he thinks necessary he can take it
>through AfD. Having a forum for the purpose just creates a focal point
>for all the bad faith in the wiki in one oozing cesspit.
>
>There are problems with the above idea.  We don't want administrators
>fecklessly undeleting copyright infringing material and defamation, or
>for that matter anything resembling a steaming pile of crap.  But an
>administrator misbehaved in this way could be stopped.
>
>
I've been pushing Tony to put forth a real replacement for DRV for a
long time, and I'm glad he did. This is a solution I'd like to see
implemented. I think admins can be trusted with this.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


body:
On 2/3/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> 1. I'd hazard a guess that the CVU builds a spirit of community among people
> who want to focus on fighting vandalism and gives recognition to an
> essential task which really gets very little recognition
> 2. Dislike it creates?  Seriously?  I wasn't aware of any until this thread
> popped up (as opposed to people who have issues with Cool Cat).

I suppose "dislike" may be too strong.  I, for one, certainly don't
like it, and would prefer it be conducted in a different way.

--
Sam


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one

body:
On 2/3/06, Nick Boalch <n.g.boalch at durham.ac.uk> wrote:
> John Lee wrote:
>
> >> Any administrator, on his cognizance or at the request of a user, should be
> >> able to evaluate a deleted article, and if he thinks it was deleted by
> >> mistake he can clean it up, and if he thinks necessary he can take it
> >> through AfD. Having a forum for the purpose just creates a focal point
> >> for all the bad faith in the wiki in one oozing cesspit.
> >
> > I've been pushing Tony to put forth a real replacement for DRV for a
> > long time, and I'm glad he did. This is a solution I'd like to see
> > implemented. I think admins can be trusted with this.
>
> I agree, for what it's worth. I'd like to see this tried out, at least.
>

I don't think it is workable while some administrators will delete
such articles again.  It needs more discussion.  I've been thinking
about it.  Possibly having the articles moved out of article space
into project space, with a soft redirect from an appropriate template,
would answer some concerns.

I would really like to have the articles editable while temporarily
undeleted, but this may not be possible. Every editor being able to
see them would be a start, though.

But I'm still concerned that some particularly entrenched,
process-committed administrators will torpedo any such initiative, in
any case.  They need to be talked round.  I'm just the ideas man;
somebody else needs to take the ball and run with it, if it's such a
good idea.


body:
On 2/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Did blocking not work in this case? Or was it genuinely different
> users with different IPs? In that case, there would appear to be no
> immediate solution, until we implement some kind of change filtering
> for anons. ie: Anon makes a change, non-anon approves the change,
> change actually appears. Obviously again a last resort mechanism for
> heavily vandalised pages where we really really want to let good faith
> anons edit the article (like for FAs).
>
> Steve
>
> On 2/3/06, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > With regards to semi-protection, we need to rethink our rules about
> limiting
> > the semi-protection of feature articles to 15 minutes. The feature
> article
> > for Thursday was being vandalised every couple of minutes by a different
> new
> > user name but with the same item featuring plenty of pictures of vaginas
> and
> > penises.

I blocked one account which seemed to reduce the flow of vandalism but
didn't need to stop it.

Regards

Keith Old

Keith Old

_______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 2/3/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/3/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Problem is they are not doing RC patrol in the clasical sense (remeber
> > RC patrol was not originaly pure anti vandalism.)
>
> Maybe I'm being stupid, but I can't separate fighting vandalism from
> fighting all the other junk that Wikipedia gets.  Aye, they're
> different, and categorised differently, but if I see a copyvio I'm
> going to tag it, if I see an AfD-worthy article, I'll AfD it.  Are you
> suggesting that these activities should be ignored by this group of
> users?
>

Thier IRC softwear is designed to deal with vandalism. RC patrol
tradtionaly covered a lot of sub vadalism (bady formated edits POV
pushing that kind of thing).

> With respect, Minister, I disagree.
>

You are free to do that. Did you know how long it took for wiki.png to
carry the "This image is copyrighted by the Wikimedia foundation."
stuff?

> A project entitled a "project" gives a wholly different impression to
> one labelled a "unit".
>

Really?

> I am missing a key part of your logic: how does the CVU encourage
> users to start RC patrolling in a way that a less organisational page
> wouldn't?

The community side. Group identity.

> I didn't say "the average Wikipedian", I said "other Wikipedians".  Difference.
>
> --
> Sam

Yeah but the non average are for the most part experenced enough not
to make the mistakes you suggest.

--
geni


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Flame retardant

body:
Could geni, The Cunctator, and Jay Converse please take a 24-hour break
from the mailing list, and *go edit Wikipedia*?

--Michael Snow


body:
On 2/3/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/3/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I ask those who support the CVU: 1) how does it help Wikipedia in ways
> > that a non-organisational structure couldn't?
>
> Organization always is more productive than lack thereof. In theory an
> organized approached to watching for vandalism should work better than
> an unorganized one. Wikipedia is highly organized. It's a flexible
> organization, and entirely voluntary, but it's organized. This list is
> a form of organization. So are administators, arbcom, featured
> articles, collaborations of the week, village pump, and, my favorite,
> reference desk.

But there isn't any organisation.  There's just an organisational
structure to the page.  That's something different.  Organisation
would be farming out of diffs through some program or other.  This
does not do that, or indeed anything like it.  It's organisational,
but not in a way that gives organisation.  (I hope you know what I'm
trying to say -- I don't think I'm articulating myself overly well)

>
> and 2) is the good it
> > does really more significant than the dislike it creates among other
> > Wikipedians?
>
> I don't have any way to quantify this. Honestly I didn't even know
> there were people who spent time worrying about these things until
> this thread. I've never been struck either way by it. Have they be
> infringing on the rights of others? Have they been colluding to do
> anything negative to the encyclopedia? If not, then I say lay off. If
> it's just a matter of your personal interpretation of what their name
> implies, I'd first have to wonder how common it was. I never came away
> with the conclusions you did.

You don't have to collude to cause a negative effect to so do.  IMO,
anti-vandalism could be better channelled through [[Wikipedia:RC
Patrol]].  This isn't about me wanting to destroy the CVU, just to
make Wikipedia's efforts in this regard more effective.

> I might also say that I also don't see any evidence that vandalism has
> increased in the face of anti-vandalism efforts. And anti-vandalism
> efforts, in my understanding of the term, simply means monitoring for
> vandalism, undoing vandalism, and blocking repeat offenders. What's so
> wrong about that? What's so wrong about organizing that?

Nothing.  I dislike the way it is being done here.

As this is clearly going nowhere (and I can't see any useful outcome),
this is my last post on the matter.

--
Sam


subject: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one

body:
On 2/3/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I don't think it is workable while some administrators will delete
> such articles again.  It needs more discussion.  I've been thinking
> about it.  Possibly having the articles moved out of article space
> into project space, with a soft redirect from an appropriate template,
> would answer some concerns.
>

Create a review namespace and I might support a version of this

> I would really like to have the articles editable while temporarily
> undeleted, but this may not be possible. Every editor being able to
> see them would be a start, though.
>
> But I'm still concerned that some particularly entrenched,
> process-committed administrators will torpedo any such initiative, in
> any case.  They need to be talked round.  I'm just the ideas man;
> somebody else needs to take the ball and run with it, if it's such a
> good idea.

"process-committed administrators" are not conservatives. They just
want you to stick to policy. You are of course free to change that
policy by the normal root. Discusion to hammer out a soild policy
suggestion. Presenting it to anyone who cares to try and gain a
consensus and perhaps some further modification in order to do so.
Then depending on the level of support either institute it or hold a
final vote to see if you can get enough support to do so.

--
geni


from_name: - Essjay -

body:
For...the...love...of...God.

How many times do we have to go through this? This is at least the fourth
round of "The CVU is the most evil creation since Willy on Wheels," and I
for one am getting sick of it. People didn't like that we had directors, so
we got rid of our directors. People didn't like that there was an
implication that the Foundation might possibly on a rare Tuesday in May if
it is raining approve of the work that we do, so we added a disclaimer to
show that we aren't Foundation supported. People didn't like the way our
logos looked, so we redesigned them. Now that we've been willing to
accomodate on everything else, we're taking fire because we have two images
out of dozens of unsanctioned derivatives (yeah, that includes things like
the COTW's logo) when we actually took the time to ask for the Board's input
on them.

If you don't like the images, IfD them. If you don't like the CVU, then MfD
us. However, you'd better be fair: You'd better IfD every other image that
fits the same criteria, and you'd better MfD every other page that smells
anything like us.

I for one, as the last Director of the CVU, appreciate the support that has
been expressed for us: Thank you all for recognizing what we are about and
supporting our desire to make Wikipedia a better place.

Finally, it has been asked whether we're actually making Wikipedia better;
I'd like to ask the contrapositive: Is alienating a dedicated corps of
recent changes patrollers what you were looking for? Were you trying to make
us feel unappreciated? Will Wikipedia be a better place if we decide to stop
doing RC patrol? If that isn't what you were going for, then you failed to
look ahead, because that is exactly what this is doing. Everytime we have to
stop our RC patrol work and defend ourselves, it is one more time that we
have to ask ourselves: "Is it worth doing this when we keep taking fire at
every turn?"

Essjay
--
Essjay
-----
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
> -----Original Message-----
> What is rather worse is the truly malicious users.  Can
> anyone really claim that inserting child abuse allegations
> into [[Wikipedia]] is merely a "less helpful" edit?

I wouldn't call it vandalism is either. On a scale of from 1 to 10 of
helpfulness, vandalism might be a -1, but such things probably start at
-3 and can get rapidly worse. Even the worst vandalism to a page
probably can't do much damage to wikipedia's reputation before someone
fixes it. But when people eventually find out that libel has been
sitting in full view for months...

> I think it is not too unreasonable to suppose that Wikipedia
> has made enemies, and will continue to make enemies; nor to
> allow that these people may be disruptive in ways more
> significant than the average page-blanker.

As happened at de, with deliberate copyvios.

Incidentally, I have frequently noticed people making changes to
statistics like city populations, incrementing them by small amounts. I
have no idea if this is this as-yet-unnamed type of unhelpful edit or
someone with access to more recent stats. I try not to let it stop me
sleeping though.

Steve


body:
> -----Original Message-----
> >What most of the people on this thread fail to recognize is that
> >creating anti-vandalism paramilitaries *encourages* vandalism.
> >
> That's just a ludicrous point of view - the vast majority of
> vandals I deal with neither know nor care about WP internal
> process. If they did, they would be able to introduce
> vandalism in much more subtle ways, for instance by stacking
> vandalistic edits behind legitimate changes by a sockpuppet,
> mixing vandalism in with a good edit, using plausible
> sounding edit summaries, etc. Instead, they tend to add the
> first thing that comes to mind, usually scatological.

I agree with this assessment, made somewhat more clearly than my own
"rat vs mousetrap" analogy earlier. Once vandals realise they are being
thwarted, they pretty quickly stop being vandals. They either disappear,
become productive editors, or become something much worse.

Steve


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 2/3/06, - Essjay - <essjaywiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> For...the...love...of...God.
>
> How many times do we have to go through this? This is at least the fourth
> round of "The CVU is the most evil creation since Willy on Wheels," and I
> for one am getting sick of it.

Maybe there's a good reason, eh?

> People didn't like that we had directors, so
> we got rid of our directors. People didn't like that there was an
> implication that the Foundation might possibly on a rare Tuesday in May if
> it is raining approve of the work that we do, so we added a disclaimer to
> show that we aren't Foundation supported. People didn't like the way our
> logos looked, so we redesigned them. Now that we've been willing to
> accomodate on everything else, we're taking fire because we have two images
> out of dozens of unsanctioned derivatives (yeah, that includes things like
> the COTW's logo) when we actually took the time to ask for the Board's input
> on them.
>
> If you don't like the images, IfD them. If you don't like the CVU, then MfD
> us. However, you'd better be fair: You'd better IfD every other image that
> fits the same criteria, and you'd better MfD every other page that smells
> anything like us.

MfD? WTF? Sheesh. Miscellany for Deletion. What a mess.

> I for one, as the last Director of the CVU, appreciate the support that has
> been expressed for us: Thank you all for recognizing what we are about and
> supporting our desire to make Wikipedia a better place.

I fully support that desire.

> Finally, it has been asked whether we're actually making Wikipedia better;
> I'd like to ask the contrapositive: Is alienating a dedicated corps of
> recent changes patrollers what you were looking for? Were you trying to make
> us feel unappreciated? Will Wikipedia be a better place if we decide to stop
> doing RC patrol?

Quite possibly.

> If that isn't what you were going for, then you failed to
> look ahead, because that is exactly what this is doing. Everytime we have to
> stop our RC patrol work and defend ourselves, it is one more time that we
> have to ask ourselves: "Is it worth doing this when we keep taking fire at
> every turn?"

Good.

Now, if you're able to not take this personally, I would suggest that
you try to understand what my criticism is. Working to discourage bad
edits needs to be done in a way that creates as little antagonism and
"us against them" mentality.

Calling yourselves the "Counter Terrorism Unit" doesn't do a good job of that.


from_name: Chip Berlet

body:
use-it-or-lose-it?

That would really mess over us authors.

:-(

-Cberlet

________________________________

From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org on behalf of Ray Saintonge
Sent: Fri 2/3/2006 8:51 PM
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: US Congress Staff Editing Wikipedia

Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>I wouldn't go so far as to say that I'd like to see the US make fair
>use more restrictive - although frankly it probably wouldn't matter
>all that much in my daily life.
>
>But making it more clear when the answer is "No."  That'd be
>tremendously helpful to Wikipedia, in that it'd resolve a lot of
>conflict, and I really don't see how it'd hurt anything.
>
Another interesting possibility would be a use-it-or-lose-it provision.
If there has been no properly authorized publication of a copright work
in the last 10 years, any reprinting is fair use.

Ec

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one

body:
On 2/3/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> > "process-committed administrators" are not conservatives. They just
> > want you to stick to policy. You are of course free to change that
> > policy by the normal root. Discusion to hammer out a soild policy
> > suggestion. Presenting it to anyone who cares to try and gain a
> > consensus and perhaps some further modification in order to do so.
> > Then depending on the level of support either institute it or hold a
> > final vote to see if you can get enough support to do so.
>
> Is it just me, or would things go a lot better if experimentation was
> part of the policymaking process? This is what Proposed Deletions is
> doing and it seems like a far better idea than arguing ad infinitum
> about improving our deletion processes.

Well if you want to support that idea see [[WP:RFA]] for the next
week. OK so this is a case of a fairly novel idea within current
process.

--
geni


body:
On 2/3/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
>
> >
> >The very word "vandalism" I think is a somewhat false analogy, since
> >there's no permanent damage in Wikipedia.
> >
> Actually, that's not true. The permanent damage is the loss of time.
> When I spend a minute bringing up an article, looking at a diff,
> checking history and contribs to see if there is more, that's a
> minute that I'm not adding facts or checking them, and that minute
> is gone forever.
>
> Volunteers' time is our most precious resource - don't throw it
> away so casually.

I don't consider it that precious. There's a lot of time in the world.
No individual participant, in the greater scheme of things, is
particularly crucial to the project.

Volunteers' enjoyment, however -- that's precious.

And to that end we do need to continue to find ways to happily manage
the project.

More (and automatic) admins, I say.


body:
On 2/3/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/3/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> <snip>
> > I ask those who support the CVU: 1) how does it help Wikipedia in ways
> > that a non-organisational structure couldn't? and 2) is the good it
> > does really more significant than the dislike it creates among other
> > Wikipedians?
> >
>
> 1. I'd hazard a guess that the CVU builds a spirit of community among people
> who want to focus on fighting vandalism and gives recognition to an
> essential task which really gets very little recognition

It's the *kind* of recognition that troubles me. The Counter Vandalism
Unit is a clear take-off of the Counter Terrorism Unit. Not the kind
of analogy I like to see.

> 2. Dislike it creates?  Seriously?  I wasn't aware of any until this thread
> popped up (as opposed to people who have issues with Cool Cat).

I dislike it, seriously.


body:
>> To take it further, it's like saying Microsoft should release no more
>> Microsoft Updates for Windows because virus makers will lose
>> interest in
>> making viruses.
>
> Although I enjoy your extended metaphors, I never said people should
> stop trying anything new. You're defending against attacks I'm not
> making.
>
> [But to reply to your metaphor: I certainly hope you're not intending
> to compare Microsoft software favorably to Wikipedia contributions.
> I'd rather, if we were to use this analogy, strive for something like
> Linux, BSD, or OS X where massive gaping security flaws aren't
> inherent in the system.]

Massive gaping security flaws aren't inherent in Wikipedia in regards
to preventing vandalism? That's news to me.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch