from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: About links

body:
Giovanni wrote:
> Mediawiki script is used for different kind of sites.
> It could be a good idea to study a way to let links to have all characters including special characters.
> This because could be necessary to create a link includind chars as +, #, etc. as discussed in a previous post.
> Personally I use Mediawiki for a site about programming anda often happen that I need creating a ling as [[C++]], [[C#]] and other.
> Is this a featur requested also by other people?
> What do you think about?

I tried, but you can't put + or %2B in URLs because either of them is
converted to space, and Brion wouldn't let me double-escape. You would
have to break the correspondence between URLs and page titles, and
that's tricky. It's probably the best way to procede, though, because it
would allow various other things like lower-case initial letters.

These characters: []|#{} are required for link syntax. In principle we
could implement some kind of escaping (e.g. [[C\# programming
language#Section 2]]), but it hasn't been requested to my knowledge.

The angle brackets <> are disallowed to prevent various cross-site
scripting attacks. Titles are often output into HTML without further
escaping.

The percent character should be disabled but it isn't.

-- Tim Starling


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms (was Reithy is
	a problem)

body:
I think Jay's assessment of our dispute resolution process is quite
accurate. I spoke about how I thought the AC should proceed when it
first started, but I was ignored. I'll repeat my basic points now.

Firstly, there is no need to require a standard of evidence analogous to
a criminal court. We're not sending someone to jail, we're attempting to
exclude them from our community. I suggested, and still recommend, a
standard of evidence analogous to a civil court -- that is, a balance of
probabilities rather than proof beyond reasonable doubt.

Secondly, the AC should take a leadership role. The AC was appointed by
Jimbo, and now has a number of democratically elected members. It has
something approaching a mandate. It should make summary judgements in a
single sitting, and not be afraid of controversy. It should do what it
thinks is best for the community and make up the rules as it goes along,
within the bounds of community norms.

Thirdly, sentences should be much, much harsher. Ban them for life and
get it over with. Banning only slows them down anyway, most of them will
come back under a different name. But at least the community will be
able to unite behind the AC ruling.

The best way to deal with trolls is to unite the community against them,
then put up with them until they grow out of it. It only took Michael 18
months. Even adult trolls like 142 eventually get bored and go do
something else, but you've got to expect it to take a year or two.

If only trolling was an criminal offence by international treaty...

-- Tim Starling


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Akka Akka

body:
Per Danny request, due to rupture of an agreement for node not to edit
under Akka Akka name, I blocked Akka Akka on ks project for 24 hours.

I have a neutral position with regards to this matter. Any one may
revert the block if there is a problem.

Ant


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia-FireFox extension

body:
There is a extension for FireFox that can be usefull;
http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=351&vid=1083

It creates a menu whit editing options when you click right in the edit
field. Also you have new keybord shortcuts. For example ctrl+shift+q
gives ~~~~

--
[[w:nl:gebruiker:walter]]


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Thomas Gries

subject: [Wikitech-l] Enotif 1.35 for MediaWiki 1.3.7 (a maintenance release)

body:
I fixed some minor problems in my Email Notification patch.

Download http://www.tgries.de/mw/mw137+en135.tgz (this decompresses to a
subdirectory testwiki/ )
Documentation http://meta.wikipedia.org/Enotif
Bugzilla http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=454

Tom
Berlin local time UTC+1
If you have questions, you can call me: +49 30 859 2873


from_name: James D. Forrester

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms (was Reithy
	is a problem)

body:
On Saturday, November 06, 2004 15:10, Tim Starling
<t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:

> Fred Bauder wrote:

[Snip]

> > Our failures to act in cases which are not before us are to be
> > expected. We do not initiate cases.
>
> All I'm asking for is that every once in a while, we
> re-evaluate our dogma. You say "we do not initiate cases" as if that
> settles the matter. I don't know if your rule about not initiating
> cases is good or bad, I just wish we'd think about it critically
> every once in a while.
>
> Let me take the negative position. Why not act on cases that
> are not brought before you? Is this a serious balance to your
> power? If the 9 of you wanted to abuse your power and bend
> editorial direction to suit your philosophy, would you have
> trouble finding a single non-member to bring cases that you
> secretly ask to be brought? If you are aware of failures,
> trolls bringing stress and anger to honest contributors and
> damaging the quality of the encyclopedia, how can you sit by
> and do nothing in good conscience?

Well, firstly, Arbitrators have been known to bring cases before the
Committee off their own bat. The point is, in doing so they are acting as
editors, not as Arbitrators, and obviously recuse themself from the ensuing
case, if any. The main reason that we chose when formulating the policy not
to be modelled on a Napoleonic-Code type of 'court', but instead upon a
Common-Law one, was that it means that the majority of our efforts are spent
judging cases, rather than whether it is in the public interest to proceed
with prosecution. It is little fun enough, and certainly not a little
depressing, to read through logs of edit wars, personal insults, and the
like, that we would wish to burden ourselves with going out searching for
such stuff.

If a user's conduct comes to the attention of a Committee member as they go
about their normal course of editing, it is probably already past the point
where someone could (and should) have brought a case about said user before
us -- we are but a dozen of your fellow editors, scant few in the miasma of
thousands of editors. We cannot be everywhere, everywhen, and, really, do
you think that that would be a useful expenditure of our time, and not
somewhat of a waste?

[Snip]

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
>
>>From: Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au>

>>Secondly, the AC should take a leadership role. The AC was appointed by
>>Jimbo, and now has a number of democratically elected members. It has
>>something approaching a mandate. It should make summary judgements in a
>>single sitting, and not be afraid of controversy. It should do what it
>>thinks is best for the community and make up the rules as it goes along,
>>within the bounds of community norms.
>
>
> As now constituted, it would be difficult to get us together, prepared (this
> is important--you have to have looked at the edits before you sit down) for
> such a procedure.

Form small subcommittees which are generally online at the same time,
and allow them to make decisions alone, subject to review by the full
committee.

> We have acted quickly in a few instances, but in general
> most arbitrators move relatively slowly. Being elected and not being afraid
> of controversy is a contradiction. I think we try to do what is best for the
> community and when there is no explicit rule try to find a way to resolve a
> dispute within expressed community norms.

Fair enough.

>
>>Thirdly, sentences should be much, much harsher. Ban them for life and
>>get it over with. Banning only slows them down anyway, most of them will
>>come back under a different name. But at least the community will be
>>able to unite behind the AC ruling.
>
>
> This was tried at first by one arbitrator but was overruled by the majority.
> Unless the bulk of the arbitrators differ markedly from the users there is
> little support for lifetime banning.

My post was just my opinion, I didn't say it was realistic. I think it's
important that we talk openly about possible solutions, so that people
can continue to reassess our options as our circumstances change.

>>The best way to deal with trolls is to unite the community against them,
>>then put up with them until they grow out of it. It only took Michael 18
>>months. Even adult trolls like 142 eventually get bored and go do
>>something else, but you've got to expect it to take a year or two.
>>
>>If only trolling was an criminal offence by international treaty...
>
>
> It proved impossible to ban obvious trolls who advertised it by
> incorporating troll into their usernames. It was insisted that they should
> be "judged by their edits" not their username. With respect to uniting the
> community, when we were smaller that happened, now there are a number of
> troublesome users that I only become aware of when a request shows up in
> requests for arbitration.

The community was never united about anything when I started in October
2002. Maybe you're talking about mid 2001?

There are degrees of unity. There's a difference between a vocal
minority and an atmosphere of distrust. Every little bit counts. Unity
comes through leadership, it doesn't occur otherwise except by chance.

> May I suggest that when a serious matter arises that any user disturbed by
> it engage in the dispute resolution procedure. Our failures to act in cases
> which are not before us are to be expected. We do not initiate cases.

All I'm asking for is that every once in a while, we re-evaluate our
dogma. You say "we do not initiate cases" as if that settles the matter.
I don't know if your rule about not initiating cases is good or bad, I
just wish we'd think about it critically every once in a while.

Let me take the negative position. Why not act on cases that are not
brought before you? Is this a serious balance to your power? If the 9 of
you wanted to abuse your power and bend editorial direction to suit your
philosophy, would you have trouble finding a single non-member to bring
cases that you secretly ask to be brought? If you are aware of failures,
trolls bringing stress and anger to honest contributors and damaging the
quality of the encyclopedia, how can you sit by and do nothing in good
conscience?

-- Tim Starling


list: foundation-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Commons logo vote

body:
There is an ongoing vote on the Wikimedia Commons logo at:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Logo/Vote

You need an account on the Commons to vote. Some people complained that
not enough people have had an opportunity to hear about this. I disagree -
it's a project-internal vote - but I've nevertheless extended the deadline
by another week. I've also contacted the designer of the currently winning
logo regarding copyright transfer to the foundation.

Jimbo: The "This vote should be regarded as an inconclusive, unofficial
informal poll with no particular weight" comment on Commons:Logo is not
helpful. Please remove it at your discretion or clarify what else needs to
be done.

Regards,

Erik


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Delirium

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms (was Reithy
	is	a problem)

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> Thirdly, sentences should be much, much harsher. Ban them for life and
> get it over with. Banning only slows them down anyway, most of them
> will come back under a different name. But at least the community will
> be able to unite behind the AC ruling.

I think the problem with this is that, if the community had its way, a
lot of the best contributors would be banned if they were unpopular.  A
site in which all unpopular users are banned is not really a wiki.  I'm
personally quite glad that Wik was not banned the numerous times his
case was brought up (until the last time, of course), and wouldn't want
things to work otherwise.

Perhaps you have a different type of site in mind?

-Mark


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Top-posting

body:
Daniel P. B. Smith (dpbsmith at verizon.net) [041106 12:12]:

> I've been on USENET since 1989, and nobody ever fussed about
> top-posting until the very late 1990s. People did whatever they chose.

My experience (since 1988) completely contradicts this.

A. Because it makes a nonsense of logical flow.
Q. Why don't you like top posting?

- d.


from_name: Chong Yidong

subject: [Wikitech-l] uploading a .el file

body:
Uploading of unrecognized file formats was blocked several weeks ago to
prevent some browser exploits. Are there any plans to fine-tune this
policy? Wikipedia contains a file, wikipedia-mode.el (an Emacs major
mode for editing wikipedia articles) that I would like to update, but I
can't do so with the block in place.

-- CYD


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms (was
	Reithy is a problem)

body:
Wik was not banned even in the end except for a short period.

Fred

> From: Delirium <delirium at hackish.org>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2004 02:53:16 -0500
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms (was Reithy
> is a problem)
>
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> Thirdly, sentences should be much, much harsher. Ban them for life and
>> get it over with. Banning only slows them down anyway, most of them
>> will come back under a different name. But at least the community will
>> be able to unite behind the AC ruling.
>
> I think the problem with this is that, if the community had its way, a
> lot of the best contributors would be banned if they were unpopular.  A
> site in which all unpopular users are banned is not really a wiki.  I'm
> personally quite glad that Wik was not banned the numerous times his
> case was brought up (until the last time, of course), and wouldn't want
> things to work otherwise.
>
> Perhaps you have a different type of site in mind?
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] was: Reithy; now: POV warriors generally

body:
uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:
> In any case, my point remains: that with Wikipedia's continuing surge
> in popularity, we have an obligation of service to our readers.  And
> POV warriors are making trouble on articles that, IMO, are now widely
> read.

In this same general area, I wanted to point out that one day my wife
called me on my cell phone to let me know that she happened to go to
the George Bush page only to find the infamous goatse.cx image there.
(If you don't know what this is, don't try to find out if you are
easily offended!)

I mention this in this context, because it also goes into the category
of "we are getting very poppular, and we have an obligation of service
to our readers".

I don't have an exact solution for the goatse.cx case, though I think
the answer probably needs to be softer than "protect the article" when
the subject is both popular and rapidly changing.  I advocate the
development of some sort of "delayed publish" mechanism whereby edits
don't appear on the main url until some time has passed.  This could
be used on articles prone to heavy vandalism during peak times, to
allow us to catch the vandalism and remove it before it is published.
And the fact that it will not be published to the world at large, will
reduce the incentive to vandalize, and therefore save us all a big
headache.

--Jimbo


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Privacy policy

body:
The privacy policy at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Draft_privacy_policy has been a draft
for a very long time. I think it's time we had a live version, and I
would like it to be finalised for translation fairly soon and have at
least the English version ready to go live by the end of the year.
I've added some thoughts on what needs to happen before then at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Draft_privacy_policy

Please comment on the talk page and make any necessary changes so the
draft status of this document can finally be removed.

Thanks.

Angela.


subject: [Foundation-l] Privacy policy


body:
Dori wrote:
> > Jimbo: The "This vote should be regarded as an inconclusive, unofficial
> > informal poll with no particular weight" comment on Commons:Logo is not
> > helpful. Please remove it at your discretion or clarify what else needs to
> > be done.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Erik
>
> Do we even know that it's really Jimbo? It doesn't sound like
> something he would say, especially without even voting, but I could be
> wrong.

Yes, it was me.  It's not appropriate to have a brief vote on an
obscure and generally unannounced web page and imagine that the
results would be official.  Informal polls are of course fine, and can
help us to build a consensus for good decisions.

There is the additional problem that legal rights to the logo
candidates should be cleared before the voting, to avoid confusion.

--Jimbo


subject:
The WP project,
	was Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Solving the US-centrism problem

body:
Charles Matthews wrote:
> >... what is WMF's
> > position on bringing free knowledge in the Third World and what do you
> think
> > that residents of Europe, North America and Oceania can do via the
> Internet
> > for the rest of the planet?
>
> I wonder how well-informed you are on Wikipedia.  Jimbo Wales typically
> mentions a whole-planet view when he is interviewed.  I would say that it is
> a *given* in serious discussion of WP, that it is a vehicle to do just this;
> if debates seem to be on 'knowledge' and 'implementation' it is because
> there is less consensus on those.

Charles is right about everything, as is typical.  :-)

NSK, people would probably appreciate it if you spent some time
learning about the community.  Your input is certainly welcomed, but
the problem is that you have too often of late written comments that
are likely a bit frustrating to many people, because you haven't done
your homework.

"what is WMF's position on bringing free knowledge in the Third
World?"

Did you imagine that I would say "I'm against it?"

--Jimbo


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: AW: [Wikipedia-l] Locking small wikis

body:
Le Saturday 6 November 2004 23:20, Mark Williamson a ?crit :
> > This isn't really a solution, as spammers and squatters (Zazaki, f.e.)
> > don't hesitate to log in.
>
> If you are referring to the article "Zazaki" on the Tibetan Wikipedia,
> this was 1. not created (nor ever even edited) by a logged-in user; 2.
> does not appear to be spam or squatting but rather a misplaced
> English-language article with real encyclopedic content

No, this is a nationalist spam (rather than a commercial one).
It also occurs on the French WP with nearly the same text(s) under different
articles.

> Mark

Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Great French invention

body:
Muke Tever wrote:

> On Sat, 06 Nov 2004 08:04:32 +0100, Gerard Meijssen
> <gerardm at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>> Yannf has added a category "language" to the categories that hold the
>> words in a language. This gives you one list with all lists of words in
>> a particular language.
>
> What, like our Latin [[Category:Linguae]] ? ;)
> http://la.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Linguae
>
> (I realize I digress entirely with this next section here:)
>
> A lot of Latin categories belong to other categories.  It keeps them
> all in order.  For example you can start at the list of names of
> animals in the family "Canidae":
> http://la.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Canidae
>
> and it is categorized under the order "Carnivora", which is
> categorized under the class "Mammalia", which is under the phylum
> "Chordata", etc., the whole tree under a taxonomy category.   I think
> it is a better system than other wiktionaries use.   Instead of being
> broad in domain but narrow in coverage (like en:'s "English mammals"
> or fr:'s "Lexique en fran?ais des animaux") it goes for narrow in
> domain but broad in coverage: entries are categorized by family, but
> contain words in all languages, which I think is a more useful kind of
> collection...
>
> It does have the drawback of requiring many more categories, though:
> currently with 682 words we have 213 categories, which is even more
> categories than en: has!  ;)

I do find the use of "English" as a category name to be useless.  For me
the correct use of "English mammals" as a category name would refer to
mammals that are found in England.  Even "English language" should be
limited to terms that are about the English language.  A very broad
application that reduces it to any English word dilutes the value of the
term.  Using another language name that way on the English Wiktionary is
slightly more justifiable, but the efficient use of "==Spanish==" should
work just as well to came up with a list of all Spanish words in the
Wiktionary,  and a reliable Boolean search of "==Spanish== and
===Adjective===" should give us all Spanish adjectives.

I don't know whether using "Carnivora", "Canidae", etc. will do much for
us.  Shouldn't that be the responsibility of the new Wikispecies?

Ec


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>
>
>>I think Jay's assessment of our dispute resolution process is quite
>>accurate. I spoke about how I thought the AC should proceed when it
>>first started, but I was ignored. I'll repeat my basic points now.
>>...
>>
>>
>Tim - we are having an election for several ArbCom seats in December. Please
>run.
>
He might indeed be good at it, but I suspect that it would dissipate the
energies that he puts in at the development level.

Ec


from_name: Bryan Derksen

references:
<cmihqt$q27$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<BAY13-F19s8FSA4AleL00012085@hotmail.com> <cmihqt$q27$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
At 02:53 AM 11/7/2004 -0500, Delirium wrote:

>Tim Starling wrote:
>
>>Thirdly, sentences should be much, much harsher. Ban them for life and
>>get it over with. Banning only slows them down anyway, most of them will
>>come back under a different name. But at least the community will be able
>>to unite behind the AC ruling.
>
>I think the problem with this is that, if the community had its way, a lot
>of the best contributors would be banned if they were unpopular.

But this raises a couple of questions. What qualifies someone as being
among the "best" contributors, and why are some editors so unpopular?

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, so presumably extensive knowledge of various
subjects is a good thing to have in contributors. Contributors who know
lots of stuff and can write it up well would therefore get a lot of points
towards being ranked among the "best". However, Wikipedia is a
_collaborative_ encyclopedia. Contributors who are unable to function in a
collaborative environment, who pick fights and push their POV and defend
"their" articles tooth and nail, lose a lot of points towards being ranked
among the "best". I'd go so far as to say it disqualifies them outright, no
matter how knowledgeable they are.

Personally, I'd much rather work with a contributor who's good at
collaborating within the Wikipedia environment than one who "knows his
stuff" about the subject at hand, given a choice of only one or the other.
Holes in knowledge are easily filled but dealing with a bad collaborator
can be very hard. I think it's not unreasonable to consider unpopularity as
an important and relevant factor here, though of course not the only one.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Proposal for the first annual staggered Arbitration
	Committee elections

body:
I've jotted down a draft of the note about the upcoming December elections
for the AC, along the same lines as Angela's first draft for the July ones.
It's at:

  [[Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2004]]

Looking forward to some input and moving forwards,

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Creation of new projects

body:
Hi all

The policy for creation of new projects (adding a language to an
existing project is not concerned by this policy) has been agreed upon
yesterday during the board meeting on irc channel.

The policy is visible here :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_project_policy

The policy is meant to ensure that the community is aware of the project
and has time to discuss it and give its opinion on it, as well as allow
the foundation to approve it or not.

Please follow this policy from now on for any new project proposition.

Thanks

Anthere

--------

Anthere a ?crit:
> Since the issue was raised several times, and since
> there is an open board meeting which will deal with
> this topic among others, I drafted a policy about new
> projects on meta.
>
> Please see
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_project_policy
>
> This is naturally open to discussion, suggestions
> etc...
>
> I hope it constitute a base for next week end meeting
> on irc.
>
> Reminder : A meeting with the board will be held on
> November 6 at 20:00 UTC in the #wikimedia IRC channel.
> This meeting will be open to everyone, and a log will
> be published on Meta.
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
> www.yahoo.com


body:
On Sunday, November 07, 2004 3:35 AM, wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org <>
wrote:

> > From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
> > Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms
> > (wasReithy is a problem) Date: Sat, 06 Nov 2004 07:02:40 -0700
> > > Thirdly, sentences should be much, much harsher. Ban them for life
> > > and get it over with. Banning only slows them down anyway, most of
> > > them will come back under a different name. But at least the
> > > community will be able to unite behind the AC ruling.
> >
> > This was tried at first by one arbitrator but was overruled by the
> > majority. Unless the bulk of the arbitrators differ markedly from
> > the users there is little support for lifetime banning.
>
> Proof that the process is broken.  We all know what a troll is.

We do? Wow. Then why needs there be any dispute resolution process at all,
if it is always so very clear-cut for "all" of us?

Blanket statements of black-and-white judgement are almost always wrong, and
certainly normally laughable.

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


from_name: Mark Richards

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Proposal: make user pages uneditable

body:
They can already protect their pages or ask someone else too. Why would making this automatic help? As far as I can see it is only one or two people who regularly have their pages vandalised anyway.
Mark

Josiah <josiah at karaitica.com> wrote:
I concur. Many users have had their user pages vandalized by others opposed
to their POV's.

Josiah
User:Yoshiah_ap

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body:
That's the MOST annoying thing?! Astounding.
Mark

Nicholas Knight <nknight at runawaynet.com> wrote:
Jens Ropers wrote:
> Is a majority of list posters opposed to that here? (Is there a
> reason/rationale for the strong aversion?)

A: Top posting.
Q: What's the most annoying thing on USENET?
_______________________________________________
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from_name: Henry H. Tan-Tenn

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Locking small wikis

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales ti 2004/11/6 ChS 07:33 sia-kong:
> Also, something like "tiny wiki
> combined RC" -- if people would enjoy keeping an eye on these.

This can be done externally by retrieving and aggregating RSS/Atom feeds.


from_name: phil hunt

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikinews II

body:
On Sun, 31 Oct 2004 02:27:38 -0800 (PST), Anthere
<anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>For this reason, and after several discussions here
>and there, given the controversial nature of the
>project and its likelyhood to get in the sunlights of
>media immediately upon its creation (contrarywise to
>wikipedia, which had time to polish before it become
>known), I would suggest that we try to contact some
>interested journalists and possibly have them join a
>sort of advisory board. What do you think ?

Sounds sensible to me.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikinews II


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikinews II


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: The WP project,
	was Re: Re: Solving the US-centrism problem

body:
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 11:36:25 +0100, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>- the best interwiki solution ever

What does this mean? I.e. what's an "interwiki solution"?

Perhaps more to the point, what's the "interwiki problem"?

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikijunior has moved to Wikibooks

body:
Hi

This is just a heads-up that the Wikijunior project has moved to its natural
home on Wikibooks. To remind everyone, the project is intended to produce
colorful, child-friendly books about important topics that are also of interest to
kids ages 7-12. We are in the earliest stages of getting the project off the
ground, and would be glad to hear your ideas, suggestions, comments,
criticisms (okay, maybe not criticisms), and everything else you have to say.

We are also eager to find graphic artists, illustrators, and cartoonists to
help make these books as appealing as possible.

While we are working on these books in English, we plan on having parallel
series in various languages. Especially important now are French and Spanish,
though other languages are also possible. There may be some grant money
available to produce similar projects in minority languages.

Finally, the best judges of these booklets will be kids. If you have kids--or
if you can borrow, buy, or steal a kid for a couple of hours--ask them what
they think about the projects as they evolve. What would they like to see? What
do they like? What do they dislike? They are probably a lot more astute when
it comes to things like this than a bunch of adults.

To visit Wikijunior, go to http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior.

Danny


from_name: Charles Matthews

body:
phil hunt wrote

>Charles Matthews wrote

> >- the best interwiki solution ever
>
> What does this mean? I.e. what's an "interwiki solution"?
>
> Perhaps more to the point, what's the "interwiki problem"?

See http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?InterWiki.  Some of us on the list
tend to use Meatball-style jargon.

That was just one bullet point.  What I meant was that the current style of
interwiki links between Wikipedias in different languages is clearly
practical and works.  It operates without any fuss about the name spaces.  I
would guess that the number of links it has created runs into the hundreds
of thousands.

Charles


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] Special characters tool bar

body:
Special characters: ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? [] [[]] {{}} ~

Could the help bar under the editing windown also include the vertical bar ?

I do not have it on my keyboard, and it would be most helpful

Thanks.


from_name: Marcus Schießer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wiki based market place

body:
Hi folks,

as part of my master thesis I developed a wiki based product catalogue /
marketplace. Using it you can build a browsable and searchable catalogue
of goods and services, make comments on them, sell stuff and so on.
Source code is available under the GPL and the wiki database under the FDL.
Now I am looking for all kinds of people who want to participate -
developers, product describers, dealers and consumers. Also I would like
to discuss possible cooperation with the wikipedia project. All of you
may contact me for any concern.
At that time, the market place is available at:
http://market.prag053.server4you.de
for some sample products, please go to "Browse - Page 2 -
Telecommunication - Mobile - Siemens".

Have fun using it,

Marcus


subject: [Foundation-l] MediaWiki namespace

body:
I think the licence situation with the text in the MediaWiki namespace
needs to be clarified.

The messages were originally part of MediaWiki, so are presumably GPL.
However, people are editing them on Wikipedia, and other sites, under
the impression that all of their edits are GFDL.

Many of the changes are not creative enough to be copyrightable, but
for some messages significant changes have occurred. Compare, for
example, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=MediaWiki:Noarticletext&oldid=3185431
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Noarticletext

Is it possible for a notice to be added to the entire namespace that
edits should be made under the GPL? Or would it make more sense to
have edits be PD so the language.php files can be updated from the
MediaWiki namespace without needing to worry about the licence terms?

What should happen to the existing edits that have been made by people
unaware that their edits ought to be GPL? Is there a solution other
than reverting to the default text?

I have copied this message to
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:MediaWiki_namespace#Licensing_issues
for those who prefer to reply on the wiki.

Angela.


subject: [Foundation-l] MediaWiki namespace


subject: [Wikitech-l] Lilypond 2.4.0

body:
This is more of a general comment than a suggestion for a replacement,
but having just returned from the International Computer Music
Conference, there's a strong dissatisfaction with the usefulness of
Lilypond as a music markup language in that community, so almost nobody
uses it.  At the moment the most popular alternatives are proprietary
ones (Finale and Sibelius), but the long-term focus is on an extention
to MPEG, currently being worked on by the MPEG Ad Hoc Group on Symbolic
Music Representation (website at
http://www.interactivemusicnetwork.org/mpeg-ahg/).  Unfortunately, this
is likely to take a significant amount of time, so isn't an immediate
solution.

The main issue IMO is to avoid being too locked in to Lilypond, since
it's unlikely to remain the ideal solution for too long (and already
isn't, in many circles).  Perhaps using some restricted subset of
Lilypond's notation, or even a completely different simple notation of
our own for a subset of its features, would allow a future migration
with relatively few hassles.  Allowing full Lilypond commands in
wikitext would tie us pretty strongly to Lilypond though, since many of
them are hackish typesetting commands rather than semantic music markup.

-Mark


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: AW: [Wikipedia-l] Locking small wikis

body:
Yann Forget wrote:
> Le Saturday 6 November 2004 23:20, Mark Williamson a ?crit :
>
>>>This isn't really a solution, as spammers and squatters (Zazaki, f.e.)
>>>don't hesitate to log in.
>>
>>If you are referring to the article "Zazaki" on the Tibetan Wikipedia,
>>this was 1. not created (nor ever even edited) by a logged-in user; 2.
>>does not appear to be spam or squatting but rather a misplaced
>>English-language article with real encyclopedic content
>
> No, this is a nationalist spam (rather than a commercial one).
> It also occurs on the French WP with nearly the same text(s) under different
> articles.

In the german wikipedia the article is almost permanently protected due
to this spam. Just for the information.

greetings,
elian


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikijunior now at Wikibooks

body:
Hi

This didn't go through the first time, so I am sending it again.

This is just a heads-up that the Wikijunior project has moved to its natural
home on Wikibooks. To remind everyone, the project is intended to produce
colorful, child-friendly books about important topics that are also of interest to
kids ages 7-12. We are in the earliest stages of getting the project off the
ground, and would be glad to hear your ideas, suggestions, comments,
criticisms (okay, maybe not criticisms), and everything else you have to say.

We are also eager to find graphic artists, illustrators, and cartoonists to
help make these books as appealing as possible.

While we are working on these books in English, we plan on having parallel
series in various languages. Especially important now are French and Spanish,
though other languages are also possible. There may be some grant money
available to produce similar projects in minority languages.

Finally, the best judges of these booklets will be kids. If you have kids--or
if you can borrow, buy, or steal a kid for a couple of hours--ask them what
they think about the projects as they evolve. What would they like to see? What
do they like? What do they dislike? They are probably a lot more astute when
it comes to things like this than a bunch of adults.

To visit Wikijunior, go to http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior.

Danny


body:
Hi,

Erik Moeller wrote:
> There is an ongoing vote on the Wikimedia Commons logo at:
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Logo/Vote
>
> You need an account on the Commons to vote. Some people complained that
> not enough people have had an opportunity to hear about this. I disagree -
> it's a project-internal vote -

Wiki Commons is intended to serve all wikimedia projects, it's not
project-internal. If you don't announce such a vote on the mailinglist
people have no chance to inform their projects about it.

> but I've nevertheless extended the deadline
> by another week.

One week is still rather short for a project wide vote.

> I've also contacted the designer of the currently winning
> logo regarding copyright transfer to the foundation.

Thank you. This should be done before any vote is started usually.
Status of the existing logos is still unresolved, we don't need even
more logos with unclear status.

greetings,
elian


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Tibetan Wikipedia

body:
I have recently been accused by Danny of using machine translation to
create new articles on the Tibetan Wikipedia.

While I have been trying to cut back on the number of e-mails I send
to wikipedia-l nowadays, I think this is fairly important.

I would like to make a few points:

1. TTBOMK, there currently exists no machine translator which will
translate to or from Tibetan.

2. I personally recognise that current machine translation technology
is generally unreliable, although it is improving a little, and would
under no circumstances write an article using the unedited output of a
machine translator, for any language. Nor would I use a word-by-word
translation from a dictionary as that is even more unreliable.

3. All the content there contributed with my username is written by
me. I am not fluent in Tibetan, but I know a little. I did not go
beyond what I am comfortable with writing, and I believe it is all
correct and if it is not, that there is much less error than if it
were a machine translation. (the exception being my userpage, where I
just wrote about myself, which I'm pretty sure is a bit wacky but
hopefully not completely incomprehensible). The individual words in
the table of contents on the Main Page, I used a dictionary for (after
all, they *are* individual words).

Even if I made some mistakes, that would be even more encouraging to a
fluent speaker to edit it and fix it than if it had no mistakes, and
that might lead to more editing.

In addition, apparently the problem with "spam" on Wikipedias is, at
least according to Danny, generally quickly cleaned up every time it
occurs, with the exception of squatting.

If squatting is the problem here, locking Wikis surely is not the solution:

If I wanted to squat on a Wiki, I could almost as easily "show
interest" and ask for it to be unlocked and start my squatting as if
it weren't locked at all - the squatters on the Nauruan Wikipedia were
committed enough to squatting that they asked a developer to change
the name of the language on interwiki links to "Nauroese", and (I'm
not sure about this second part, I didn't check) request adminship.
Requiring a minimum number of committed contributors won't help
either, as if somebody wants to use a Wikipedia for a conlang not
likely to be approved for a new Wikipedia, there is a good chance they
can find 4 other people to support them and contribute (especially if
the conlang has fans or supporters, as do for example the Rosenfelder
conlangs).

There are three solutions to the (perceived; so far it has only for
sure occured once on any Wikipedia, perhaps twice) problem of
squatting:

1. Verify in some way that the content people write is in the language
they claim it's in, which does not nessecitate locking.

2. Erase all inactive Wikipedias, and never create any new ones.

3. Continue the way things were before, where people patrolled such
inactive Wikipedias. This has until now been 100% effective against
squatting - I caught the only known case, and another suspected case
(the suspected case being relatively soon after it was edited). If
there are other cases already, I have not caught them, so I guess the
100% statistic is invalid as if a case is not caught, it cannot be
counted as "not caught".

In addition, Danny has suggested that I do not in fact check inactive
Wikipedias on a regular basis. I, as well as a few other users, do
actually check inactive Wikipedias on a regular basis. Some have
expressed the feeling that if such Wikis could simply be locked
instead, then it would save them the trouble of having to monitor
them. However, I (and undoubtedly at least a couple of others) do it
for different reasons than these people, and actually enjoy performing
that task.

Another solution to a supposed problem of inactive Wikis is to
actively recruit people to contribute. So far, I have done this on a
very small scale with a small degree of success, and I have
commitments from people to contribute to a Wikipedia once they finish
something they're in the middle of. Presumably, if it were on a more
official level and from an e-mail address not from a free email
provider (I've begun to suspect that some ISPs block gmail addresses,
after I've found that I get one reply per 10 or so languages, even
though the number of failure notices I get is extremely low), the
response would be greater.

In addition, I have personally found so far that there are at least a
few Wikipedias where we already have Wikipedians who are fluent in the
language but do not contribute to it because they either don't know of
its existance or are busier with another Wikipedia. This is true with
some of the Wikipedias in South African languages (people contribute
instead to the English or Afrikaans Wikipedias), some of the
Wikipedias in Indic languages (people mostly contribute to hi: and ur:
instead of their local language with the major exceptions being ta:,
kn:, and ks: and to a smaller degree a couple of others), European
minority languages (I have a strong suspicion that there are at least
a couple of speakers of French minority languages on the French
Wikipedia who do not contribute to that Wikipedia, same with Russian
and Italian minority languages, and with Saami speakers on
Scandinavian-language Wikipedias). The problem of simple lack of
awareness would be fairly easy to remedy, but if somebody doesn't want
to work on a Wikipedia in their own language, there is no forcing
them.

Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: was: Reithy; now: POV warriors generally

body:
On Sun, 7 Nov 2004 07:43:45 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>I don't have an exact solution for the goatse.cx case, though I think
>the answer probably needs to be softer than "protect the article" when
>the subject is both popular and rapidly changing.  I advocate the
>development of some sort of "delayed publish" mechanism whereby edits
>don't appear on the main url until some time has passed.

That sounds a damn good idea.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)


subject: [Foundation-l] participation to tic21

body:
Hello,

In february 2005 a meeting will take place in France.

www.tic21.com

The meeting topic is ?new technologies and sustainable development?. It will last two days.

The program and the speakers have now been established. http://www.tic21.com/intro.php?Page=programme.htm&PHPSESSID=10338cd0a3fd3d50016cc4cdb283a63a

Wikipedia will not be part of the speakers.

However, I suspect our project might be mentionned by some participants. So, it would still be beneficial that there is a participant of Wikipedia over there, and if so, essential that we have a mini stand and poster/leaflets on it, so that participants to the congress who hear about Wikipedia will have a place to go to know more. Best would be an internet connection or a computer with Wikipedia on it.

Who could mention Wikipedia ?

Well, first the organiser itself possibly, Michel Giran, since we had the opportunity to meet, and since he asked me to participate to the last tic21 newsletter.

Second, there are participants from La Fing, and in particular of Denis Pansu, who is one of the foundator of Wikimedia France (http://www.fing.org/)

I could also mention Stefan Jensen - EEA ? GEMET, who is working with Gerard on including GEMET data in Wiktionary (http://www.eionet.eu.int/GEMET)

Bruno Oudet            -Minist?re des Affaires ?trang?res (France), Conseiller sp?cial pour le SMSI is very aware and interested in Wikipedia as well. I met him last spring in Lyon, Yann also met him several times and will participate to Autrans organised by Bruno in january. (http://autrans.crao.net/index.php/BrunoOudet)

Daniel MATHIEU            -Association Tela Botanica, Pr?sident. Is also currently in relation with the French Wikipedia for content collaboration. (http://www.tela-botanica.org/)

I think all 5 at least could mention Wikipedia and redirect people to us.

Who is participating to this meeting ?
Many people, and many important people.

Among other

   J?r?me Bind? - UNESCO, Sous-Directeur g?n?ral
   ?ric GUILLON - Comit? 21, Pr?sident
   Margot Wallstr?m - Communaut? europ?enne, Vice-pr?sidente
   Serge LEPELTIER - Ministre de l??cologie et du d?veloppement durable (France)
   Rabia ABDELKRIM - ENDA (S?n?gal),
   Dominique DESAUNAY            - Radio France Internationale, Journaliste
   Thierry Gaudin            -Prospectiviste / chercheur (http://www.gaudin.org/)
   Guy HaScoet            -Acad?mie du d?veloppement durable (also a notable politician in France)
   Fabienne Rubert            -?ditions Nathan, Directeur d?veloppement et des relations ext?rieures (Edition Nathan is a major publisher in France)
   Etc?

Why do I think it is important that Wikipedia is at this meeting ?

Potentially, there are some people with which we could cooperate (exchange content, get more visibility?). At the minimum, it would help the french wikipedia to get better known by organisations giving grants.
But mostly, it would be positive I think, that such people working at the Unesco, Comit? 21, European community, etc? get to hear more about us.

Now, the problem is that as most congress, it is not free, and as more and more congress, even the mini-stand is not free either. It would cost 500 euros for a mini stand, and 300 euros for congress access (I think the 500 include the congress access, but I am just not sure). There are some trip costs of course, perhaps 120 euros for train and hotel. And naturally the costs of leaflets and poster printing for the stand. Business cards would also be a good idea. I suspect that makes the overall costs over 1000 euros.

I would like very much to go to this meeting. Both because I am interested myself (I work in sustainable agriculture), and because I think it can be beneficial to Wikipedia. I am ready to take 2/3 days off to go there and ready to participate to the costs myself, but 1000 is just too high for me.

I have tried to get access for free, till now with no success. It is not really a french tradition to invite people :-). I also looked a bit for money to fund this, till now, no success either. But there are 3 months left, so it is not desperate :-) There are a limited number of stand though.

I am well aware that we should not have to pay to be heard, and that it would not be acceptable to pay the access with donators money.
However, I think this is one event which would be worthwhile to participate to and I am ready to give it time so that it is the most beneficial for our project. So, if any one has an idea of who I could contact to ask for funds for this, public or private grants, please do contact me. I am interested in any suggestion.

Aside from access and trip costs, I would like that we discuss participation of foundation and french association to printing costs of any promotional documents.

Anthere

---------------------------------
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 Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page. www.yahoo.com


subject: [Foundation-l] participation to tic21


from_name: Minty

subject: [Wikitech-l] maintenance/archives/importUseModWiki.php

body:
before I get my hands dirty, anyone know if there is a recent and
working import script from UseMod (v1.0) to MediaWiki?

the one in the bundle states it doesn't work, and a quick poke
suggests this is accurate.  It doesn't look to complex a job, but
either way, if I can avoid writing it, all the better :)

Whilst I'm here, same question but for MoinMoin...


body:
We have had a few relatively competent contributors who in addition to doing
good editing themselves were dismissive or insulting to others. Some of
those others were vandals, some misguided in their efforts, some simply good
editors who incurred the wrath of their betters.

Fred

> From: Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2004 11:42:08 -0800
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms (was Reithy
> is a problem)
>
> At 02:53 AM 11/7/2004 -0500, Delirium wrote:
>
>> Tim Starling wrote:
>>
>>> Thirdly, sentences should be much, much harsher. Ban them for life and
>>> get it over with. Banning only slows them down anyway, most of them will
>>> come back under a different name. But at least the community will be able
>>> to unite behind the AC ruling.
>>
>> I think the problem with this is that, if the community had its way, a lot
>> of the best contributors would be banned if they were unpopular.
>
> But this raises a couple of questions. What qualifies someone as being
> among the "best" contributors, and why are some editors so unpopular?
>
> Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, so presumably extensive knowledge of various
> subjects is a good thing to have in contributors. Contributors who know
> lots of stuff and can write it up well would therefore get a lot of points
> towards being ranked among the "best". However, Wikipedia is a
> _collaborative_ encyclopedia. Contributors who are unable to function in a
> collaborative environment, who pick fights and push their POV and defend
> "their" articles tooth and nail, lose a lot of points towards being ranked
> among the "best". I'd go so far as to say it disqualifies them outright, no
> matter how knowledgeable they are.
>
> Personally, I'd much rather work with a contributor who's good at
> collaborating within the Wikipedia environment than one who "knows his
> stuff" about the subject at hand, given a choice of only one or the other.
> Holes in knowledge are easily filled but dealing with a bad collaborator
> can be very hard. I think it's not unreasonable to consider unpopularity as
> an important and relevant factor here, though of course not the only one.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
We need to be careful to not open more postions than there are reasonably
well qualified candidates (of whom I count you as one). Some of the
candidates in the last election seemed much more suited for the role of
defendant than arbitrator.

Fred

> From: Rebecca <misfitgirl at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: Rebecca <misfitgirl at gmail.com>, English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 18:07:42 +1100
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms
>
> Is there any means for doing this with otherwise inactive
> administrators? I ask, because there's two arbitrators on Michael's
> list who are clearly inactive, having participated very little in
> recent months - and furthermore, aren't up for re-election.
>
> -- ambi
>
>
> On Sat, 06 Nov 2004 22:22:38 -0800, Michael Snow
> <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>> uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:
> In addition, I think we need to open the election to
>> include the positions of the five arbitrators I mentioned.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

body:
It has been included now.

On Sun, 07 Nov 2004 16:21:35 +0100, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Special characters: ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? [] [[]] {{}} ~
>
> Could the help bar under the editing windown also include the vertical bar ?
>
> I do not have it on my keyboard, and it would be most helpful
>
> Thanks.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Puddl Duk

body:
--- Rebecca <misfitgirl at gmail.com> wrote:

> Surely there's got to be some distinction here
> between users who are
> here to fight, and users who, while they may have
> some problems
> relating to other users, are generally good.

The difference is [[Mens rea]], which can be hard to
identify and harder to prove.

Ocasionally, however, it is obvious.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>We need to be careful to not open more postions than there are reasonably
>well qualified candidates (of whom I count you as one). Some of the
>candidates in the last election seemed much more suited for the role of
>defendant than arbitrator.
>
>
Just as in real life, heh-heh. We really need the Daily Show
correspondents to go out and interview our ArbCom candidates!

Stan


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms (was
	Reithyisa problem)

body:
Charles Matthews wrote:
> "Bryan Derksen" wrote
>
> > Kicking off 0.1% of Wikipedia's users isn't going to significantly reduce
> > the pool of editors, and would reduce the stress for a significant portion
> > of the 99.9% who remain. I don't see what these 1-in-1000 antisocials are
> > contributing to Wikipedia that is worth it to endure the bad atmosphere
> > they generate for everyone else.
>
> Well, I think that's the debate really.  If it was uncontroversial who they
> were, and that a surgical removal was possible without splitting the
> community, they would be banned quite quickly.

I think you're both right.  :-)

The "problem user" that concerns us all the most is not the troll or
vandal or obvious nutcase.  These are taken care of quite quickly with
a minimum of fuss.

The problem are the people who are *good* and *bad*, and there are
many many types of these, and really all of us has some tendencies in
this area.  (One of the best decisions I ever made around here was not
to edit much myself: I love NPOV in principle, but I'm not sure I
would be good at it on topics that I care a lot about!)

If we could unambiguously identify the 0.1% and remove them, yes, we'd
have a bit more peace.  But in the meantime, we can just cautiously
and slowly adjust our policies and procedures more or less tightly,
with an eye on kindness, love, justice, and principled action, and
seek for a helpful middle ground that we can all mostly support even
if we think it goes wrong sometimes.

I don't think anyone can seriously campaign for pure wiki anarchy, nor
for a regime of fast-banning by admins anytime there is a dispute of
any kind.  Neither would be consistent with our goals and values.

So, here we are, eternally talking about what to do.  This is not a
bad thing, it's just the human condition.

--Jimbo


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms (was Reithy
	is a problem)

references:
<BAY13-F19s8FSA4AleL00012085@hotmail.com>
	<cmihqt$q27$1@sea.gmane.org> <418DD46C.7020904@hackish.org>
	<cmmkj0$alo$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> Wik's point of view was more important to him than the integrity of
> Wikipedia. This was demonstrated by the fact that when he was finally
> frustrated, he wrote a script to vandalise Wikipedia and meta. He spent
> about a week in an arms race with me and the other developers.
>
> I'm thinking of a site where NPOV is valued, rather than just word
> count. If that's different to the type of site you're thinking of, then
> so be it.

I agree with this completely.

It's interesting to note that Wik's vandalism spree was a great relief
to me in some ways, but it may have short-cutted some advances in our
policies to deal with problematic editors.

It was a relief because he was causing a deep rift in the community:
he did some good work, and sometimes - as difficult as he was -- he
was right on the issue at hand.  He fought badly with some really
annoying pov warriors, and so forth.  There was no consensus as to
what to do about him.  But when he vandalized the site with a script,
the path became clear to everyone: this was just beyond the pale.

Even so, it relieved us of the need to figure out what to do better in
cases like that.

--Jimbo


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms (was Reithyis
	a problem)

body:
At 12:18 PM 11/8/2004 +0000, Charles Matthews wrote:
>Making popularity a high priority is a charmless policy, in my opinion.  It
>is also the 'wrong end of the telescope'; most people respond to a good
>community atmosphere by becoming good wikizens, and scapegoating a few who
>don't is a policy of last resort.  If Wiki-en has had 100000 signed-in
>users, it will have attracted quite a number of 1-in-1000 Internet
>antisocials.  Enough to give the 'problem user' prominence, certainly in
>discussion on this list.

Kicking off 0.1% of Wikipedia's users isn't going to significantly reduce
the pool of editors, and would reduce the stress for a significant portion
of the 99.9% who remain. I don't see what these 1-in-1000 antisocials are
contributing to Wikipedia that is worth it to endure the bad atmosphere
they generate for everyone else.


from_name: uninvited at nerstrand.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy proposal: require e-mail confirmation

body:
I would like to propose two related policy changes:

1.  That a confirmed e-mail address be required for creation of new
accounts
2.  That these e-mail addresses be visible to administrators.

Wikipedia extends several important priviledges to logged in users:
- uploading images
- moving pages
- hiding IP address
- stronger policy protections before being blocked

Each of these has been misused:
- Recently, there has been a spate of uploads of the goatse image.
- There have been several instances of page-move vandalism.
- We have growing problems with socks, which have been used for
circumventing AC bans, for vandalism, for POV-driven advocacy, and for
"good hand/band hand" editing where a throwaway account is used to
evade accountabilitiy for antisocial edits
- There are a growing number of cases where vandals create accounts,
make a few good edits, and then proceed with relative impunity since
they cannot then be blocked without an AC decision.

Requiring a confirmed e-mail address would have little effect on
legitimate contributors and would help considerably in dealing with
problem users:

a.  It would complicate the construction of vandalbots that register a
username and then conduct high-speed vandalism
b.  It would provide a better basis for following up on abusive users in
egregious cases where an ISP must be contacted
c.  It would allow likely socks to be more rapidly identified

While there are services that provide anonymous email accounts (hotmail,
yahoo, and so on), these take time to create, providing a deterrent
effect.  Also, a pattern of creating userids with anonymous email
addresses is easy to spot.

Finally, I believe that this would help us be more welcoming to new
users, since it would reduce the present atmosphere of suspicion
surrounding any account that has relatively few edits.

UninvitedCompany


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Great French invention

references:
<418C7780.4090005@myrealbox.com>	<opsg1sbqjh2okkek@arcadia.attbi.com>
	<418E6DDE.1030007@telus.net>

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Muke Tever wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 06 Nov 2004 08:04:32 +0100, Gerard Meijssen
>> <gerardm at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hoi,
>>> Yannf has added a category "language" to the categories that hold the
>>> words in a language. This gives you one list with all lists of words in
>>> a particular language.
>>
>>
>> What, like our Latin [[Category:Linguae]] ? ;)
>> http://la.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Linguae
>>
>> (I realize I digress entirely with this next section here:)
>>
>> A lot of Latin categories belong to other categories.  It keeps them
>> all in order.  For example you can start at the list of names of
>> animals in the family "Canidae":
>> http://la.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Canidae
>>
>> and it is categorized under the order "Carnivora", which is
>> categorized under the class "Mammalia", which is under the phylum
>> "Chordata", etc., the whole tree under a taxonomy category.   I think
>> it is a better system than other wiktionaries use.   Instead of being
>> broad in domain but narrow in coverage (like en:'s "English mammals"
>> or fr:'s "Lexique en fran?ais des animaux") it goes for narrow in
>> domain but broad in coverage: entries are categorized by family, but
>> contain words in all languages, which I think is a more useful kind
>> of collection...
>>
>> It does have the drawback of requiring many more categories, though:
>> currently with 682 words we have 213 categories, which is even more
>> categories than en: has!  ;)
>
>
> I do find the use of "English" as a category name to be useless.  For
> me the correct use of "English mammals" as a category name would refer
> to mammals that are found in England.  Even "English language" should
> be limited to terms that are about the English language.  A very broad
> application that reduces it to any English word dilutes the value of
> the term.  Using another language name that way on the English
> Wiktionary is slightly more justifiable, but the efficient use of
> "==Spanish==" should work just as well to came up with a list of all
> Spanish words in the Wiktionary,  and a reliable Boolean search of
> "==Spanish== and ===Adjective===" should give us all Spanish adjectives.
>
> I don't know whether using "Carnivora", "Canidae", etc. will do much
> for us.  Shouldn't that be the responsibility of the new Wikispecies?
>
> Ec
>
Ray,
You do miss the point why the use of templates like {{-en-}} is usefull.
They help to make data portable between different wiktionaries. The data
of the English wiktionary is very hard to use as there is a reluctance
to understand and accept innovations like these templates for what they
are; a way of increasing cooperation. A list of all words in a lanuage
is of a relative merit except for the fact that it was created to have a
list with all words in a language that can exceed the 500 entries limit
that exists when you ask for the usage of a particular lemma. It has
added benefits as this list is in alphabetical order. These categories
for words in a language were requested by a user from the ENGLISH
wiktionary by the way.

On previous occations I have explained that the use of templates like
{{-en-}} is not for a lexicological reason. They are there for a
technical reason. it allows for the easy transfer of data as mentioned
earlier and it has different content than just a definition of a term on
the nl:wiktionary, in other wiktionaries it points to a definition on
wikipedia, to the wiktionary definition or not at all. That is up to the
local wiktionary. This is what the use of the templates allows for.
There is only efficient use of "==Spanish==" if you are not interested
in looking further than the English wiktionary. That is in my view a bit
short sighted given the current amount of active wiktionaries and the
need for quality content in all of them.

Thanks,
    Gerard


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms (was Reithy
	is	a problem)

references:
<BAY13-F19s8FSA4AleL00012085@hotmail.com>
	<cmihqt$q27$1@sea.gmane.org> <418DD46C.7020904@hackish.org>
	<cmmkj0$alo$1@sea.gmane.org> <418FB5BC.2020402@hackish.org>

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> Wik's point of view was more important to him than the integrity of
>> Wikipedia. This was demonstrated by the fact that when he was finally
>> frustrated, he wrote a script to vandalise Wikipedia and meta. He
>> spent about a week in an arms race with me and the other developers.
>
>
> I guess there's not a whole lot to say except that I completely
> disagree with this assessment.

You don't think that Wik writing vandal-scripts was unacceptable?

Stan


subject: [Wikitech-l] HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR header

body:
Hoi,

A user of the nl:wikipedia who had the misfortune to be blocked on a proxy server, mentioned that many providers send a HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR header along. This she said could easily be retrieved using PHP with the variable $_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"]. Now when this is true, it makes excellent sense to use this IP-adress for the registration of contributions but also for the use of blocking specific IP numbers.

I have no idea if our software uses this or not. I thought this a great idea so I move this remark to you in the hope that we can enhance our software and make our anti vandal solutions more accurate.

Thanks,
	GerardM


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Nov 8, 2004, at 10:11 AM, Rowan Collins wrote:
> On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 03:48:58 +0000, Minty <mintywalker at gmail.com> wrote:
>> before I get my hands dirty, anyone know if there is a recent and
>> working import script from UseMod (v1.0) to MediaWiki?
>
> This isn't a definitive answer, but I would doubt it - the existing
> one [presumably] dates to when the English Wikipedia was first
> converted to a bespoke wiki engine (which later turned into
> MediaWiki).

No, it's from the conversion of the other remaining languages direct to
MediaWiki. However it's likely not completely up to date, and is not
maintained, so might need a little tweaking.

Oh, use maintenance/importUseModWiki.php, *not*
maintenance/archives/importUseModWiki.php

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> This is just a heads-up that the Wikijunior project has moved to its natural
> home on Wikibooks.

Neat. A Wikijunior namespace should be set so that Wikijunior-specific database
dumps and and searches could be done.

-- mav

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


body:
--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> We need to be careful to not open more postions than there are reasonably
> well qualified candidates (of whom I count you as one). Some of the
> candidates in the last election seemed much more suited for the role of
> defendant than arbitrator.

I agree with this completely. Therefore votes against candidates should also be
allowed - only the top candidates with a net positive vote will be elected (5
options would be given, from strongly approve to strongly disapprove). If that
means that some seats remain empty, then so be it.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com


from_name: Domas Mituzas

body:
Hey,

You'd have to log at least both addresses, if you don't trust a forwarding proxy. Malicious user can specify same header and have other users framed. Moreover, lots of such headers would contain local ip addresses, like 192.168.0.0/24 subnet. And last, but not the least. Apaches already use this, because users don't contact software directly, but via squid proxy pool.

Cheers,
Domas

-----Original Message-----
A user of the nl:wikipedia who had the misfortune to be blocked on a proxy server, mentioned that many providers send a HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR header along. This she said could easily be retrieved using PHP with the variable $_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"]. Now when this is true, it makes excellent sense to use this IP-adress for the registration of contributions but also for the use of blocking specific IP numbers.


subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Request for new Wikipedia: bokmål

body:
I propose a different solution.

* Create nb: for Bokm?l
* Allow nb: users to copy-paste articles from no: that are in Bokm?l,
since no: is a mixture and to just move everything would create a
problem
* Place links to nn: and nb: prominently on the mainpage of no:
* Place interwiki links to nn: and nb: on all applicable pages on no:

Mark

On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 15:57:01 +0100, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> Here my proposal on what to do with no:
>
> * Create nb: for Norsk Bokm?l
> * Move the current contents of no: to nb:
> * Create on the main page of no: as a sort of disambiguation page
> between nb: and nn:
> * Let other pages on no: redirect to nb: so existing links keep working.
>
> Andre Engels
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, 06 Nov 2004 20:34:13 -0500, Olve Utne <utne at nvg.org> wrote:
> > At 20:35 06/11/2004 +0000, Lars Alvik wrote:
> > >Ok, there are some basic facts, that the request didn't provide.
> > >
> > >1. Most of the articles on no: is on either bokm?l or riksm?l.
> > >2. The debate started on nn:, and is probably an attempt to claim (or deny
> > >the other part use of the no; domain)
> > >3. A split (practicaly a move) would give bokm?l (the dominant language) a
> > >unfamiliar name.
> >
> > Hello Lars & everyone else,
> > As an active Nynorsk / Norsk Bokm?l / Swedish Wikipedia writer,
> > I find your list of "basic facts" a bit skewed, Lars.
> >
> > I can assure you that there is no conspiracy to claim the no: domain
> > for another non-exclusive language of Norway (be it Nynorsk,
> > Norsk Bokm?l, Norsk Riksm?l, H?gnorsk, S?megiella (Northern Sami),
> > other Sami languages, languages of national minorities or whichever).
> >
> > As for the no: articles being mostly in Norsk Bokm?l/Riksm?l (and
> > near 100% of the user interface), that is true -- and you seem to wish
> > to use this argumentatively against the Nynorsk Wikipedia people.
> > The logical consequence of that would in fact be to also admit that
> > the use of no: as a language code for our Norsk (mainly Bokm?l)
> > Wikipedia is linguistically inappropriate.
> >
> > Here is an alternative list of "basic facts", for the case of balancing
> > the arguments:
> >
> > 1. "Either Bokm?l or Riksm?l" makes little sense,
> >     since the two are part of one orthographic/morphologic
> >     continuum officially (but not amongst the Riksm?l proponents)
> >     known as "Bokm?l" -- a continuum with a difference magnitude
> >     roughly equivalent to the difference between UK and US English,
> >     minus (!) the clarity of norms.
> > 2. The Bokm?l name is unfamiliar partially because its proponents
> >     prefer, for political reasons, to call it (incorrectly) simply "Norsk"
> >     (Norwegian).
> > 3. The majority of the Norwegian population write Bokm?l
> >     but speak dialects that are closer to Nynorsk than Bokm?l.
> > 4. The Nynorsk Wikipedia people are definitely not interested
> >     in taking over the no: domain.
> >     (Rebuttal of your "basic fact" #2 -- which I find suspicious
> >     that you included in a "basic facts" list at all....)
> > 5. The discussion most likely takes place on Nynorsk
> >     because the debate culture there is easier on its participants
> >     than the one on no:.
> > 6. The logical name for a nb: Wikipedia would probably be
> >     "Norsk Bokm?l" rather than simply "Bokm?l".
> >     That is what the code nb: stands for anyway --
> >     and it is as familiar as Norsk, but more precise.
> >     (Rebuttal of your "basic fact" #2.)
> > 7. The domain name no: as such transcedes: nb or nn:,
> >     and should, logically speaking, be a common site with
> >     contents and/or links reflecting both Nynorsk and Bokm?l.
> > 8. In the hypothetical event of a separate Norsk Bokm?l Wikipedia,
> >     the no: domain could either
> >     a) remain as a mixed entity, as it is to some degree now
> >        (which is a basic assumption within the nn: discussion);
> >     b) be used as a common portal to nb: and nn:,
> >        and possibly also the national minority languages of Norway;
> >     c) or be a disambiguation link page.
> > 9. The reasons for the wish of a separate Norsk Bokm?l Wikipedia
> >     may vary for the various users. My personal view is that a
> >     separate Norsk Bokm?l Wikipedia may be a better strategy for
> >     the work towards a future common-Scandinavian interface
> >     with parallel articles in the four main written forms of Scandinavian
> >     (defining Bokm?l and Riksm?l as one, since there is no single
> >     definite linguistical trait that defines these as separate codes
> >     rather than a socio-linguistic continuum).
> > 10.I know that the sometimes fiercely high-profile POV from
> >     some central people on no: serves to scare some people away.
> >     This has already been referred to in the wikipedia-l debate
> >     as part of the reason why some people who wish to keep
> >     writing in Norsk Bokm?l may wish a separate Wikipedia
> >     as a way to "come clean".
> >
> > I personally do not have a strong preference either way,
> > but I do think that it is important to try to keep the discussion
> > on a factual level.
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> > Olve
> >
> > ___________________
> >
> > Olve Utne
> > http://utne.nvg.org
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Commons logo vote

body:
Jimmy-
> Yes, it was me.  It's not appropriate to have a brief vote on an
> obscure and generally unannounced web page

The Wikimedia Commons homepage is hardly "obscure", and that is where the
vote was prominently linked, in bold text. Unlike Wikipedia, all the
Wikimedia Commons languages are stored in the same wiki. Anyone working on
the Commons on a regular basis will have noticed the vote. That is for
whom it was intended.

Before you made your ex cathedra announcement that the vote was to be
considered "inconclusive", "unofficial" and "informal", 99 votes had
already been cast - hardly a small sample, particularly considering that
50 of these votes were cast for a single logo, which will clearly be the
winner even if we keep this up for 3 months.

There currently exists, to my knowledge, no written policy on logo
copyrights or the procedure for choosing new logos. As always, we try to
improve our procedures along every step of the way. I have no problem
whatsoever with requiring the transfer of copyright to the Wikimedia
Foundation for the winning logo before we put it into use. I do have a
problem with the way this issue was handled, with no prior communication,
no clear path of resolution, and an ex cathedra announcement. I am readily
available for communication, so there is really no good reason for that.

Again, now that we agree that a copyright transfer is necessary, the
deadline has been extended and the vote has been more broadly announced, I
ask you to remove or rephrase your announcement on Commons:Logo as a
gesture of good faith.

Regards,

Erik


body:
"Bryan Derksen" wrote

> Personally, I'd much rather work with a contributor who's good at
> collaborating within the Wikipedia environment than one who "knows his
> stuff" about the subject at hand, given a choice of only one or the other.
> Holes in knowledge are easily filled but dealing with a bad collaborator
> can be very hard.

People always do opt for 'easy-going' colleagues.  A friend of mine with a
successful business career gave me the opinion that the awkward colleague
usually was the one who got the job done.  It is a truism about voluntary
organisations that this is not something that immediately translates.

But ... if it is accepted that WP will become harder to expand usefully, the
more that the well-known facts are already covered, then actual experts
become increasingly needed.  I would find it easy to come up with areas
where there seems to be a unique wikipedian who can write authoritatively.

>I think it's not unreasonable to consider unpopularity as
> an important and relevant factor here, though of course not the only one.

Making popularity a high priority is a charmless policy, in my opinion.  It
is also the 'wrong end of the telescope'; most people respond to a good
community atmosphere by becoming good wikizens, and scapegoating a few who
don't is a policy of last resort.  If Wiki-en has had 100000 signed-in
users, it will have attracted quite a number of 1-in-1000 Internet
antisocials.  Enough to give the 'problem user' prominence, certainly in
discussion on this list.

So, I come down more on the side of 'Wikipedia community, heal thyself' than
on of the ArbCom bashers.  Surely WP has enough momentum, not to be
deflected away from a general tolerance, and AssumeGoodFaith _especially_ of
the less popular (as usual, matters most when least likely to be applied).
I find the 'bad-faith user' a slightly creepy epithet, actually, for what is
usually a POV editor.

Charles


from_name: Delirium

references:
<BAY13-F19s8FSA4AleL00012085@hotmail.com>	<cmihqt$q27$1@sea.gmane.org>	<418DD46C.7020904@hackish.org>
	<cmmkj0$alo$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> I don't really want to diverge into a dicussion of the personality
> traits of particular users, but Wik was more than just unpopular. He
> refused discussion and conducted numerous edit wars. According to this
> mailing list post:
>
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-May/027321.html
>
> he was responsible for the departure of at least two users.
>
> There are more important things than the number of words written on
> Wikipedia. It also matters that the text written is accurate and
> written in a neutral point of view. NPOV is acheived through rational
> discussion and compromise, two things that Wik was extremely bad at.
>
> Another thing that is more important than word count is the mental
> health of our contributors. Editors should be able to contribute to
> the site without constant anger and frustration. They shouldn't have
> to put up with personal attacks.
>
> Wik's point of view was more important to him than the integrity of
> Wikipedia. This was demonstrated by the fact that when he was finally
> frustrated, he wrote a script to vandalise Wikipedia and meta. He
> spent about a week in an arms race with me and the other developers.

I guess there's not a whole lot to say except that I completely disagree
with this assessment.  In my opinion, Wik was on the correct side in
around 95% of the edit wars in which he was involved, and tirelessly
pursued a NPOV policy in the face of numerous POV-pushing edit warriors
who, in frustration at his relentless opposition, kept resorting to
trying to ban him when they couldn't get people to agree with their
actual arguments.  It's true that in 5% or so of the cases Wik was
indeed in the wrong, but this pales in comparison to the amount of
POV-pushing he kept at bay.

I'd have to say that I agree with Wik and Adam Carr that in many cases,
discussion is simply not worth it.  There are too many POV pushers with
too much free time on their hands to engage them all in endless
discussion.  If people are arguing over points that reasonable people
can disagree on, fine, but if they're espousing ridiculous views and
trying to push some overtly nationalist message, just revert 'em and be
done with it.

Certainly Wik wasn't a model citizen, but his opponents are a far bigger
problem than he ever was.

-Mark


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Special characters tool bar

body:
great :-)

?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason a ?crit:
> It has been included now.
>
>
> On Sun, 07 Nov 2004 16:21:35 +0100, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Special characters: ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
>>? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? [] [[]] {{}} ~
>>
>>Could the help bar under the editing windown also include the vertical bar ?
>>
>>I do not have it on my keyboard, and it would be most helpful
>>
>>Thanks.
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikitech-l mailing list
>>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>>
>


from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms (was Reithy is
	a problem)

references:
<BAY13-F19s8FSA4AleL00012085@hotmail.com>	<cmihqt$q27$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<418DD46C.7020904@hackish.org>

body:
Delirium wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> Thirdly, sentences should be much, much harsher. Ban them for life and
>> get it over with. Banning only slows them down anyway, most of them
>> will come back under a different name. But at least the community will
>> be able to unite behind the AC ruling.
>
>
> I think the problem with this is that, if the community had its way, a
> lot of the best contributors would be banned if they were unpopular.  A
> site in which all unpopular users are banned is not really a wiki.  I'm
> personally quite glad that Wik was not banned the numerous times his
> case was brought up (until the last time, of course), and wouldn't want
> things to work otherwise.
>
> Perhaps you have a different type of site in mind?

I don't really want to diverge into a dicussion of the personality
traits of particular users, but Wik was more than just unpopular. He
refused discussion and conducted numerous edit wars. According to this
mailing list post:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-May/027321.html

he was responsible for the departure of at least two users.

There are more important things than the number of words written on
Wikipedia. It also matters that the text written is accurate and written
in a neutral point of view. NPOV is acheived through rational discussion
and compromise, two things that Wik was extremely bad at.

Another thing that is more important than word count is the mental
health of our contributors. Editors should be able to contribute to the
site without constant anger and frustration. They shouldn't have to put
up with personal attacks.

Wik's point of view was more important to him than the integrity of
Wikipedia. This was demonstrated by the fact that when he was finally
frustrated, he wrote a script to vandalise Wikipedia and meta. He spent
about a week in an arms race with me and the other developers.

I'm thinking of a site where NPOV is valued, rather than just word
count. If that's different to the type of site you're thinking of, then
so be it.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Tibetan Wikipedia

body:
Mark Williamson a ?crit:

> In addition, I have personally found so far that there are at least a
> few Wikipedias where we already have Wikipedians who are fluent in the
> language but do not contribute to it because they either don't know of
> its existance or are busier with another Wikipedia. This is true with
> some of the Wikipedias in South African languages (people contribute
> instead to the English or Afrikaans Wikipedias), some of the
> Wikipedias in Indic languages (people mostly contribute to hi: and ur:
> instead of their local language with the major exceptions being ta:,
> kn:, and ks: and to a smaller degree a couple of others), European
> minority languages (I have a strong suspicion that there are at least
> a couple of speakers of French minority languages on the French
> Wikipedia who do not contribute to that Wikipedia, same with Russian
> and Italian minority languages, and with Saami speakers on
> Scandinavian-language Wikipedias). The problem of simple lack of
> awareness would be fairly easy to remedy, but if somebody doesn't want
> to work on a Wikipedia in their own language, there is no forcing
> them.
>
> Mark

Since I started on a small wikipedia nearly 3 years ago, I can say it
clearly. Working nearly alone on a small wiki is rather boring. Little
feedback, little interaction. Most people dont find that fun. I waited
that more people join fr to really start working on it.


from_name: Nicholas Knight

body:
uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:
> Requiring a confirmed e-mail address would have little effect on
> legitimate contributors and would help considerably in dealing with
> problem users:

It's remarkable how every time someone proposes to violate privacy, they
declare that it will have "little effect" on legitimate people.

> a.  It would complicate the construction of vandalbots that register a
> username and then conduct high-speed vandalism

Congratulations, you've slowed down the creation of vandal bots by a
one-time five minutes, and the creation of each vandal bot account by a
few seconds.

Oh, and you've also slowed down the registration process for real people
by a few minutes, and scared off people that don't want to be handing
out their email address.

> b.  It would provide a better basis for following up on abusive users in
> egregious cases where an ISP must be contacted

No vandal is going to give their ISP-provided email address, and I fail
to understand how it would provide any better basis than their IP
address even if they did.

> c.  It would allow likely socks to be more rapidly identified

How? Anyone with a modicum of intelligence creating sockpuppets isn't
going to provide the same or even similar email addresses.


from_name: Henry H. Tan-Tenn

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Tibetan Wikipedia

body:
Mark Williamson ti 2004/11/8 ChS 02:00 sia-kong:

> In addition, I have personally found so far that there are at least a
> few Wikipedias where we already have Wikipedians who are fluent in the
> language but do not contribute to it because they either don't know of
> its existance or are busier with another Wikipedia. This is true with
> some of the Wikipedias in South African languages (people contribute
> instead to the English or Afrikaans Wikipedias), some of the
> Wikipedias in Indic languages (people mostly contribute to hi: and ur:
> instead of their local language with the major exceptions being ta:,
> kn:, and ks: and to a smaller degree a couple of others), European
> minority languages (I have a strong suspicion that there are at least
> a couple of speakers of French minority languages on the French
> Wikipedia who do not contribute to that Wikipedia, same with Russian
> and Italian minority languages, and with Saami speakers on
> Scandinavian-language Wikipedias). The problem of simple lack of
> awareness would be fairly easy to remedy, but if somebody doesn't want
> to work on a Wikipedia in their own language, there is no forcing
> them.

And that is the "problem", isn't it.  There are quite simply a lot more
incentives to working on a Language of Wider Communication than a more
regional one.  It's amazing how many Internet-savy elites in
ex-colonies/incorporated regions prefer an LWC as a badge of their
identity.  The best we can do is (1) consistenly advertise the existence
or possibilities of those Wikipedias (and hope for the best); and (2) on
a more long-term basis, attempt to bridge the "digital divide" so that
"non-elites" speaking those languages will be able to access Wikipedia.
  i.e. Allow the very local to access the global, hopefully without
losing their identity in the process.  But that's beyond Wikimedia's
mission.  And ultimately, of course, I respect people's choice.

----

BTW, also be mindful of the fact that Unicode and typographic
technologies for some scripts are still evolving (adoption rate probably
much lower).  That could be a reason why an WP is under-utilized:  it's
difficult or impossible to correctly input and/or output certain scripts
in a Unicode-compliant way.  Or else a legacy encoding scheme and
associated font is still dominant.  (Ironically the mere existence of an
WP in those scripts may help to accelerate the transition toward
Unicode, provided there's some content.)


from_name: Rick

body:
Because "some" of us want to bend themselves into such pretzel shapes to try to prevent the rest of us from carrying on with the business of creating an encyclopedia, and are more intrerested in allowing anyone and everyone to do anything and everything they can.

RickK

"James D. Forrester" <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
On Sunday, November 07, 2004 3:35 AM, wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org <>
wrote:

> > From: Fred Bauder
> > Reply-To: English Wikipedia
> > To: English Wikipedia
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms
> > (wasReithy is a problem) Date: Sat, 06 Nov 2004 07:02:40 -0700
> > > Thirdly, sentences should be much, much harsher. Ban them for life
> > > and get it over with. Banning only slows them down anyway, most of
> > > them will come back under a different name. But at least the
> > > community will be able to unite behind the AC ruling.
> >
> > This was tried at first by one arbitrator but was overruled by the
> > majority. Unless the bulk of the arbitrators differ markedly from
> > the users there is little support for lifetime banning.
>
> Proof that the process is broken. We all know what a troll is.

We do? Wow. Then why needs there be any dispute resolution process at all,
if it is always so very clear-cut for "all" of us?

Blanket statements of black-and-white judgement are almost always wrong, and
certainly normally laughable.

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com

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from_name: Olve Utne

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Enhanced search for local language clusters? (Was::
	Request ...

body:
Hello,
A user on no: (I don't know whether he is active here on wikipedia-l or
not, since he is only known through his pseudonym) has pointed out two main
problems with starting to use nb: rather than no: for the mainly nb (i.e.,
Norsk Bokm?l/Riksm?l(/samnorsk)) wikipedia:

1) The interwiki links to articles on no: might not work anymore.
2) The search engine hits through Google and Yahoo might not work anymore.

Both Andre's and Mark's suggestions seem to take care of this problem.

I have another question, though:

Is it -- as yet -- possible to configure a Wiipedia in such a way that one
can use the general search box so search in more than one language version?
In other words: Could the parameters for the Scandinavian wikipedias
(no-nn-sv-da) be set so that hits from all four wikipedias show up when
clicking the "search" link? And, even better, can this be done for the
"Search" function only, thus giving only a local hit when searching for a
term using the "Go" button IF there is a local page with that name?

Hypothetical examples:

1) In da:, you enter "K?benhavn" and click "G? til" (Go). You get the
Danish page "K?benhavn".
2) In da:, you enter "K?benhavn" and click "S?g" (Search). You get a list
of hits, with the da: and no: articles and the Swedish K?benhavn redirect
to K?penhamn. You do not yet get a nn: hit, since that article is not yet
created. Alternatively (or additionally), you get the Swedish "K?penhamn"
page directly because of the interwiki links to "da:K?benhavn" and
"no:K?benhavn".
3) In da:, you enter "Gamvik" in the search box and hit "S?g" (Search). You
get, hypothetically, the no: and the nn: hit, since there is no da: page
with this name.
4) In nn: you enter "K?benhavn" and click "G?" (Go). Since there is no page
with that name yet in this still quite new Wikipedia, it defaults to a
Scandinavian search and comes up with the no:, da: and sv: pages on top of
the search result page. You also, obviously, get the usual question whether
you want to create a "K?benhavn" page in Nynorsk.

This option should probably be set as default. It should also be possible
for logged-in users to unselect this option.

This would be a great enhancement; it would be a way of for all four (as
yet) Scandinavian-language wikipedias to effectively provide more
comprehensive contents, for the benefit of all its users; — and it
would be a great incitement for each of the four groups to write lots of
articles to make sure that there is an article for a direct hit in their
own language as often as possible.

Other similar language clusters, like Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian (with some
tweaking of the Alphabet issue), Czech/Slovak,
Bulgarian/Macedonian(/Serbian), Finnish/Estonian, German/Plattd??tsch/etc.,
and maybe Faeroese/Icelandic (or the latter could join the Scandinavian
cluster for this purpose if they so desire), may also benefit from such a
solution.

Regardless of whether no: stays or moves to / gets joined by nb:, I think
this would be a solution to consider for the best of all four Scandinavian
language groups.

Best regards,

Olve

___________________

Olve Utne
http://utne.nvg.org