list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Voting bug and Election closure

body:
--- Tomos at Wikipedia <wiki_tomos at hotmail.com> wrote on Wikipedia-l:
> I have just read this bug on the list about unrecorded votes:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2004-June/015741.html
>
> I announced it on japanese wikipedia, only to realize that the voting is
> closed. Considering the fact that the bug was found so late that I suppose
> there could be a extention for the vote so that people who voted can make
> sure their opinions are counted.

We were also down for more than a day and Wiktionary was not upgraded for at
least a few days into the election IIRC. I therefore suggest re-opening the
vote and extending it until the end of Monday UTC time.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
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list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Daniel Mayer


list: wikien-l

from_name: Fennec Foxen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Don't look for trouble. (was Re: Blocking without
	following policy)

body:
On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 15:16:20 -0700, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> I just read through it.  It looks like an honest expression of views in
> the Wikipedia namespace.  Nobody is being attacked.  What is there about
> the post that "provokes conflict"?  Surely this is not an opinion that
> would merit banning.

Without commenting on whether or not this is honest or bannable or
anything like that... this looks like it belongs on Meta.

Now, regarding the "banned user", I believe standard practice (at
least on certain hard-banned users - Michael... 142? if not everyone)
is to revert everything they do on Wikipedia, whether or not it is
good, valid, right, wrong, misleading, or enlightening.

The implication in the preceding post seems to be that it's obvious
via this page history that the user in question is in fact a user who
is already hard-banned.


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Server down message

body:
--- Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Philip Newton wrote:
>
> > Perhaps this is a good place to ask the question - is RC "required
> > reading"? [...]
> > Yet it's where e.g. the recent Election was announced [...]
> > So - should I look at RC regularly?
>
> We often have people complaining that things aren't announced visibly
> enough. Therefore, obviously, we need a central place to do so. For the
> really important things (like the election), Recent Changes is perfect
> for that, because most Wikipedians look at it regularly, and then those
> that don't can't complain they weren't informed ;-)

Actually I seldom have time to look at RC on the English Wikipedia anymore
since it takes me an hour or two every day just to go through my watchlist and
'Related changes' from my user page. Having [[Wikipedia:Recentchanges]]
displayed at the top of all watchlists and maybe at the top of all related
changes pages would help matters.

-- mav

__________________________________
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http://messenger.yahoo.com/


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Red faction and the Legion of Trolls

body:
In a message dated 6/12/2004 6:50:33 PM Eastern Standard Time,
maveric149 at yahoo.com writes:
This type of crap should not be tolerated - and yet it is. I am fearful that
our open and trusting nature is making us a haven for trolls.
Very true. I can think of a bunch we should get rid of immediately.

Danny
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list: wikitech-l

from_name: wiki pedista

subject: [Wikitech-l] timeout in editing a template.

body:
While trying to edit the Template:Stub page (and the
Template:Esbozo page that has the same content) in the
spanish wikipedia, I get an error with the following
message:

Sorry- we have a problem...
The wikimedia web server didn't return any response to
your request.
To get information on what's going on you can visit
#wikipedia.
An "offsite" status page is hosted on OpenFacts.
Generated Sun, 13 Jun 2004 02:29:59 GMT by
wikipedia.org (squid/2.5.STABLE4-20040219)

Got that one several times, and a coupl eof times the
following:

Error de la base de datos
De Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre.
Ha ocurrido un error de sintaxis en una consulta a la
base de datos. Esto puede ser debido a una b?squeda
ilegal (ver Buscando en Wikipedia), o puede indicar un
error en el software. La ?ltima consulta que se
intent? fue:

    UPDATE cur SET cur_touched='20040613025734' WHERE
cur_id IN
(20,70,93,142,189,238,320,627,629,753,757,839,878,913,993,1014,1025,1037,1126,1140,1201,1260,1261,1263,1321,1343,1382,1481,1600,1626,1648,1768,1800,2046,2060,2146,2157,2199,2677,2805,2887,2899,2924,2968,3002,3011,3224,3352,3434,3811,3852,3990,4026,4309,4403,4600,4619,4706,4708,4765,4856,4865,5062,5082,5163,5167,5391,5420,5478,5528,5693,6225,6282,6417,6427,6437,6490,6689,6801,6858,7219,7224,7271,7449,7700,7884,8003,8056,8096,8222,8223,8249,8288,8366,8562,9116,9256,9450,9623,9634,10181,10362,10513,10638,10640,10669,11198,11450,11500,11639,11658,11758,11957,12186,12349,12582,12871,12896,12967,13001,13083,13144,13198,13302,13511,13536,13691,13702,14663,14939,14974,15396,15662,15878,16339,16391,16567,16586,16637,16945,17221,17273,17296,17397,17410,17501,17622,17760,17772,17777,18053,18414,18427,18541,18822,19037,19112,19186,19327,19424,19569,21240,21280,22071,22247,22254,22879,22880,22882,22938,23108,23235,23474,25023,25283,25285,25516,25550,25583,26193,26280,26407,26810,26856,27096,27187
,27245,27267,27308,27376,27566,27835,27975,28334,28539,28625,29352,29657,29701,29780,29824,29869,29892,30125,30313,30337,30346,30469,30478,30600,30608,30702,30705,30717,30764,30842,30898,30985,31014,31170,31219,31382,31486,31549,31755,31759,31797,31911,31924,31950,31971,31976,32040,32041,32148,32190,32259,32285,32302,32323,32361,32399,32479,32620,32643,32932,33017,33139,33142,33171,33180,33321,33412,33629,33648,33839,33917,33984,34025,34194,34297,34372,34501,34507,34723,34727,34738,34754,34768,34811,34824,34903,34914,35096,35140,35168,35212,35369,35371,35372,35383,35579,35633,35634,35639,35666,35688,35733,35738,35739,35783,35864,35910,36069,36081,36082,36083,36091,36115,36154,36278,36280,36282,36288,36409,36463,36464,36472,36495,36560,36586,36677,36723,36789,36790,36791,36792,36796,36871,36873,36889,36896,36948,37112,37120,37152,37194,37219,37278,37294,37318,37326,37358,37432,37455,37460,37467,37490,37502,37503,37504,37509,37514,37521,37523,37539,37597,37598,37609,37639,37772,37810,3
7824,37854,37858,37859,37923,37981,37988,38020,38025,38031,38035,38041,38061,38098,38100,38102,38110,38123,38138,38143,38146,38150,38151,38152,38155,38160,38168,38170,38216,38217,38220,38223,38244,38306,38327,38391,38578,38608,38647,38662,38791,38816,38855,38908,38909,38910,38914,38916,38917,38922,38938,38961,38972,39068,39071,39075,39095,39121,39198,39201,39254,39301,39314,39321,39323,39548,39564,39568,39570,39590,39592,39736,39793,39805,39816,39829,39873,39874,39876,39968,40022,40072,40092,40093,40101,40131,40189,40289,40370,40387,40396,40546,40549,40568,40605,40606,40608,40704,40706,40707,40711,40758,40798,40801,40803,40811,40821,40825,40828,40859,41028,41052,41093,41100,41125,41177,41182,41222,41243,41253,41309,41336,41338,41339,41350,41354,41374,41393,41400,41413,41529,41574,41576,41592,41681,41737,41766,41887,41907,41940,42009,42220,42228,42362,42367,42385,42391,42392,42540,42553,42587,42591,42633,42647,42659,42769,42784,42787,42788,42789,42792,43019,43032,43039,43048,43069,432
00,43202,43203,43217,43263,43267,43454,43466,43469,43470,43490,43512,43513,43526,43546,43549,43554,43558,43560,43577,43580,43582,43599,43600,43602,43606,43623,43682,43683,43685,43691,43746,43804,43805,43808,43809,43812,43813,43814,43815,43817,43818,43819,43820,43821,43822,43823,43824,43828,43829,43830,43831,43832,43833,43834,43835,43837,43838,43841,43842,43846,43847,43848,43850,43851,43852,43853,43854,43855,43856,43857,43858,43859,43860,43861,43862,43863,43864,43865,43866,43867,43868,43869,43870,43871,43872,43873,43874,43875,43876,43877,43878,43879,43880,43881,43882,43883,43884,43885,43888,43889,43891,43943,43946,43969,43975,43983,44039,44044,44082,44083,44105,44126,44164,44284,44299,44363,44379,44460,44487,44610,44653,44659,44662,44667,44672,44715,44741,44788,44833,44834,44841,44888,44952,44992,45022,45027,45028,45041,45061,45068,45069,45070,45071,45104,45132,45133,45137,45300,45354,45356,45398,45407,45412,45455,45540,45561,45629,45635,45707,45715,45717,45720,45766,45788,45826,45865
,45883,45908,45916,45943,45953,45955,45956,46088,46090,46091,46093,46096,46125,46135,46192,46213,46228,46230,46232,46237,46238,46243,46244,46253,46254,46258,46297,46312,46320,46327,46329,46331,46332,46380,46384,46385,46402,46403,46423,46431,46434,46488,46525,46527,46531,46537,46549,46554,46555,46558,46560,46586,46603,46605,46612,46656,46675,46707,46720,46728,46730,46751,46787,46858,46874,46877,46908,47058,47059,47096,47191,47224,47232,47253,47290,47324,47333,47348,47366,47414,47448,47455,47491,47732,47877,47884,47916,47925,47926,47945,47976,47996,48038,48042,48048,48056,48070,48082,48108,48205,48209,48239,48271,48302,48326,48384,48395,48429,48449,48475,48480,48482,48483,48505,48557,48569,48592,48666,48702,48705,48707,48729,48730,48733,48744,48806,48809,48857,48950,48979,48994,49015,49030,49036,49066,49072,49113,49149,49153,49154,49160,49182,49184,49197,49200,49231,49238)

El error de retorno de MySQL fue"1205: Lock wait
timeout exceeded; Try restarting transaction".
And in another ocassion the same previous one with
this message...

UPDATE cur SET cur_text='

[[Imagen:WikiLetraMini.png|WikiLetra]]
\'\'Este
art?culo es, por ahora, s?lo un
[[Wikipedia:esbozo|esbozo]]. [[Wikipedia:Encontrar y
arreglar un esbozo|Ampli?ndolo]], ayudar?s a mejorar
Wikipedia. Para ello, pulsa en la pesta?a
\'\'\'editar\'\'\', que est? al principio. Si has
?cambiado de piel? busca un enlace abajo o arriba.

',cur_comment='',cur_minor_edit=0,
cur_user=1,cur_timestamp='20040613030037',cur_user_text='AstroNomo',cur_is_redirect=0,
cur_is_new=0, cur_touched='20040613030037',
inverse_timestamp='79959386969962' WHERE cur_id=23982
AND cur_timestamp='20040601182327'

Thanks,

AstroNomer

__________________________________
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http://messenger.yahoo.com/


from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
I think much of the worry about Red Faction is fairly justified,
especially considering that their membership is a virtual who's who of
problem users, as well as their tendency to try to swarm on various
issues. It should also be noted that User:Editing Saddam Hussein
(Better known to the world as Lir) did his work under the red faction
banner.

That's not to say that I think RF poses any sort of meaningful "threat"
- simply put, they're kind of too scrawny to be worth worrying about.
But I think that they make a pretty good bellweather. That is, if you
don't have time to form a full opinion on an issue, you could do worse
than looking at RF's opinion and voting exactly opposite them.

-Snowspinner

On Jun 12, 2004, at 6:58 PM, N.T. Riche wrote:

>
>
> Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>  What the hell is up with this?
>
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Plato/red_faction
>
> Wikipedia breaking up into factions is a very, very bad idea.
>
> Also, comments from IndigoGenius like:
>
>  "Father of the Fifth World movement, thinks Jimbo is brain dead and
> deserves
> the death penalty; not a job editing (I mean deleting) the ideas that
> will
> change and save our world! God made a mistake when he made Jimbo!!"
>
> are not at all acceptable and should be deleted on sight and the user
> who wrote
> them blocked from editing.
>
>  JRR's mention and link to [[meta:Regime change]] (a page mostly
> written by
> banned user 142.177) along with many other 142-written meta pages
> elesewhere
> (such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JRR_Trollkien/Troll )
> indicates that
> JRR and 142.177 are one in the same.
>
>  This type of crap should not be tolerated - and yet it is. I am
> fearful that
> our open and trusting nature is making us a haven for tr olls.
>
>  -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
> http://messenger.yahoo.com/
>  _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> ?You really shouldn't worry about it. I allow anyone (pretty much) to
> edit my red faction page. Even though you might worry about the
> communist overtones, it is not a?wiki-communist organization. It was
> created?for those users who need wiki-love and they don't get it. Now
> I never knew that 142 wrote that page which provides a rather
> interesting insight into who Jrr is but it is still not enough proof
> to convince me.
>
>  ?
>
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo!
> Messenger_______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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from_name: Philip Newton

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Server down message

body:
On Fri, 11 Jun 2004 14:40:22 -0500, Delirium
<delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> Or at the very least, stick the message on recent changes ahead of time,
> but not every single page until somewhere closer to the actual downtime.

Perhaps this is a good place to ask the question - is RC "required
reading"?

I know that I look at RC on en: nearly never, even though it's where I
do most of my edits, simply because there's *so much* on it.

Yet it's where e.g. the recent Election was announced, apparently (which
I found out from one of the candidates' User pages), and where you
propose to stick downtime notices.

So - should I look at RC regularly?

(Incidentally, I also think 24 hours is a reasonable time span for the
warning to be up.)

Cheers,
Philip


from_name: John Robinson

body:
With all due respect, how often do you edit en:? I count 28 edits in
the month of May. I often beat that in a day.

On the other hand, in the same time period I count 48 pontifications
from you on the en: mailing list, which I must admit I can't hope to
match.

Might I suggest you are dealing more in theory than in practice?
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: China goverment maybe blocked wikipedia today

body:
--- Jiong Sheng <sheng.jiong at gmail.com> wrote on Wikipedia-l:
> Now I think if the ban is still not lifted for another week, we shall
> have a press release about this. I agree with mav that if the whole
> world knows about it Chinese government will lift the ban, just like
> what it did to Google in 2002.

I know at least Slashdot will cover the story. But whether or not the story
goes beyond that is up to the news cycle at the time.

We do need to confirm that this is
1) real
2) not a mistake
Otherwise we could be creating a lot of bad press for ourselves (I don't
believe in the adage that there is no such thing as bad press). If we do this
right, then we could at the very least garner a great deal of public support
and increased awareness of the project. Hopefully that will be enough to shame
the PRC into lifting the block. It is sad to think that the recent good press
about the Chinese Wikipedia may have been what brought the PRC's attention to
us.

> Another possible choice is to consult a lawyer in PRC. There was a
> case last December, when a Hong Kong reporter brought a political
> magazine into mainland and was confiscated by the Custom. He sued the
> local government and won the case. I believe that we have to fight for
> this freedom. If we keep quiet then they will never lift the ban.

Lawyers are expensive (even pro-bono ones). So I hope this does not come to
that. We could set up a Wikimedia legal defense fund to help pay the expenses
of pro-bono lawyers if the need arises though.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
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from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: irc: #mediawiki split

body:
Timwi wrote:
>  (Is this a vote at all?)
More like a 2cp collect.

Ashar


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Blocking without following policy

body:
On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 01:49:05 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I have a question.
> I thought Halifax was range blocked, and proxies unusable.
> So, how could JRR or LT edit ?
Private proxies and perhaps alternate ISPs? Proxy blocking is not
effective against nonpublic proxies.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Board vote trouble

body:
Hello,

A bug caused vote to not be correctly submitted prompting a blank page
to the user voting. This is like 2 days olds maybe.

Every user that have been prompted with a blank page after voting should
check the vote list and check if they are in the list as their vote
might not have been saved.

If you are not in the list, please revote.

Sorry for the trouble.

--
Ashar Voultoiz


from_name: ruimu uestc

body:
From: "Yann Forget" <yann at forget-me.net>

> > Today China gverment blocked all lang. of all projet on wikimedia. How
> > manages?
>
> Are you sure of that ?
> This looks like serious bad news.

I can't get to wikipedias today with my ADSL connection located in Sichuan.
I hope tomorow...

(gbog)


from_name: Anthere

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Let's deputize admins and expand the size of the AC
 (was: Re: Re: Blocking without following policy)

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>...
>>As I said above, I think the policy leaves room for a group of sysops to
>>act temporarily, before the AC does.
>
>
> Without comment on this particular block, I completely agree with your above
> general statement. I would in fact like to deputize admins so that they have
> more authority to do this sort of thing but would have to implement such blocks
> in triads (three admins would be needed to issue a block; the ability for
> single admins to block obvious vandals would not be changed).
>
>
>>Is it good ?
>>*yes, because AC is acting slowly. Participants are getting upset to see
>>reincarnations waiting for 2 months before "judgment" by the AC. It is
>>no good that participants become angry.
>
>
> I agree - The AC is a panel of judges who have the authority to issue long term
> bans. This is a large responsibility and contrary to what many might think, it
> is not fun at all. Thus cases move slowly. We are not, nor have ever been a
> police force and therefore cannot protect people from the actions of others.
> Our job is to judge those people and issue remedies which we hope will be fair
> to the accused and to the community. Admins are the ones who  implement those
> rulings.
>
>
>>In real life, there is similar
>>provision.... when someone is said to have done something deeply wrong
>>and is considered a potential threat to the society, he may be put in
>>jail before the judgment is made. He should be put in jail only if there
>>is enough evidence naturally. But this prevents damage to the society,
>>while giving time to judge fairly.
>
>
> This concept in the U.S. at least is called 'probable cause'. It allows
> policemen to detain suspects before trial and allows individual judges to
> extend that through trial based on incomplete evidence. The goal is to balance
> the rights of the accused with the right of the public to not be harmed by
> somebody who the police or the arraignment judge reasonably thinks may do harm
> if released. A full trial will determine guilt.
>
> In fact I want the AC to change its arbitration policy a bit to allow for
> probable cause blocks of users during a trial based on a simple quorum (4 votes
> in favor). Such a user would only be able to edit his/her user and user talk
> page, and the AC pages concerning him/her. But that only takes care of the
> trial part. IMO, admins also need the ability to do this during day to day
> operations (the pre-trial part). Either way we need to greatly increase the
> size of the AC so that it can deal with the workload.
>
>
>>If there is a mistake, we should deeply apology to the wrongly-blocked
>>person, and re-consider how we are looking for evidence for next cases.
>
>
> Not necessarily - if probable cause was in fact valid to begin with then the
> user was not wrongly blocked. But just as there is a possibility for police
> abuse, there is also the possibility of admin abuse. If that is the case, then
> the admin may be in a trial of his/her own. However, we should assume good
> faith of admins as much as possible - otherwise everybody will be too afraid of
> using their sysop power to do what needs to be done for the good of the
> community.
>
>
>>*yes, it is also good because power should be in the hand of people
>>first. Those doing the daily work. This is the wiki way.
>
>
> I agree. The current set-up is rather top heavy with the AC having most of the
> authority and most of the admins feeling as if their hands are tied. I would
> like to spread some of the AC's authority around but would like to proceed with
> caution.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

I support all these suggestions. You are right that AC is judge, not
force police. So, activities should be separated. And empowering teams
of sysops (with a good balance of pro and con-banning for example) to
act in good faith while you are working through the case seems a good idea.


body:
I have a question.
I thought Halifax was range blocked, and proxies unusable.
So, how could JRR or LT edit ?

John Robinson wrote:
> Fred Bauder wrote:
>
>  >I definitely want to see some evidence and also some information about
> what
>  >would be evidence. How do we determine that someone is a reincarnation
> of a
>  >previously banned user?
>
> It's pretty simple really, using the old saw:
>
> 1) They look like a duck. Check, derivative usernames (Entmoots of
> Trolls, JRR Trollkien, Leo Trollstoy)
>
> 2) They walk like a duck. Check, editing mostly the same articles as the
> banned user did.
>
> 3) They quack like a duck. Check, the edits made to the above-mentioned
> articles are virtually the same as those made by the banned user.
>
> Even with all three of these being the case, it is hypothetically
> possible that they are not, indeed, a reincarnation of the banned user.
> However I think it is overkill to go to their house, knock on their door
> and ask "Hey, are you [banned user]?" Assuming that the banned user was
> banned for their behavior, it makes sense that a new account displaying
> the same behavior should also be banned.
>
> -Hephaestos
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Tomos at Wikipedia

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Voting bug and Election closure

body:
I have just read this bug on the list about unrecorded votes:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2004-June/015741.html

I announced it on japanese wikipedia, only to realize that the voting is
closed. Considering the fact that the bug was found so late that I suppose
there could be a extention for the vote so that people who voted can make
sure their opinions are counted.

Tomos

_________________________________________________________________
Getting married? Find great tips, tools and the latest trends at MSN Life
Events. http://lifeevents.msn.com/category.aspx?cid=married


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Server down message

references:
<caa7lr$5m3$1@sea.gmane.org>	<200406102025.20331.mail@ulrich-fuchs.de>	<40C8D97C.6030302@hackish.org>	<cabikk$425$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<40CA0AA6.8020200@hackish.org>
	<f6mmc05b82ds7lgkrt12bg679t3b69grsc@4ax.com>

body:
Philip Newton wrote:

> Perhaps this is a good place to ask the question - is RC "required
> reading"? [...]
> Yet it's where e.g. the recent Election was announced [...]
> So - should I look at RC regularly?

We often have people complaining that things aren't announced visibly
enough. Therefore, obviously, we need a central place to do so. For the
really important things (like the election), Recent Changes is perfect
for that, because most Wikipedians look at it regularly, and then those
that don't can't complain they weren't informed ;-)

So the answer to your question is: If you want to be informed of these
important things, then you should probably have a look at either
[[Special:Recentchanges]] or [[Wikipedia:Recentchanges]] every once in a
while (the latter probably usually loads faster). However, it's not
required reading if you are not interested in anything that is usually
announced there.

Timwi


from_name: Fire

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Mailinglist passwords

body:
Andre Engels schrieb:

> "Fire" <ronny at kopfrechnung.de> schrieb:
>
>
>>By the way: Could someone tell me why wikinl-l has as far as I remember
>>16 list admins?
>
>
> The wikinl-l-owner at wikipedia.org address 'doubles up' as the address
> that is given to people as a 'contact Wikipedia' address on nl:. Because
> of this, all Dutch sysops (except maybe the last one or few) are list
> admins, and the address is also used as a kind of mailing list for
> sysop-specific discussion (in particular, giving opinions on new
> candidate-sysops).
>
> Andre Engels

Hi Angre.

What would you think about getting a new list, called "InfoNL-l" (for
example) which would handle with this 'contact Wikipedia' things? The
sysops would then be the admin of the InfoNL-l and there'd be one or two
people left as list admins on WikiNL-l, which really wouldn't need more.

Sincerly yours,
Ronny Raschkowan
[u:Fire]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Red faction and the Legion of Trolls

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

> Also, comments from IndigoGenius like:
> "Father of the Fifth World movement, thinks Jimbo is brain dead [...]"
> are not at all acceptable and should be deleted on sight and the user who wrote
> them blocked from editing.

Well, why didn't you delete it?


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Mailinglist passwords (typo)

body:
Fire schrieb:

> Andre Engels schrieb:
>
>> "Fire" <ronny at kopfrechnung.de> schrieb:
>>
>>
>>> By the way: Could someone tell me why wikinl-l has as far as I
>>> remember 16 list admins?
>>
>>
>>
>> The wikinl-l-owner at wikipedia.org address 'doubles up' as the address
>> that is given to people as a 'contact Wikipedia' address on nl:. Because
>> of this, all Dutch sysops (except maybe the last one or few) are list
>> admins, and the address is also used as a kind of mailing list for
>> sysop-specific discussion (in particular, giving opinions on new
>> candidate-sysops).
>>
>> Andre Engels
>
>
> Hi Angre.
>
> What would you think about getting a new list, called "InfoNL-l" (for
> example) which would handle with this 'contact Wikipedia' things? The
> sysops would then be the admin of the InfoNL-l and there'd be one or two
> people left as list admins on WikiNL-l, which really wouldn't need more.
>
> Sincerly yours,
> Ronny Raschkowan
> [u:Fire]

I am sorry. I mean Andre, of course :-)

Sincerly yours,
Ronny Raschkowan
[u:Fire]


from_name: Jiong Sheng

body:
Now I think if the ban is still not lifted for another week, we shall
have a press release about this. I agree with mav that if the whole
world knows about it Chinese government will lift the ban, just like
what it did to Google in 2002.

Another possible choice is to consult a lawyer in PRC. There was a
case last December, when a Hong Kong reporter brought a political
magazine into mainland and was confiscated by the Custom. He sued the
local government and won the case. I believe that we have to fight for
this freedom. If we keep quiet then they will never lift the ban.

formulax

On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 01:10:00 +0800, ruimu uestc <ruimu at uestc.edu.cn> wrote:
>
> From: "Yann Forget" <yann at forget-me.net>
>
> > > Today China gverment blocked all lang. of all projet on wikimedia. How
> > > manages?
> >
> > Are you sure of that ?
> > This looks like serious bad news.
>
> I can't get to wikipedias today with my ADSL connection located in Sichuan.
> I hope tomorow...
>
> (gbog)
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Martin Harper

subject: [WikiEN-l] Yes, A Reincarnation

body:
> The current policy of "ask politely, show evidence,
> consider, block" does not appear to have been followed
> in this case.

Well, certainly it was followed for the JRR account - he was asked, evidence was
shown, we mulled it over, and then Heph blocked. Perfectly in line with that policy. You
may have missed it because it took place over several weeks, but I think it was
exemplary. If anything we perhaps took a little too long mulling over things, perhaps in
part because we had a red herring about whether "troll" in the username is
inappropriate.

> Presumption of innocence which is totally forgotten

In the UK, the burden of proof in criminal cases is "innocent until proven guilty", while
the burden of proof in civil cases is "balance of probabilities", and so forth. Even in the
real world, the presumption of innocence is hardly a universal, and with good reason.

I guess in deciding the burden of proof, one needs to consider the consequences of
making a wrong decision, and the ability of an innocent person to show that they are
innocent. It would be wrong to witch hunt and block on suspicion, but equally it would be
wrong to require evidence that would satisfy a criminal court. There is a balance to be
struck here.

> * blocking is done without AC consideration first to the case
> =>consequence number 1 (block) is saying "we do not trust AC to do what
it should do"

I think our policy on reincarnations is such that the AC doesn't need to consider the
issue first. I was willing to consider it only because the admins seemed to feel unwilling
to block without the backup of a specific arbcom ruling - as that no longer is the case,
our involvement is no longer required, unless Mark and the rest of the community are
unable to come to an agreement on this.

-Martin


from_name: Laurent GUERBY

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Mediawiki-l] MediaWiki 1.3.0beta3 released

body:
Zero problem installing it, all issues reported from 1.3.0beta2
have been solved, thanks!

Here is a small patch that documents the existing $wgUseCopyrightUpload
and adds a new $wgCheckCopyrightUpload which I believe is useful for
private installations that would like to track copyright information
($wgUseCopyrightUpload = true) but don't want checks that
the user provided decent values.

Laurent

guerby at pc:~/work/cvs/phase3/includes> diff -u DefaultSettings.php /srv/www/htdocs/wiki/includes/
--- DefaultSettings.php	2004-06-13 06:36:16.996839568 +0200
+++ /srv/www/htdocs/wiki/includes/DefaultSettings.php	2004-06-13 06:46:43.936148766 +0200
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 <?php
-# $Id: DefaultSettings.php,v 1.118 2004/06/12 02:05:15 vibber Exp $
+# $Id: DefaultSettings.php,v 1.110.2.2 2004/06/13 01:15:10 vibber Exp $
 # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE!
 # To customize your installation, edit "LocalSettings.php".
 # Note that since all these string interpolations are expanded
@@ -343,6 +343,13 @@
 $wgRightsText = NULL;
 $wgRightsIcon = NULL;

+# Set this to true if you want detailed copyright information forms on Upload.
+$wgUseCopyrightUpload = false;
+
+# Set this to false if you want to disable checking that detailed
+# copyright information values are not empty.
+$wgCheckCopyrightUpload = true;
+
 # Set this to false to avoid forcing the first letter of links
 # to capitals. WARNING: may break links! This makes links
 # COMPLETELY case-sensitive. Links appearing with a capital at
guerby at pc:~/work/cvs/phase3/includes> diff -u  /srv/www/htdocs/wiki/includes/SpecialUpload.php .
--- /srv/www/htdocs/wiki/includes/SpecialUpload.php	2004-06-13 06:38:57.630015379 +0200
+++ ./SpecialUpload.php	2004-06-13 06:36:17.902693886 +0200
@@ -73,15 +73,14 @@
 		global $wgUser, $wgOut, $wgLang;
 		global $wgUploadDirectory;
 		global $wgSavedFile, $wgUploadOldVersion;
-		global $wgUseCopyrightUpload, $wgCheckCopyrightUpload;
+		global $wgUseCopyrightUpload;
 		global $wgCheckFileExtensions, $wgStrictFileExtensions;
 		global $wgFileExtensions, $wgFileBlacklist, $wgUploadSizeWarning;

 		if ( $wgUseCopyrightUpload ) {
 			$this->mUploadAffirm = 1;
-			if ($wgCheckCopyrightUpload &&
-			    (trim ( $this->mUploadCopyStatus ) == "" || trim ( $this->mUploadSource ) == "" )) {
-				$this->mUploadAffirm = 1;
+			if ( trim ( $this->mUploadCopyStatus ) == "" || trim ( $this->mUploadSource ) == "" ) {
+				$this->mUploadAffirm = 0;
 			}
 		}


from_name: Bill

subject: [WikiEN-l] Opinion: Anyone enforcing the GNU FDL?

body:
Fernando Cassia has an article with the subject title in the 13 June
2004 Inquirer:

   http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=16551

It concerns WordIQ's apparent infringement of the GNU copyleft from the
en Wikipedia.

Interesting reading.

Best,

Bill


body:
On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 14:20:20 +0800, ruimu uestc <ruimu at uestc.edu.cn> wrote:

> My claim is that, if something is to be done to lift this ban, I suggest to
> do it first in a soft way, not using laywers, but try to convince Chinese
> officials that wikipedia is mainly a wonderfull free tool for educational
> purposes, that, as far as they agree on "encyclopedic NPOV", /they/ can
> check it and change articles if they think the content offenses China's
> integrity or so on. They know perfectly well how to drive such kind of
> "reading commitee"...

I agree we don't need to go too far and too fast on this issue. Of
course it is best to convince them to lift the ban without hiring
lawyers. It would too expensive, and we won't have much chance of
winning after all. The first step is to contact departments in charge
of censorship. If they refuse to lift the ban then perhaps we can go
to higher levels. Only after all efforsts failed shall we resort to
legal measures.

> Example : There are few pages on "how to write Chinese articles" explaining
> how to deal with Tawainese problem that would probably fit their demands
> ("never present Tawain as a nation", and so on... can't find the page now,
> you know why....) So I suppose the best could be to try to ask them (but who
> ? thats the problem, see below) which pages they don't like and deal with
> it, explain them that wikipedia is always under construction and that, with
> their help, offensive pages will progressively reach npov. The question they
> could ask is something like "is wikipedia controlable ?" We would answer
> yes, very easily in 99% cases, using admin tools like locking pages in the
> other 1%. We could also say that there is a simple and open procedure to
> become admin on chinese wikipedia...

But we may risk our NPOV. Some materials are inevitably offensive to
the government and we cannot delete them just to please PRC. But of
course I would rather have a few pages filtered than the whole site
denied access from PRC.

> So "who" is to be contacted ? I have no idea but maybe this article
> http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-06/10/content_1519843.htm
> give a direction. See also http://net.China.cn

I find that this website mainly deal with pornography rather than
politically sensitive materials on the Internet. I think it is the
General Administration of Press and
Publication(http://www.gapp.gov.cn/) who is in charge of censorship.
One of their duties is the "daily supervision and control of
information published on the Internet".

formulax


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: small template & furigana

body:
On Saturday 12 June 2004 19:36, Timwi wrote:
> Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> > On Wednesday 09 June 2004 21:05, Alexandros Diamantidis wrote:
> >>U+FFF9 INTERLINEAR ANNOTATION ANCHOR
> >>U+FFFA INTERLINEAR ANNOTATION SEPARATOR
> >>U+FFFB INTERLINEAR ANNOTATION TERMINATOR
> >
> > Though I do think that tables should be inlined, perhaps even better
> > solution would be to add support for these characters to MediaWiki.
> > Should it be done?
>
> This is not something MediaWiki can do. Support for Unicode control
> characters is up to the browsers.

We know that most (all?) browsers don't support it. Why not doing it when it's
as simple as

preg_replace(
	array(
		"/(.*)(.*)/",
		"/(.*)(.*)/"
	),
	"

$2

$1

",
	$text);

?


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Jiong Sheng <sheng.jiong at gmail.com> wrote on Wikipedia-l:
>
>
>>Now I think if the ban is still not lifted for another week, we shall
>>have a press release about this. I agree with mav that if the whole
>>world knows about it Chinese government will lift the ban, just like
>>what it did to Google in 2002.
>>
>>
>
>I know at least Slashdot will cover the story. But whether or not the story
>goes beyond that is up to the news cycle at the time.
>
>We do need to confirm that this is
>1) real
>2) not a mistake
>Otherwise we could be creating a lot of bad press for ourselves (I don't
>believe in the adage that there is no such thing as bad press). If we do this
>right, then we could at the very least garner a great deal of public support
>and increased awareness of the project. Hopefully that will be enough to shame
>the PRC into lifting the block. It is sad to think that the recent good press
>about the Chinese Wikipedia may have been what brought the PRC's attention to us.
>
I agree that this requires a careful and measured approach.  Our primary
objective should be to ensure access for users living in the PRC.
"Commie bashing" or railing about the lack of civil rights in China may
only convince them to tighten things up even more.

We first of all need to be sure of our facts in the matter to avoid
making accusations that have no foundation in reality.  A cooperative
attitude can also be helpful.  It would help to know just where the
decision came from, and whether there is an accessible higher level
bureaucrat who might overrule the decision.  It may even be that their
requirements are within acceptable levels; we shouldn't presume that
they aren't.  It would be great if the appropriate officials could be
convinced that there is some benefit for the PRC as a whole in having
Wikipedia available to its people.

>>Another possible choice is to consult a lawyer in PRC. There was a
>>case last December, when a Hong Kong reporter brought a political
>>magazine into mainland and was confiscated by the Custom. He sued the
>>local government and won the case. I believe that we have to fight for
>>this freedom. If we keep quiet then they will never lift the ban.
>>
>>
>Lawyers are expensive (even pro-bono ones). So I hope this does not come to
>that. We could set up a Wikimedia legal defense fund to help pay the expenses
>of pro-bono lawyers if the need arises though.
>
Yes, they are expensive, but we are not looking at lawyers with United
States style fee structures.  At this point first level lawyer contact
would be useful.  Its purpose would be to discuss in broad terms what
applicable laws and strategies are available.  This does not imply that
there will ever be any active court case or any other kind of formal
procedure.  A peaceful settlement of the issue will always be the
preferred option.

Ec


body:
Mark Richards wrote:

>On the contrary, I think the current climate is
>hostile to those trying to persuade admins to follow
>policy, or even inform themselves of it.
>
What it really comes down to is confusion between policy and enforcement
of policy.

If the policy is, "A properly banned user may not edit under any name
while the ban is in effect," that is understandable whether one agrees
with it or not.

When we have the situation that some individual is suspected of being
the reincarnation of a banned user, many, including some sysops start by
acting on their suspicions rather than seeking out hard evidence.  There
is rarely a need for hasty action when the suspect is confining his
activities to a handful of articles; there will always be time to fix
this when the issue is clarified.

If you suspect that someone is a reincarnation have the logs and other
technical information checked, and bring back that information.  That
will be the basis for the appropriate decision.  The incessant
gnattering about whether someone's edits resemble those of a banned user
serves no useful purpose.

There is a serious need for some people to start understanding what
standards of proof are all about.

Ec


from_name: Mark Richards

subject:
Leo Trollstoy - still no evidence presented. Re: [WikiEN-l] Yes,
	A Reincarnation

body:
Well, assuming you have access to more information
than I do, because what has been published is precious
flimsy, I'm prepared to take your word for it on JRRT,
but what about LT? I see no connection in edits.
Mark

--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> I have finally looked at this and the evidence is
> clear. JRR Trollkien is
> The Cave Troll is EntmootsofTrolls. There is no
> reasonable scenario which
> would result in someone reposting that stuff and
> calling it a minor edit. I
> believe, based on that evidence alone, any
> adminstrator may within Wikipedia
> policy ban JRR Trollkien as a reincarnation and
> revert any edit he makes. Or
> am I going too far?
>
> I still think any user who has "troll" in their name
> should be summarily
> banned, after a request to change their name just in
> case a mistake has been
> made in choosing a name. However when this kind of
> edit is made the chance
> of that is vanishingly small.
>
> Fred
>
> From: John Robinson <john at freeq.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2004 17:24:19 -0500
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Don't look for trouble. (was
> Re: Blocking without
> following policy)
>
>
> I find the idea of a popularity contest to see
> whether
> someone is returning user bizarre. In fact, I find
> the
> whole idea of returning users bizarre. If the user
> needs to be banned, ban them on the basis of the
> edits
> they make, there is no need to speculate on whether
> they are returning.
> If they don't do anything worth banning, so much the
> better. Don't provoke conflict unless it is
> necessary
> - I think there is a word for that.
> Mark R
>
> Here is JRR Trollkien's first edit:
>
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Political_dispute&diff=
> 2878571&oldid=2754803
>
> I find it bizarre that you think it is someone
> besides this
> previously-banned user who is attempting to "provoke
> conflict". Even more
> bizarre than the fact that this user is still
> posting three months later.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
> > _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Yes, A Reincarnation

body:
What about LT?

--- Martin Harper <martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk>
wrote:
> > The current policy of "ask politely, show
> evidence,
> > consider, block" does not appear to have been
> followed
> > in this case.
>
> Well, certainly it was followed for the JRR account
> - he was asked, evidence was
> shown, we mulled it over, and then Heph blocked.
> Perfectly in line with that policy. You
> may have missed it because it took place over
> several weeks, but I think it was
> exemplary. If anything we perhaps took a little too
> long mulling over things, perhaps in
> part because we had a red herring about whether
> "troll" in the username is
> inappropriate.
>
> > Presumption of innocence which is totally
> forgotten
>
> In the UK, the burden of proof in criminal cases is
> "innocent until proven guilty", while
> the burden of proof in civil cases is "balance of
> probabilities", and so forth. Even in the
> real world, the presumption of innocence is hardly a
> universal, and with good reason.
>
> I guess in deciding the burden of proof, one needs
> to consider the consequences of
> making a wrong decision, and the ability of an
> innocent person to show that they are
> innocent. It would be wrong to witch hunt and block
> on suspicion, but equally it would be
> wrong to require evidence that would satisfy a
> criminal court. There is a balance to be
> struck here.
>
> > * blocking is done without AC consideration first
> to the case
> > =>consequence number 1 (block) is saying "we do
> not trust AC to do what
> it should do"
>
> I think our policy on reincarnations is such that
> the AC doesn't need to consider the
> issue first. I was willing to consider it only
> because the admins seemed to feel unwilling
> to block without the backup of a specific arbcom
> ruling - as that no longer is the case,
> our involvement is no longer required, unless Mark
> and the rest of the community are
> unable to come to an agreement on this.
>
> -Martin
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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body:
Or, if they were not the same users. That doesn't seem
to be an option we're prepared to consider though.
Take them on the merits of their edits - I agree there
is a case to be made in the case of Jrrt, but cannot
see one in LTs case.
Mark

--- Fennec Foxen <fennec at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 01:49:05 +0200, Anthere
> <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I have a question.
> > I thought Halifax was range blocked, and proxies
> unusable.
> > So, how could JRR or LT edit ?
> Private proxies and perhaps alternate ISPs? Proxy
> blocking is not
> effective against nonpublic proxies.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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body:
On the contrary, I think the current climate is
hostile to those trying to persuade admins to follow
policy, or even inform themselves of it.
Mark

--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> > Daniel Mayer wrote:
> >
> > > Also, comments from IndigoGenius like:
> > > "Father of the Fifth World movement, thinks
> Jimbo is brain dead [...]"
> > > are not at all acceptable and should be deleted
> on sight and the user who
> > wrote
> > > them blocked from editing.
> >
> > Well, why didn't you delete it?
>
> Because doing so unilaterally would probably result
> in several people attacking
> me for it. The current climate seems to be hostile
> against admins enforcing our
> policies. I would like to change that.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
> http://messenger.yahoo.com/
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Telgar the Trollslayer (was In Defence of JRR Troln )

body:
I remeber that brief furore - it was a user who should
have known better pretending to be a sockpuppet of
some other 'troll' user - nobody was prepared to
entertain the idea that it was not a sockpuppet.
Mark

--- "N.T. Riche" <vonriche at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I have seen no proof that JRR is banned User:EofT,
> other than according to a few sysops that he has the
> same editing style of EofT. Now I have spoke to
> Trollkien on the irc channel and he told me in a
> private chat that he was not EofT. I have several
> reasons to believe Trollkien.
>
> 1) Trollkien never threatened another user which was
> both 24's and EofT's trademark.
>
> 2) Trollkien has made many meaningful contributions
>
> 3) Trollkien was never involved in edit wars, like
> EofT was with RK
>
> 4) It was thought that User:Telgar the troll slayer
> was JRR which was later proved to be false
>
> If any of you have links that prove otherwise show
> me them. Thanks.
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Friends.  Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger>
_______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Let's deputize admins and expand the size of the
	AC (was: Re: Re: Blocking without following policy)

body:
I'd support this, if there were some credible way to
review these actions against community made policy.

Mark
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I support all these suggestions. You are right that
> AC is judge, not
> force police. So, activities should be separated.
> And empowering teams
> of sysops (with a good balance of pro and
> con-banning for example) to
> act in good faith while you are working through the
> case seems a good idea.

__________________________________
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from_name: Rich Holton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Fixed term sysops.

body:
--- Fennec Foxen <fennec at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 04:08:45 +0100, Timwi
> <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> > We are trying to, but I don't think that's really
> possible. We cannot
> > deny that sysops have additional privileges
> (that's the whole point).
> > This, almost by definition, triggers what I have
> outlined above.
>
> I disagree. Sysops don't have additional priveleges,
> but they have
> additional powers.
>
> <SNIP!>

> The sysop, ideally,
> does not do anything requiring general approval like
> deleting or
> banning. They're there to implement community
> decisions, not to make
> them.
>
> In theory, anyway. In theory, practice is the same
> as the theory, but
> in practice it is not. :) The point where this
> boundary becomes fuzzy
> is the cutting edge of Recent Changes, where it is
> clear that the
> community has decided that vandalism is bad and
> vandals should be
> blocked after being warned, but it's not entirely
> clear who is a
> vandal and what is vandalism (in some cases). Moving
> further away from
> this idealized little circle, we find the newly
> registered-for-trivial-vandalism username, simple
> trolls wanting
> trouble (naming themselves to confuse themselves
> with sysops, for
> example), and it continues on from there. Some of
> the actions taken in
> this area are not so much against policy as outside
> of policy, while
> some are clearly disallowed.

Add things like determining the outcome of a vote on
VfD, making changes to the front page and other
protected content, deleting unwanted user subpages,
etc. I guess in many ways a sysop is like a police
officer. They do not make the laws, but they enforce
them. However, what one person calls a power another
may call a privilege.

For many, enforcement itself is a privilege.

In general, we must all trust that sysops are doing a
good job -- and it seems that for the most part they
are. But where there is trust, there must also be
accountability. Individual decisions of sysops can be
judged -- although sometimes even this is challenging.
When a page is deleted immediately, who checks that it
should have been?

Even so, most individual decisions of Sysops can be
reviewed. (Do we really want to do that?) But there is
not really any way of reviewing a Sysops decision
trends. Does a sysop have a systematic bias against
certain users, certain article types (recipes?
conlangs?) or certain perspectives?

Are we doing a good job of maintaining accountability
for our Sysops? Are our methods scalable? Is there a
better method than periodic elections?

At the same time, are we giving our sysops the support
that they need to do their jobs? Do we have clear,
enforceable policies? Is the sysop's job well defined?
Do we recognize sysops who consistently do their jobs
well?

-Rich Holton  [[User:Rholton]]

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia's coverage of 1973 Chilean coup

body:
libertarian wrote:

>>I believe we've been through this before, and your position has
>>been thoroughly refuted.
>>
>>
>
>Wrong. I was the one who provided all evidence. You must be an
>ignorant American.
>
Our self-professed libertarian friend is remarkable for his
inconsistencies.  At one mement he appears to be carrying a battle
against the ignorance of the American right, and blaming Americans for
not seeing or understanding what is going on in their own country.
Then, scarcely pausing for breath, he makes pronouncements about India
that would make an American extremist proud if it were said about his
own country.  His attitudes about his own India appear to parallel those
same attitudes that he would consider ignorant if said by an American
about his country.  This is hardly a strong basis for claiming a
superior intellect.  There are stories in the Gospels (beam in the eye,
throwing the first stone) that deal with these situations, but it would
not be appropriate for an effectively atheist individual to be invoking
Christian sources.

>I am superior and you are inferior. India now has a Communist
>coalition whether you accept it or not. ... and you are simply trying to spew hardline nationalist
>
>
>propaganda on Wikipedia.
>
>
>
>I am not a nationalist. I am an anarchist.
>
There we have it.  That point has been superbly exhibited.

>>Your attacks on your opponents for being "communists" or
>>"communist supporters" are becoming rather tiresome.
>>
>>
>
>For someone who gets brainwashed by Fox TV, your view is
>understandable, but despite your strident assertions, India
>has Communists and the Govt in power is run by a Communist
>coalition. Your ignorance is amazing.
>
You mean it isn't being run by the Congress Party?

>Yet, this is typical American behavior. The whole world is
>seen through religions and conflicts. If White skinned people
>are killed by Muslims, it is the fault of Muslims, otherwise
>it is the fault of pagans! Disgusting to say the least. At least
>learn to look around you and I am sure there will be Indians
>around you. Check out how they keep to themselves and are quiet.
>Then look at Muslims around you and you will see them demanding
>their pound of flesh and creating conflicts.
>
Of course, locally two Indians are on trial for the bombing of an Air
India passenger plane off the coast of Ireland, and for another bomb
that killed two baggage handlers at Narita Airport in Japan.  These two
defendants are not Muslims.

It's unfortunate that the reforms of Indian religion undertaken by
Gotama were not a complete success.

Ec


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] problem of writing

body:
This message was held for moderation on wikitech-l, but when I got to
the queue it was missing (perhaps someone accidentally cleared it?)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

---

Subject: problem of writing
From: "Rebel Mouse" <rebelmouse at mutualaid.org>
Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 15:04:30 +0200 (CEST)
To: wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org

Hi,
I am writing from Belgrade/serbia. I checked before some time
sr.wikipedia.org and I like that there is free distribution of information
in so many languages.
Then I started to create new category called Anarhizam/anarchism. Then I
sawe after several days that it disapeard. I succeeded to find it but
somebody (later I found who) changed it because it was written in latin
way. so now it is moved and tehre are only tittles in cirilic. so now I
have problem and I must ask you for advice/solution.

1) we use here the both: latin and cirilic letters. But sombody who
started to create sr.wikipedia.org monopolised way of writing so it is not
allowed to write in latin way. so I tried to make Latin version (tittle)
at main page but it was moved with answer that I must upload files in
cirilic.
2)many of us here didn't use cirilic ore than 15 years, so now we don't
have chance to put there files in our way.
if in canada exists 2 languages, how they solved that problem? here are
not 2 languages than 2 ways of writing the same langauge...

so, what I should do now in order to get possibility to read and write
articles in latin way at serbian wikipedia?
one more time: we use the both ways but serbian wiki is only in cirilic,
so what to do now?
RebelMouse

-- oslobodimo se
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from_name: Delirium

body:
libertarian wrote:

>>I think administrators' role is exaggerated by
>>Libertarian.
>>
>>
>
>Not true. I've been frustrated at the behavior of the admins.
>In one edit-war, I was naive to assume that mediation meant
>that they would look into the merits of the case.
>Instead, I was accused of McCarthyism by ignorant Americans
>who refused to believe that there is a Communist Party in India.
>
>The Communist who was posting propaganda had his way on Wikipedia
>though he was wriing fiction. I was clearly superior and he was
>inferior which is proved by the fact that he learnt stuff from the
>discussion page. He was such a fool that he did not know that a
>candidate who ran for President of India on the Marxist ticket
>was a Communist Party member. He kept introducing the word 'alleged'
>which is idiotic.
>
>
I believe we've been through this before, and your position has been
thoroughly refuted.  You have essentially tried to claim any assertions
that there was violence against Muslims by Hindus is "communist
propaganda", due to the fact that at least one person made such
allegations was, several decades ago, a candidate for president on a
Marxist ticket.  You then tried to rewrite the article with a hardline
Hindu nationalist take on the events, one that would not be accepted by
any newspaper, barring some of the radical ones in India.  You were not
"clearly superior"---your writing was inaccurate, and you are simply
trying to spew hardline nationalist propaganda on Wikipedia.  Your
attacks on your opponents for being "communists" or "communist
supporters" are becoming rather tiresome.

-Mark


from_name: Rick

subject:
[WikiEN-l] An online mag takes on WordIQ's thefts of Wikipedia
	articles ...

body:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=16551

RickK

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from_name: Fennec Foxen

subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML tags: is there any reason NOT to allow <span>?

body:
On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 00:09:34 +1000, Tony <twilson at ncable.net.au> wrote:
> Subject says it all.
> Currently (MediaWiki 1.3 beta 3) DIV is an allowed HTML tag, but SPAN is not allowed. Adding "span" to line 1528 of
> Parser.php allows the end user to do things like:
>
> <span class="reptile"> some text </span>
>
> - assuming, of course, that someone with access to the css has defined class "reptile" already. Seems to work just fine.
>
> Is this unsafe? Or something I can do happily?

I believe it is completely safe, but it is deprecated on Wikipedia
proper because they prefer people doing stuff with wiki markup.


from_name: ruimu uestc

body:
Yes, having en.Wikipedia in China is a wonderfull tool for teachers that
have not so many valuable material here. It's also nice for students and I
gave mine the links on Chinese versions, explaining them what is a wiki. I
sent also links to other teachers in other fields (like Chinese culture,
psychology), and some used it as main material for their courses. What
westerners may not know is that universities in China are very important in
the city life (in Kunming, campuses fill nearly fully the north-west quarter
of the city) and the biggest university's dean is often one of the five most
influential men around the mayor. Here education is something important, and
Chinese gov is focusing a lot on it, because they know that well educated
people produce wealth and stability.

My claim is that, if something is to be done to lift this ban, I suggest to
do it first in a soft way, not using laywers, but try to convince Chinese
officials that wikipedia is mainly a wonderfull free tool for educational
purposes, that, as far as they agree on "encyclopedic NPOV", /they/ can
check it and change articles if they think the content offenses China's
integrity or so on. They know perfectly well how to drive such kind of
"reading commitee"...

Example : There are few pages on "how to write Chinese articles" explaining
how to deal with Tawainese problem that would probably fit their demands
("never present Tawain as a nation", and so on... can't find the page now,
you know why....) So I suppose the best could be to try to ask them (but who
? thats the problem, see below) which pages they don't like and deal with
it, explain them that wikipedia is always under construction and that, with
their help, offensive pages will progressively reach npov. The question they
could ask is something like "is wikipedia controlable ?" We would answer
yes, very easily in 99% cases, using admin tools like locking pages in the
other 1%. We could also say that there is a simple and open procedure to
become admin on chinese wikipedia...

Trying to go too quickly in frontal fight would imho be a mistake. They may
want something in exchange if they lift the ban. This "something" could
simply be the possibility to participate in the project, what everybody can
do !

So "who" is to be contacted ? I have no idea but maybe this article
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-06/10/content_1519843.htm
give a direction. See also http://net.China.cn

(gbog)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jiong Sheng" <sheng.jiong at gmail.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2004 12:20 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: China goverment maybe blocked wikipedia today

> Now I think if the ban is still not lifted for another week, we shall
> have a press release about this. I agree with mav that if the whole
> world knows about it Chinese government will lift the ban, just like
> what it did to Google in 2002.
>
> Another possible choice is to consult a lawyer in PRC. There was a
> case last December, when a Hong Kong reporter brought a political
> magazine into mainland and was confiscated by the Custom. He sued the
> local government and won the case. I believe that we have to fight for
> this freedom. If we keep quiet then they will never lift the ban.
>
> formulax
>
> On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 01:10:00 +0800, ruimu uestc <ruimu at uestc.edu.cn>
wrote:
> >
> > From: "Yann Forget" <yann at forget-me.net>
> >
> > > > Today China gverment blocked all lang. of all projet on wikimedia.
How
> > > > manages?
> > >
> > > Are you sure of that ?
> > > This looks like serious bad news.
> >
> > I can't get to wikipedias today with my ADSL connection located in
Sichuan.
> > I hope tomorow...
> >
> > (gbog)
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>>Daniel Mayer wrote:
>>
>>>Also, comments from IndigoGenius like:
>>>"Father of the Fifth World movement, thinks Jimbo is brain dead [...]"
>>>are not at all acceptable and should be deleted on sight and the user who
>>>wrote  them blocked from editing.
>>
>>Well, why didn't you delete it?
>
> Because doing so unilaterally would probably result in several people attacking
> me for it.

I didn't mean deleting the entire page, but the personal attack you quoted.

I deleted it yesterday and so far there has been no reaction.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Don't look for trouble. (was Re: Blocking without
 following policy)

body:
John Robinson wrote:

> With all due respect, how often do you edit en:? I count 28 edits in the
> month of May. I often beat that in a day.
>
> On the other hand, in the same time period I count 48 pontifications
> from you on the en: mailing list, which I must admit I can't hope to match.

I don't know about others, but I have absolutely no idea what or who you
are referring to.

Not that I'm particularly interested now, but in future, please could
you either quote the relevant passages so that the context is clear, or
use a sensible e-mail program that generates the "References" header
correctly?

Thanks,
Timwi


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] China ban confirmed

body:
--- Pratyeka <walter at pratyeka.org> wrote:
> NatKrause emailed me on Sunday morning to ask if it was just his
> connection.  I confirmed the news from here from another part
> of China.
>
> Nat suggests the ban has been in place since early June 9 or late
> June 8, China time.  If you look at his and my user histories
> (except for my proxy login yesterday) it should narrow down the
> timeframe.
>
> Yesterday I posted the news to Current Events but it was removed
> due to being 'unconfirmed'.
>
> Please consider this news confirmed.

When we confirm a source fact ourselves, then that is journalism and not
encyclopedia writing (encyclopedias are secondary sources, not primary ones and
we require links to news articles after every entry at [[Current events]]).
Perhaps this might be a good time to launch Wikinews?

But the confirmation of the block saddens me greatly. :(

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] asinah.net ; bad compliance with GFDL

body:
--- Luc Van Oostenryck <luc.vanoostenryck at easynet.be> wrote:
> This set of site use whole Wikipedias content but doesn't comply with the
> GFDL.
> Can someone deal with them?
>
> * http://francais.asinah.net/
> * http://england.asinah.net/
> * http://espaniol.asinah.net/
> * http://deutsch.asinah.net/
> * http://japanese.asinah.net/ (not really sure, I don't read japanese (yet))
> * http://5189.asinah.net/ (not sure)
> * http://www.asinah.net/nl/wikipedia/l/la/landen_van_de_wereld.html (better
> compliance ?)
> * http://www.asinah.net/sv/wikipedia/h/hu/huvudsida.html (better compliance
> ?)

Sigh - yet another one. List them at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copies_of_Wikipedia_content_(low_degree_of_compliance)

and send them the first form letter at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Standard_GFDL_violation_letter

Hopefully they will respond.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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from_name: libertarian

body:
> (a rather good sumary)

Actually, the question is about the Pinochet article, not some other spinoff article.

> It's one of the interesting aspects of Wikipedia that
> conflicts on wordings often are focused to one or a
> few articles at a time.

What is even more interesting is that some people make it sound as though quibbling on the wording is no big deal, but will not allow the wording to go against what they want.
If the wording is no big deal, why not allow 172's choice of words?

> I think administrators' role is exaggerated by
> Libertarian.

Not true. I've been frustrated at the behavior of the admins.
In one edit-war, I was naive to assume that mediation meant
that they would look into the merits of the case.
Instead, I was accused of McCarthyism by ignorant Americans
who refused to believe that there is a Communist Party in India.

The Communist who was posting propaganda had his way on Wikipedia
though he was wriing fiction. I was clearly superior and he was
inferior which is proved by the fact that he learnt stuff from the
discussion page. He was such a fool that he did not know that a
candidate who ran for President of India on the Marxist ticket
was a Communist Party member. He kept introducing the word 'alleged'
which is idiotic.

The main point of contention was that a firebombing of a train
by Muslims was called a "spontaneous riot" and a story in chain mail
which circulated on the net among Muslims was quoted (it is still
quoted) as true despite the fact that it was proved wrong when
journalists called up the "eyewitness" whose phone number was part
of that chain mail! That journalist felt harassed at the number of
phone calls he was receiving and stated that he had actually reported
the opposite of what went on in that chain mail.

Yet, Wikipedia perpetrates the myth that the firebombing was
provoked by some hindus. If only the Wikipedia folks also used
their brains while mediating, they will realize that people don't
carry cans of petrol and diesel to spontaneously react. It is
simply an idiotic proposition to say that people carry petrol
bombs at all times.

Anyway, I'm doing my part. These days I have stopped contributing
to Wikipedia. Instead, I look for such glaring errors and use them
to poison the minds of journalists I know. I tell them that Wikipedia
is a failed effort and give these errors as proof. I point to ongoing
edit-wars and give it as proof that it is no better than a discussion
group.
One journalist has told me that he intends writing about the dangers
of relying on information gleaned from the net and has told me that
he will sneak in a line about Wikipedia as an example of an unreliable
source.

> But we have to be aware of Wikipedia's inherent
> US-centricism, and how this may be a serious disadvantage
> for Wikipedia's credibility outside of the Anglo-Saxon world.

That US-centricism makes it racist whether you realize it or
not. It makes it appear that Wikipedia opposes Communists and
Islamofascists when it suits the Americans, but takes their
side when other races and religions are involved. In any case,
Wikipedia can write racist stuff and claim that Hindus are the
most evil people on earth, but it can't change the truth
that Hindus don't hijack planes and slam them into buildings
or blow up innocent people.

You're right about credibility outside the Anglo-Saxon world.
Now I guess I need to focus inside the Anglo-Saxon world.
I need to befriend a few journalists in the Anglo-Saxon
world and poison their minds too. I shall use errors on Wikipedia
to claim that "wannabe-academics" who failed to do well in academics
contribute to it and it is full of urban legends.

-libertarian

_______________________________________________
No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding.
Make My Way your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: China goverment maybe blocked wikipedia today

body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>....
> We first of all need to be sure of our facts in the matter to avoid
> making accusations that have no foundation in reality.  A cooperative
> attitude can also be helpful.  It would help to know just where the
> decision came from, and whether there is an accessible higher level
> bureaucrat who might overrule the decision.  It may even be that their
> requirements are within acceptable levels; we shouldn't presume that
> they aren't.  It would be great if the appropriate officials could be
> convinced that there is some benefit for the PRC as a whole in having
> Wikipedia available to its people.

The block seems to have been confirmed, but I'm still not convinced that it was
entirely intentional. They could have blocked an entire IP range of spammers or
porn sites and we could have been caught in the cross fire. If that is the case
then this should be as simple as Jimbo writing the right person in the PRC to
explain the situation.

> Yes, they are expensive, but we are not looking at lawyers with United
> States style fee structures.  At this point first level lawyer contact
> would be useful.  Its purpose would be to discuss in broad terms what
> applicable laws and strategies are available.  This does not imply that
> there will ever be any active court case or any other kind of formal
> procedure.

Yes, it would be great to get a probono lawyer who lives in or near the PRC.

> A peaceful settlement of the issue will always be the preferred option.

Absolutely.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Separating the MediaWiki default interface text from
 the Wikimedia default

body:
While I was installing MediaWiki for my research group over the last
couple of weeks, I was struck by how inappropriate some of the interface
text is for an "out of the box" MediaWiki installation. I hacked away at
Language.php for a while attempting to fix this, but then I realised:
Language.php isn't just the MediaWiki default, it's also the default for
new Wikipedias.

Well, it turns out I'd already written most of the code to fix this
situation, some time ago. A copy can be made of the MediaWiki namespace
of a wiki using dumpMessages.php. And InitialiseMessages.inc had some
untested support for reading in such files. The idea was to use the
interface text from the English Wikipedia as the default for new
Wikimedia wikis.

To do this, first I had to generalise the text in the MediaWiki
namespace, using tags such as {{PROJECT}} and {{localurle:}}. This
allows the resulting dumped language file to be used for other projects,
where the namespace names or even directory structures might be different.

This worked just fine, and I dumped the file and committed it to CVS. I
also dumped the MediaWiki namespaces of a few other languages, but I'm
not sure if they have been generalised in the same way as the English one.

I then initialised the new kw.wikipedia.org with the text from the
English Wikipedia. This also appears to have worked just fine.

I haven't yet written code to allow MediaWiki to load one of these
language files at run time, but I do plan to do so. When that's done, we
could theoretically remove the $wgAllMessagesXx arrays from the
LanguageXx.php files.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikipedia-l] About Chinese government's blocking Wikipedia

body:
--- yuanml <yuanml at pku.org.cn> wrote:
> ,,,
> Formulax and Daniel Mayer hopes that a press release will make them feel
> shame and then cancel the ban. I really don't think so. Maybe an unthoughtful
> press release will make things worse and worse.

That would be our last effort after all other softer options had been tried and
failed. I do hope that the situation does not come to a point where a press
release is needed, but I am prepared to help write such a document.

> If the worst happens, the ban is a long-term policy; I think we still have a
> choice: we can setup a mirror inside P.R.China.

How would that change anything? Yes, you would be OK for a while, but then the
censors would find the new site, cancel the domain, seize the server and
possibly put the server admin in jail for trying to work against the PRC's
censorship order.

We also need to know if the ban was directed specifically at Wikipedia and that
we are not just innocent bystanders who were blocked along with hundreds of
other websites in a range block.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
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from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikitech-l] No Webalizer stats after May 20

body:
According to Webalizer the world has forgotten Wikipedia and Wiktionary
after May 20.
No visitors at all :)

Erik Zachte


body:
--- Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=16551

Yikes! I wish they would have contacted us first since WordIQ isn't that bad
and in fact is listed as having a 'high degree of compliance'. So I wrote to
author of the article. Below is a copy of that email:
-----------------------------------------------------
You wrote:
>Anyone enforcing the GNU FDL?

At Wikipedia the authors and administrators of our content enforce the GNU FDL
by searching for infringers and contacting them. At first we use a friendly
form letter, then a more sternly worded letter, and finally a very stern
letter. Usually this works, but some websites are still in breach - we are
still trying to figure out what to do with them. We keep track of all this
here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks

I'm one of the Wikipedia administrators who informed WordIQ that they were
breaking the terms of our license by not providing a link back to the Wikipedia
original and not mentioning that their copied version of our articles were
licensed under terms of the GNU FDL. After some time they did finally provide
the link-backs and the mention/link to the GNU FDL that we were asking for. So
we listed them under "high degree of compliance."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copies_of_Wikipedia_content_(high_degree_of_compliance)#wordIQ_.28http%3A.2F.2Fwww.wordIQ.com.29

The chairmen of the Wikimedia Foundation's board (our parent organization)
Jimmy Wales had this to say about WordIQ:

|I agree Tualha, wordIQ seems pretty complaint to me. They're linking to
|wikipedia so that's great for us. We should put them on the high compliance
|list. Compared to all the offenders out there, wordIQ is very legit and has
|really cleaned up its act. -- Jimbo

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copies_of_Wikipedia_content_(low_degree_of_compliance)#wordIQ_discussion

At Wikipedia we use a very liberal interpretation of the GNU FDL in order to
make it easier for people to copy our content. So while I agree that WordIQ's
terms and conditions could use some tweaking as well as the "It uses material
from" message, I do not think that their current set-up is something to get too
worried about. I'm far more concerned about websites that do not provide any
link-backs or mention of the GNU FDL.

I really wish you would have contacted us before you ran the article since we
could have given you a list of fairly bad offenders. Here is that list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copies_of_Wikipedia_content_(low_degree_of_compliance)

Sincerely,

Daniel Mayer
One of the 240 or so Wikipedia Administrators

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Mailinglist passwords

body:
Fire wrote:
> I have considered that lot of people know the mmsitepass (main password)
>  for our mailman mailinglists. I don't think it's a good idea that a
> list admin can edit the configuration and other things on other ones.
> Personaly, i don't considerate it'd be a good idea that nearly all the
> listadmins from the different lists know the "main password".
>
> I purpose to give each listadmin of a specific list the password only
> for the list he is list admin on. At the same of course, I'd make a new
> mmsitepass.
> There wouldn't a big problem (for me) to write E-Mail's to all the list
> admins telling them the "new" password for their list their admin on.

Sure, go for it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Red faction and the Legion of Trolls

body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>..
> If you suspect that someone is a reincarnation have the logs and other
> technical information checked, and bring back that information.  That
> will be the basis for the appropriate decision.  The incessant
> gnattering about whether someone's edits resemble those of a banned user
> serves no useful purpose.

Speaking of which, it would be nice for stewards to have the ability to check
those logs in these cases. Our developers seem to be overworked as it is.

-- mav

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from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anthere has abused her authority

body:
Anthere has now clearly overstepped her authority. She has
picked one version of an article which deleted and censored
all info which did not agree with her her anti-Zionist
views, and then she protected the page. This is outrageous
behaviour from a Sysop.

I understand that many people here hate Israel and Jews who
support it, that much has been clear for some time. But
such hatred is rarely so blatant as this: To falsify
history by deleting entire historical accounts and quotes,
to spin a fantastic pro-Arab, anti-Zionist storyline, and
to lock the article, is just too much.

Recall that on Fri Jan 9 14:48:08 Jimbo Wales writes about
this very situation:

"But in tems of actual content, I don't see the problem.
There is no question that a full understanding of the
Palestinian situation requires understanding what
Palestinian views of the peace process actually are. There
is no question that one point of contention is whether
Palestinian leaders, in particular, view the peace process
as "permanent and irrevocable" (or similar) or whether they
view it merely as a short-term negotiating tactic in a
longterm effort to destroy Israel. Simply omitting
information on that question is unacceptable. This is an
important part of one of the major questions of our time."

  He is right. That is what Martin (MyRedDice) had been
  doing, and that is now what Mirv and Anthere are doing.

It is a total violation of Wikipedia NPOV policy to only
mentioning viewpoints from a limited number of people, in a
limited number of situations. Palestinian viewpoints that
Anthere and Mirv disagree with, even if they are majority
views, are censored and deleted. That is outrageous and
dishonest.  It is also anti-Palestinian; Anthere and Mirv
are effectively saying "You Palestinians can go fuck
yourselves'; we'll tell the world what you believe, even if
we have to erase your own quotes."

In contrast, the material they censored shows a wide range
of views from a wide range of Palestinian leaders, so that
Wikipedia readers can read the range of views and make up
their own mind. That, by definition, is Wikipedia NPOV
policy.

In support of the range of views presented within the
article, Jimbo writes:

"The text could be improved, of course. But it is very good
precisely becasue it presents "balanced and balancing
viewpoints with the proper historical context". The quotes
are dated and exact references are given. Alternative views
and background information is given.

Many in the West are uncomfortable with this kind of
information because it doesn't comport well with the
prevailing liberal view that the Palestinians are solely
victims. Rationally, of course we can say that Palestinians
are indeed victims while simultaneously holding and
expressing reprehensible views. What we must not do is
simply omit information about Palestinian attitudes because
it doesn't match up too our rosy view of noble rebels
fighting a racist apartheid state. What I'm primarily
arguing, though, is not the content of the material. I
think that the material is good, though not excellent, but
my real point is that it can in no way be characterized as
something that ought to be simply *deleted* outright. It
should be *improved*.

In the present case, we see why deletion is bad. We are
left with a horribly broken presentation in which readers
are unable to discover why it might be that, despite the
PLO officially no longer calling for the destruction of
Israel, and Arafat himself announcing a right to exist, the
majority of Palestinians polled support the destruction of
Israel.

We can only come to understand that better when we come to
understand Arafat's duplicity, and the anti-Israel
propaganda that is rampant in the Palestinian culture. But
because some supporters of Palestine are uncomfortable with
that material, it is censored from Wikipedia. No, I don't
think censorship is too strong a word."

   Jimbo is correct. Stop the censorship, and stop the
   explicit and outrageous violation of Wikipedia NPOV
   policy. If your hatred of Israel gets in the way of
   following NPOV, then I would suggest working on other
   articles.

Robert (RK)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Anthere is a wonderful person

body:
--- Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> wrote:
Blah, blah, blah Robert. You cry wolf so often that I just delete your messages
without ever reading them anymore. I'm sure many other people do the same.

--mav

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from_name: Dan Miller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 11, Issue 54

body:
This is the first time in my entire life that I've
seen America be accused of_excessive_toleration of
Muslims ;)

> Your hatred and jealousy shows here. There is
> nothing called
> Hindu nationalism. That is a myth. The fact is that
> Islam indulges
> in terrorism all over the world and sometimes, even
> tolerant people
> hit back. The typical white skinned American refuses
> to accept
> this and roots for Islam because it is a religion of
> the book and
> pagans are low lives.

=====
"The difference between extra-marital sex and extra marital sex is not to be sneezed at."

--George Will, on hyphen use

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body:
> I believe we've been through this before, and your position has
> been thoroughly refuted.

Wrong. I was the one who provided all evidence. You must be an
ignorant American.

> You have essentially tried to claim any assertions that there
> was violence against Muslims by Hindus is "communist
> propaganda",

You are either a liar or an ignorant fool. I pointed out that the
violence began when the train was firebombed by Muslims. You REFUSE
to accept it. The resulting riots had casualties on both sides.
The view you support is called a conspiracy theory.

It is full of fictional claims about Government planning and
hatching conspiracies to ethnically cleanse Muslims. Which is a
lie. Provide proof for it if you believe it to be the case.

> due to the fact that at least one person made such
> allegations was, several decades ago, a candidate for president on
> a Marxist ticket.

Shows the typical American ignorance again. VR Krishna Iyer
contested regular elections in his youth and when he ran for
President, he had already retired after leading a life as a
Marxist. Your ignorance shows again. It wasn't decades ago
(not in plural).
Besides, none of you American morons, nor the kids knew anything
about India before 1990 and were learning from my posts.

Besides, it wasn't ONE person. The entire organzation consists
of Communists. I proved this many times. I have asked this question
before and I ask again - if you want to take their statements as
facts, I think it is fair to use their statements and allegations
against USA too! Why not? Or do you have different standards for
White skinned people?

> You then tried to rewrite the article with a hardline
> Hindu nationalist take on the events, one that would not be
> accepted by any newspaper, barring some of the radical ones in
> India.

Your hatred and jealousy shows here. There is nothing called
Hindu nationalism. That is a myth. The fact is that Islam indulges
in terrorism all over the world and sometimes, even tolerant people
hit back. The typical white skinned American refuses to accept
this and roots for Islam because it is a religion of the book and
pagans are low lives.

> You were not "clearly superior"---

I am superior and you are inferior. India now has a Communist
coalition whether you accept it or not.

Consider the facts I support and the ones you support.

The train at Godhra was firebombed by Muslims. (You refuse
to accept this.)
This resulted in Hindu-Muslim riots. (you insist this is not
the case and all casualties were Muslims and it was the result
of a conspiracy hatched by Hindus.)
According to you the statements made in that chain mail were
accurate while I point out that the journalist named as an
eyewitness refuted it.

> your writing was inaccurate,

My writing was 100% accurate. You come across as a fool by spewing
Communist propaganda and claiming that Muslim terrorism is terrorism
only if White skinned Americans are killed.

> and you are simply trying to spew hardline nationalist
> propaganda on Wikipedia.

I am not a nationalist. I am an anarchist.

> Your attacks on your opponents for being "communists" or
> "communist supporters" are becoming rather tiresome.

For someone who gets brainwashed by Fox TV, your view is
understandable, but despite your strident assertions, India
has Communists and the Govt in power is run by a Communist
coalition. Your ignorance is amazing.

Yet, this is typical American behavior. The whole world is
seen through religions and conflicts. If White skinned people
are killed by Muslims, it is the fault of Muslims, otherwise
it is the fault of pagans! Disgusting to say the least. At least
learn to look around you and I am sure there will be Indians
around you. Check out how they keep to themselves and are quiet.
Then look at Muslims around you and you will see them demanding
their pound of flesh and creating conflicts.

-libertarian

_______________________________________________
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Make My Way your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Trollinator 3

body:
This is not necessary when the "Trollinator 3" immediately goes to work
restoring the deleted material previously posted by "Trollinator 2" and
"Trollinator 1".

Fred

> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 12:15:39 -0700
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Red faction and the Legion of Trolls
>
> If you suspect that someone is a reincarnation have the logs and other
> technical information checked, and bring back that information.  That
> will be the basis for the appropriate decision.  The incessant
> gnattering about whether someone's edits resemble those of a banned user
> serves no useful purpose.
>
> There is a serious need for some people to start understanding what
> standards of proof are all about.
>
> Ec


subject:
Leo Trollstoy - still no evidence presented. Re: [WikiEN-l]
	Yes, A Reincarnation

body:
Sorry, but who is LT?

Fred

> From: Mark Richards <marich712000 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 12:19:53 -0700 (PDT)
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Leo Trollstoy - still no evidence presented. Re: [WikiEN-l] Yes, A
> Reincarnation
>
>
> Well, assuming you have access to more information
> than I do, because what has been published is precious
> flimsy, I'm prepared to take your word for it on JRRT,
> but what about LT? I see no connection in edits.
> Mark
>
> --- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>> I have finally looked at this and the evidence is
>> clear. JRR Trollkien is
>> The Cave Troll is EntmootsofTrolls. There is no
>> reasonable scenario which
>> would result in someone reposting that stuff and
>> calling it a minor edit. I
>> believe, based on that evidence alone, any
>> adminstrator may within Wikipedia
>> policy ban JRR Trollkien as a reincarnation and
>> revert any edit he makes. Or
>> am I going too far?
>>
>> I still think any user who has "troll" in their name
>> should be summarily
>> banned, after a request to change their name just in
>> case a mistake has been
>> made in choosing a name. However when this kind of
>> edit is made the chance
>> of that is vanishingly small.
>>
>> Fred
>>
>> From: John Robinson <john at freeq.com>
>> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>> Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2004 17:24:19 -0500
>> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Don't look for trouble. (was
>> Re: Blocking without
>> following policy)
>>
>>
>> I find the idea of a popularity contest to see
>> whether
>> someone is returning user bizarre. In fact, I find
>> the
>> whole idea of returning users bizarre. If the user
>> needs to be banned, ban them on the basis of the
>> edits
>> they make, there is no need to speculate on whether
>> they are returning.
>> If they don't do anything worth banning, so much the
>> better. Don't provoke conflict unless it is
>> necessary
>> - I think there is a word for that.
>> Mark R
>>
>> Here is JRR Trollkien's first edit:
>>
>>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Political_dispute&diff=
>> 2878571&oldid=2754803
>>
>> I find it bizarre that you think it is someone
>> besides this
>> previously-banned user who is attempting to "provoke
>> conflict". Even more
>> bizarre than the fact that this user is still
>> posting three months later.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>
>
> __________________________________________________
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> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Pants on Fire!

body:
> From: "libertarian" <libertarian at myway.com>
> Reply-To: libertarian at myway.com, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 16:15:59 -0400 (EDT)
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia's coverage of 1973 Chilean coup
>
> There is nothing called
> Hindu nationalism. That is a myth.


subject: [Wikitech-l] How do I recognize bots?

body:
I was asked today to filter bots from the stats and present them in a
separate list.
I think that would be nice. I also would like to redefine 'edits per month'
to 'edits per month excluding known bots'.
Now the latest stats show a marked increase in edit activity in June, which
in reality is mainly due to 'Template Namespace Initialisation Script'.

So my question is: any suggestions how to recognize bots unambiguously?

I checked http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bots
but the bot list there seems rather incomplete.

Checking on postfix 'bot' would be unreliable, not all are named in this
way, especially in other languages. I might even offend user 'Joe Bot'.

Where does WikiMedia look for filtering Recent Changes?

Erik Zachte


from_name: Camille Constans

subject: [Wikitech-l] How do I recognize bots?

body:
On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 16:30:59 +0200
"Erik Zachte" <e.p.zachte at chello.nl> wrote:

> I was asked today to filter bots from the stats and present them in a
> separate list.
> I think that would be nice. I also would like to redefine 'edits per month'
> to 'edits per month excluding known bots'.
> Now the latest stats show a marked increase in edit activity in June, which
> in reality is mainly due to 'Template Namespace Initialisation Script'.
>
> So my question is: any suggestions how to recognize bots unambiguously?
>
> I checked http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bots
> but the bot list there seems rather incomplete.
>
> Checking on postfix 'bot' would be unreliable, not all are named in this
> way, especially in other languages. I might even offend user 'Joe Bot'.
>
> Where does WikiMedia look for filtering Recent Changes?
>
> Erik Zachte

Wikimedia looks in user table. in user_rights there's a flag 'bots'

Shaihulud


body:
Could you please give us the name of the article?

Fred

> From: Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 15:53:04 -0700 (PDT)
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Anthere has abused her authority
>
> Anthere has now clearly overstepped her authority. She has
> picked one version of an article which deleted and censored
> all info which did not agree with her her anti-Zionist
> views, and then she protected the page. This is outrageous
> behaviour from a Sysop


body:
Erm - surely her membership of the board has no
bearing on this? It doesn't look to me as though there
is any substance to this, but that shouldn't have
anything to do with her position.
Mark R

--- daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 6/13/2004 5:53:24 PM Eastern
> Standard Time,
> rkscience100 at yahoo.com writes:
> Anthere has now clearly overstepped her authority.
> As of today, Anthere has quite a bit more authority
> than you care to imagine.
> Pick your enemies wisely, Robert. I wouldn't go
> launching attacks on the
> Board if I were you.
>
> Danny
> > _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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