subject: [Foundation-l] (no subject)

body:
Hi,

I've been working on the foundation wiki for three days now, and I wrote
two comments on the local Babel :
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Babel#Miscellaneous

Summing it up, it's about cleaning up the wiki using an inventory I
built (I need comments on its entries) and about changes in the look 'n
feel. I think one can answer on my talk page on Meta[1], or on any Meta
page that would be convenient for such a discussion[2].

I noticed this would-be discussion to several people, but got a few
feedback only (both Wikimania and "the lost page on the lost wiki" can't
help :)), so Angela advised me to send an email to foundation-l.

Thank you!
jd / Meanos

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Meanos
[2] say, http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_site_feedback or
a brand new subpage of it

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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Article bragging (was: Re: en: well on the way to
	... 2 million!)

body:
On 10/08/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/9/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > computer terminology guide - hence why the [[FOLDOC]] maintainer saw
> > it and promptly wondered whether he should continue with FOLDOC at
> > all.

> Did he decide to continue? I have to agree, it does seem kind of
> pointless: Wikipedia is GFDL as well, contains many of the sources
> FOLDOC draws upon, has inherently better technical facilities (not
> just in linking to fuller encyclopedic entries on terms but in
> general), better articles etc.

Someone wrote to him asking for permission to use his stuff in
Wikipedia, and he happily released it all under GFDL just for us :-D

FOLDOC has some careless copyright violations in it - definitions
cut'n'pasted from guidebooks and so forth - that I've found when
adapting FOLDOC material for Wikipedia. (I can't remember what
entries.) It allowed public contributions, so some people were
careless. Something to watch for.

It would be an interesting thing to do to recompile FOLDOC from Wikipedia ;-)

> But I've always wondered something about FOLDOC; does its name come
> from the foldr and foldl operators in functional languages?

Free On-Line Dictionary Of Computing.

> Shock! Quelle horreur! We don't have [[foldl]] or [[foldr]]!

You know what to do!

- d.


from_name: NSLE (Wikipedia)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Guardian article about Wikipedia

body:
Again, delighted to still be subscribed. A bit worried about the notion of
"voting", then again, the press don't have the proper term for it (hell,
Wikipedia still doesn't. It's supposed to be "discussion", last I checked
:P).

--NSLE

On 8/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/9/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/8/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Guardian article about Wikipedia.
> > > http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1840193,00.html
> >
> > Does anyone really call it "wiki-crack"?
>
> Yeah, the Guardian does.
>
> (that was a wikiwisecrack)
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> 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: M. Queen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Another Israeli apartheid RFD

body:
I'm very disappointed by the new Israeli apartheid AFD at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Allegations_of_Israeli_apartheid

Whether we like it or not "Israeli apartheid" is a concept that is discussed
and debated in scholarly books and articles and within Israeli society
itself. However, it is a disagreeable concept and it's understandable that
people who support Israel would want to rubbish it and delete it.

It will be a sad day for wikipedia if the article is deleted, however. We
have articles on many contestable concepts but our task is not to censor but
to make sure the articles are well written, balanced, NPOV and sourced.

There is a systemic bias in WIkipedia on certain subjects. The Middle East
is one of them because there are more fluent English speaking Israelis and
Jews than there are fluent English speaking Arabs, Palestinians and Muslims.
As a result, we have more editors who are pro-Isreal than pro-Palestianian
and more admins who are on one side of the question. This is probably biased
in the other way on the Arabic wikipedia and probably relatively balanced on
other language wikipedias but in English it's a problem that we have to come
to grips with if we are to maintain our neutrality and our credibility.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: HappyDog

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Role of MediaWiki.org (was 'Interesting behaviour of
	"ISBN" magic word')

body:
From: "Steve Bennett" <stevage at gmail.com>
> On 8/9/06, HappyDog <wikilist at kennel17.co.uk> wrote:
> > True - the documentation is in quite a state at the moment.  There is a
move
> > to sort out the Mediawiki docs, and to consolidate everything at
> > mediawiki.org, but it is a slow process and so far there are not many
people
> > participating.  Any help is always appreciated, so the short answer is
yes -
> > you can directly edit those pages, and it would be appreciated.
>
> Ok, so what's the current situation, and what's the goal? All
> mediawiki doc should be at mediawiki.org? What's where atm?
>

Yes, in the long term.  There is a project aimed at transferring content
about the software from meta to MW, making MW a comprehensive resource for
all information about the software (at least, all information provided by
the foundation).  This is located at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:MetaProject_to_transfer_content_to_Media
Wiki.org, however there has been little action regarding this yet and there
are still a lot of things to be worked out before a proper move can be
undertaken.

Additionally, there are issues that need resolving about the structure of
MW.org, which I have added to a new page at
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Current_issues.

So, in short, SOME documentation is at meta, SOME documentation is at
MW.org, and there are various other places where bits of useful information
have been scattered.  Additionally, there is currently little consistency
about where within either site (and particularly at MW) this information is
located and how it is structured...

A bit of a mess, really!

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


from_name: Ligulem

subject: [Wikitech-l] Comprehensive template expansion size limit

body:
I do have some related (possibly silly) questions/thoughts:

What is (was?) the main intention of the *subst* feature of MediaWiki
templates?

Is subst meant to help reduce parse time or is subst intended as an
editorial tool?

Currently, the user input containing the subst keyword is lost when the
user saves a page. Are there any plans/intentions/ideas to store this
input somewhere?

Would it be feasible to have a compilation like model for some templates
(something like an expanded subst mechanism)? Could/should we store
pages (revisions?) at the "templates expanded" level?

As an observation, the current template system in some aspects violates
the revertability paradigm of MediaWiki, as all article revisions (not
only the newest) are affected by changes in an included template.

--Ligulem


list: foundation-l

from_name: Mark Evans

subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures

body:
I assume Garion96 & Larberg were speaking of the album covers Jimbo
mentioned in his post. If not, please let us know.
I'm no expert about copyright law, but I don't see how it would be possible
for a record company to give us such a 'free' image without compromising the
integrity of their copyright. All that they would be able to give us would
be an alternative image that they had no interest in protecting, which
wouldn't be useful to us. Maybe we could get free photos of bands from Sony,
but that amounts to the publicity photos mentioned earlier. I doubt that
Time Warner or UMG would give us a suitable substitute for the album
cover for Nirvana's Nevermind.

On Aug 9, 2006, at 6:45 PM, Christopher Larberg wrote:

On Wed, 2006-08-09 at 23:43 +0200, Garion96 wrote:
Would it be a good idea if the foundation would ask for 'free' images from
big record companies (like Sony music entertainment), actor agencies etc. I
know any editor can do this, but it would definitely have a greater
chance of success if it is coming from the foundation.

Just to interject here, I think it's worth a shot (if someone at the
Foundation is willing to do it), but I'd be willing to bet that most of
those publicity photos are only offered under non-free licenses (limited
redistribution, no derivative works, etc.). I still think it wouldn't
hurt to at least try, though.
--
Christopher Larberg [[w:en:User:Slowking Man]]
<christopherlarberg at gmail.com>
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Virgil Ierubino

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Save Draft button

body:
Clarifying this idea in the light of responses, and further suggestions:

As this is a button beneath the edit box it would have to be fully, properly
written into the PHP that is MediaWiki - i.e. this function would arrive
with a new version of the software. So small additions to the framework that
make it work seem okay to me.

The button only appears for a logged in user. When you click it, the page
saves to "User:Example/Pagename" rather than "Pagename".

To streamline this Drafts system, it could also then save into the user
subpage a magic word like "__DRAFT__" which, on any page, forces the
appearance of a new tab/toolbox option like "Finalise".

Clicking Finalise is then equivalent to having done all three of these at
once:
 * Editing the original page
 * Pasting the new drafted text into the edit box
 * Clicking "Show changes" to display a diff

In the absence of this "Finalise" button and/or "__DRAFT__" magic word, the
original "Save Draft" button could simply prepend the saved user subpage
with automatic links to edit and diff the original article (with exact text
specified in a System Message).

Or in the simplest incarnation, "Save Draft" just saves to a user subpage
and that's it.

Whatever the case, this function would be infinitely useful because edits
are often longer than a single session, but not necessarily longer than the
time between revisions of an article. It would simply automate what a lot of
people already do anyway (i.e. end up working offline), and would encourage
more high-quality focused work on articles.


list: commons-l

from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [Commons-l] Stats on deletion

body:
Part of being a Wikipedia user is that your actions are public.  Part
of being a Wikipedia administrator - a voluntary position nobody is
obliged to accept or keep - is public oversight.

I find it most bizarre that you suddenly have an issue with this, and
suggest - since it is unlikely to change - that you either accept it
or leave the project, bluntly.

-Matt


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Emergency on Wiktionary

body:
On 8/9/06, Wildrick Steele <wildrick.steele at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually not. There weren't any stewards around and the perpetrator remained
> sysopped for a full day, doing hundreds of random blocks and unblocks. We
> had to wait for developer intervention to remove the flag in the database.
> Quite a nonperformance for the otherwise well-functioning steward team.
> We'll take Wikimania as a good excuse :-)

Wikimania may have been part of the problem. Also, the request at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_permissions#Removal_of_access
seems to have been lost amongst the noise of dozens of other requests,
which for some reason, no longer get immediately archived, so it's not
easy to see whether or not there are outstanding requests. Perhaps
moving urgent requests to a separate section at the top would help in
future. There is a (not-very-active) IRC channel at
#wikimedia-stewards, but the #wikimedia channel is often a better
place to find a steward in an emergency. I don't know whether either
of these channels were tried before finding a developer.

This might just be a sign that new steward elections are required.

Angela.


subject: [Foundation-l] Emergency on Wiktionary


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Comprehensive template expansion size limit

body:
I have in my working copy a set of changes introducing a comprehensive
template expansion size limit. The limit is configurable (by
$wgMaxArticleSize), and will probably be set to 1 MB on Wikimedia. This
prevents a number of DoS vulnerabilities, such as the exponential argument
substitution attack that we've known about for some time.

The output size of template expansion has long been limited to 1MB, limiting
several attacks. But it was possible to evade this limit by forcing the
parser to parse a large chunk of text, and then throwing away the result,
say by putting it into an unused template parameter. The new behaviour is to
limit both the pre-expansion size and the post-expansion size.

This may break some articles, that's why I'm posting this to wikipedia-l. In
particular, it will break articles which use {{#switch}} or similar
constructs to extract many small fragments of text from large
pseudo-databases. This practice is extremely inefficient, and I'd very much
like to see it discontinued on the editorial level. This feature will
probably only break the most flagrant cases, where article parse times were
in the tens of seconds. I'm sure the other developers would agree -- we
would be very grateful if the remaining cases could be dealt with by policy,
as much as possible. I've been having a discussion with some Wikipedians
along these lines at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:TransLink_(South_East_Queensland)_services

When the limit is hit, there will be HTML comments in the parser output
indicating the problem. For all articles which use more than 1KB of
templates, there will be an HTML comment at the bottom of the parser output
showing how close the article is to the size limit. This allows technically
capable users to monitor and optimise the expansion size of their templates.

At this stage I would like to invite comments. The we can move forward to a
trial, perhaps in a few days, if there are no objections.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Norman Technologies AfD

body:
On 8/10/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> What I see here is a double standard: there's  a tiny wiff of a
> problem and a user is indef banned, while vastly worse problems like
> vandals and copyright violators at least get the courtesy of the
> {{test}} templates.

Then let's not have a double standard, but a general mechanism to
submit new articles where conflicts of interest may exist for
community review prior to publication, and ask editors (including
yourself) to follow that process. Here's a quick proposal:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflicts_of_interest

Erik


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject:
[WikiEN-l] FYI/FYA: Wikipedia,
	proudly supporting the war on terrorism

body:
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,20080119%5E15318%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html

A DETECTIVE involved in the prosecution of 13 accused terrorists has
told a court he gleaned much of his knowledge of terrorism from the
internet and admits he's no expert on the subject.

"The witness said he had used internet resources like Google and
Wikipedia to research terrorism and Muslim extremists."

In order to maintain the NPOV, we certainly need an islamic terrorist
to testify that he used Wikipedia for his evil purposes, right?


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Break out links-How are they done?

body:
On 8/10/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> I missed where we established how an average user (IE or unextended
> Firefox, say, with default settings) is supposed to a) determine in
> advance that a link will open in a new window/tab and b) override the
> behavior and open it in the same window/tab.  I can do the latter via
> a Firefox extension, but even that requires two clicks plus picking an
> option out of a context menu rather than just middle-clicking.

Ok, you win.

Steve


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Using a template to set some character formatting
	to several blocks of text

body:
On 8/10/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/9/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Even using divs and spans didn't work.
>
> It works for me.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Simetrical/Sandbox&oldid=68707581

But not using a template. If you do it this way:
 {{template|
*foo {{template2}}
}}

the parsing borks at the nested template.

If you do it this way:

Define {{opendiv}} as <div style="...">
Define {{closediv}} as </div>

and then:
{{opendiv}}
*foo {{template2}}
{{closediv}}

then MediaWiki automatically closes the div tag for you, and it doesn't work.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Norman Technologies AfD

body:
On 10/08/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/10/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:

> > What I see here is a double standard: there's  a tiny wiff of a
> > problem and a user is indef banned, while vastly worse problems like
> > vandals and copyright violators at least get the courtesy of the
> > {{test}} templates.

> Then let's not have a double standard, but a general mechanism to
> submit new articles where conflicts of interest may exist for
> community review prior to publication, and ask editors (including
> yourself) to follow that process. Here's a quick proposal:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflicts_of_interest

Or they could, um, note it on the talk page? Rather than put yet
another procedure in place which will have the effect of "why bother."
Unless that's the purpose.

- d.


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Willy on Wheels and ISP Reporting Changes

body:
Aphaia wrote:

>I ask anyone on the project, because Mr. Merkey is now not a part of
>our community as far as I know, please ignore this off topic thread
>and not reply you to save other editors' time.
>
>
I am not a part of **YOUR** restricted community (Essjay and friends),
but I am part of the greater
wikipedia community and the Wikipedia Native American Community. Like it
or not, I am not going away,
I have resources and a Wiki appliance company, and I am promoting
wikipedia, just not the same way you
are.

>Or please explain what is relevant to our project and the organization
>which supports it.
>
>
I discussed it with Fred Bauder on the phone yesterday and I'll let Fred
handle these
community based issues with the Foundation. Open Forums are just that.
The Community
never banned me from anywhere -- it was the Board of Trustees afraid I
was going to take
some form of legal action. The legal action got resolved. To be honest,
I get tired of
the constant backpedaling and posturing of folks and I asked Fred to
interface.

It will just be easier this way.

Cheers,

Jeff

>Please,
>
>
>On 8/8/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Fred Bauder wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>I chickened out when I connected to those. But let's keep talking
>>>>about them.
>>>>
>>>>Fred
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Fred,
>>
>>I checked on arrangements and if the foundation is interested in an
>>appliance, I will pick up the costs for it and
>>donate it to the Foundation at no cost. My contribution to Wikimedia
>>this year if they wish to use it.
>>
>>Jeff
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>


from_name: maru dubshinki

body:
On 8/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Would you rather it was FODOC? :)
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax

I'd rather it was FDC, so that way it is a curse word - "FDC it!" "FDC
you, man."

~maru


subject: [WikiEN-l] Norman Technologies AfD

body:
On 10/08/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Or they could, um, note it on the talk page? Rather than put yet
> > another procedure in place which will have the effect of "why bother."
> > Unless that's the purpose.

> On what talk page? This is for articles which do not yet exist. How
> would you bring those to the attention of the community without
> posting them directly?

Write the article and note involvement on the talk page. I've done
this for articles where I have some link to the references. This lets
the article stand if it's OK and there's a flag on the talk page for
an NPOV check.

- d.


from_name: Patrick-Emil Zörner

subject: [Commons-l] Stats on deletion

body:
--- Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> schrieb:

> Who's in the top 10? :)
>
>
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kotepho/admin#Ordered_list_of_total_deletions
>
> Maybe we should award monthly prizes to those who (a) increase their
> ranking by the most places, (b) perform the most deletions and (c)
> have the largest increase on their previous month's performance.

Maybe we should delete this page because it is a vast intrusion into
every admins private life. Is WM "Big Brother"? Maybe you should
install a camera and monitor my doings? I do not even know if the
stuff he does is legal.

> Then again, perhaps it's not a good idea to encourage such
> single-minded obsessiveness. :)

Acknowledge.

> Disclaimer: As Fred wisely noted, quality != quantity. Pissing many
> people off is still not a good idea. Reducing large backlogs is,
> though. Walk a fine line........

see above.

___________________________________________________________
Der fr?he Vogel f?ngt den Wurm. Hier gelangen Sie zum neuen Yahoo! Mail: http://mail.yahoo.de


subject: [Commons-l] Stats on deletion

body:
forgot to say

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikide-l/2006-July/017614.html

similar case.

Paddy

--- Patrick-Emil Z?rner <paddyez at yahoo.de> schrieb:

>
> --- Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> schrieb:
>
> > Who's in the top 10? :)
> >
> >
>
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kotepho/admin#Ordered_list_of_total_deletions
> >
> > Maybe we should award monthly prizes to those who (a) increase
> their
> > ranking by the most places, (b) perform the most deletions and (c)
> > have the largest increase on their previous month's performance.
>
> Maybe we should delete this page because it is a vast intrusion into
> every admins private life. Is WM "Big Brother"? Maybe you should
> install a camera and monitor my doings? I do not even know if the
> stuff he does is legal.
>
> > Then again, perhaps it's not a good idea to encourage such
> > single-minded obsessiveness. :)
>
> Acknowledge.
>
> > Disclaimer: As Fred wisely noted, quality != quantity. Pissing
> many
> > people off is still not a good idea. Reducing large backlogs is,
> > though. Walk a fine line........
>
> see above.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________
> Der fr?he Vogel f?ngt den Wurm. Hier gelangen Sie zum neuen Yahoo!
> Mail: http://mail.yahoo.de
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>

___________________________________________________________
Telefonate ohne weitere Kosten vom PC zum PC: http://messenger.yahoo.de


subject: [WikiEN-l] Challenge: explain NPOV in a sentence.

body:
On 8/9/06, Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:
> Since your statement appears to imply that you want
> constructive suggestions, here's one.
>
> Give WP:NPOV a "facts override" clause. That is,
> if something is a simple and verifiable fact, npov is
> not meant to relativate it when a majority of people
> are misinformed or simply don't like the information.

Sounds dangerous. But can you explain it in a bit more detail? My
concern is that most of the time when people think that NPOV already
works that way, it's because they want to objectively define truth at
Wikipedia or something. Leading to "X said XX. Y said YY. But actually
they're both wrong, the TRUTH is Z!"

I think we could go so far as to give more weight to scientific
opinions, but "facts override" just sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Steve


body:
On 8/9/06, Violet/Riga <violetriga at gmail.com> wrote:
> "You're never alone with a
> Strand<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27re_never_alone_with_a_Strand>",
> Cow fighting <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_fighting>, and Conger
> cuddling <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conger_cuddling>.

Classic!

Steve


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 8/9/06, Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Aug 2006 17:52:50 -0400
> "The Cunctator" <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Verifiability flows from evidence.
>
> Right right - but you say WP would have
> a bias towards verifiable information. That
> is just wrong - WP has not a bias towards
> verifiable information, but towards mainstream
> ignorance.

I meant as WP is intended, not necessarily in practice. However,
principles like citing sources and forbidding original research do
point articles in the direction of verifiable information.

The bias toward verifiable information may be weak, but it's there.


subject: [Commons-l] Stats on deletion

body:
--- Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> schrieb:

> What the hell?? Admin actions on-wiki are part of their private
> life???

Your girlfriend/wife, boyfriend/husband or employer might find exactly
this data without going through Special:Log. Easily done an mighty
disturbing.

> Paddy, you might be disturbed to learn of the existence of
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Log ... from which all of
> this data could be obtained.

I know that this exists but sorting data and making it transperent is
what disturbs me.

BTW see last post.

greetings

Paddy

___________________________________________________________
Der fr?he Vogel f?ngt den Wurm. Hier gelangen Sie zum neuen Yahoo! Mail: http://mail.yahoo.de


subject: [WikiEN-l] MyWikiBiz

body:
On 8/9/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> The big problem with paid editing on wikipedia is NOT that someone is
> getting paid to write, but rather that this causes a rather obvious
> conflict of interest and appearance of impropriety.  This was my
> problem, and they immediately saw why this was not in our interest or
> theirs.

I'm not sure why conflict of interest is a problem here. When someone
sits down to write an article about their own religion, there's a
conflict of interest. When they write about circumcision because they
were HORRIBLY EMOTIONALLY SCARRED as a baby, there's a conflict of
interest. Hell, when they realise that their favourite Pok?mon somehow
escaped a mention in Wikipedia, we don't expect them to write a
neutral, unbiased piece. We might like it, but we don't expect it.

Somehow Wikipedia survives on all of his "conflict of interest", you
might even say it thrives on it. Some of our best, most referenced
articles come from battles between pro- and anti- groups.

In the case of articles about corporations, what you'd likely find
would be this 1 "conflict of interest" editor being brought into line
with a dozen or more NPOV warriors. In the long term, would any of
MyWikiBiz's clients' articles remain unedited?

> Rather, what we brainstormed about as a nice mutually beneficial ground
> would be for them to charge customers for writing high quality NPOV
> articles about their companies, with sources and verifiability, but for
> them to work with well known and respected wikipedians who are NOT being
> financially compensated to actually enter the articles into Wikipedia
> upon their own independent judgment.  This will avoid, for MyWikiBiz, a

I'm not liking this. Company A pays Company B in order to get
Volunteer C to write an article. (Then, Company D sells the results to
Sucker E...)

> lot of sad fighting with us which is likely to be ugly and unproductive
> all around.

Could the sad fighting not be avoided by constructive discussion,
whereby we conclude that paying people to write Wikipedia articles is
in everyone's best interest, and might even improve our reputation,
giving us a more "professional" appearance?

> This preserves our independence as a volunteer editing body, while at

If "independence" means that we don't have anyone with barrows to
push, I don't think we are "independent". If being a "volunteer
editing body" is now a fundamental aspect of Wikipedia (as opposed to
a fact of life of having no money to pay people), then I'm just
confused.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] MyWikiBiz

body:
On 8/10/06, ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:
>   I had a very similar thought.  The idea that eventually paid
> academics might be allowed to spend some amount of their compensated
> time contributing is not unrealistic.  Look at all the the programmers
> that are paid by large corporations to work on open source projects.

Heh, nice thought. When you think about it, if an academic's mission
is to spread knowledge about some topic, writing a Wikipedia article
or two would probably be a lot more effective than writing a book
which very few people will ever read.

>   Thought his is quite a different thing than a company paying someone
> to write an article about them (which they would probably not want to be
> paying for if it was not going to benefit them and thus putting NPOV in
> question).  I think the best option for a company that wants an article
> on wikipedia is to simply request it.

I'd like to think there are a few companies for whom an NPOV
description would still be flattering.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Norman Technologies AfD

body:
On 8/9/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I have indef banned MyWikiBiz from English Wikipedia.
>
> If he wants to do something like this, he should write his articles
> independently, post them on his website, and see if interested
> Wikipedians who are willing to vouch for the articles... WITHOUT
> FINANCIAL COMPENSATION... want to include them.

Oh, dear. We have just sent out a clear message: "If you wish to get
paid to write on Wikipedia, please do not use a transparent process.
Please do not attempt to engage with the community, and please,
whatever you do, do not tell us that you actually got paid for the
article. If anyone asks, deny, deny, deny".

This guy was approaching this in exactly the right way, and the
outcome was good.

Meanwhile, I'm sure lots of big companies *do* edit their own
articles, but they *don't* tell us what they're doing, and we're ok
with that?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Norman Technologies AfD

body:
On 8/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Or they could, um, note it on the talk page? Rather than put yet
> another procedure in place which will have the effect of "why bother."
> Unless that's the purpose.

On what talk page? This is for articles which do not yet exist. How
would you bring those to the attention of the community without
posting them directly?

Erik


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Emergency on Wiktionary

body:
Angela wrote:

>On 8/9/06, Wildrick Steele <wildrick.steele at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Actually not. There weren't any stewards around and the perpetrator remained
>>sysopped for a full day, doing hundreds of random blocks and unblocks. We
>>had to wait for developer intervention to remove the flag in the database.
>>Quite a nonperformance for the otherwise well-functioning steward team.
>>We'll take Wikimania as a good excuse :-)
>>
>>
>Wikimania may have been part of the problem. Also, the request at
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_permissions#Removal_of_access
>seems to have been lost amongst the noise of dozens of other requests,
>which for some reason, no longer get immediately archived, so it's not
>easy to see whether or not there are outstanding requests. Perhaps
>moving urgent requests to a separate section at the top would help in
>future. There is a (not-very-active) IRC channel at
>#wikimedia-stewards, but the #wikimedia channel is often a better
>place to find a steward in an emergency. I don't know whether either
>of these channels were tried before finding a developer.
>
>This might just be a sign that new steward elections are required.
>
The other possibility would be to give bureaucrats the power to de-sysop.

Fortunately, these rogue sysops are uncommon, but bureaucrats are more
often in a position to act quickly when this sort of activity happens.
It would also be handy to have this available for de-sysopping inactive
admins; the latter can also be reactivated on request without the need
for votes or other complicated community processes.

While it is also possible that there can be rogue bureaucrats, these
will be proportionally rarer than rogue admins.  Anyone who has become a
bureaucrat has a very high degree of trust in the community, and
especially in relatively larger communities there is sufficient
oversight to prevent the abuses that may be more common with the
untested bureaucrats of tiny communities.  Speaking arbitrarily, one
could define a larger community, as one with at least 50,000 articles
and/or 2 active bureaucrats.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Emergency on Wiktionary


subject: [WikiEN-l] Norman Technologies AfD

body:
On 8/10/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On what talk page? This is for articles which do not yet exist. How
> would you bring those to the attention of the community without
> posting them directly?

AfC.

Steve


from_name: Death Phoenix

body:
On 8/10/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Would you rather it was FODOC? :)
> >
> > --
> > Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
>
> I'd rather it was FDC, so that way it is a curse word - "FDC it!" "FDC
> you, man."
>

Oh, fsck you.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Norman Technologies AfD

body:
On 8/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Or they could, um, note it on the talk page? Rather than put yet
> > > another procedure in place which will have the effect of "why bother."
> > > Unless that's the purpose.

> > On what talk page? This is for articles which do not yet exist. How
> > would you bring those to the attention of the community without
> > posting them directly?

> Write the article and note involvement on the talk page. I've done
> this for articles where I have some link to the references. This lets
> the article stand if it's OK and there's a flag on the talk page for
> an NPOV check.

That doesn't seem to work, given that MyWikiBiz has just been told by
Jimmy not to do this.

Erik


subject: [Commons-l] Stats on deletion

body:
--- Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> schrieb:

> On 10/08/06, Patrick-Emil Z?rner <paddyez at yahoo.de> wrote:
> >
> > --- Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> schrieb:
> >
> > > What the hell?? Admin actions on-wiki are part of their private
> > > life???
> >
> > Your girlfriend/wife, boyfriend/husband or employer might find
> exactly
> > this data without going through Special:Log. Easily done an mighty
> > disturbing.
>
> I don't really get why they would be disturbed to learn that you
> delete images as part of your administrator duties. If they're going
> to be disturbed that you are an administrator period, or you have an
> account on a wiki, well those pieces of information are already
> available aside from this one page.
>
> Wiki actions are public; that is a very basic thing that if you
> can't
> accept, you should probably never have hit "edit" in the first
> place.
> let alone joined a publicly archived mailing list from an email
> account that has your real name on it.

Exactly how much someone wants to show of his private life publicly is
everybodys personal problem. And what you are saying is: "if you
already wear bathing trunks you might as well go naked". No I prefer
not to. And I never agreed that statistics of my activities are
published. And what I agree on is my problem.

> > > Paddy, you might be disturbed to learn of the existence of
> > > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Log ... from which all
> of
> > > this data could be obtained.
> >
> > I know that this exists but sorting data and making it transperent
> is
> > what disturbs me.
>
> Is not transparency in admin actions a good thing?

Yes, but only to a point where it is usefull. Knownig that I deleted x
images does not help you understand what I have deleted. I approve
that you can see that I deleted an image but not how many. period!

> > BTW see last post.
>
> I saw it, but considering I can't read German, it didn't do much for
> me.

See in Wikipedia there is one relevant english article and the other
two are only in german but those laws apply:

en: [[Informational self-determination]] de:
[[Bundesdatenschutzgesetz]] de: [[Teledienstedatenschutzgesetz]]
should be the relevant german laws.

greetings

Paddy

___________________________________________________________
Telefonate ohne weitere Kosten vom PC zum PC: http://messenger.yahoo.de


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Commons-l] Deletion of still-used images

body:
Brianna Laugher schrieb:
>
> Well, in theory it does. It seems a bit broken at the moment. :(
> Hopefully Magnus will get it up and running again soon.
>
Fixed.

Magnus

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subject: [Commons-l] Stats on deletion

body:
On 8/10/06, Patrick-Emil Z?rner <paddyez at yahoo.de> wrote:
> PS I wonder if more comments like the german law is stupid, pack your
> bags and leave, bizzare,... follow. There has only been one person
> that is answering to the topic and that is daniel.

My comments were not with regard to German law whatsoever, but purely
in response to your belief that actions - admin actions especially -
should not be subject to oversight or statistics.

I could be persuaded that the actions of non-admin users might have
this expectation of privacy.

I explicitly do NOT agree that oversight of the administrative actions
of administrators should be restricted by privacy concerns.  I believe
that ordinary users of Wikipedia are already, rightly, cautious of
over-reach in the use of admin powers, and that full openness is a
crucial part of dealing with community concerns on that matter.

However, I do also agree that bare statistics, without explanation,
are often less useful than they may seem, and the availability of a
statistic may influence users socially in a way that might not be for
the best.  As an example, the use of ever-more-nitpicking standards
for granting of admin rights, I think, can be laid partly at the feet
of greater availability of highly detailed statistics on a user's
history obtained via toolserver scripts.

Thus, I agree, caution is a good thing; I do not, however, agree that
such caution is mandated by a right to privacy over one's admin
actions, but rather by considering the value to the project.

-Matt


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] "What links here" doesn't update properly
	with	templates

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Is this a known issue? Take a look at "what links here" for this image:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Chambord_pano.jpg
>
> It claims to be "linked to" by 50 or more pages - most of them user
> pages that have {{POTD}} on them. However, that template no longer
> refers to the image.

It takes some time for the queue to run through and update all entries,
especially when the queue is already full from some widely-used template being
edited.

Please learn patience. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Commons-l] [Toolserver-l] Stats on deletion

body:
On 8/10/06, Daniel Kinzler <daniel at brightbyte.de> wrote:
> Ideally, new users would be presented with a text explaining what data
> they expose when they contribute, and how this may be analyzed. This may
> even be made a click-through part of the account creation process.

I suspect in certain legal jurisdictions we may be actually required
to do this.  (anyone?)

The problem with this is that it puts up another barrier to
registration as a user.

> Also ideally, users would be able to state which types of analysis they
> want to allow. Perhaps a simple scheme of "no statistics", "simple
> statistics" and "detailed statistics" would be enough, with a default of
> "simple". "Simple" statistics would basically be total counts (number of
> edits, maybe per namespace, number of deletions, etc), "detailed" would
> be "anything goes". A per-project policy could then require admins to at
> least allow simple statistics, or something like that.

My concern with this is that abusive users will abuse privacy options
to reduce oversight of what they're doing, and that adopting such a
policy would eventually lead to restricting access to such things as
Special:Contributions.

-Matt


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Norman Technologies AfD

body:
On 8/9/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> (Note that this screed is independent of any deal Jimmy and MyWikiBiz
> may've come to).
>
> This is an absurd block. He was writing perfectly fine, well-written,
> *referenced* articles and has so far as I know scrupulously followed
> the notability guidelines; would to God that we had a thousand more
> like him, and could ditch the bottom thousand editors.
[snip]

Are we so sure?

How do we know that he doesn't use multiple accounts with the role
account attached to his orgs name on good behavior?


from_name: cohesion

subject: [Wikitech-l] Apple's Wiki Server brings WYSIWYG to wiki

body:
On 8/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Do we? I was thinking about this. Even the wikiwyg we looked at a
> couple of weeks ago essentially forces you to edit wikitext, and
> separately shows it to you. Do we have anything that works like Word,
> for instance?
>
> I ask this not as a clueless user, or on behalf of people who are too
> lazy to learn syntax. But as someone who does a *lot* of editing in
> MediaWiki, and who finds the "spot the mistake, click edit, find the
> same spot in the code, change, save" cycle far too slow. Editing would
> be a hell of a lot more efficient if one could simply click on the
> place to edit, and start typing. I imagine the basic cycle looking
> like this:
>
> 1. Click on the text.
> 2. A surrounding patch of text (a sentence? a paragraph?) is "locked"
> (no one else can edit it) and highlighted, and somehow rendered
> "editable".
> 3. Edit, drag text around etc. If necessary, mark other bits of text
> as being "locked" as well so you can edit them.
> 4. Press a commit button.
>
> I don't know that this would work well for more complex syntax like
> tables, but even if it only worked for small, local changes (like typo
> fixing) it would be a major improvement.
>

That would be nice, and I would consider that a UI improvement, but
not really in the same direction as wysiwyg editing. Personally, I am
not convinced that wysiwyg editing is as simple a process as people
think. Sure it would be nice to let anyone edit as easily as they do
in Word, but Word doesn't have templates, and wikilinks, and wikilinks
with alternate text.

When you are designing the UI people really need to think about
specifics, sure having a bold button would be easy to make something
bold, but what would be the easiest way to fill in {{Taxobox}}. That
is a hard question, but I can guarantee you trying to mimic the
formatting toolbar in Word is not the answer.

When people start to edit a wiki there is some learning they have to
do, no matter how easy you make it. The set of skills people need to
edit a word document are not all the skills they need, even at a
conceptual level, to edit a wiki. They will have to learn new
concepts. Now, that's not to say that the system we have is perfect,
having to find the text once, then click edit and find it again is a
good example, and some of the obvious formatting things (bold etc)
could actually use standard UI, but there is a lot of stuff that is
honestly conceptually new.

Dealing with that is a difficult problem, but I'm not sure if the
wikiwyg project is being very useful in that direction.


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
Anthere wrote:

>A minor point
>
>But for Arno, absolutely all discussion pages for board candidacies on
>the english wikipedia.
>
>What are the implications in terms of international representation AND
>in terms of project representation ?
>
>

Where do the translations go for the candidates for discussion pages? I
assume these are left in English.

I have stopped translating the lower candidate statements for Cherokee
since I noticed the short list is out of sync with
the main list since a lot of folks have submitted and gotten pulled
before making the top list. Is the top list the approved candidates?
I have translated these into Cherokee (and one from German into English).

Thanks

Jeff

>ant
>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


body:
Ligulem wrote:
> I do have some related (possibly silly) questions/thoughts:
>
> What is (was?) the main intention of the *subst* feature of MediaWiki
> templates?

When I introduced subst, I imagined it as a shortcut for the various items
on [[Wikipedia:Boilerplate text]]. I introduced templates at the same time
for completeness, although not under that name, but I couldn't imagine that
anyone would want to use them for anything. I was wrong, transclusion proved
to be the more popular model. People moved all of the boilerplate text into
templates, and thought of brand new applications, such as navigation boxes.
I changed the syntax for transclusion from {{msg:foo}} to simply {{foo}} to
reflect its growing predominance. I added features such as template
parameters, both for subst and transclusion.

> Is subst meant to help reduce parse time or is subst intended as an
> editorial tool?

It does both. As I was hinting above, my intention when I introduced this
feature is nothing but a historical footnote. Nobody had any idea what
editors would do with templates, at the time they were introduced.

> Currently, the user input containing the subst keyword is lost when the
> user saves a page. Are there any plans/intentions/ideas to store this
> input somewhere?

No.

> Would it be feasible to have a compilation like model for some templates
> (something like an expanded subst mechanism)? Could/should we store
> pages (revisions?) at the "templates expanded" level?
>
> As an observation, the current template system in some aspects violates
> the revertability paradigm of MediaWiki, as all article revisions (not
> only the newest) are affected by changes in an included template.

As it happens, I was working on such a feature on my way home from Wikimania
yesterday. The application would mostly be stable version tagging. You can't
revert a change to a template by reverting an article that uses the
template, I think that would be very counterintuitive. If we did that, then
reverting a bad change in an article could inadvertently revert a good
change in an included template. What we can do is preserve the appearance of
past revisions in the face of subsequent template changes. One of the
reasons this makes sense is that diffs are presented without the templates
expanded, so the user should be reviewing changes made to the article text,
not to any templates.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Matt Brown

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Technical solution to bad fair use (was:Uploading
	images should be a privilige...)

body:
On 8/10/06, Nyenyec N <nyenyec at gmail.com> wrote:
> So the German Wikipedia will never be able to fulfill its mission?

In terms of completeness of image coverage, there are topics in de.wp
that cannot be illustrated.

Whether this means anything to do with 'fulfilmnet of mission' depends
on how you define that - which ends up how much you value the 'free'
part of 'free encyclopedia', and just as importantly, how 'free'
defines for you.

-Matt


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Wed, Aug 09, 2006 at 06:21:37PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> > So let _me_ decide where I open up links, and stop trying to force me.
>
> Since we've established that you can override the suggestion provided
> to the browser, no one's forcing anything...

Again, Steve, no, you can't.  If the link says TARGET=new, I am no
aware of any unmodified browser that will permit you to override that.
In Firefox, you can ctrl-click it, and get it in a new tab, but there's
no way I'm aware of to get it in *the current tab*.

If you know of anything, please share.

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

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On Thu, Aug 10, 2006 at 11:19:13AM -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 09, 2006 at 06:21:37PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> > > So let _me_ decide where I open up links, and stop trying to force me.
> >
> > Since we've established that you can override the suggestion provided
> > to the browser, no one's forcing anything...
>
> Again, Steve, no, you can't.  If the link says TARGET=new, I am no
> aware of any unmodified browser that will permit you to override that.
> In Firefox, you can ctrl-click it, and get it in a new tab, but there's
> no way I'm aware of to get it in *the current tab*.
>
> If you know of anything, please share.

Apologies; I didn't read far enough down the thread.

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

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


from_name: Nyenyec N

body:
On 8/1/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> Don't fall into the trap of thinking that *every* fair image has some free
> twin that could replace it. In the cases of CD covers or images of Superman
> or whatever, it's just no the case. To fulfil our mission, we're always
> going to need fair use images.
>
> Steve

So the German Wikipedia will never be able to fulfill its mission?

-- nyenyec


body:
On Wed, Aug 09, 2006 at 12:57:58PM +0100, Christiaan Briggs wrote:
> For your interest, it looks like Apple has come to the party with a
> wiki of its own, without the need for people to learn markup language:
> http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/leopard/wikiserver.html

[ looks ]

Oh, it's a wiki with a WYSIWYG editor on the front.

Yeah, we've got that.

> We've been using MediaWiki as our office intranet over the years but
> it's never been adopted to a level that we think it could be, because
> of the requirement that users learn wiki markup. For this reason
> we'll be ditching MediaWiki in our office next year for Apple's Wiki
> Server.
>
> The reason I'm posting this is simply put forward the view that I
> hope WYSIWYG or some relevant variant will be developed for Wikimedia
> projects in the near future, because I think the hurdles that stop
> many people from participating on our office intranet apply equally
> to Wikimedia projects. And the hurdle is not that wiki markup is
> "difficult" or "hard to learn" but that it is intimidating and time-
> consuming to learn.

With all due respect to your users, bullshit.

Number one, you don't actually *need* to use any markup at all.  Number
two, the markup you might *want* to use is so trivial, that I have to
say that anyone who can't be bothered to learn it -- it's just that:
they can't be bothered.

Screw 'em.

If you're not willing to learn the tools, you're not entitled to the
ease their use contributes to your life.  And good riddance.

I'm elitest, sure, but that outlook is *not*, IMHO.

> I have little doubt that one day using wiki markup only to edit
> websites like Wikipedia will be seen as an anachronism, even more so
> as other alternatives to MediaWiki (such as Apple's Wiki Server) come
> online, but there's a few hurdles to overcome yet and they're not all
> technical ones as far as I can work out.
>
> It's always surprised me that WYSIWYG editing has not been made a
> high priority for Wikimedia, considering the fact that it was founded
> on the idea of broad participation. Although technical difficulties
> are often put forward as the reason, the biggest obstacle, it has
> often seemed to me, is an installed base of Wikipedians who see wiki
> markup as a way of protecting their territory and minimising
> participation by others. I've even had people argue that wiki markup
> is some kind of "intelligence" hurdle that people should have to
> overcome before being allowed to edit Wikimedia projects. Somehow
> this needs to be overcome if WYSIWYG is to gain traction and get a
> higher priority it seems to me.

Bullshit.

There will need tobe markup in the internal storage format anyway; if
you want WYSIWYG, you bolt it on around the outside.  That's the only
design pattern that makes any sense at all.

Given that, I see no reason to penalize those who *prefer* power by
making the markup language inaccessible -- which I'd bet cash Apple has
done -- and if you want or need a WYG editor, put one on there.

But don't dis MediaWiki because the native interface is ... the native
interface.  That's just strawman.

> Thanks to those who have been working on WYSIWYG for MediaWiki,
> particularly in trying to integrate FCKEditor, and I wish you well.
> However, if integrating an editor into the current environment is so
> difficult maybe there needs to be a new approach, such as developing
> new software/syntax with some type of WYSIWYG editor built in from
> the start? Worth a discussion at least, I should imagine.

I don't think so.

Rebuilding MediaWiki from scratch?  That's crazy talk.

If the problem is the weak definition of the markup language, then
precess that around until you get it stable enough to WYG in front of.

Anyone along the way for whom this isn't the right tool will no doubt
find something else.  Darwin lives.

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

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On Thu, Aug 10, 2006 at 11:28:45AM -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> I'm elitest, sure, but that outlook is *not*, IMHO.

I may be elitist, but clearly, I can't spell for shit.  :-)

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

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On Thu, Aug 10, 2006 at 07:58:29AM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> and then:
> {{opendiv}}
> *foo {{template2}}
> {{closediv}}
>
> then MediaWiki automatically closes the div tag for you, and it doesn't work.

That formatting which is opened in one included template and closed in
a different one won't work was covered in depth here about 2 or 3 weeks
ago; it's interrelated with whether tidy's turned on, I think; check
the archives.

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

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

references:
<ebfkoi$bup$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<ebflq6$fkg$1@sea.gmane.org>	<44DB66B3.8010205@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<44DB659D.5020407@typhon.org>

body:
Jean-Denis Vauguet wrote:

>Jeff V. Merkey a ?crit :
>
>
>>Anthere wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>A minor point
>>>
>>>But for Arno, absolutely all discussion pages for board candidacies on
>>>the english wikipedia.
>>>
>>>What are the implications in terms of international representation AND
>>>in terms of project representation ?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Where do the translations go for the candidates for discussion pages? I
>>assume these are left in English.
>>
>>I have stopped translating the lower candidate statements for Cherokee
>>since I noticed the short list is out of sync with
>>the main list since a lot of folks have submitted and gotten pulled
>>before making the top list. Is the top list the approved candidates?
>>I have translated these into Cherokee (and one from German into English).
>>
>>
>
>I am currently working on that, basically creating a templates-based
>system which will make the translation process easier AND allow for
>discussions on Meta, not on en: or any other local wiki. Let me one or
>two hours to get all this done and alive :)
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
OK.  I'll get the stuff translated after you get it where you think it
needs to be.

Jeff


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
NPOV is about the content of the article, not who is using it.

On 8/10/06, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,20080119%5E15318%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html
>
> A DETECTIVE involved in the prosecution of 13 accused terrorists has
> told a court he gleaned much of his knowledge of terrorism from the
> internet and admits he's no expert on the subject.
>
> "The witness said he had used internet resources like Google and
> Wikipedia to research terrorism and Muslim extremists."
>
>
>
> In order to maintain the NPOV, we certainly need an islamic terrorist
> to testify that he used Wikipedia for his evil purposes, right?
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
Now, now, no need for that.

There's a lot of competing thought about the best way to maximize
human-computer interaction.

MediaWiki is pretty far from the original wikiwiki design intent of Ward
Cunningham. Doesn't mean either is right or wrong.

On 8/10/06, Christiaan Briggs <christiaan at yurkycross.co.uk> wrote:
>
> In your world the human should bend to the computer. My users think
> it should be the other way round.
>
> You're not elitist Jay, you're just a prick.
>
> Christiaan
>
> On 10 Aug 2006, at 4:28 PM, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Aug 09, 2006 at 12:57:58PM +0100, Christiaan Briggs wrote:
> >> For your interest, it looks like Apple has come to the party with a
> >> wiki of its own, without the need for people to learn markup
> >> language:
> >> http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/leopard/wikiserver.html
> >
> > [ looks ]
> >
> > Oh, it's a wiki with a WYSIWYG editor on the front.
> >
> > Yeah, we've got that.
> >
> >> We've been using MediaWiki as our office intranet over the years but
> >> it's never been adopted to a level that we think it could be, because
> >> of the requirement that users learn wiki markup. For this reason
> >> we'll be ditching MediaWiki in our office next year for Apple's Wiki
> >> Server.
> >>
> >> The reason I'm posting this is simply put forward the view that I
> >> hope WYSIWYG or some relevant variant will be developed for Wikimedia
> >> projects in the near future, because I think the hurdles that stop
> >> many people from participating on our office intranet apply equally
> >> to Wikimedia projects. And the hurdle is not that wiki markup is
> >> "difficult" or "hard to learn" but that it is intimidating and time-
> >> consuming to learn.
> >
> > With all due respect to your users, bullshit.
> >
> > Number one, you don't actually *need* to use any markup at all.
> > Number
> > two, the markup you might *want* to use is so trivial, that I have to
> > say that anyone who can't be bothered to learn it -- it's just that:
> > they can't be bothered.
> >
> > Screw 'em.
> >
> > If you're not willing to learn the tools, you're not entitled to the
> > ease their use contributes to your life.  And good riddance.
> >
> > I'm elitest, sure, but that outlook is *not*, IMHO.
> >
> >> I have little doubt that one day using wiki markup only to edit
> >> websites like Wikipedia will be seen as an anachronism, even more so
> >> as other alternatives to MediaWiki (such as Apple's Wiki Server) come
> >> online, but there's a few hurdles to overcome yet and they're not all
> >> technical ones as far as I can work out.
> >>
> >> It's always surprised me that WYSIWYG editing has not been made a
> >> high priority for Wikimedia, considering the fact that it was founded
> >> on the idea of broad participation. Although technical difficulties
> >> are often put forward as the reason, the biggest obstacle, it has
> >> often seemed to me, is an installed base of Wikipedians who see wiki
> >> markup as a way of protecting their territory and minimising
> >> participation by others. I've even had people argue that wiki markup
> >> is some kind of "intelligence" hurdle that people should have to
> >> overcome before being allowed to edit Wikimedia projects. Somehow
> >> this needs to be overcome if WYSIWYG is to gain traction and get a
> >> higher priority it seems to me.
> >
> > Bullshit.
> >
> > There will need tobe markup in the internal storage format anyway; if
> > you want WYSIWYG, you bolt it on around the outside.  That's the only
> > design pattern that makes any sense at all.
> >
> > Given that, I see no reason to penalize those who *prefer* power by
> > making the markup language inaccessible -- which I'd bet cash Apple
> > has
> > done -- and if you want or need a WYG editor, put one on there.
> >
> > But don't dis MediaWiki because the native interface is ... the native
> > interface.  That's just strawman.
> >
> >> Thanks to those who have been working on WYSIWYG for MediaWiki,
> >> particularly in trying to integrate FCKEditor, and I wish you well.
> >> However, if integrating an editor into the current environment is so
> >> difficult maybe there needs to be a new approach, such as developing
> >> new software/syntax with some type of WYSIWYG editor built in from
> >> the start? Worth a discussion at least, I should imagine.
> >
> > I don't think so.
> >
> > Rebuilding MediaWiki from scratch?  That's crazy talk.
> >
> > If the problem is the weak definition of the markup language, then
> > precess that around until you get it stable enough to WYG in front of.
> >
> > Anyone along the way for whom this isn't the right tool will no doubt
> > find something else.  Darwin lives.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > -- jra
> > --
> > Jay R. Ashworth
> > jra at baylink.com
> > Designer
> > Baylink                             RFC 2100
> > Ashworth & Associates        The Things I
> > Think                        '87 e24
> > St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1
> > 727 647 1274
> >
> >       The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Mathias Schindler

body:
On 8/10/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> NPOV is about the content of the article, not who is using it.
>

right. I was confusing it with some bizarre concept of "balance of power" ...


from_name: Ben Garney

body:
On 8/10/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Aug 09, 2006 at 12:57:58PM +0100, Christiaan Briggs wrote:
> > For your interest, it looks like Apple has come to the party with a
> > wiki of its own, without the need for people to learn markup language:
> > http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/leopard/wikiserver.html
>
> [ looks ]
>
> Oh, it's a wiki with a WYSIWYG editor on the front.
>
> Yeah, we've got that.

No... you don't. It sounds like Apple is shooting for, and has hit, a level
of usability comparable to, say, Writely (or a variety of native apps).
There are a lot of people who would use a wiki, that currently don't, if it
was that friendly to interact with. They want a Word interface, not a text
interface.

I know in the context of my own intranet, I know that Writely has had
significantly higher uptake than MediaWiki (or even other similar tech)
because it fits into a paradigm a lot of people are comfortable with.

Should MW be the "easy to use" wiki? I dunno. A good WYSIWYG implementation
wouldn't hurt, though, if it were to happen to exist.

Rude responses need not apply. It's entirely possible to violently disagree
politely. :)

--
Ben Garney
Torque Technologies Director
GarageGames.Com, Inc.


from_name: Brianna Laugher

body:
On 09/08/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2006/8/9, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com>:
>
> > You know we are talking about thousands of images... right?
> >
> > Well you can start at [[Category:Against policy]] and from there it's
> > a long slog through [[Category:Unknown]] subcategories... all of them
> > more than 7 days old that is. Which is most of them. You can use
> > messages from [[User:Pfctdayelise/Translations]] in edit summaries if
> > you like.
>
> I know that, I am going through subcategories of [[Category:Unknown]]
> sometimes, and do some deletions here and there.
>
> What I was looking for was more a list of images that would already
> have been deleted, if it were not being used on projects.

Well, I strongly recommend using Magnus Manske's "Bad Old Ones" tool.
You can create an automatic link to it on a category page (such as
[[Category:Images with unknown source as of 11 June 2006]]) but
putting the template {{delete assist}}. (I don't recommend putting it
on larger categories because it takes quite a while to run.)

It reads CheckUsage and tells you if the image is being used or not.
So you can easily identify "quick" deletions (not in use) as well as
those that need de-linking.

Well, in theory it does. It seems a bit broken at the moment. :(
Hopefully Magnus will get it up and running again soon.

cheers,
Brianna


from_name: Ron Hall

body:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
Hey! What kinda' dialogue is this - certainly you can find better ways
to express yourself.
If not, then perhaps you might just want to "turn down the volume".

Human-Computer-Interaction/Computer-Human-Interaction both exist,
sometimes they overlap
sometimes that don't. The truth, or the real-world (as it were) lies
somewhere in-between the
poles of pure research.

In some cases one works better than others - by way of the absurd
consider the brakes on Fred Flintstone's car
and the vitech brakes on my Mazda. Which is better? depends on the
environment and the limits of existing, local
technology.

All that aside - there really was no reason to be rude.

r


body:
On Thu, Aug 10, 2006 at 04:42:43PM +0100, Christiaan Briggs wrote:
> In your world the human should bend to the computer. My users think
> it should be the other way round.

Then your users are perfectly welcome to use something that does what
they need done, which is, to my understanding, the official position of
the Mediawiki developers.

> You're not elitist Jay, you're just a prick.

Nope, not at all.

You don't know me from Adam; you're neither entitled, nor informed
enough, to call me a prick.

An opinionated bastard of extraodrinary magnitude?  Yes.  But it seems
to me that "MediaWiki should gravitate in -- or be rewritten into --
something that happens to suit *my* user base's needs, whether that
would be suitable to the WMF -- which is how your comments read, to me
-- is *much* more presumptious than my comments.

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

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures

body:
Christopher Larberg schrieb:
> On Wed, 2006-08-09 at 23:43 +0200, Garion96 wrote:
>
>> Would it be a good idea if the foundation would ask for 'free' images from
>> big record companies (like Sony music entertainment), actor agencies etc. I
>> know any editor can do this, but it would definitely have a greater
>> chance of success if it is coming from the foundation.
>>
>
> Just to interject here, I think it's worth a shot (if someone at the
> Foundation is willing to do it), but I'd be willing to bet that most of
> those publicity photos are only offered under non-free licenses (limited
> redistribution, no derivative works, etc.). I still think it wouldn't
> hurt to at least try, though.
>
While favorable, wikipedia does not really *need* high resolution photos
in this case; an image for a web site can be much smaller (200x300 pixel
would suffice) than an image needed for high-quality printing. Maybe
some companies would be willing to release such a low-res version under
GFDL or CC-BY-SA, as potential commercial use of these images is limited
due to their small size.

And yes, I'd prefer hi-res images too, but if the choice is "no free
image" or "small free image", I'd always go for the latter...

Magnus

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subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures

body:
Christopher Larberg schrieb:
> On Wed, 2006-08-09 at 23:43 +0200, Garion96 wrote:
>
>> Would it be a good idea if the foundation would ask for 'free' images from
>> big record companies (like Sony music entertainment), actor agencies etc. I
>> know any editor can do this, but it would definitely have a greater
>> chance of success if it is coming from the foundation.
>>
>
> Just to interject here, I think it's worth a shot (if someone at the
> Foundation is willing to do it), but I'd be willing to bet that most of
> those publicity photos are only offered under non-free licenses (limited
> redistribution, no derivative works, etc.). I still think it wouldn't
> hurt to at least try, though.
>
While favorable, wikipedia does not really *need* high resolution photos
in this case; an image for a web site can be much smaller (200x300 pixel
would suffice) than an image needed for high-quality printing. Maybe
some companies would be willing to release such a low-res version under
GFDL or CC-BY-SA, as potential commercial use of these images is limited
due to their small size.

And yes, I'd prefer hi-res images too, but if the choice is "no free
image" or "small free image", I'd always go for the latter...

Magnus

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subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures

body:
Christopher Larberg schrieb:
> On Wed, 2006-08-09 at 23:43 +0200, Garion96 wrote:
>
>> Would it be a good idea if the foundation would ask for 'free' images from
>> big record companies (like Sony music entertainment), actor agencies etc. I
>> know any editor can do this, but it would definitely have a greater
>> chance of success if it is coming from the foundation.
>>
>
> Just to interject here, I think it's worth a shot (if someone at the
> Foundation is willing to do it), but I'd be willing to bet that most of
> those publicity photos are only offered under non-free licenses (limited
> redistribution, no derivative works, etc.). I still think it wouldn't
> hurt to at least try, though.
>
While favorable, wikipedia does not really *need* high resolution photos
in this case; an image for a web site can be much smaller (200x300 pixel
would suffice) than an image needed for high-quality printing. Maybe
some companies would be willing to release such a low-res version under
GFDL or CC-BY-SA, as potential commercial use of these images is limited
due to their small size.

And yes, I'd prefer hi-res images too, but if the choice is "no free
image" or "small free image", I'd always go for the latter...

Magnus

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subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures

body:
Christopher Larberg schrieb:
> On Wed, 2006-08-09 at 23:43 +0200, Garion96 wrote:
>
>> Would it be a good idea if the foundation would ask for 'free' images from
>> big record companies (like Sony music entertainment), actor agencies etc. I
>> know any editor can do this, but it would definitely have a greater
>> chance of success if it is coming from the foundation.
>>
>
> Just to interject here, I think it's worth a shot (if someone at the
> Foundation is willing to do it), but I'd be willing to bet that most of
> those publicity photos are only offered under non-free licenses (limited
> redistribution, no derivative works, etc.). I still think it wouldn't
> hurt to at least try, though.
>
While favorable, wikipedia does not really *need* high resolution photos
in this case; an image for a web site can be much smaller (200x300 pixel
would suffice) than an image needed for high-quality printing. Maybe
some companies would be willing to release such a low-res version under
GFDL or CC-BY-SA, as potential commercial use of these images is limited
due to their small size.

And yes, I'd prefer hi-res images too, but if the choice is "no free
image" or "small free image", I'd always go for the latter...

Magnus

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body:
On Thu, Aug 10, 2006 at 05:39:53PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> Yes, I know. My question is, is there any remotely elegant way I can
> achieve what seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to me: using a
> template to apply a character style to a block of text. Having to use
> a table (which is the only way I could find to do it) is not imho
> elegant.

Well, I think the other guy's answer was "sure, you can use a div, you
just can't open the div in one template and close it in a different
one."

IOW: I think that elegant may be too much to ask at this point.

I don't like putting HTML in my wikitext either, but I think you're
gonna have to.

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

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On Thu, Aug 10, 2006 at 05:26:37PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> Having said that, actually it's easy: drag and drop the link onto the
> address bar. Try it!

You're correct; that would do it.

Now, can we convince FireFox to warn us like it used to?

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

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


from_name: Patrick-Emil Zörner

subject: [Commons-l] Stats on deletion

body:
--- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> schrieb:
> The stupid German laws might apply to the Toolserver which is hosted
> by
> Wikimedia DE, but they do NOT apply to Commons, which is hosted in
> Florida.

Apart from the fact that if German laws are stupid or not you are
totally beside the point. BTW your laws in your country are stupid too
(just to prove the point that arguments like that are useless).

I noticed that if people point out legal infringements people argue
1) The uploader is liable
2) The servers are in Florida
They choose what suits them best.

Fact is that if you do not care about showing your ass in public there
are still people that do. I see no argument for not respecting other
peoples behaviour in the internet/in public. Give an argument why
these statistical evaluations are so important for the project and why
we can not do without. Otherwise I would like to see the page deleted.

greetings

Paddy

___________________________________________________________
Telefonate ohne weitere Kosten vom PC zum PC: http://messenger.yahoo.de


body:
On Thu, Aug 10, 2006 at 05:21:24PM +0100, Christiaan Briggs wrote:
> On 10 Aug 2006, at 5:02 PM, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > Then your users are perfectly welcome to use something that does
> > what they need done, which is, to my understanding, the official
> > position of the Mediawiki developers.
>
> And, as I said in my initial email, they will. But that wasn't the
> point of my post. As I said: "The reason I'm posting this is simply
> to put forward the view that I hope WYSIWYG or some relevant variant
> will be developed for Wikimedia projects in the near future, because
> I think the hurdles that stop many people from participating on our
> office intranet apply equally to Wikimedia projects."
>
> In your haste to prove your self-image as an opinionated bastard of
> extraordinary magnitude you completely missed my point.

Expand, then, on your point, based on Wikipedia's article count and
sustained network transfer rates.

> > You don't know me from Adam; you're neither entitled, nor informed
> > enough, to call me a prick.
>
> Someone who says I and the people I work with are talking bullshit
> and should get screwed because they want computers to work for them
> instead of the other way around is entitled to the label of prick as
> far as I'm concerned. By all means, be opinionated but if you're
> going to use such language then get used to having it thrown back at
> you.

I said that an asserted argument was bullshit.

You *called me a prick*.

Different thing entire.

> > An opinionated bastard of extraodrinary magnitude?  Yes.  But it
> > seems to me that "MediaWiki should gravitate in -- or be rewritten
> > into -- something that happens to suit *my* user base's needs,
> > whether that would be suitable to the WMF -- which is how your
> > comments read, to me -- is *much* more presumptious than my comments.
>
> Then you need to read a little more slowly.

Well, we'll see, won't we.

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

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures

body:
On 8/10/06, Mark Evans <alberrosidus at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I assume Garion96 & Larberg were speaking of the album covers Jimbo
> mentioned in his post. If not, please let us know.
> I'm no expert about copyright law, but I don't see how it would be
> possible
> for a record company to give us such a 'free' image without compromising
> the
> integrity of their copyright. All that they would be able to give us would
> be an alternative image that they had no interest in protecting, which
> wouldn't be useful to us. Maybe we could get free photos of bands from
> Sony,
> but that amounts to the publicity photos mentioned earlier. I doubt that
> Time Warner or UMG would give us a suitable substitute for the album
> cover for Nirvana's Nevermind.

No, I was definitely not talking about album covers. No record company would
release those under a 'free' license. I was talking about publicity
pictures.

Garion96


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures


from_name: Daniel Kinzler

subject: [Commons-l] Stats on deletion

body:
(This mail is in response to a thread on Commons-l; I'm cross posting it
 to the toolserver list, because it seems relevant there. Ultimately,
this should probably be discussed with the WMF and its local associates)

Please note that publishing "intelligence" obtained from analyzing
person-related data may be considered a violation of that person's
privacy, even if the analyzed data is publicly available - at least
under German law and, afaik, EU guidelines. Data mining can expose
things about a person that are not easily found out by looking straight
at the raw data - this is often problematic, especially since the
results can be quite misleading, as per the nature of the methods used.

If this is stupid or not is besides the point. We have been asked
explicitly by the German Wikimedia e.V. not do make any analysis of user
data available on the toolserver, so we won't (although i find it a bit
hard to draw a line). If it would be legal for the US based foundation
to do it, is a different question. A different question still is if it
would be wise and desirable. To quote Wau Holland and the "hacker
ethics" of the Chaos Computer Club: "utilize public data, protect
private data". Information wants to be free - but so do people. In the
end, the latter are more important.

I personally feel that any analysis that exposes information that is not
 *relevant* to activity on the project should be strictly opt-in. An
example would be a breakup of user activity be time of days or day of
the week. I'm not sure about things like the number of untagged images a
user has uploaded, for example - that does seem relevant to me. If it's
legal or wise to expose such an analysis is an open question to me
(actually, I'd like to have some input on this, since my tools can give
that statistic).

On the other hand, I believe that admins should expect to be subject to
"public oversight". This is in my opinion an important part of an
informal "watch the powerful" mechanism. We already have the ability to
see a list of "admin action" an admin has performed. I'm a bit unsure
about consolidating that log data into a statistics of deletions per
week or whatever - I think we should ask ourselves how useful that would
really be. In any case it should be made more obvious to people what
"data trails" they leave when working on Wikimedia projects, as a
"normal" user and as an admin.

General statistics about admin activity - i.e. sum of all admins, not
per person, would be quite interesting, though, and unproblematic.

Regards,
Daniel

--
Homepage: http://brightbyte.de


from_name: odder

subject: [Commons-l] Stats on deletion

body:
2006/8/10, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com>:

It's my first mail here, on commons-l, so hello all :)

> Part of being a Wikipedia user is that your actions are public.  Part
> of being a Wikipedia administrator - a voluntary position nobody is
> obliged to accept or keep - is public oversight.

> -Matt

Just a small thing:

http://tinyurl.com/hsyjs
http://tinyurl.com/hdf5b

and a link with all statistics of admin activity on pl:
http://tinyurl.com/l5fd7

I see no reason for deleting this page.

--
odder


from_name: Anthony

subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
On 8/10/06, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> A minor point
>
> But for Arno, absolutely all discussion pages for board candidacies on
> the english wikipedia.
>
> What are the implications in terms of international representation AND
> in terms of project representation ?
>
> ant

Internationally, it means that countries where the English languages
is widespread are probably going to have a greater representation.
Changing this would be likely be extremely difficult and/or expensive.
 And it's somewhat of a catch-22: Wikimedia probably won't have very
much representation from non-English speakers until it's easy for
Wikimedians of different languages to communicate with each other, but
until Wikimedia has more representation from non-English speakers
translation issues will probably remain a relatively low priority.

As for project representation, I don't think board members should be
representing individual projects in the first place.  Wikipedia is by
far the largest and most successful project, so it doesn't surprise me
that board candidates use that project for their discussion pages.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures

body:
On 8/10/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
>
>
> While favorable, wikipedia does not really *need* high resolution photos
> in this case; an image for a web site can be much smaller (200x300 pixel
> would suffice) than an image needed for high-quality printing. Maybe
> some companies would be willing to release such a low-res version under
> GFDL or CC-BY-SA, as potential commercial use of these images is limited
> due to their small size.
>
> And yes, I'd prefer hi-res images too, but if the choice is "no free
> image" or "small free image", I'd always go for the latter...

I didn't even think of that. Yes, the chance of companies willing to release
low-res versions would definitely be bigger.

Garion96


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Synchronize mediawiki articles with wikipedia
	feature

body:
On 8/10/06, Raffi Kojian <armenia at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm sure other ways of implementing this would be possible, but the
> basic idea I think (and hope you agree) is a good one.

It sounds very much in keeping with the goals of Wikipedia's freeness.
Depending on how many articles are involved, your best bets might be:
* regularly grabbing the Wikitext page via some web-enabled script
(and locking the page to prevent people editing it)
* regularly downloading a whole database dump, and pulling out the few
pages that you want
* Using cross-wiki links (like [[w:George W Bush]] instead of [[George
W Bush]]) - not sure about the configuration required to make that
happen
* Trying to do something tricky whereby the content of the [[George W
Bush]] page is dynamically sucked from Wikipedia, and the edit button
actually does edit it on Wikipedia.

Note that several of these techniques are explicitly prohibited ("live
mirroring" and all that), so you'd want to get permission before doing
any of them, and obviously they'd only be practical if the demand
would be quite low.

Steve


body:
On Thu, Aug 10, 2006 at 06:16:19PM +0100, Christiaan Briggs wrote:
> On 10 Aug 2006, at 5:24 PM, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > Expand, then, on your point, based on Wikipedia's article count and
> > sustained network transfer rates.
>
> I don't know of any way to prove this point when it comes to
> Wikipedia. If people are put off by wiki markup (which I know,
> anecdotally, they are) this is not going to show up in any Wikipedia
> data I know of. Possibly edit clicks vs. exits?

Maybe.  I think you're right: there's no wikipedia-based way to tell if
the requirement to use wikitext puts off potential wikipedia editors.

But again: the amount of wikitext markup syntax you have to carry
around in your head to use it approaches zero more closely than
anything else I've ever worked with.

We require people to learn how a car works in order to take advantage
of the extended capabilities of being able to drive to places, and
that's *much* more complicated than wikitext.  :-)

> However, I think I have enough experience trying to get people to
> participate on Wikipedia and on our local intranet (which uses
> MediaWiki) to be worthy of reporting. I also have my own personal
> experience, which is that I don't like using wiki markup, I don't
> like relearning it each time I use it, and I don't like seeing a sea
> of monospaced text every time I use it. So I understand their point
> of view.

People are certainly entitled to their own tastes.

> In any case my point has already been answered. There are already
> moves afoot to prioritise and bring some sort of WYSIWYG to MediaWiki
> from what some people have said.

And, regardless what you may think from what I've said, I have no
problem with that.  Whether I think that work deserves a higher
priority than other things is a different issue, but since I am not,
and I don't think you are, writing code, what we think matters only
anecdotally.

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

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

references:
<ebfkoi$bup$1@sea.gmane.org> <ebflq6$fkg$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<71cd4dd90608101016y80834albe8cb906c2bc5c@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 8/10/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> As for project representation, I don't think board members should be
> representing individual projects in the first place.  Wikipedia is by
> far the largest and most successful project, so it doesn't surprise me
> that board candidates use that project for their discussion pages.
>

By the way, I also think this has a lot to do with the fact that this
election appears to be a winner-takes-all election of a single seat
(*).  Having representatives from different languages/projects doesn't
make sense when there are only two elected members.

Almost all the discussion on this very list takes place in English.  I
don't know what percentage of people who discuss on this list
participate primarily on Wikipedia, but I'd guess it's at least a
simple majority.  Changing that, I believe, would require a major
overhaul of the entire organizational structure of Wikimedia.  But I
suppose I shouldn't make such comments without first knowing what that
percentage really is.

(*) Although, it says on the election page "at least one" seat.


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


subject: [WikiEN-l] Norman Technologies AfD

body:
On 8/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Does it? How are they unique? The following,
>
> "Norman Technologies is the only U.S.-based private-sector I.T.
> consultancy focused solely on global trade initiatives. The company is
> also unique in that it provides the only non-bank representative to the
> International Chamber of Commerce's Committee on Banking Technique &
> Practice. The firm is also a member of the International Financial
> Services Association."
>
> uses a heap of weasel words/buzzwords/business jargon ("global trade
> initiatives") which don't really mean much; and what is the

I agree. I'm curious as to what they actually do :)

> International Chamber of Commerce's Committee on Banking Technique &
> Practice anyway?

"The Commission on Banking Technique and Practice comprises 400
members from 42 countries, including partners in trade finance
institutions and international organizations.

Membership of the ICC Commission on Banking Technique and Practice
provides unique benefits and strategic advantages for companies of all
sizes and all parts of the w orld. Membership in the Banking
Commission allows participants to attend Banking Commission meetings
and to make a personal input into the development of ICC rules on
documentary credits, bank-to-bank reimbursements, collections and
demand guarantees."

http://www.iccwbo.org/policy/banking/id3681/index.html

> You're wrong. /Nobody cares/ about J. Random Company, manufacturer of
> Gnomovision, which makes passes about compilers, even if Gnomovision is
> notable[0].

Really? What do companies do when they're trying to work out whether
or not to do business with another company? Do they just visit their
website and hope for the best? There must be some resources to allow
one to research another company - and why shouldn't Wikipedia be that
resource?

> Because it's just one more article which people are going to edit war
> and email OTRS about, and it's not particularly interesting or
> informative; the aim of an encyclopedia is to be factual, informative
> and interesting.

There's no shortage of boring article topics, including most counties
in the US (or communes in France for that matter). If it's not
informative enough, mark it {{stub}}. Or do you think that no decent
article could ever be written on a company of only 26 employees? I'm
sure that's not the case, we must have articles on companies of only 1
or 2 that have some amazing product...

> [0] Guess the reference...

Failed.

Steve


subject: [Commons-l] Stats on deletion

body:
--- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> schrieb:

> In accordance with Sharia law (in effect in Iran, Syria, Saudia
> Arabia
> etc.) I will start deleting all images which portray people.

I do not even understand what the hell you are talking about. But I
have the strange feeling that you did not understand a word I said.
Otherwise you could tell apart cheese and chalk and would not be
writing such utter nosence.

greetings

Paddy

___________________________________________________________
Der fr?he Vogel f?ngt den Wurm. Hier gelangen Sie zum neuen Yahoo! Mail: http://mail.yahoo.de


body:
On Thu, Aug 10, 2006 at 10:53:22AM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> > Is this a known issue? Take a look at "what links here" for this image:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Chambord_pano.jpg
> >
> > It claims to be "linked to" by 50 or more pages - most of them user
> > pages that have {{POTD}} on them. However, that template no longer
> > refers to the image.
>
> It takes some time for the queue to run through and update all entries,
> especially when the queue is already full from some widely-used template being
> edited.
>
> Please learn patience. :)

I'm pretty sure the issue here isn't lack of patience, but rather lack
of knowledge as to what things are affected by caching, and what
aren't.

:-)

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

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Norman Technologies AfD

body:
On 8/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> Really? What do companies do when they're trying to work out whether
> or not to do business with another company? Do they just visit their
> website and hope for the best? There must be some resources to allow
> one to research another company - and why shouldn't Wikipedia be that
> resource?

Ok, chances are they end up at a page like this:
http://www.zoominfo.com/search/CompanyDetail.aspx?CompanyID=73779439&cs=QHEZcjvUk

We could easily be more informative than this site, and we wouldn't
charge people money to click on the "Show competitors to Norman
Technologies" link.

*shrug*

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] A busy article!

body:
On 8/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/10/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > footnotes could be cleaned up and merged together, though - there's no
> > reason to cite a dozen news stories saying the same thing...
>
> Yes and no. If they're all AAP or Reuters-derived, then no. Other
> times I like to provide links to *every single* source, if there
> aren't ridiculously many of them.

Agreed - while wholly redundant stories from a single ultimate source
are unnecessary, quoting more than one news source shows that the
facts and opinions shown are not the solitary view of one news source
...

-Matt