from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: statistics

body:
On Sun, 11 Apr 2004 18:48:03 +0200, Erik Zachte wrote:

> Anthere wrote:
> "I think I need to have the rough number of hits per day on wikipedia
> (whole project)"

> Note that Webalizer may count several visits per day by one person as
> several unique visitors if the time between those vists is several hours,
> so a (very) small correction downwards is needed.

The timeout for a visit is 1/2 hour. On the other hand users of a big
proxy all count as one visitor because they share the ip.

> Figures may be influenced by current server setup (squids, etc), maybe
> visitors are counted once per squid, or something like that, I don't know.

No, the logs are merged and sorted before analysis. Note that en isn't
included in the stats in the last days because it's using curly.bomis.com
which isn't set up to transfer the logs.

>From my information it's about 8 million hits per day overall.

--
Gabriel Wicke


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Robert

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Mr Natural Health and Martin Harper again out of
	control

body:
I sent a message to this list explaining why Martin Harper
(MyRedDice), and Mr Natural Health, needs to immediately
stop their campaign of reversions and politically motivated
mass deletions. Most of what I sent was a detailed
explanation of precisely why Martin's actions are a clear
violation of NPOV, and why they constitute censorship.
These explanations were not written by me, but rather by
Jimbo Wales, Wikipedia founder.

Jimbo writes:
>In the present case, we see why deletion is bad. We are
>left with a horribly broken presentation in which readers
>are unable to discover why it might be that, despite the
>PLO officially no longer calling for the destruction of
>Israel, and Arafat himself announcing a right to exist,
>the majority of Palestinians polled support the
>destruction ofIsrael.
>We can only come to understand that better when we come to
>understand Arafat's duplicity, and the anti-Israel
>propaganda that is rampant in the Palestinian culture. But
>because some supporters of Palestine are uncomfortable
with
>that material, it is censored from Wikipedia. No, I don't
>think censorship is too strong a word."

Ray Saintonge (Ec) mistook this for a quote from me, It
wasn't. Ray writes:

> This seems like a blatant attempt to manipulate a text,
> or a series of assumedly accurate facts in support of
> propaganda for the Israeli POV.

No, it isn't. Your accusations are angry and unfounded. On
Wikipedia, NPOV policy demands tha we provide a situation's
context. Context requires that we provide quotes from many
different people, at different points in their lives
(especially if they offer multiple contradictory
statements, like Yassir Arafat.)

You are still assuming that Arabs are liars, and that any
quote from them "makes Arabs look bad and Jews look good".
But that just is not true. The fact that you just don't get
is that many Arabs have views that differ from your own.
For instance, the Palestinian Authority has funded the
publication of Adolph Hitler's Mein Kampf, and funds
teachers and preachers who teach holocaust denial. That
isn't an "anti-Arab" statement. In fact, to them these
positions are PRO-Arab. You disagree? Fine; if you can't
stomach reading views that you disagree then go away. But
don't use our encyclopedia to rewrite facts to make all
Palestinian Arabs look like left-wing pro-peace people.
Where I come from, this is called lying.

For the last year, many Wikipedians on this list have acted
in rage, and lashed out in mass-censorship, when facts have
appeared which showed Arab leaders to have views which are
not democratic, or are anti-Jewish or anti-Chrisitian.  We
have been told by left-wing Wikipedia contributors that
these views are "anti-Arab and pro-Jewish".

The problem is that they are not anti-Arab, nor are they
pro-Jewish. They are just honest points of view from people
who happen to be Arab leaders. We have to allow our
encyclopedia the ability to state such views, even when we
disagree with them.

Ray closes his letter with a personal attack on me, which
clearly is encouragement for Martin and MNH to continue
damaging the encyclopedia. This is called biting one's nose
off to spite one's face. Should I respond in kind? Should I
find people who hate Ray and encourage them to violate
Wikipedia policy - simply to enrage Ray?

Some people like to talk the talk, but when it comes to
walking the walk many people here seem willing to dump NPOV
in order to tweak someone. That is unacceptable behaviour.

Robert (RK)

=====
"No one is poor except he who lacks knowledge....A person who has knowledge has everything.  A person who lacks knowledge, what has he? Once a person acquires knowledge, what does he lack?  [Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim, 41a]

__________________________________
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http://promotions.yahoo.com/design_giveaway/


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Mr Natural Health and Martin Harper again out
	of	control

body:
Robert wrote:

>These explanations were not written by me, but rather by
>Jimbo Wales, Wikipedia founder.
>
Hey Jimbo, are you regretting weighing in on this one now? :-)

Personally, I think Robert should only be allowed back on this
mailing list when he apologizes to me and everybody else here
for calling us Nazis. I know it's been awhile and I should be
forgiving, but Robert needs to learn how to behave civilly, and
as we see here, once he sees he can get away with the mortal
insults, he takes it as permission to abuse everybody and anybody
who disagrees with him.

Stan


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Meta deletions

body:
I also like the guy, and think he has room in the project...but I did not appreciate him deceiving people to get sysop,
I did not appreciate him using policy holes to get sysop in spite of obvious opposition,
and I did not appreaciate in the least that he tried to apply pressure on me to be made sysop on meta.
That seriously decreased the level of friendly feeling I could have toward him. Fortunately, there was a high level initially :-) so some of it is still there :-)

I am also seriously concerned by his last requests, being a sysop on wikibooks, being a steward and suggestion that any sysop on one wiki should be sysop anywhere.
I also am concerned that he got all this power, not because people trusted and supported him, but essentially thanks to rules.
I think a project like wikipedia should be flexible, and driven by people decisions and collective feeling. Not by rules applied blindly.
When someone is made sysop, thanks to rules, against community wishes, I think the system is seriously broken and rules should be changed.
There should be a way to have decisions back in the hand of people, rather than in the words of rules.

Also, there is a weird situation where basically, anyone made sysop one day will stay sysop forever, except if he makes a horrible infringment (even in this case...). So, someone made sysop without trust can stay a sysop even though people do not trust him. Is that good ? Why is it a permanent status ? Should it be unrevocable ?

ant

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from_name: Peter Gervai

subject: [Wikipedia-l] meta deletion

body:
I would very much like NOT to have some english sysops anywhere near our
national language wikipedia. Since it's EN: I don't worry how did they
become sysops, not my business who trusted them and why, but possibly *I*
don't trust them at all, and I would like not to be the one to clean up the
mess after them.

My two cents.

On Mon, Apr 12, 2004 at 08:07:08AM -0600, Fred Bauder wrote:
> If they speak the language.
>
> Fred
>
> > From: Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
> > Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 06:20:42 -0700 (PDT)
> > To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
> > Subject: [Wikipedia-l] meta deletion
> >
> > Are you suggesting that a sysop on one wikipedia would
> > be sysop on all wikipedias ?
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: DJ

subject: [WikiEN-l] Press Questions on Wikipedia

body:
To whom it may concern,

 My name is Daniel and I'm a writer for the Paradise
Valley Community College newspaper in Phoenix,
Arizona. I wanted to ask a few questions about your
site Wikipedia. If you can get back to me prior to
Thursday the 13th, I would appericate any questions
you would be willing to answer. Thanks for your time!

Daniel Greenfield

__________________________________
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from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Robert wrote:

>I sent a message to this list explaining why Martin Harper
>(MyRedDice), and Mr Natural Health, needs to immediately
>stop their campaign of reversions and politically motivated
>mass deletions. Most of what I sent was a detailed
>explanation of precisely why Martin's actions are a clear
>violation of NPOV, and why they constitute censorship.
>These explanations were not written by me, but rather by
>Jimbo Wales, Wikipedia founder.
>
>Jimbo writes:
>
>>In the present case, we see why deletion is bad. We are
>>left with a horribly broken presentation in which readers
>>are unable to discover why it might be that, despite the
>>PLO officially no longer calling for the destruction of
>>Israel, and Arafat himself announcing a right to exist,
>>the majority of Palestinians polled support the
>>destruction ofIsrael.
>>We can only come to understand that better when we come to
>>understand Arafat's duplicity, and the anti-Israel
>>propaganda that is rampant in the Palestinian culture. But
>>because some supporters of Palestine are uncomfortable
>>
>with
>
>>that material, it is censored from Wikipedia. No, I don't
>>think censorship is too strong a word."
>>
>Ray Saintonge (Ec) mistook this for a quote from me, It
>wasn't. Ray writes:
>
>>This seems like a blatant attempt to manipulate a text,
>>or a series of assumedly accurate facts in support of
>>propaganda for the Israeli POV.
>>
>No, it isn't. Your accusations are angry and unfounded. On
>Wikipedia, NPOV policy demands tha we provide a situation's
>context. Context requires that we provide quotes from many
>different people, at different points in their lives
>(especially if they offer multiple contradictory
>statements, like Yassir Arafat.)
>
The word that I objected to was "duplicity".  NPOV requires assuming
good faith.  I don't dispute that we should include quotes from many
different people at many different times in their lives, but that too
must be an orderly process.  If something was said 20 years ago it may
not reflect the person's current thinking.  Anyway, it's pointless to
put too much emphasis on Arafat.  He has been effectively marginalized
by both the Israelis and his own people.  His health appears to be in
decline.  As with Moses, the rewards of the promised land are likely to
be posthumous.

>You are still assuming that Arabs are liars, and that any
>quote from them "makes Arabs look bad and Jews look good".
>But that just is not true. The fact that you just don't get
>is that many Arabs have views that differ from your own.
>For instance, the Palestinian Authority has funded the
>publication of Adolph Hitler's Mein Kampf, and funds
>teachers and preachers who teach holocaust denial. That
>isn't an "anti-Arab" statement. In fact, to them these
>positions are PRO-Arab. You disagree? Fine; if you can't
>stomach reading views that you disagree then go away. But
>don't use our encyclopedia to rewrite facts to make all
>Palestinian Arabs look like left-wing pro-peace people.
>Where I come from, this is called lying.
>
I find it hard to recognize any of my position in the above fabricated
gibberish.  What is the relevance of "Mein Kampf"?  Preaching the fringe
doctrine of holocaust denial would be self-contradictory for a people
who put forth that the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians the same
thing that the Germans did to the Jews.  By denying the holocaust they
would lose their "model".

>For the last year, many Wikipedians on this list have acted
>in rage, and lashed out in mass-censorship, when facts have
>appeared which showed Arab leaders to have views which are
>not democratic, or are anti-Jewish or anti-Chrisitian.  We
>have been told by left-wing Wikipedia contributors that
>these views are "anti-Arab and pro-Jewish".
>
>The problem is that they are not anti-Arab, nor are they
>pro-Jewish. They are just honest points of view from people
>who happen to be Arab leaders. We have to allow our
>encyclopedia the ability to state such views, even when we
>disagree with them.
>
The relevant Middle East dispute is between Israelis and Palestinians
far more than between Jews and Arabs.  I can criticize Israel without
being anti-Jewish, and I can criticize Zionism without being
anti-semitic.  I am always careful in choosing my words in this regard.
 Those who insist on confounding these terms do more than anyone for
turning anti-semitism a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The rigorous pursuit
of holocaust deniers says more about the pursuers, than about the
misguided individuals who are making the denial

>Ray closes his letter with a personal attack on me, which
>clearly is encouragement for Martin and MNH to continue
>damaging the encyclopedia. This is called biting one's nose
>off to spite one's face. Should I respond in kind? Should I
>find people who hate Ray and encourage them to violate
>Wikipedia policy - simply to enrage Ray?
>
Though you chose to speak to two separate issues in your original
posting, I could not have commented on the MNH issue without reviewing
events in that area.  I did not review those events, and made no
comments about MNH.

Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: wpSection=new flood attack on zh

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> How about throttling with a manually generated whitelist for heavy
> (human) editors?

Yes, that would be very nice.

(Just hard-code my username. ;-) )

Timwi


body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:

>>>>>>"T" == Timwi  <timwi at gmx.net> writes:
>
>     T> No matter what throttling you choose, I will hit the limit at
>     T> some point, I'm sure...
>
> Well, y'know, I'd question whether you could do a sustained 2 edits
> per second, like the zh flooding bot. If so, you need to get some
> other hobbies. B-)

Do you know that browsers have the capability of opening several windows
or (often) tabs?

If I need to add, say, a {{msg:}} to a range of pages, or remove it from
them, or anything like that, then yes, I will probably hit about 2 edits
per second.

Timwi


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Parasitic behaviour. We loose more than money by
	it.

body:
Arvind Narayanan wrote:

> While our main page has a high pagerank, individual articles probably
> don't (depending on how well they're linked to). So, it would help to
> link to Special:Allpages from the main page (the static cached version
> is fine). That way, it would take at most 3 links from the main page
> to any article.

It already takes at most 4 links from the Main Page to any article (via
the "Special Pages" link in the side bar).


body:
Erik Zachte wrote:

> E.g. "rembrandt wikipedia"
> http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=wikipedi
> a+rembrandt
> shows Wikipedia only behind two other sites, one of which uses "Rembrandt -
> Wikipedia" even in the <title>..</title> tags, which is shown prominently in
> the Google response.

I definitely think we need to be more aggressive with threatening legal
action against trademark violation such as this.

Timwi


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Disk space on suda

body:
Disk space on suda is really, *really* tight. Every couple of days we
find ourselves clearing off files because it's *full*.

Would it be possible to toss in another disk, any disk, temporarily to
which we could migrate ~20gb of the database + future binlogs?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] load balancing with icp and squid on apache servers

body:
On Apr 13, 2004, at 12:06, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> Load distribution is more even than with the round-robin setup,
> especially
> if something else is running on one of the apaches (or if the apaches
> are
> not identical machines).

Awesome!

Which reminds me; is there a way we could get a graph of the proportion
of traffic going to each apache server?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Perl

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> Perl is a user who has been obssessed with sysopship and other forms of
> status since shortly after he joined Wikipedia. He makes many good
> contributions under one name, and applies for sysopship, and then when
> his bad reputation starts catching up with him, he switches names and
> tries again. So far he has done this 4 times. He has contributed as
> Aplank, Greenmountainboy, Sennheiser, NASA and Perl.

I might add that I have had a rather insightful talk with him about it
and from it I gained the impression that he has now come to understand
the inappropriateness of sock puppets and has agreed to stop
reincarnating. I believe him this, and I also believe that his previous
actions were - from his point of view - in good faith (I know this is
difficult to appreciate for some). I have the strong impression that he
never meant to hurt anyone's feelings or to make anyone feel cheated or
deceived, and it seems to me that he now understands that this is what
he has caused, and so he stopped.

I also believe that if he had been granted adminship, he would only have
applied the privileges in good faith (he certainly never caused any
damange on the Maori Wikipedia or Wikibooks). Nevertheless, of course,
in the light of the circumstances, it is difficult to trust his good
faith, which is why I voted against him in the hope that he wouldn't
view it as hostility against him.

I hope this shed some light on his motives and intentions; I think he's
a really nice guy, and he doesn't deserve being badmouthed for his
actions or being accused of being deliberately disruptive. This doesn't
mean I'm defending his actions, but I think he just needs a little bit
of social guidance, if you see what I mean. I am certainly glad that he
is still around, and I'm sure he will continue to make valuable
contributions in the future.

Greetings,
Timwi


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Paul Vogel's anti-Semitism

body:
Believe it or not, it is best to request mediation on this matter with him,
although I would vote to accept this matter for arbitration as it sits now
(although I know certain other arbitrators would not).

Fred

From: "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu>
Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 15:04:58 -0400
To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Paul Vogel's anti-Semitism

Paul Vogel has been adding an anti-Semitic link to the Judaism page.  I
explained in detail on the talk page why I think this is inappropriate, and
I deleted the link.  Although some other users believe that such a link is
acceptable as long as it is clearly identified, I think if Wikipedia is
going to have any links to anti-Semitic material it should be on the
anti-Semitism page.

In any event, after I explained why I deleted the link, Vogel responded,
"Any hue and cry of "anti-semitism" or "nazism" etc. ad nauseum for such a
link is not relevant, if one is being hypocritical in actually allowing
similar pov and slanderous links on cosmotheism, or any other religion,
within Wiki articles.-PV " -- a response that ignored my explanation
entirely.

I replied, "I am not "allowing" slanderous links on the cosmotheism page.
Two rights do not make a wrong. If you have a problem on another site, seek
mediation -- don't take out your frustrations here."

And then Vogel made clear the anti-Semitic logic by which problems on the
cosmotheism page are really "Jewish" problems: "Aren't you? Each one of
those 4 slanderous POV articles and each one linked as "criticisms" on the
cosmotheism page have been written by "Jews", and you have not ever
protested and ever insisted upon their actual "removal" have you? The
problem is on THIS SITE, WIKIPEDIA. The lying hypocrisy of your own "ilk" is
responsible for this nonsense, and so it actually is YOUR OWN PROBLEM.
Unfortunately, there is no effective medication for psychological projection
on your and your own ilk's part, but, hope springs eternal!.-"

Do I need to explain my outrage?  Vogel doesn't identify the people working
on the cosmotheism as wikipedians but as "Jews." He doesn't identify me as a
wikipedian but solely as a "Jew."  And because I am a Jew, he holds me
responsible for what other "Jews" have done on another site.

This use of "Jew" as a slur; the identification of my "ilk" as hypocrites,
reeks of anti-Semitism.  If this itself does not merit banning, I certainly
think some strong action should be taken.

Thanks,

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701

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_______________________________________________
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from_name: steven l. rubenstein

subject: [WikiEN-l] Paul Vogel's anti-Semitism

body:
Paul Vogel has been adding an anti-Semitic link to the Judaism page.  I
explained in detail on the talk page why I think this is inappropriate, and
I deleted the link.  Although some other users believe that such a link is
acceptable as long as it is clearly identified, I think if Wikipedia is
going to have any links to anti-Semitic material it should be on the
anti-Semitism page.

In any event, after I explained why I deleted the link, Vogel responded,
"Any hue and cry of "anti-semitism" or "nazism" etc. ad nauseum for such a
link is not relevant, if one is being hypocritical in actually allowing
similar pov and slanderous links on cosmotheism, or any other religion,
within Wiki articles.-PV " -- a response that ignored my explanation
entirely.

I replied, "I am not "allowing" slanderous links on the cosmotheism page.
Two rights do not make a wrong. If you have a problem on another site, seek
mediation -- don't take out your frustrations here."

And then Vogel made clear the anti-Semitic logic by which problems on the
cosmotheism page are really "Jewish" problems: "Aren't you? Each one of
those 4 slanderous POV articles and each one linked as "criticisms" on the
cosmotheism page have been written by "Jews", and you have not ever
protested and ever insisted upon their actual "removal" have you? The
problem is on THIS SITE, WIKIPEDIA. The lying hypocrisy of your own "ilk"
is responsible for this nonsense, and so it actually is YOUR OWN PROBLEM.
Unfortunately, there is no effective medication for psychological
projection on your and your own ilk's part, but, hope springs eternal!.-"

Do I need to explain my outrage?  Vogel doesn't identify the people working
on the cosmotheism as wikipedians but as "Jews."  He doesn't identify me as
a wikipedian but solely as a "Jew."  And because I am a Jew, he holds me
responsible for what other "Jews" have done on another site.

This use of "Jew" as a slur; the identification of my "ilk" as hypocrites,
reeks of anti-Semitism.  If this itself does not merit banning, I certainly
think some strong action should be taken.

Thanks,

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
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from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] User name, nick, real name

body:
So, the way that MediaWiki is currently set up, we have two fields for
identifying a contributor:

         * user name
         * nick

I think (but don't know) that the idea here is that your "user name"
is your "real" name, like "Evan Prodromou", and your "nick" is going
to be a nickname, handle, or pseudonym, like "Mister Bad". This may
come from the tradition on some wikis, like Ward's Wiki, Meatball,
others, where using your real name is the norm.

It seems that on Wikipedia, other Wikimedia projects, and Wikitravel
(which I'm most interested in), this is not the case. People treat a
user name like a Unix, IRC, or other "user account": an abbreviated
name or a pseudonym. The "nick" field is generally just used for
making fancy signatures; in other cases, it's just used to provide a
_second_ pseudonym or abbreviation.

Now, I'm the last person to put down pseudonyms. I think they're a
crucial part of Internet culture. But real names can be useful for,
say, getting credit as a contributor to an article. Somewhere along
the way here we lost the slot for adding a "real name" to a user
account.

You can't provide your real name even if you want to. Putting your
real name in the user name slot is lost in the noise; I don't know,
when you have a user account like "Bob Frapples", whether that's a
clever pseudonym or actually your real name. Contributors who want to
have their real name recognized now put them on their user pages. But
this is kind of difficult for software to determine what a user's real
name is.

I'd like to embrace the reality of the situation and have two identity
fields, plus a display field:

        * User account name -- a pseudonym or abbrev or whatever
        * Real name -- preferred form of legal name
        * Signature -- fancy formatting for signatures

For these reasons, I'd like to propose the following:

* We add a nullable user field "user_real_name".
* The login/account creation page has an additional field for "real
  name", with an explanation that it's optional, and only for
  attribution, etc.
* The preferences page lets you change your real name.
* We change the documentation for the user name to note that it's a
  nickname and doesn't need to be your real name.
* We change the documentation for the "nick" field to note its use as
  a "signature" format.

Automatic attribution tools can use the real name field if it's
provided, or the preferred pseudonym ("Wikitravel user Hogwallop") if
not.

The user account name would continue to be shown everywhere it is now,
and the "nick" field would continue to be used primarily
(exclusively?) in the ~~~ signature areas. The main thing is that if
contributors want attribution under their real name, but identity in
the system under a nickname, they get it.

Lastly, I think an easy way to change your user name is necessary, to
make this shift in emphasis easier for those who want to. That's a
whole can of worms, there, but I don't think it's impossible to deal
with.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Perl

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Today, aplank deleted a collection of pages on meta.
>
> See http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta%3ADeletion_log
>
> The deletion policy on meta states that pages should
> stay between 15 to 30 days listed on vfd before being
> deleted. The long delay time is due to the fact users
> do not come to meta as often that they come to local
> wikipedia, so are given more time to react.

Some readers of this list may be confused as to why some people consider
this to be such a big deal. Perhaps some background on Perl would help.

Perl is a user who has been obssessed with sysopship and other forms of
status since shortly after he joined Wikipedia. He makes many good
contributions under one name, and applies for sysopship, and then when
his bad reputation starts catching up with him, he switches names and
tries again. So far he has done this 4 times. He has contributed as
Aplank, Greenmountainboy, Sennheiser, NASA and Perl. When confronted as
a new identity with allegations that he is another Alex Plank
reincarnation, he strongly denies it, but when evidence is presented, he
admits it and expresses remorse. For some of us, these expressions of
remorse seem shallow, considering the number of times he has repeated
his behaviour. However Perl does have his supporters. People point out
that his most recent reincarnation has done lots of good work, and that
perhaps we should forgive. Despite this, his most recent request for
adminship on en was easily voted down:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship&oldid=2907208#Perl

The root cause of Perl's bad reputation is the actions he performed as
his initial identity, Aplank/Alexandros. He removed adverse comments
about himself, he did something controversial at Mother Theresa which
offended some people (not sure what exactly), and he "vandalised" Adam
Carr's user page.  Personally I have found his behaviour rash and
impulsive, so I wouldn't trust him with sysop access.

Here are some of his previous sysopship applications. Note that during
the course of the Greenmountainboy and Sennheiser applications, his
identity was exposed, and some refactoring occurred.

As Aplank/Alexandros:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship&oldid=1649846#Aplank
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship&oldid=1749367#user:alexandros
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship&oldid=1819934#Alexandros
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship&oldid=1848760#Alexandros
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship&oldid=1958091#Alexandros

There was also one on the French Wikipedia:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikip%C3%A9dia:Administrateur&oldid=315106#Aplank

As Greenmountainboy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship&oldid=2122627#Green_Mountain

As Sennheiser:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship&oldid=2395599#alexandros

As Perl:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship&oldid=2906811#Perl_(3/6/1)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship&oldid=3022534#Perl;_(1/4/0)_ends_00:40_9_April_2004

The Perl identity was exposed before the first adminship request. Perl
requested sysop access on the inactive Maori Wikipedia, which I happily
granted him, not knowing at that time who he was. Then he requested
developer access. I received a tip-off, checked the logs, and, in a very
angry state, posted the result to IRC. At Angela's request, I didn't
desysop him.

Anyway, it suprised some of us when Perl requested sysop access on
Wikibooks, and it was approved with two people supporting (Mav and
Theresa) and none against. But it's only wikibooks, it's no big deal.
Then Mav gave him sysop access on meta. While stricly speaking this is
allowed by policy, it seems to be against the majority opinion, at least
on the English Wikipedia.

I'd like to request that Perl be desysopped on meta, and that the policy
be changed to require more stringent controls on who becomes a sysop there.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikipedia-l] another wikipedia clone without backref

body:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/encyclopedia/

no links or reference is visible to wikipedia.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Perl

body:
>
>
>Tim Starling wrote
>
>>Timwi wrote:
>>
>>>I hope this shed some light on his motives and intentions; I think he's
>>>a really nice guy, and he doesn't deserve being badmouthed for his
>>>actions or being accused of being deliberately disruptive. This doesn't
>>>mean I'm defending his actions, but I think he just needs a little bit
>>>of social guidance, if you see what I mean. I am certainly glad that he
>>>is still around, and I'm sure he will continue to make valuable
>>>contributions in the future.
>>>
>>Perl is a nice guy who isn't deliberately disruptive. He's just impulsive,
>>has little understanding of the effect his actions will have on other
>>people, and is unwilling accept criticism. He might be nice, he might be
>>sincere, but I'm afraid I don't trust him with adminship.
>>
Funny that just after I read this, he made a request to be an admin at
Wikisource, saying

> I'm a sysop on wikibooks and I would like to also have that status
> here. I frequently transwiki things from wikibooks and I would like to
> be able to delete accidental pages that I create without needing to
> list them.

If I look at his contributions, I don't even have to scroll to see them
all.  There's nothing controversial in that list.  A willingness on his
part to participate in discussions might be my first criterion before
acting.

Until at least one other Wikisourceror has noticed his request, I guess
I haven't really noticed it either.   :-)

Ec


from_name: Pedro Fortuny

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Perl

body:
As a matter of fact, I also had (long ago, during the "Mother Teresa"
affair, when he was "Aplank" and turned into "Alexandros") a long talk
with him (several) and I want to stress that I have the strong feeling
that he has always acted in good faith, although he has repeatedly
misbehaved (in an objective sense, that is). This is what prevents me to
promote him (vote for him) to be a sysop right now. I also think he needs
a long time to prove his ability to manage complicated affairs.

I hope he is reading this mail list.

Pedro.

* Tim Starling <ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> [2004-04-13]:
> Timwi wrote:
> > I might add that I have had a rather insightful talk with him about it
> > and from it I gained the impression that he has now come to understand
> > the inappropriateness of sock puppets and has agreed to stop
> > reincarnating. I believe him this, and I also believe that his previous
> > actions were - from his point of view - in good faith (I know this is
> > difficult to appreciate for some). I have the strong impression that he
> > never meant to hurt anyone's feelings or to make anyone feel cheated or
> > deceived, and it seems to me that he now understands that this is what
> > he has caused, and so he stopped.
> >
> > I also believe that if he had been granted adminship, he would only have
> > applied the privileges in good faith (he certainly never caused any
> > damange on the Maori Wikipedia or Wikibooks). Nevertheless, of course,
> > in the light of the circumstances, it is difficult to trust his good
> > faith, which is why I voted against him in the hope that he wouldn't
> > view it as hostility against him.
> >
> > I hope this shed some light on his motives and intentions; I think he's
> > a really nice guy, and he doesn't deserve being badmouthed for his
> > actions or being accused of being deliberately disruptive. This doesn't
> > mean I'm defending his actions, but I think he just needs a little bit
> > of social guidance, if you see what I mean. I am certainly glad that he
> > is still around, and I'm sure he will continue to make valuable
> > contributions in the future.
>
> Perl is a nice guy who isn't deliberately disruptive. He's just impulsive,
> has little understanding of the effect his actions will have on other
> people, and is unwilling accept criticism. He might be nice, he might be
> sincere, but I'm afraid I don't trust him with adminship.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

--
Pedro Fortuny Ayuso: http://pfortuny.sdf-eu.org
Colegio Mayor Pe?afiel, Universidad de Valladolid
C/ Estudios 6, 47005 Valladolid, Spain -->        www.cmpenafiel.org
pfortuny at sdf-eu.org                         Tfn. Nr. 34  983  298277


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.2.4 release

body:
Changes since 1.2.3:
* Fixed edit toolbar in Mozilla
* Diff links in Contributions for 'top' edits
* Fixed Nostalgia skin drop-down for register_globals off
* Backported optional open proxy blocker
* Backported $wgWhitelistRead
* $wgCapitalLinks option to force full case sensitivity in titles
* Cleaned up error handling when can't talk to database
* Disabled unsafe command-line installer (remove the "die()" call to
use)

Release notes:
https://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=230959

Download:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.2.4.tar.gz?
download

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Arvind Narayanan

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Parasitic behaviour. We loose more than money
	by it.

in_reply_to:
<c5gjle$itu$3@sea.gmane.org>;
	from timwi@gmx.net on Tue, Apr 13, 2004 at 12:41:30PM +0100

references:
<NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNAELICHAA.e.p.zachte@chello.nl>
	<20040412114006.A27214@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in>
	<c5gjle$itu$3@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Tue, Apr 13, 2004 at 12:41:30PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> Arvind Narayanan wrote:
>
> > While our main page has a high pagerank, individual articles probably
> > don't (depending on how well they're linked to). So, it would help to
> > link to Special:Allpages from the main page (the static cached version
> > is fine). That way, it would take at most 3 links from the main page
> > to any article.
>
> It already takes at most 4 links from the Main Page to any article (via
> the "Special Pages" link in the side bar).
>
I'm looking at things from google's point of view. The difference
between level 3 and level 4 can be huge. Currently, Special:Allpages
is not indexed by google and so it is useless. That's why I feel it
should be made more prominent.

Arvind
--
Its all GNU to me


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>>> We can only come to understand that better when we come to
>>> understand Arafat's duplicity, and the anti-Israel
>>> propaganda that is rampant in the Palestinian culture.
>>
>> Ray Saintonge (Ec) mistook this for a quote from me, It
>> wasn't. Ray writes:
>>
>>> This seems like a blatant attempt to manipulate a text,
>>> or a series of assumedly accurate facts in support of
>>> propaganda for the Israeli POV.
>>
>> No, it isn't. Your accusations are angry and unfounded. On
>> Wikipedia, NPOV policy demands tha we provide a situation's
>> context. Context requires that we provide quotes from many
>> different people, at different points in their lives
>> (especially if they offer multiple contradictory
>> statements, like Yassir Arafat.)
>
> The word that I objected to was "duplicity".  NPOV requires assuming
> good faith.

I think the objection is fair, but I disagree that NPOV requires
assuming good faith. That's good Wikiquette, but a bad approach to NPOV.
In my opinion, NPOV requires not assuming either way, just presenting
the facts. If somebody is figuratively talking out of both sides of
their mouth, we can discuss the relevant statements. But if dishonesty
or duplicity is alleged and disputed, then we need to present both sides
of that issue as well.

> I don't dispute that we should include quotes from many different
> people at many different times in their lives, but that too must be an
> orderly process.  If something was said 20 years ago it may not
> reflect the person's current thinking.

This I have no arguments with. Not only do people change, but they also
have the capacity to believe things that others may find obviously
contradictory. Not just 20 years apart, but even simultaneously. Within
their worldview, most ideologies tend to be internally consistent. We
need to address the views of both the apologists and the critics.

--Michael Snow
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Mediawiki-l] MediaWiki 1.2.4 release

body:
On Apr 13, 2004, at 17:19, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Download:
> http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.2.4.tar.gz?
> download

SF seems to be having some technical difficulties. Alternate download:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki-1.2.4.tar.gz

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
I've set up a hacked squid on each of the apaches that returns ICP_HIT on
any icp request. The squids are running on the apache machines at nice 19,
taking up <1% cpu. The apache to receive the next request is now
determined by the icp response time, basically the first icp reply from
the apache machines gets the request. High load -> slow icp response -> no
request this time.
Load distribution is more even than with the round-robin setup, especially
if something else is running on one of the apaches (or if the apaches are
not identical machines).
--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> How about throttling with a manually generated whitelist for heavy
> (human) editors?

On susning.nu you can only do 5 edits in 2 minutes.  When you save,
the code does a

  select count(*) from changelog
     where user="$thisuser"
     and unix_timestamp(now()) - unix_timestamp(time) < 120;

and if that count is greater than or equal to 5, the new (sixth) save
is denied.  Nobody seems to have a problem with this.

I recently (during March) also tried a "karma" system. Everybody
started out at zero karma, and karma could only be lowered from there.
If you wrote something bad, and somebody did a "restore vandalism" on
your edit, you would get -1 karma point.  Then 30 seconds would be
added to your 120 second time window for every negative karma point
you had. The idea was that you should always be able to catch up with
a vandalism robot, because the more of its vandalism you restored, the
more it would be slowed down.  Once the vandal got -3 karma it could
no longer "restore vandalism" (to avoid restore wars) and its name
would show up in red on the Recent Changes page.  For various reasons,
this karma system is no longer in use (it didn't stop all cases of
vandalism, and the red color was very unpopular), but perhaps this
could give some ideas here.

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


from_name: RolyPhotography at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia:Requests for comment/RK

body:
2nd request
please remove my name off this list

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body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> But say if you can do two per second. Can you
> do 10 per second? 20? 50? 100? We've got to put a limit in somewhere, or
> else improved Wikimedia hardware will leave us vulnerable to extremely high
> edit rate attacks.

Ah, but say you put the limit at 2 per second. How much less work is it
undoing the damage from a bot then, especially if they spam several
Wikipedias during less populated hours?

By contrast, with an "undo all contributions with a single click"
function, the rate completely doesn't matter...

> There's no need for legitimate bots to operate at high edit rates. They can
> be left running for many hours or even days, in order to complete their
> task.

I suppose that's true.

Timwi


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] question  to Andre Engels

body:
Why am I being asked? And what exactly is the question? If you want a
Wikipedia in your language, there are others here who can do more about
that than I can.

Andre Engels

"llane ra" <webmaster at Llanera.zzn.com> schrieb:
> friend Andre Engels certainly interesaria me one wikipedia for which
> we have given to call the language I crush, that it is a language that is used in Colombia by the common one of
> people, although generally the educative apparatus usually tries to confuse it
> with the Spanish, but I crush has linguisticas forms that differentiate day after day of
> the Spanish,  that is I in front of crush the Spanish passes the same fenomeno to
> him that happens to him in front of to Gallego the Spanish.
>
> they are similar but nonidenticos.
>
> Get your Free E-mail at http://llanera.zzn.com
> ____________________________________________________________
> Para obtener su propio servicio de correo electr?nico basado en la Multimalla, dir?jase a http://www.zzn.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
"Tim Starling" <ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> schrieb:
>
> Timwi wrote:
> > Evan Prodromou wrote:
> >
> > >>>>>>"T" == Timwi  <timwi at gmx.net> writes:
> > >
> > >     T> No matter what throttling you choose, I will hit the limit at
> > >     T> some point, I'm sure...
> > >
> > > Well, y'know, I'd question whether you could do a sustained 2 edits
> > > per second, like the zh flooding bot. If so, you need to get some
> > > other hobbies. B-)
> >
> > Do you know that browsers have the capability of opening several windows
> > or (often) tabs?
> >
> > If I need to add, say, a {{msg:}} to a range of pages, or remove it from
> > them, or anything like that, then yes, I will probably hit about 2 edits
> > per second.
>
> I've done similar batch jobs, and I haven't been able to hit 2 per second.
> Maybe one every 2-3 seconds. But say if you can do two per second. Can you
> do 10 per second? 20? 50? 100? We've got to put a limit in somewhere, or
> else improved Wikimedia hardware will leave us vulnerable to extremely high
> edit rate attacks.

There's another side to that coin though. When dealing with the previous
bot attacks, I have done like 20 edits within 2 or 3 seconds while reverting.
It would be rather wry irony if measures against vandalism would slow down
the fighting against vandalism...

Apart from that occasion, I have never had sustained rates over 1 per 2-3
seconds. That number was got doing a particularly easy disambiguation using
a human-interfaced bot.

If the throttle is really a throttle - that is, the edit is only delayed,
I would say that even a throttle of 1 per second would not give undue
problems. Sure, people sometimes hit the 'submit' button faster when working
in multiple screens/tabs, but I don't think that waiting 10 seconds for the
last one to get through when doing 10 edits at once should bother too much -
especially since the first one will come without delay, and the next 3
within 3 seconds. Still, there is the vandalism fight problem mentioned
above. So perhaps we should switch off throttling for sysop rollbacks?

Andre Engels


body:
Arvind Narayanan wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 13, 2004 at 12:41:30PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
>
>>Arvind Narayanan wrote:
>>
>>>While our main page has a high pagerank, individual articles probably
>>>don't (depending on how well they're linked to). So, it would help to
>>>link to Special:Allpages from the main page (the static cached version
>>>is fine). That way, it would take at most 3 links from the main page
>>>to any article.
>>
>>It already takes at most 4 links from the Main Page to any article (via
>>the "Special Pages" link in the side bar).
>
> I'm looking at things from google's point of view. The difference
> between level 3 and level 4 can be huge. Currently, Special:Allpages
> is not indexed by google and so it is useless. That's why I feel it
> should be made more prominent.

Hm. I see that Special:Allpages has a <meta name="robots"
content="noindex,follow"> tag. Special:Specialpages, however, has
index,nofollow. That means that Google won't reach Allpages through this
route.

However, upon closer inspection, I notice that the Main Page *does* have
a link to Special:Allpages, entitled "All articles by title".

Timwi


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Peter Gervai wrote:

>http://www.sciencedaily.com/encyclopedia/
>
>no links or reference is visible to wikipedia.
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>
>
I have contacted Science Daily by E-mail, and they have now adjusted the
text on their site, and included a back-link to the article, and a link
to the GFDL text on each page, as follows (with my line wraps):

 From http://www.sciencedaily.com/encyclopedia/astronomy

Note: The
original source of this article
can be found on the main Wikipedia Web site.

This article is licensed under the
GNU Free Documentation License,
which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work
(including additions) remains under this license.

There is also an "edit this page" link which links back to Wikipedia.

-- Neil


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: another wikipedia clone without backref

body:
Neil Harris wrote:

> I have contacted Science Daily by E-mail, and they have now adjusted the
> text on their site, and included a back-link to the article

More often than not, their links are broken links. For example:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/encyclopedia/galileo_galilei
links to
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/galileo_galilei
which redirects to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_galilei
as opposed to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei

Timwi


body:
Andre Engels wrote:

> Still, there is the vandalism fight problem mentioned
> above. So perhaps we should switch off throttling for sysop rollbacks?

The vandalism fight problem, which I didn't even think of :), supports
my claim that a sysop "rollback all" button would be best...


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Perl

body:
Timwi wrote:
> I might add that I have had a rather insightful talk with him about it
> and from it I gained the impression that he has now come to understand
> the inappropriateness of sock puppets and has agreed to stop
> reincarnating. I believe him this, and I also believe that his previous
> actions were - from his point of view - in good faith (I know this is
> difficult to appreciate for some). I have the strong impression that he
> never meant to hurt anyone's feelings or to make anyone feel cheated or
> deceived, and it seems to me that he now understands that this is what
> he has caused, and so he stopped.
>
> I also believe that if he had been granted adminship, he would only have
> applied the privileges in good faith (he certainly never caused any
> damange on the Maori Wikipedia or Wikibooks). Nevertheless, of course,
> in the light of the circumstances, it is difficult to trust his good
> faith, which is why I voted against him in the hope that he wouldn't
> view it as hostility against him.
>
> I hope this shed some light on his motives and intentions; I think he's
> a really nice guy, and he doesn't deserve being badmouthed for his
> actions or being accused of being deliberately disruptive. This doesn't
> mean I'm defending his actions, but I think he just needs a little bit
> of social guidance, if you see what I mean. I am certainly glad that he
> is still around, and I'm sure he will continue to make valuable
> contributions in the future.

Perl is a nice guy who isn't deliberately disruptive. He's just impulsive,
has little understanding of the effect his actions will have on other
people, and is unwilling accept criticism. He might be nice, he might be
sincere, but I'm afraid I don't trust him with adminship.

-- Tim Starling


body:
Timwi wrote:
> Evan Prodromou wrote:
>
> >>>>>>"T" == Timwi  <timwi at gmx.net> writes:
> >
> >     T> No matter what throttling you choose, I will hit the limit at
> >     T> some point, I'm sure...
> >
> > Well, y'know, I'd question whether you could do a sustained 2 edits
> > per second, like the zh flooding bot. If so, you need to get some
> > other hobbies. B-)
>
> Do you know that browsers have the capability of opening several windows
> or (often) tabs?
>
> If I need to add, say, a {{msg:}} to a range of pages, or remove it from
> them, or anything like that, then yes, I will probably hit about 2 edits
> per second.

I've done similar batch jobs, and I haven't been able to hit 2 per second.
Maybe one every 2-3 seconds. But say if you can do two per second. Can you
do 10 per second? 20? 50? 100? We've got to put a limit in somewhere, or
else improved Wikimedia hardware will leave us vulnerable to extremely high
edit rate attacks.

There's no need for legitimate bots to operate at high edit rates. They can
be left running for many hours or even days, in order to complete their
task.

-- Tim Starling


body:
Timwi wrote:

> Neil Harris wrote:
>
>> I have contacted Science Daily by E-mail, and they have now adjusted
>> the text on their site, and included a back-link to the article
>
>
> More often than not, their links are broken links. For example:
> http://www.sciencedaily.com/encyclopedia/galileo_galilei
> links to
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/galileo_galilei
> which redirects to
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_galilei
> as opposed to
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
>
> Timwi
>
Can you give them a quick heads-up about that? They were very polite and
responsive when I contacted them earlier today. They appear to get the
_edit_ link right for that page, so it shouldn't be too much scripting
for them.

They also seem to have a problem with some (all?) year links...

-- Neil


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Use of noncommercial-only images

body:
The article [[Hinduism]] presently uses several "for noncommercial use
only" images.

We had agreed a while ago that we don't want to allow such images. In the
time since, people have tagged all these images with
{{msg:noncommercial}}. Most of them are still in use. It would now be easy
to locate and remove them all.

However, I certainly don't want to get into an edit war about that,
especially when some people continue to insist that such images should be
allowed.

So we need to make this policy official ASAP. An official pronouncement
from Jimbo would be the most effective, failing that, we should hold a
vote (English only, I guess) on whether to allow such images.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: tic at tictric.net

subject: [Wikitech-l] math

body:
I was just looking whether math support is working or not now.

Well it does. Partially :-)

http://glassdoc.org/index.php/Diskussion:Hauptseite#Test_und_Demonstration_der_Darstellung_von_mathematischen_Formeln

Anybody could give me a possible reason why it cannot convert {matrix} for
example?
I mean some it does render, some it doesn't.

Or is it just still in developement?

I'm running that mediawiki 1.2.3 on a woody machine with php 4.3.4 (not
woody of course :-) )

btw that sofware you're developing there's way cool :)

Thank you


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Perl

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
>Anyway, it suprised some of us when Perl requested sysop
>access on Wikibooks, and it was approved with two people
>supporting (Mav and Theresa) and none against. But it's
>only wikibooks, it's no big deal.  Then Mav gave him sysop
>access on meta. While stricly speaking this is  allowed by
>policy, it seems to be against the majority opinion, at least
>on the English Wikipedia.

Since when has the English Wikipedia had control over Meta? Meta is a wiki
which serves as a place for inter-wiki coordination of Wikimedia projects. As
such Meta sysoping policy has been (up to Perl's sysoping at least) that anyone
who is already an admin on any Wikimedia project can be an admin on Meta just
by asking.

I, like you, were not aware of Perl's apparent obsession with status when I
promoted him (nor was I aware of his sock puppets). I was only aware of his
good standing as an editor on the English Wikipedia (having bumped-up against
him on many occasions -- all good experiences) and the fact that he was already
an admin on Wikibooks and the Maori Wikipedia. That should be enough, but I am
a bit concerned by his apparent wish for status (as I was for 172 - but I was
proved wrong in the long run on that count).

So, has Perl knowingly abused any sysop user rights on the Maori Wikipedia,
Wikibooks, or Meta?  Granted he failed to follow the largely unwritten admin
rules for Meta, but an apparent honest mistake is hardly grounds for
de-adminship (unless he does it again after being informed of those rules). His
actions on Meta seemed to be acts in good faith as far as I could see.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online by April 15th
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html


subject: [Wikipedia-l] DOI

body:
On Apr 14, 2004, at 03:02, J.F. de Wolff wrote:
> Hi all.
> Recently I've been using DOIs to refer to publications that are
> available on the internet (e.g. [[Galena officinalis]]). I'm impressed
> with the handling of ISBN book codes. I was wondering if there would
> be support for implementing a similar measure to handle DOIs. Every
> DOI code can be decrypted by prefacing it with the URL
> [http://dx.doi.org/] - the bit after the slash is automically
> interpreted, and the DOI site links through to the resource. Any
> ideas? How do I go about having this implemented?

Could you give some examples?

 From your description it may be sufficient to assign an interwiki
prefix.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] R: Perl

body:
Daniel said

> So, has Perl knowingly abused any sysop user rights
on the Maori Wikipedia,
> Wikibooks, or Meta?  Granted he failed to follow the
largely unwritten admin
> rules for Meta, but an apparent honest mistake is
hardly grounds for
> de-adminship (unless he does it again after being
informed of those rules).
> His actions on Meta seemed to be acts in good faith
as far as I could see.

I am sure Perl acted in good faith. But the rule he
infringed is about the **only** rule written on meta
:-)

What worries me a bit is that even after Perl was
pointed out to that **only** written rule, he goes on
claiming that he respected it.

It goes without saying Mav, that you were totally
correct in making him sysop on meta, since that was
the rule. (and still is for a few days...hurry people
!)

>I agree. Meta is a bit of a craphole and Alexander
did >what he could to
>clean it up. I see no evidence that there was any
>attempt to resolve this
>matter in personal discussion - there is certainly no
>message on his talk
>page.

This was resolved **amply** in personal discussion on
IRC (and a tiny little bit on meta itself) with him
directly. There were numerous witnesses to the
discussion. I explained to Alex the importance of
reading the only ridiculously small and unique rule
governing sysops on meta, and tried to explain him the
unspoken rules as well. I recognise it might have not
been easy for him, since he never really had to follow
any sysop rules, and we know he has it hard to manage
human relationships unfortunately.

However, Alex is now aware of these rules, and I have
been trying to clarify them further. I hope (no, I am
sure) that Alex is now more careful.

>Why does this need to be discussed on a public
mailing >list?

This is discussed on this mailing list, because
**following** these events, mainly due to broken meta
policy, I proposed an update for deletion policy and a
new adminship access policy on meta, and very few
people are giving it any feedback. Actually feedback
is total support. However, I prefer to have it known
here, so to avoid latter hearing I made rules all
alone.

>The policy issues on Meta should be separated in the
>discussion from any
>personal issues. As he notes on his user page, Alex
is >a kid with
>Asperger's syndrome. Don't give him too much of a
hard >time, please. If he
>does something really stupid there are more than
>enough ways to undo it.

Well, it is not because Alex unfortunately has
personal problems, that we should let him do how he
feels like, from using deception to get sysop, to
going against rules. Now, if he is being careful on
meta from now on, it is fine with me that he is sysop.
I already know that sysop does not mean trusted
anyway.

>Furthermore, Meta issues belong on foundation-l, not
>on
>wikipedia-l, as Meta is not just about Wikipedia.

I disagree unfortunately. On the principle I agree,
but practically, who is registered to foundation-l for
now ?

>Regards,

>Erik

__________________________________
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Yahoo! Tax Center - File online by April 15th
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html


from_name: Peter Gervai

body:
On Wed, Apr 14, 2004 at 05:35:10PM +1000, Tim Starling wrote:

> There's about 70 mirrors listed now, so there's probably not much point
> posting to the mailing list every time we find one. [[Wikipedia:Mirrors
> and forks]] has a procedure which you can follow in cases of non-compliance.

Now I know. Thanks.


from_name: J.F. de Wolff

subject: [Wikipedia-l] DOI

body:
Hi all.
Recently I've been using DOIs to refer to publications that are available
on the internet (e.g. [[Galena officinalis]]). I'm impressed with the
handling of ISBN book codes. I was wondering if there would be support for
implementing a similar measure to handle DOIs. Every DOI code can be
decrypted by prefacing it with the URL [http://dx.doi.org/] - the bit after
the slash is automically interpreted, and the DOI site links through to the
resource. Any ideas? How do I go about having this implemented?

Jacob F de Wolff MBBS


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Perl

body:
* Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> [2004-04-14]:
> Daniel-
> > So, has Perl knowingly abused any sysop user rights on the Maori Wikipedia,
> > Wikibooks, or Meta?  Granted he failed to follow the largely unwritten admin
> > rules for Meta, but an apparent honest mistake is hardly grounds for
> > de-adminship (unless he does it again after being informed of those rules).
> > His actions on Meta seemed to be acts in good faith as far as I could see.
>
> I agree. Meta is a bit of a craphole and Alexander did what he could to
> clean it up. I see no evidence that there was any attempt to resolve this
> matter in personal discussion - there is certainly no message on his talk
> page. Why does this need to be discussed on a public mailing list?
>
> The policy issues on Meta should be separated in the discussion from any
> personal issues. As he notes on his user page, Alex is a kid with
> Asperger's syndrome. Don't give him too much of a hard time, please. If he
> does something really stupid there are more than enough ways to undo it.
>

Moreover, taking the time to do such a boring thing as delteing 150
pages which probably deserved being deleted is -even though it may be
too bold- bordering on praisable behaviour. Even more if the rules for
Meta are not written.

I am glad to see him supported, by the way.

Pedro.

> Furthermore, Meta issues belong on foundation-l, not on
> wikipedia-l, as Meta is not just about Wikipedia.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

--
Pedro Fortuny Ayuso: http://pfortuny.sdf-eu.org
Colegio Mayor Pe?afiel, Universidad de Valladolid
C/ Estudios 6, 47005 Valladolid, Spain -->        www.cmpenafiel.org
pfortuny at sdf-eu.org                         Tfn. Nr. 34  983  298277


subject: [Wikipedia-l] R: Perl

body:
Anthere-
> This was resolved **amply** in personal discussion on
> IRC (and a tiny little bit on meta itself) with him
> directly.

Great. Then why did your first message start with "Today, aplank .." and
not with "I have suggested a new .."? Even the subject line of this thread
is now "Perl". I have tried to explain to you before that carrying out
every little dispute in public is a good recipe for escalation. Please,
let's try to separate policy issues from personal issues as much as
reasonably possible. If you need examples, you can always write "a sysop".
If you want to desysop Perl, this is not the right forum to discuss that.

> I disagree unfortunately. On the principle I agree,
> but practically, who is registered to foundation-l for
> now ?

There are currently 90 members on foundation-l, including most of the
individuals who participated in this thread.

http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

That is more than enough for a policy announcement.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Richards,Michael

subject: [Wikitech-l] Internal error on upload of small image file

body:
On our internal MediaWiki (currently 1.1.0) here at Gartner, which we have recently put on a production Linux box, everything works fine except image uploads.

I uploaded several image files onto the development box successfully, and copied them over to the production box, and they display fine.

I am trying to upload a 150K image (nowhere near the hard limit of 1MB) and get the following error:

Internal error
Could not copy file "/tmp/php5ZpRoX" to "/srv/www/htdocs/wiki/upload/3/31/Cyclone.jpg".

These are the current versions of the software:
  * Apache 2.0.48
  * MySQL Ver 11.18 Distrib 3.23.54
  * PHP 4.3.3
  * Mediawiki 1.1.0

LocalSettings.php has uploads enabled i.e.  $wgDisableUploads = false;

I tried it with the Powered by Mediawiki image from the Test Wikipedia and get a similar error:
Could not copy file "/tmp/phpvyu88k" to "/srv/www/htdocs/wiki/upload/d/d4/Poweredby_mediawiki_88x31.png".

Do you know what might be causing this error? It is consistent and repeatable (except of course the tmp filename changes each time).

Thanks,

Michael Richards

PS
This error is now happening on both the production and development boxes, so
  * something must have changed during the migration
  * I can't compare one with the other to determine how to fix it


from_name: Alex Barth

subject: [Wikitech-l] how to change language subsequently?

body:
I installed mediawiki with the web-interface. Now I want to change the
wiki's language subsequently from german to english. Therefore, I changed
the line

$wgLanguageCode = "de";

in LocalSettings.php to

$wgLanguageCode = "en";

no effect.

As far as I understand, the persistence of $wgLang is the troublemaker. I
cannot restart the webserver on the target host, for I don't have the
rights...

any ideas?

thanks in advance,

Alex Barth


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Apr 14, 2004, at 09:18, Richards,Michael wrote:
> On our internal MediaWiki (currently 1.1.0) here at Gartner, which we
> have recently put on a production Linux box, everything works fine
> except image uploads.
>
> I uploaded several image files onto the development box successfully,
> and copied them over to the production box, and they display fine.
>
> I am trying to upload a 150K image (nowhere near the hard limit of
> 1MB) and get the following error:
>
> Internal error
> Could not copy file "/tmp/php5ZpRoX" to
> "/srv/www/htdocs/wiki/upload/3/31/Cyclone.jpg".

Check the ownership and permissions of the upload directory and its
subdirs; they must be writable by the web server (usually user
"apache", or "web" or "www" or "httpd" or ...) It's easy to
accidentally reset the ownership when copying files around.

Are you suppressing PHP errors, or directing them to a log file instead
of web output? If there are bad permissions you should see some error
messages on the mkdir() and move_uploaded_file() calls.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On Apr 14, 2004, at 03:20, Alex Barth wrote:
> I installed mediawiki with the web-interface. Now I want to change the
> wiki's language subsequently from german to english. Therefore, I
> changed
> the line
>
> $wgLanguageCode = "de";
>
> in LocalSettings.php to
>
> $wgLanguageCode = "en";

At install time, the interface messages are imported to the database so
you can customize them. (See
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_namespace ) If you then change
the language, you can do one of two things:

1) Set "$wgUseDatabaseMessages = false;" to disable the support for the
MediaWiki: namespace. This means you'll have to customize things by
hand in Language*.php, will lose your changes at the next upgrade if
you don't carefully merge, and can't use template messages for other
purposes.

2) Run maintenance/rebuildMessages.php to re-import the messages.
You'll have to temporarily take out the maintenance script warning in
your LocalSettings.php to run it, probably. It needs to be run from the
command line. (This'll be cleaner in 1.3.x...)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] DOI

body:
It seems an interwikiprefix would do fine:
[[doi:abcd]] resolves to http://dx.doi.org/abcd

Maybe we should ask if we can get DOIs for each wikipedia article? As
some kind of fallback static URL? I'm not sure who would use it, though,
and if we can get these for free...

Magnus

Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Apr 14, 2004, at 03:02, J.F. de Wolff wrote:
>
>> Hi all.
>> Recently I've been using DOIs to refer to publications that are
>> available on the internet (e.g. [[Galena officinalis]]). I'm
>> impressed with the handling of ISBN book codes. I was wondering if
>> there would be support for implementing a similar measure to handle
>> DOIs. Every DOI code can be decrypted by prefacing it with the URL
>> [http://dx.doi.org/] - the bit after the slash is automically
>> interpreted, and the DOI site links through to the resource. Any
>> ideas? How do I go about having this implemented?
>
>
> Could you give some examples?
>
> From your description it may be sufficient to assign an interwiki prefix.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: vlad at isys-software.de

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Bug in Site statistics?

body:
Hi All,

I have found that Statistics page for uk.wikipedia.org always shows values
$3 and $6 in "sitestatstext" as 0. Is it bug?

Regards,
Gutsul


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Internal error on upload of small image file

body:
On Wednesday, April 14, 2004 12:30 PM Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> Are the image dirs writeable to the apache user (often www-data)?

Duh! Of course. Why didn't I think of that?

The upload directory itself was fine, but half the subdirectories were missing write privileges.

Works fine now. Thanks Gabriel.

Michael


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Peter Gervai wrote:
> http://www.sciencedaily.com/encyclopedia/
>
> no links or reference is visible to wikipedia.

It's been listed since November 2003:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ACopies_of_Wikipedia_content_(high_degree_of_compliance)#ScienceDaily

There's about 70 mirrors listed now, so there's probably not much point
posting to the mailing list every time we find one. [[Wikipedia:Mirrors
and forks]] has a procedure which you can follow in cases of non-compliance.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news

body:
http://www.marketingprofs.com/4/wreden5.asp

RickK

---------------------------------
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Extension syntax vote begins

body:
On Apr 14, 2004, at 16:12, Erik Moeller wrote:
>  The point of these polls is
> to get a reasonably representative *sample* of Wikimedia opinions.

I'd really appreciate it if these straw polls were *labeled* as such,
instead of being given the appearance of official binding referenda.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Wikipedia

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in aromanian

body:
Hi. I would like to establish Wikipedia in aromanian (arm?neashti). The adress would be http://ars.wikipedia.org . As for interface use the partial localized file at LanguageArs.php . All the names of the pages, like Wikipedia:About, Wikipedia:NPOV, the days of the week, the mounths etc. and the preference page were translated into arm?neashti. As fo the logo, you have it at this adress: http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/2/28/Logo-wiki-ars.png

Thank you!

---------------------------------
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from_name: Timwi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/RK

body:
RolyPhotography at aol.com wrote:

> 2nd request
> please remove my name off this list

You need to do that yourself. See link below.

> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

body:
On Wed, 14 Apr 2004 12:18:57 -0400, Richards,Michael wrote:

> This error is now happening on both the production and development boxes, so
>   * something must have changed during the migration
>   * I can't compare one with the other to determine how to fix it

Are the image dirs writeable to the apache user (often www-data)?

--
Gabriel Wicke


body:
Neil Harris wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> Neil Harris wrote:
>>
>>> I have contacted Science Daily by E-mail, and they have now adjusted
>>> the text on their site, and included a back-link to the article
>>
>> More often than not, their links are broken links. For example:
>> http://www.sciencedaily.com/encyclopedia/galileo_galilei
>> links to
>> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/galileo_galilei
>> which redirects to
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_galilei
>> as opposed to
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
>
> Can you give them a quick heads-up about that?

Yeah, I have. They've fixed the capitalisation issue.


from_name: David Friedland

subject: [Wikitech-l] WAP interface (was Re: gopher-support for Apache2 ...)

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> Gopher ? Seriously ? I will love that option, just to get back 10+ years
> later.
>
> I think most mobil phone use WAP ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAP ) and I
> dont think they are going to support the 1991 gopher protocol. If it's
> every implemented, it will really be just for geeks ...

I agree with everyone else that trying to reinvigorate the gopher
protocal is as good an idea as bringing back 8-tracks. I do remember
once downloading a 3-D gopher client in 1995, where you could view the
gopher world in three dimensions. I think it was called "GopherVR". It
was supposed to be some kind of quantum leap in information user
interfaces, and was going to keep the protocol from dying (snicker).

However, a WAP interface to the Wikipedia---I could definitely see using
that. Does anyone know what is involved in making WAP interfaces? I
could definitely see making a read-only interface to looking up
information... as for editing via mobile phone, I think I'd rather stick
knitting needles into my eyes.

> Moreover, the [[Gopher]] en articles use ~ 13 KB wich might be compressed
> using the gzip option that mobil phone browser *might* support. I am not
> aware of gopher browser supporting compression. So that's non-sen ;)

-- David


subject: [Wikipedia-l] DOI

body:
Thanks, Brion and Magnus, for feedback on the DOI proposal. An interwiki
prefix might be sufficient when it comes to quoting DOI-enabled resources.
Who do I approach to take this matter further? I.e. who's in charge of
interwiki settings?

JFW


body:
On Apr 14, 2004, at 19:02, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Brion-
>> I'd really appreciate it if these straw polls were *labeled* as such,
>> instead of being given the appearance of official binding referenda.
>
> That would be misleading. This vote is as binding as any such technical
> vote is going to get. If the developers see profound reasons not to
> implement the vote result, they may of course decide not to do so;
> however, these should be good reasons, there should be developer
> consensus
> about them, and they should be explained to the voters.

Please reconcile the above with "The point of these polls is to get a
reasonably representative *sample* of Wikimedia opinions."

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Mikhail Capone

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikitech-l list archive not getting gzipped

body:
I know it's only a few megabytes, but I just thought I'd point out that
for three months the list hasn't been getting compressed. Probably some
config file that was changed around that date, I'm not familiar with the
list server software.

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/

I know that hard-drive space has been very tight lately...
--
Mikhail / http://MikeCapone.blogspot.com


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Bjorn-
>> Voting deadline is April 12, 2004, 20:00 UTC. Please distribute this
>> announcement to your local projects. This is not only relevant to
>> Wikipedia but to all Wikimedia projects.

> Personally, I have no opinion on what syntax is preferable. But it
> annoys me that at the time I read this message (April 15) the deadline
> has already passed.

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
- Douglas Adams

No matter what deadline you choose there will always people who miss it,
particularly in the small Wikimedia projects which only have a handful of
active contributors. We don't need to reach every single one of them, we
need to get a reasonably representative sample of Wikimedia membership.

I personally think the poll went far too long, especially as it was clear
after a couple of days which option would win. The point of these polls is
to get a reasonably representative *sample* of Wikimedia opinions. But
knowing you guys, I picked a very generous deadline so that people
wouldn't complain about. I should have known better than that.

Oh well, next time it's back to 72 hours then. ;-)

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Bjorn Lindqvist

body:
> Voting deadline is April 12, 2004, 20:00 UTC. Please distribute this
> announcement to your local projects. This is not only relevant to
> Wikipedia but to all Wikimedia projects.

Personally, I have no opinion on what syntax is preferable. But it
annoys me that at the time I read this message (April 15) the deadline
has already passed. At Easter you do other stuff and so on. I just
think that six days are not enough to hold a fair vote. God managed to
create a world in six days, but holding an international vote that
potentially effect all wikipedians in that time? No way.

So is it to much to ask for that very important votes (read the quoted
text) is given atleast one month of time? There's no hurry.

BL


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Aromanian

body:
Please create Wikipedia (Uichipedia) in aromanian (arm?neashti), at http://ars.wikipedia.org . I've partially translated the language file at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/LanguageArs.php . In the language file, all the names of the pages, the name of the days and mounths and the preferences page were translated, and the rest of the interface is in romanian, untill aromanian wikipedia will be online, so that other arm?neashti speakers can work on translating it. The logo can be found here: http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/2/28/Logo-wiki-ars.png . I stored some first articles on my computer, the Main Page (Prota padzin?) too.

Thank you!

---------------------------------
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body:
On Apr 14, 2004, at 22:24, Arvind Narayanan wrote:
> Brion, this looks like hair splitting to me. Since it isn't possible
> to have a poll in which every single wikipedian casts their vote, what
> Eric meant was that the poll should be comprehensive enough as to leave
> no reasonable doubt that as to which option would be the winner if
> everyone who had an opinion did express it. In this respect the poll
> was entirely satisfactory. What's the problem?

The difference is authority of the outcome, and that difference is
relevant to how the process is presented and handled. It's the
difference between an informative survey, which gives developers some
data points to work into our decisions on how to implement the
software, and a formal election which determines what the developers
must do (unless there are "profound reasons").

Erik's votes are shams. <strawman>Can I just unilaterally *call a vote*
and declare the winner to be president of [insert country here]? You
don't think the winner should be president? Well, you'd better have a
*profound reason* why he's not good enough!</strawman>

A survey, an informative straw poll to gauge preference and relative
interest is fine, but *treat it as such*. Don't call it a *vote* with a
*deadline* yadda yadda. For goodness' sakes, Erik sent the announcement
of this little poll to the Wikimedia Foundation list -- the list that
has replaced wikilegal-l.

By not being honest about the real nature of these surveys (that they
are just straw polls which will either be ignored completely or will
just be a footnote to the implementation), a lot of people get worked
up that they "missed the vote" or that the offered choices weren't fair
or that yadda yadda. Self-selected poll responses are not going to give
accurate samples, either... Software development is not driven by
votes; real people have to do real work.

Erik, if you really do mean these polls to be informal surveys to
gather ideas and get a general sense of what's well-liked, please do
something about the way you present them because they *look* like
official votes which will formally bind the entire development team
under the sole authority of your having declared there to be a vote.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: gopher-support for Apache2 ...

body:
On Fri, 9 Apr 2004 15:26:31 +0000 (UTC), Walter Vermeir wrote:

> Mathias Schindler <neubau at ...> writes:
>> Is there any group which might find a gopher-wikipedia useful, such as
>> people without these great DSL modems and flat rate access? Any PC which
>
> I would like it if there would be a gopher-Wikipedia. It would be the biggest
> gopher site ever I think. Can you access gopher whit a handheld pc or a
> gprs/umts-phone?
>
> Walter

Gopher ? Seriously ? I will love that option, just to get back 10+ years
later.

I think most mobil phone use WAP ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAP ) and I
dont think they are going to support the 1991 gopher protocol. If it's
every implemented, it will really be just for geeks ...

Moreover, the [[Gopher]] en articles use ~ 13 KB wich might be compressed
using the gzip option that mobil phone browser *might* support. I am not
aware of gopher browser supporting compression. So that's non-sen ;)

--
Ashar Voultoiz
http://fr.wikipedia.org/Utilisateur:Hashar


body:
On Apr 15, 2004, at 02:11, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Brion-
>> Erik's votes are shams.
>
> Could you point to a single vote that isn't, in your opinion, a "sham"?

On the wiki? Probably not. ;)

Anyway, I apologize for venting, but I would continue to argue that the
way these polls are presented makes them seem more official, binding,
or important than they really are (or, I think, than you intend them to
be), and that creates needless friction over the legitimacy of votes
that are really just informal opinion surveys that are informative, not
binding.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Perl

body:
Tim-
> Like I said before, I want Perl desysopped on meta. I'm not too keen on
> unilateral action, so it's not something that can be done with a private
> discussion.

True. But either mailing list is the wrong place for that. If you want a
desysop discussion, the place where you contend sysop status is the right
place to discuss that, in this case, Meta-Wiki.

> Indeed, if you read up on AS, you find that the disorder only goes a
> small way towards explaining Perl's behaviour.

Maybe so, maybe not. This is not a moral discussion (if you want to make
it one, I'll begin by contending the concepts of good and evil). The
question is whether Alex can act within our policies. Given how many
chances we gave Lir, I believe we should give him another chance to do so.

Regards,

Erik


body:
Brion-
> I'd really appreciate it if these straw polls were *labeled* as such,
> instead of being given the appearance of official binding referenda.

That would be misleading. This vote is as binding as any such technical
vote is going to get. If the developers see profound reasons not to
implement the vote result, they may of course decide not to do so;
however, these should be good reasons, there should be developer consensus
about them, and they should be explained to the voters.

Regards,

Erik


body:
Brion-
> Please reconcile the above with "The point of these polls is to get a
> reasonably representative *sample* of Wikimedia opinions."

Please reconcile the fact that only 50% of the American population voted
for either George Bush or Al Gore with the numbnut that is currently in
office.

Every vote only draws from interested individuals. In our case, that will
hopefully make for better results, as the people not interested in highly
technical and insubstantial matters are also the ones who are unlikely to
have an informed opinion. Furthermore, a less significant vote needs a
lower minimum turnout. We don't need to ask 1000 people when we get a
reasonably clear picture from asking 100 people. What reasonably clear is
depends on the context.

For the comparatively insignificant matter of whether we should type
<math>2 + 2 = 4</math> or, say, >>>>(XXXX>>>|2+2=4|<<<XXXX)<<<<, it is
arguable that we already wasted far too much time getting an unreasonably
*large* sample of community opinion, especially with one option clearly
dominating all others (20 votes for my proposal, 1 vote for the 2nd place
proposal, all others negative). The only reason I started a poll at all is
that people kept bringing up all kinds of wacky ideas and we needed to
come to a solution.

Who decides what is an important matter that deserves a Wikimedia-wide
poll with announcements on the Main Pages and a personal message on each
user talk page, and what can be done simply by announcing it to the
mailing list and Wikimedia News, or maybe just a talk page? Ultimately,
whoever sets up the poll, but also those who watch them do so. If you had
felt the need to bring this to the attention of a larger group of people,
you had ample opportunity to do so.

The difference between such a poll and a straw poll is that a straw poll
is entirely unannounced, has no deadline, no prior discussion phase, no
defined outcome and a very low, if any, minimum turnout. Straw polls
answer the question: Are we anywhere close to consensus? They do nothing
else. The Extension Syntax vote was *not* a straw poll by any reasonable
definition.

Of course, if people just listened to me we wouldn't need any stupid
polls.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Perl

body:
* Erik Moeller
<erik_moeller-Mmb7MZpHnFY at public.gmane.org>
[2004-04-15]:

> Tim-

(...)

> > Indeed, if you read up on AS, you find that the
disorder only goes a
> > small way towards explaining Perl's behaviour.

>
> Maybe so, maybe not. This is not a moral discussion
(if you want to make
> it one, I'll begin by contending the concepts of
good and evil). The
> question is whether Alex can act within our
policies. Given how many
> chances we gave Lir, I believe we should give him
another chance to do so.
>

>But has Perl been told his behaviour is astoundingly
>counter-politic? I cannot see anything of the sort in
>his talk page either in WP or in Meta.

>Pedro.

Hi Pedro. Yes, he was told on irc. I hope my
explanations were clear enough. If not, I suppose my
level of conviction could not escape him :-(

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online by April 15th
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html


body:
Brion-
> Erik's votes are shams.

Could you point to a single vote that isn't, in your opinion, a "sham"?

Regards,

Erik


body:
Brion-
> Anyway, I apologize for venting, but I would continue to argue that the
> way these polls are presented makes them seem more official, binding,
> or important than they really are (or, I think, than you intend them to
> be)

Possible. Votes on Wikipedia are typically about what people *should not*
do and never about what they *must* do. I thought that it was clear to
everyone that we cannot vote on what volunteers must do. If that is not
so, maybe we need to clarify it next time.

However, the group of developers is not simply one person.
They are bound by a consensus process, and that process is in turn
informed by prior community votes. If we, as developers, decide in
consensus that the community decision is bogus, then it will of course not
be implemented. However, I did my best to moderate the poll beforehand to
filter out options that were clearly not useful from a technical POV.

So if your committed a patch tomorrow to use an extension syntax
different from the one we voted on, I would expect you to explain
yourself, and if I disagree with it, I would revert the change or, if the
option is sufficiently different from the previous ones, start a new vote.

This developer/user distinction is less applicable, or not applicable,
where the burden on the developer is minimal or non-existent (turn off
that option, set up that logo, implement that policy). But again, anyone
could refuse to do anything, the problems would begin when they do
something that goes directly against the result of a reasonably
representative vote without reaching consensus among all relevant
participants to do so.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Pedro Fortuny

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Perl

body:
* Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> [2004-04-15]:
> Tim-
(...)
> > Indeed, if you read up on AS, you find that the disorder only goes a
> > small way towards explaining Perl's behaviour.
>
> Maybe so, maybe not. This is not a moral discussion (if you want to make
> it one, I'll begin by contending the concepts of good and evil). The
> question is whether Alex can act within our policies. Given how many
> chances we gave Lir, I believe we should give him another chance to do so.
>

But has Perl been told his behaviour is astoundingly counter-politic? I
cannot see anything of the sort in his talk page either in WP or in Meta.

Pedro.

> Regards,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

--
Pedro Fortuny Ayuso: http://pfortuny.sdf-eu.org
Colegio Mayor Pe?afiel, Universidad de Valladolid
C/ Estudios 6, 47005 Valladolid, Spain -->        www.cmpenafiel.org
pfortuny at sdf-eu.org                         Tfn. Nr. 34  983  298277


from_name: Götz Hoffart

subject:
[Wikitech-l] WAP interface (was Re: gopher-support for Apache2
	...)

body:
Am 15.04.2004 um 02:58 schrieb David Friedland:

> I do remember once downloading a 3-D gopher client in 1995, where you
> could view the gopher world in three dimensions. I think it was called
> "GopherVR".

TurboGopher 3D for the Macintosh.

> However, a WAP interface to the Wikipedia---I could definitely see
> using that.

At least here in Europe WAP is dying. Major companies don't offer WAP
content any longer. It is replaced by HTML pages. Mobile phone's
displays get bigger and more colorful and are not longer handicapped by
slow GSM connections, HSCSD and GPRS is here, UMTS and WLAN are coming
soon. PDAs and Cellulars are interwoven.

In addition I can't think of reading
<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%fcchenschelle> on a WAP display with 4
lines by 20 chars of text.

I think the Wiki project will gain more through accessible and
structured HTML. This is the future.

Regards
G?tz