subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 8/22/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
> Policy and process are sticks; the policy one is for hitting people
> with.  NPA, CIVIL, AGF, etc. all exist because we sometimes need to hit
> someone over the head when they refuse to conform to "don't be a dick".

No, no, no. Some people use them that way. I use AGF as a guiding
principle, to remind me how to behave. I have no idea how you would
make a stick out of it.

>  NOR, CITE are there because "don't make shit up" isn't obvious enough
> and sometimes need to be accompanied by a whack to the noggin as well.

No. NOR is critical for defining what kind of reference work we are,
and setting limits on how far people can go. Not all rules have to be
used as sticks to be effective.

> Similar, but less obvious whacking has occurred in support of "we're an
> encyclopaedia" and "we're neutral".  Funnily enough (or perhaps not),
> nobody's felt the need to create policies which help shore up "ignore
> all rules".  Perhaps there's hope yet?  The point, regardless, is this:
> policy is a stick for hitting people because they're too damn stupid to
> do the Right Thing.  If you're already doing (or striving to do) the
> Right Thing, then policy doesn't have to apply to you.

No. Policy is there to define what the right thing is, because it's
not always obvious! I very frequently see discussions between people
like "Are we allowed to say this in the article? Doesn't that violate
NOR?" then someone replies "Hmm, should be okay according to section
x.y...I think?". No sticks.

> Process, meanwhile, is a crutch.  It's there to help editors through
> complicated actions.  The AfD process, for example, theoretically

In the sense that every useful tool ever invented is a "crutch".

> row of Lilliputian houses).  Just as with policy we have editors who
> don't need to be hit over the head, there are times when Wikipedians
> don't *need* a crutch.

Definitely. There are very very few cases where a process absolutely
*must* be followed. In most cases, alternate sequencing of events
arriving at the same destination work equally well, even if they
confuse spectators :)

> We must always be careful not to confuse these two ... er ... metaphors
> (ahem).  Policy is not a crutch, and leaning on it when you don't have
> to can lead to absurdity.  Process is not a stick to hit people with,

The absurdity is the two people in perfect health criticising each
other because they're not leaning on the crutch enough. That happens.
Like when a vote gets closed early due to overwhelming inevitability
and someone complains that it's supposed to get 7 days or whatever. No
crutch needed.

> and giving someone a fair and unnecessary wallop behind the ears is not
> likely to improve their humour (unless they're a member of CVU, but
> that's another post entirely).

I honestly don't see a lot of this kind of behaviour, but I do stay
away from most controversial/busy articles.

Steve


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Blocking anon page creation was an experiment,
	wasn't it?

body:
On 8/21/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> My support for the whole endeavour, for one. The appearance of
> professionalism, for another. This thing looks like it was just a
> knee-jerk reaction to bad publicity.

There's no doubt, it *was* a knee-jerk reaction to bad publicity, but
not a bad one. Calling it an experiment was a mistake, since everyone
now expects introduction, method, results, analysis, conclusion, in
that order. However, we haven't had any more Seigenthalers, and
there's certainly no sign that anything has become dramatically worse.
Maybe Wikipedia could have been "even better" than it is now, for the
same time period? We could have been up to 1.6 million articles? Who
knows.

Steve


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 8/22/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
[snip]
> Deleted versions can't be relied on, who knows when the deletion
> database will be cleared again?

That doesn't reflect our current practices.

> All I ask is a little transparency. There's no reason for any of this to
> be kept secret.

What do you think is being kept secret.

Don't mistake Jimbo's inability to be simultaneously aware of the work
of every single participant as an indicator of secrecy.


body:
On 8/22/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Agreed, drawing any conclusions other than "nothing terrible happened"
> is pretty difficult - we didn't set out to collect any data, and we
> don't really have any.

I asked what data we are missing, and no one has named any.

Please don't cloud a complicated issue further with uninformed conjecture.


body:
On 8/22/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> We could have been up to 1.6 million articles? Who
> knows.

Is it a bad thing that we're not?

We have a *lot* of articles, and I think we're well past the point
where we can say that more is better without careful consideration.

It is clear that it's generally easier to monitor one low traffic
article for vandalism than 10 very low traffic articles.  I don't know
exactly where those breakpoints are... but it does seem intuitive that
past some point additional articles will increase our workload more
than they increase the informative value of the project.


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
On 8/22/06, Death Phoenix <originaldeathphoenix at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Yes, that does sound like a decent idea. Instead of having, say, Gregory
> post up an article on his web site then asking a trusted Wikipedian post it,
> we could have Gregory working in his own userspace, for everyone to see, in
> a place like [[User:MyWikiBiz/Norman Technologies]], then if he thinks it's
> of sufficient quality, he can send a message to someone (or a bunch of
> someones, maybe even a formal peer review) and have them edit it to
> appropriate Wikipedia standards. I think that is more in line with how we
> already handle articles that have been userfied.

Yes, and it is much easier to attribute the text to the original
contributor if the page is moved, than if the text is published under
the GFDL elsewhere and copied across by another editor. I imagine
there would be a whole regime of templates and categories to organise
this :)

While there's something to be said for distancing people, and having
them publish work first on their own websites, there's also an
argument that bringing people into the fold, where the community can
actively engage with and monitor them, could be more successful in
achieving productive contributions in many cases.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

references:
<44E9A0AF.8080108@web.de> <ece7r5$ps6$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<44EAB0D6.70007@web.de> <ecfi2a$gq1$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Why is downloading from an unknown server any less secure than
downloading from an unknown user?  You have to ensure that the file is
non-malicious either way.


subject: [WikiEN-l] en: well on the way to ... 2 million!

body:
On 8/21/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> have a biography.  Even in the Anglosphere, there's plenty of room for
> expansion: there are lots of major court precedents, moderately
> important historical figures (state/provincial governors, entrepreneurs,
> judges, etc.), state/provincial parks, geographical features (mountains,
> rivers, islands, etc.), and so on that are still either red links or
> wholly absent.

I can feel a new game coming on, akin to Googlewhacking. You somehow
have to find the most important entity for which no article exists,
for some objective measurement of "important". Any ideas?

Incidentally, I really appreciate the work of those people who
methodically go through lists of people, places, things making sure
they're all present.

Steve


body:
On 8/22/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> What this means is that we haven't had anyone with ready wide media
> access hate their bio. We've had lots of people who hate their bio.
> I'd say that if anything's changed in that regard, it's a hardarsed
> attitude to living bios. I'd REALLY like some more solid cause and
> effect stuff before you attribute "no more Seigenthalers" to blocking
> anon page creation.

Agreed, drawing any conclusions other than "nothing terrible happened"
is pretty difficult - we didn't set out to collect any data, and we
don't really have any.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Using social networking sites as sources

body:
On 8/22/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> This may be of interest to some people, given our occasional habit of
> fleshing out articles by raiding the personal sites of subjects:
>
> http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003211808_fancher20.html
>
> It's a brief report of a discussion at the Seattle Times about the
> reliability and ethical appropriateness of using (say) the Myspace
> page of a murder victim in reporting on them. Not much content, but
> it's good to see people are asking themselves these questions.

Interesting both in terms of the tendency to use such sites as
sources, and for the brief discussion on the ethics of using certain
types of information (even when publicly available) towards the end.

The thirteen questions (questions, not answers) posed there, or some
equivalent, should be in the minds of all those working on biographies
on Wikipedia, where there is sometimes a tendency to forget that we
are writing an encyclopaedia, and not a mere collection of
information.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Joe Szilagyi

subject: [WikiEN-l] perjorative terms under [[WP:LIVING]] in article lead

body:
Hi,

There's a dispute going on that relates to the defamation discussion
that is ongoing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons#.22Conspiracy_theorist.22

Specifically, the question is whether labeling someone a conspiracy
theorist is pejorative and a violation of policy, and if it's
sourced--if he is considered one--whether it should be in the article
lead. I agree with this: "It should not be WP editorial position to
characterize anyone in such a pejorative term (no matter how accurate),
but presenting outside characterization is OK."

But other editors are strongly disagreeing on this article and related
ones, and I would like some clarification, especially as the subjects of
these articles are known to read these articles.
--

Regards,
Joe


body:
Sorry, this sent out by mistake--my original mail was moderated as my
first post and got caught, from yesterday.

Regards,
Joe

Joe Szilagyi wrote:
> Hi,
>
> There's a dispute going on that relates to the defamation discussion
> that is ongoing:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons#.22Conspiracy_theorist.22
>
> Specifically, the question is whether labeling someone a conspiracy
> theorist is pejorative and a violation of policy, and if it's
> sourced--if he is considered one--whether it should be in the article
> lead. I agree with this: "It should not be WP editorial position to
> characterize anyone in such a pejorative term (no matter how accurate),
> but presenting outside characterization is OK."
>
> But other editors are strongly disagreeing on this article and related
> ones, and I would like some clarification, especially as the subjects of
> these articles are known to read these articles.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Question on citation policy

body:
On 8/22/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> It makes perfectly good sense to me.  It's also consistent with the rule
> that says we should leave something for others to do.

You oldschooler, you.

Steve


subject:
[WikiEN-l] editorial judgment and process (was Re: Defamation
	policy hypothetical)

body:
On 8/21/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Doesn't seem to happen on WP:RFA so nothinbg something we need concern
> ourselves with in this case

Is there *anything* about WP:RFA which we can either be proud of or
want to apply elsewhere on Wikipedia?

Steve


from_name: Andrew Dunbar

subject:
[Wikitech-l] How bad is a category with 21,
	008 pages for the servers?

body:
On 8/22/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/21/06, Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Maybe if there were a "go to a random article in need of cleanup"
> > feature then more people would do just that...
>
> There is one.  You navigate to the category and pick the first one off
> the list.  As it happens, the randomization algorithm has a strong
> bias toward page names starting with Aaaaaaaaaa, but that's not
> relevant to addressing the quality of the encyclopedia, is it?  I
> doubt anyone's going to notice or care that our articles beginning
> with A are higher-quality than those starting with M . . .

In fact maybe they already do this and nobody actually does notice
or care (-:

Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)

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

--
http://linguaphile.sf.net


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Defamation policy hypothetical

body:
On 8/22/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/21/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > made.  It doesn't help that most scientific evaluation in this area tend
> > to be remarkably inconclusive, and fail to give a knockout blow for
> > either side.
>
> Which is kind of the problem, and articles end up falling into the
> trap of "is it real, is it not", with lots of material debating
> whether proof exists either way. Whereas often these things are just
> best treated as social phenomenons, like "for some reason, people have
> decided to believe that X".

The people who have decided to believe that X would probably object.

>It would be like filling [[Jesus]] with
> material debating his existence or attempting to debunk his miracles -
> to me, it would just be missing the point.
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
geni


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Article and info for Interview on The Right Hook

body:
I'm doing an interview about this on [[Newstalk 106]] at 6pm. I've
attached the original article they're talking about (it's not on the site).

I find it hard to argue the unreliability point as stated ... I
suspect I'll be emphasising the 'perpetual working draft' angle and
[[Portal:Ireland]]. Probably http://ga.wikipedia.org as well. Any
other ideas, anyone?

- d.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kate Garry
Date: 22-Aug-2006 14:46
Subject: Article and info for Interview on The Right Hook

 Hi David,

As per earlier telelphone conversation, please find attached articlie
from todays Irish Independent - Wikipedia: Trick or Truth?

I appreciate you taking the time to talk with George this evening on
his drive-time show 'The Right Hook'. Also taking part in the
discussion will be Irish Times and Newstalks Technology Correspondent,
Karlin Lillington.

And here's a little  bit about us and our presenter George Hook.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newstalk_106.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hook

Look forward to talking to you

Any further questions, I can be contacted on 00353xxxxxxx

Regards

Kate Garry
Researcher

Wikipedia: trick or truth?

Tuesday August 22nd 2006

The online encyclopedia has been voted the world's second most
influential website - but with the public allowed to edit its one
million entries, this font of knowledge is a prankster's dream, writes
KIM BIELENBERG

If he happens to log on to the internet encyclopedia Wikipedia during
his summer holidays, Pat Kenny may be surprised to discover that he is
a "scientologist".

According to Wikipedia's utterly misleading entry for Pat Kenny, the
broadcaster "became a devout scientologist in the early 1970s".

The entry for the Late Late Show presenter was also claiming last week
that he presents the "acclaimed" RTE Radio 1 Show, "Granny-punching
with Pat Kenny".

Over a million articles have now appeared on Wikipedia; it has become
one of the world's greatest sources of information. Last week, it was
named by The Observer as the second-most influential website on the
internet.

But, as well as being a useful starting point for anyone looking for
information - including millions of school pupils and students - it is
also one of the world's leading repositories of comical misinformation
and nonsense.

Wikipedia's strength - the fact that it has an estimated 13,000
voluntary contributors - is also its greatest weakness. It invites
anyone - absolutely anyone - to add an entry or edit one that is
already there. This is the heart of the problem.

Wikipedia's article about Pat Kenny has been hit by pranksters before.
Previously, the world's most popular encyclopedia claimed that Pat
Kenny was suspected of being "The Midnight Commando, a Batman-style
vigilante who fought night crime in late 1970s Dublin" and "once
claimed to have travelled to space in a giant hat".

Pat Kenny is not the only famous person to have been targeted by
pranksters on Wikipedia. Until Wikipedia imposed restrictions on
changes to its article about Tony Blair, the entry was being changed
as many as 25 times a day. Pranksters have given him the middle name
'Whoop-de-Doo' and made the unfounded claim that he had posters of
Adolf Hitler on his wall as a student.

An entry for the singer Robbie Williams recently suggested that he
"makes his money by eating domestic pets in pubs in and around Stoke".

David Beckham has been described as a Chinese goalkeeper in the 18th
century, while George Bush was reported to be the frontman of 1980s
heavy metal band Poison

In the most notorious case of Wikipedia misinformation, an article on
the website falsely named a journalist John Seigenthaler as a suspect
in the assassinations of president John F. Kennedy and his brother,
Robert.

The howlers on Wikipedia would perhaps be unimportant if it was not
such a popular source of information. It is now the 17th most visited
site on the web. Experienced researchers see it as a useful starting
point, but know that they should take its information with a pinch of
salt. But as an unimpeachable source for students, it is decidedly
flawed.

Wikipedia began five years ago more or less as a lark. Jimmy Wales,
its founder, had been interested in encyclopedias ever since his
parents bought the World Book from a door-to-door salesman (and Wales
became obsessed with cross-referencing the additions that came with
each of the annual supplements).

Wales ran an earlier internet encyclopedia called Nupedia, which
relied on the old-fashioned technique of inviting experts to
contribute.

Wales's encyclopedia revolution began when he was introduced to the
wiki, a software tool that allows online collaborative writing and
editing. Wales sent out a message: "Humour me. Go there and add a
little article. It will take all of five or 10 minutes."

He expected nothing very much, but within a short time there were 600
contributions. Then word got out and in a couple of years, there were
20,000 entries. Now, with over one million entries and 14,000 hits a
second, it is a paradise for the anorak who wishes to achieve internet
immortality.

Refreshingly, perhaps, the encyclopedia that has been described as
"the world's brain" can devote as much space to characters from The
Simpsons as to a Nobel prize-winning writer.

There are substantial entries on such diverse Irish themes as Eamon De
Valera's car, the word scanger ("a derogatory term for a stereotypical
member of a youth subculture group in Dublin, Ireland") and Dustin the
Turkey.

About 80% of the contributors, who remain anonymous, are male. And the
vast majority of the pranksters who type in nonsense are believed to
be male teenagers with a lot of time on their hands (vandalism
increases at weekends and during school holidays).

In theory, its entries reflect a neutral point of view and the
material in articles must be verifiable and previously published.

Disputes inevitable arise, however. Feelings can run high and
arguments over various arcane facts can rumble on for months. For some
reason, "cheese" has been among the most contested entries, but you
can see that others might be more politically sensitive.

The entry for the Israel-Lebanon conflict was posted just six hours
after Hizbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in a raid on July 12,
but it has since been edited by other contributors more than 4,000
times.

Jimmy Wales, who runs Wikipedia from Florida with a tiny permanent
staff, was initially reluctant to ban persistent vandals from the
site. But as it has grown, he has had to act more swiftly.

There are various entries that cannot be altered without special
clearance - the one on George W Bush has been vandalised so frequently
that it is often closed to editing for days. Other surprisingly
contentious pages that are protected from random abuse are those on
poodles, oranges and Chopin.

With its fast-and-loose editing system and its mass appeal, Wikipedia
has inevitably incurred the wrath of the more august encyclopedias.

An editor at Encyclopaedia Britannica acidly commented about
Wikipedia: "We can get the wrong answer to a question faster than our
fathers and mothers could find a pencil."

Although it has attracted many high-profile howlers, many of its
errors have been weeded out with time. Last year, a survey in Nature
magazine estimated that for every three errors in Encyclopaedia
Britannica, there are four on Wikipedia.

Is this good enough? The founder Jimmy Wales thinks so, given that his
site is free and much more comprehensive than Britannica, but Pat
Kenny and others might beg to differ.

Wacky Wiki

Five postings from the weird and wonderful world of Wikipedia

The moon: "The moon does not exist. It was blown up in a nuclear test
in the 1960s by a scientist named Malcolm Cohen. What you see now is a
projection so that people do not panic."

The Jules Rimet Trophy: "Named after the Fifa president Jules Rimet
who, in 1929, passed a vote to initiate the competition after a
bittersweet reunion with the gruff but lovable dwarf who took him in
as a child and raised him, despite his constant bout with rickets."

Malaga (province): "The Sun Coast (Costa del Sol) is a concrete
monster that swallows, burns, and spits back millions of happy
European tourists."

Vauxhall Corsa: "Popularly driven by retired ladies and hairdressers,
Corsas can be seen in their natural habitat on their roofs in a ditch
surrounded by livestock and insurance assessors."

Stepping: "The name for a process of locomotion - either forward or
backward movement engaged in by bipedal (i.e. humans and chickens) and
quadripedal (i.e. rats, deer) and multipedal (i.e. insects) organisms
consisting of putting the left foot forward, following with the right
foot and repeating. Monopedal organisms often experience difficulty in
stepping."

What the experts say

*Alan Byrne author of 'Thin Lizzy: Soldiers of Fortune', on
Wikipedia's Thin Lizzy entry:

"In general, it seems far better than the last time I saw it. There
isn't a huge amount that I can fault but as a resource, Wikipedia is
not a site I would usually use. More often than not, fan websites
contain far more detail."

*Justine McCarthy, journalist and author of 'Mary McAleese, The
Outsider' on the Mary McAleese entry:

"As a starting point, it's quite useful but it seems to gloss over
some of the more controversial episodes in her career. It does not
deal with the troubles she encountered in RTE, her role in the second
abortion referendum and her promise to hold a bonfire in the Aras
grounds on July 12."

*Bernard Share, author of 'Slanguage - A Dictionary of Irish Slang':

"I found it useless. It is not in any way comprehensive. When you look
up 'Irish slang', there is just a list of mostly vulgar terms. The
word 'conker' is included as Irish slang, even though it is used in
England as well."

(c) Irish Independent
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/ & http://www.unison.ie/


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
On 8/22/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> -In a world we where tell PR Firms not to edit:
> * PR firm follows the rules, doesn't edit.
> **Pool of editing people decreased
> **Harm of biased insertions avoided
> or
> * PR firm ignores the rules, secretly inserts biased material.
> **We detect it: Harm is mitigated.
> **We fail to detect it: harm remains.
>
> -In a world where we invite PR firms to edit after jumping through hoops:
> *PR firm follows the rules, edits (with boiler plates and notices)
> **Editing community size increased by the addition of editors driven
> by monetary interests in certain POVs.
> **Rightfully distrustful users overscrutnize every word, things we
> would normally accept are rejected
> **Worst of the bias removed, their ability to use Wikipedia for PR
> mostly suppressed.
> **Still some bias and POV leak through, but now through a blessed channel
> **Patient and well funded PR firms are able to wikilawyer to game the
> system, because we have no blanket prohibition.
> * PR firm ignores the rules, secretly inserts biased material.
> **Feel justified because we've permitted them to edit, but not allowed
> them to actually accomplish their goal.
> **We detect it: Harm is mitigated.
> **We fail to detect it: harm remains.

What I got out of this analysis, which I don't see any basis to
contest, is that by allowing PR firms to edit through some sort of
approval process, we get all the costs of a bureacracy to manage
approved PR firms, without in any way eliminating the cost of
monitoring for PR firms (and others!) who attempt to push biased
content clandestinely.

>From a cost-benefit standpoint, I see insufficient value in
encouraging PR firms to edit through an approval process; it increases
our costs and gains us rather little.  We'll still have to hunt down
and deal with the defecting PR firms and other bias pushers, and
frankly I doubt that the gain from the cooperating PR firms will be
significant.

Kelly


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] Java applets for Wikiversity

body:
Andreas wrote:
>  2) "Some browsers do not come with Java applet support enabled or even
> included." I have not found one instance of this, yet, but I'm sure this
> is true. It is, however, not clear to me, what percentage of users would
> fall into this category. My guess is in the single digits, really.

Windows XP SP2 / IE6?  stopped their Java support due to legal issues with
Sun. So you can expect quite a lot of users not having Java installed. I
don't remember the number of steps to install it (though i recently
installed it, i thought i already had it) but wasn't 'difficult'.

Some quick links:
* http://www.mvps.org/marksxp/WindowsXP/java.php
* http://www.mvps.org/marksxp/WindowsXP/java.php  The same problem years ago


body:
On 8/22/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm doing an interview about this on [[Newstalk 106]] at 6pm. I've
> attached the original article they're talking about (it's not on the site).
>
> I find it hard to argue the unreliability point as stated ... I
> suspect I'll be emphasising the 'perpetual working draft' angle and
> [[Portal:Ireland]]. Probably http://ga.wikipedia.org as well. Any
> other ideas, anyone?
>
>
> - d.
>
ga.wiktionary could proably do with a boost.

--
geni


body:
Ok, excuse that mail.

Jay R. Ashworth:
> Because the problem is *not* "shouldn't some things which are now
> written in Java be written in JS, etc, instead?", it's "There are
> indisputably useful things which can *only* be written in Java for the
> deployment environment being discussed", and he didn't solve that worth
> a damn, alas.

I wasn't trying to prove it. It should be addressed by Andreas, who wants
them.
I pointed the example didn't need Java at all, but Rob opined it was a
trivial
implementation (Andreas probably disagreed). I agree it doesn't probe, but
i'm not
pushing for java :-) They do exist, can some of them be needed on a wmf
project?
Don't know. Show me one to decide ;-) Or maybe it could be done in both but
it's coded 200% faster in java, who knows...


body:
On 22/08/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/22/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > [[Portal:Ireland]]. Probably http://ga.wikipedia.org as well. Any
> > other ideas, anyone?

> ga.wiktionary could proably do with a boost.

Probably, but I figure ga.wikipedia will be enough to try to get
across in ten minutes on the radio ...

- d.


body:
On 8/22/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/22/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The people who have decided to believe that X would probably object.
>
> Here's a concrete example:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Center_Cross
>
> The article, by an large, doesn't attempt to assess whether this is
> "really" a cross or not. It just focuses on the people's response to
> it. Isn't that an example?
>
> Steve

Fails to mention a simular phernomermon at coventry cathedral after it
got bombed.

I doubt you would getr very far applying that aproach to [[9/11
conspiracy theories]] , [[homeopathy]] and [[Uri Geller]]

--
geni


body:
On 8/21/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> made.  It doesn't help that most scientific evaluation in this area tend
> to be remarkably inconclusive, and fail to give a knockout blow for
> either side.

Which is kind of the problem, and articles end up falling into the
trap of "is it real, is it not", with lots of material debating
whether proof exists either way. Whereas often these things are just
best treated as social phenomenons, like "for some reason, people have
decided to believe that X". It would be like filling [[Jesus]] with
material debating his existence or attempting to debunk his miracles -
to me, it would just be missing the point.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article and info for Interview on The Right Hook

body:
On 22/08/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm doing an interview about this on News Talk 106 at 6pm. I've
> attached the original article they're talking about.

Now to be on at 5:30pm.

- d.


from_name: Nyenyec N

subject: [WikiEN-l] Your Wikimania presentation ("Does Consensus Scale?")

body:
Hi Kelly,

I've read your email on wikien-l. I'd be very interested in your
presentation. Is there a way I could access it online?

Thanks,
nyenyec

On 8/21/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:

> At my Wikimania presentation ("Does Consensus Scale?") one participant
> brought up the consensus building methodolgy used at Apache; someone
> else during Wikimania (Lessig, perhaps) mentioned IETF "rough
> consensus".  My counterpoint to both of these suggestions (and which I


from_name: Aerik Sylvan

subject: [Wikitech-l] How bad is a category with 21, 008 pages for

body:
Timwi wrote

You method would:
> * retrieve all pages from category1
> * retrieve all pages from category2
> * sort the whole list
> * group them (i.e. replace runs with their counts)
> * filter out those where the count is 2
>
> The straightfoward method would be:
>
> select a.page from categorylinks a
> where a.category='category1' AND EXISTS (
>         select * from categorylinks b
>         where a.page=b.page AND b.category='category2'
> )
>
> This would:
> * retrieve all the pages from category2
> * find all the pages in category1 that are any of those
>
> I don't have MySQL handy, but tested this on MSSQL and the second method
> was way faster. :)
>
> Timwi
>

Hey, cool!  I don't have my ego wrapped up in it or anything, so if that's
better, great!  I don't know what MySQL's internal processes are, so I can
only speculate as to what the pros and cons are to each method (whether it
actually does two queries, or just one, under what circumstances, etc... I
have no idea).

Thanks for calling it "clever" - honestly, it was the only way I could think
of to do it.  I've seen it done (dynamic page lists) with a lot of joins,
but it struck me that all those joins had to incur a lot of overhead.  Maybe
I'll write the three different implementations and run them head-to-head in
MySQL.  Would be interesting, anyway.

Best Regards,
Aerik


from_name: Sydney aka FloNight

subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
---- Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

Lets look at the possibilities:

-In a world we where tell PR Firms not to edit:
* PR firm follows the rules, doesn't edit.
**Pool of editing people decreased
**Harm of biased insertions avoided
or
* PR firm ignores the rules, secretly inserts biased material.
**We detect it: Harm is mitigated.
**We fail to detect it: harm remains.

=====================================================
Hello Greg,

Overall agree with your post with the exception of PR firms staying in business to keep their clients. I think this type of business is perfect for con artists that open and close businesses at a rapid pace in different US states or around the world.

They bill the customers and then move on to a new company name, leaving businesses angry at us for not putting their article on Wikipedia.

I think this type of illegal activity is a real possibility and is another reason that we should ban PR firms from our site. With this policy we will not be caught up in the illegal activity.

Take care,
Sydney aka FloNight


body:
On 8/22/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 22/08/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I'm doing an interview about this on News Talk 106 at 6pm. I've
> > attached the original article they're talking about.
>
>
> Now to be on at 5:30pm.
>
>
> - d.

timeing unfortunet considering this:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054980460

--
geni


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> I've found some nice classical ogg files online (CC-BY-SA-2.0). However,
> some are larger than 20 MB. Uploading those leads me back to a blank
> upload page, without comment or error. 20MB seems to be a magical limt
> for PHP.
>
> Is there a way to bypass that limit? I'd hate to have to cut perfectly
> good ogg files.

PHP stores the entire contents of the POST request in memory, as it is
receiving it. That's why we can't allow arbitrarily large uploads, the
server would run out of memory. In any case, HTTP does not support resuming
for uploads, so it's quite fragile.

Ideally, we should use a protocol which is designed for uploading large
files efficiently and robustly. FTP is one such protocol, that's what
archive.org use for their video and audio uploads. They do it like this:

1. When a web account is created, an FTP account and home directory is set up.
2. Via a PHP script, the user gives the name of the collection of files they
want to upload. The script creates a directory for the upload on the FTP server.
3. The user logs in to the FTP server using their web username and password.
They upload the files using an FTP client.
4. The user "checks in" the files. There is an HTML file in the FTP
directory called "CLICK_HERE_WHEN_DONE.htm" which does this operation via a
meta refresh. Alternatively, it's done automatically 48 hours after the
directory creation.

So we could set up something like that. Or maybe we could just outsource our
large file handling to them. It'd certainly save on hard drive costs,
wouldn't it?

-- Tim Starling


list: foundation-l

from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] Board election notice on the English Wikipedia

body:
On 8/22/06, Walter Vermeir <walter at wikipedia.be> wrote:
> Oleg Alexandrov schreef:
> > The board election is coming up real soon, and it is good that people are
> > notified about that. However, I strongly disagree with the election notice
> > showing up on all English Wikipedia article pages.
> >
> > I would believe it would be more appropriate for that notice to show up on
> > wathclists only, that way any established editor can see it. I think it is just
> > distracting on all article pages.
> >
> > Comments?
> >
> > Oleg Alexandrov
>
> This is not really about EN Wikipedia but in general;
>
> I find there no need to keep the site notice running at this time
> anymore. It can come back for a few days when the voting starts.
>
> Now the message is about a call for candidates. If a potential candidate
>  now at this time needs that site notice to come up with the idea to
> present themselves for the board I do need think he/she make any change.

Not only. It is also call for translators.

>
> And when the vote is open, and that I my personal POV, that should be be
>  announced naturaly but not to strongly and not with a site notice to
> ask to vote during the complete period. Only an notice when it starts
> and when I is almost closing is enough.
>
> --
> Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org
> Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * vivemus, mea Lesbia, amemus *


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Delphine Ménard

body:
On 8/21/06, Walter Vermeir <walter at wikipedia.be> wrote:

> Now the message is about a call for candidates. If a potential candidate
>   now at this time needs that site notice to come up with the idea to
> present themselves for the board I do need think he/she make any change.
>
> And when the vote is open, and that I my personal POV, that should be be
>  announced naturaly but not to strongly and not with a site notice to
> ask to vote during the complete period. Only an notice when it starts
> and when I is almost closing is enough.

I strongly agree with Walter. An annoucement of the vote opening for
say, three days, and an annoucement of "the vote is going to close"
for another three days before the deadline is  very sufficient.

Delphine
--
~notafish


body:
On 8/22/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm doing an interview about this on [[Newstalk 106]] at 6pm. I've
> attached the original article they're talking about (it's not on the site).
>
> I find it hard to argue the unreliability point as stated ... I
> suspect I'll be emphasising the 'perpetual working draft' angle and
> [[Portal:Ireland]]. Probably http://ga.wikipedia.org as well. Any
> other ideas, anyone?

I find it very frustrating that they don't attempt to quantify any of
these errors by the time they existed, nor quantify the total number
of blatant errors at any given time. They treat the Seigenthaler
incident (a serious, fairly nasty accusation that lasted *4 months*)
in the same way as joke contributions to articles about the moon or
George Bush, which probably lasted a few minutes at most.

I find this statement "it is also one of the world's leading
repositories of comical misinformation and nonsense." very misleading
and basically incorrect. I'd accept "It is also *potentially* one
of..." You feel like asking a journalist to start pressing "random
article" and to stop when he's found 3 blatant, ridiculous mistakes of
the type mentioned in this article...

Maybe we need to come up with an analogy to describe these errors.
Maybe something like cars on a freeway, which the vast majority of the
time works well. There are occasional breakdowns, but they don't
matter much, and get fixed pretty quickly. And just occasionally
there's a big wreck that lasts a few hours. That kind of thing...

Steve


body:
On 8/22/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> The people who have decided to believe that X would probably object.

Here's a concrete example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Center_Cross

The article, by an large, doesn't attempt to assess whether this is
"really" a cross or not. It just focuses on the people's response to
it. Isn't that an example?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] please watch [[Pat Kenny]]

body:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Kenny

There's been a pile of vandalism, a mention in the Irish Independent
this morning and a libelous email purporting to be the Wikipedia
article on him circulating, which latter I just got a call from the
Irish 'Sun' about. So please watchlist and stamp on vandalism.

- d.


body:
On 22/08/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/22/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 22/08/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > > I'm doing an interview about this on News Talk 106 at 6pm. I've
> > > attached the original article they're talking about.

> > Now to be on at 5:30pm.

> timeing unfortunet considering this:
> http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054980460

hence email I just sent about [[Pat Kenny]] ;-)

cc to oversight-l - if someone with oversight (not me) has time to
dredge through the history and kill the severely libelous revs, that
would probably be good.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] please watch [[Pat Kenny]]

body:
On 8/22/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Kenny
>
> There's been a pile of vandalism, a mention in the Irish Independent
> this morning and a libelous email purporting to be the Wikipedia
> article on him circulating, which latter I just got a call from the
> Irish 'Sun' about. So please watchlist and stamp on vandalism.
>
>

Already being done. can't we just protect it?

--
geni


from_name: Michelle D'israeli

subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms - First post here by myself

body:
Hello all,

My appologies if the subject line appears more convuluted than strictly needed, the posting guide seemed to suggest something like it. Unfortunately I know I wouldn't be able to keep up with the list, so you'll forgive me for not subscribing.

Before my main thoughts, an idea just (literally) occured to me - have the Germans discussed this yet? They seem to be ahead of the game on a number of points, from what i've bumped into. Unfortunately, my german vocabulary is very limited, so I can't really go have a look :(

As has been mentioned a few times, there is the "Wikipedia:Conflicts of interest" proposal that is being slowly worked upon. However before any further mention occurs, it does have to be pointed out that this is very much a working document that is still rather in the preliminary ideas stage. Please remember when viewing this proposal and the associated talk page that it is clearly not complete yet, although we'd like to get that fixed!

In many respects, this whole issue appears to be one of ethics. As WAS 4.250 said on the aforementioned talk page, you could argue that ultimately this is a case of Verifiability and Neutral Point of View. As long as these two policies are met, no one would be any the wiser if this were to happen from an anonymous account. However recient events have reminded us that paid editors and others with a conflict of interest may try to use the community process in unethical ways, and Sheldon Rampton has reminded us here that it's not just about positive comments on your own article, it's also about negative entries in those of competitors.

One thing being discussed on the COI discussion is that there are other forms of conflict of interest. This raises far more interesting ethical questions, since not all such conflicts are automatically bad. As we understand it, wikipedia would actually be benifited from experts within a field updating related articles, as long as they avoid original research! But on the other hand, there is a matter of trust inherant in such things. An example given for a situation in which some people may feel uncomfortable about giving that trust would be a christian group editing articles on evolution and inteligent design.

So far much of the COI talk we have done has focused upon procedures for new articles, with a current rough leaning towards consensus acceptance being needed. We should really try and steer some discussion off towards the problem with editing existing articles. Not only is this potentially more damaging, but it represents a compromise between article integrity and article improvement. Whilst it would be nice to believe that every request for work placed on the corresponding talk page would get answered (or rejected, if needed), I seriously doubt this would happen in a timely manner without an additional system to draw attention to the work request. Perhaps I'm just bitter and jaded (for reasons not relating to wikipedia), but in general I've found people would rather others who they see as being 'able' to do the work do it themselves rather than ask for it to be done. I suspect some of the issues with editing existing articles would be mitigated by a stable article system, which would allow for the work to be done, but verified before being accepted.

I've ran out of steam now, so I'll stop. I'll keep an eye on the list, and you can get back to me at this address, my talk page (user talk:LinaMishima) or on the COI discussion. I'm off to move the key points from the thread here to the COI discussion...

~Mish, LinaMishima
Michelle D'israeli


from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] Defamation policy

body:
On 8/21/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> I don't recall having said anything about a "complicated" theory.  Even
> if your change to physics is simple, and you think it's blatantly
> obvious that it's true, Wikipedia isn't the place to publish it.
>
I think that's such a far-fetched hypothetical that it's impossible to
talk about.  If our article on a physics subject is blatantly false,
and the reasoning is simple enough to explain to just about anyone,
and pretty much anyone would agree that the reasoning is correct, then
yes, I think *at the very least* the blatantly false item should be
removed.

> I do think people are reliable sources for their own views, but editors
> personally interviewing them is problematic because it's not well
> documented.  A Wikinews article or a reference to their own personal
> website or something like that would be fine with me, though.
>
If a Wikinews article or blog posting or something similar is
acceptable, then I suppose that's an adequate solution.

But that wouldn't be acceptable solution for someone's new physics
theory, would it?

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] please watch [[Pat Kenny]]

body:
On 22/08/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/22/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> >     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Kenny

> > There's been a pile of vandalism, a mention in the Irish Independent
> > this morning and a libelous email purporting to be the Wikipedia
> > article on him circulating, which latter I just got a call from the
> > Irish 'Sun' about. So please watchlist and stamp on vandalism.

> Already being done. can't we just protect it?

Only if needed, of course. Soft security!!! (ahem)

There's a message at the end of that message board post you linked
suggesting they find other DJ articles to vandalise. So
[[Category:Irish radio personalities]] and [[Category:Irish television
personalities]] could do with a watchful eye as well.

- d.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Akash Mehta

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia:Verifiability

body:
If it isn't present on a wikipedia, it would need to be approved by
the sysops/bureaucrats and general users on the wiki, however as an
official long standing policy on en:wp this shouldn't be a problem.

On 8/22/06, ????????? ??????? <alexander.sigachov at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is Wikipedia:Verifiability an official policy only on the English
> Wikipedia, or on Wikipedias in all languages?
>
> Does it need to be approved by local community?
>
> --
> Alexander Sigachov
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ajvol
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: maru dubshinki

body:
On 8/21/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/21/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > This was way back in 5 Dec 2005. Has the experiment run long enough?
> > What sort of experiment varies the independent variable only one way?
> >
> > Let's turn page creation back on for anons. We turned it off, so let's
> > see what happens when we turn it back on; otherwise we're simply
> > running on sheer blind inertia and unthinking myopia.
>
>
> We don't need to. We saw what happened in the 4 years before it was turned
> off.

Yes. We saw Wikipedia take off and far surpass Nupedia (which had anon
page creation turned off, incidentally).

> Take a look at the monumental failure that is AFC sometime, which turning
> > off page
> > creation has forced on us. Valid, good articles are being entombed
> > there.
>
>
> And look at how many nonsense creations are being stopped there too.

It's a lot easier to destroy bad articles than it is to write good ones.

~maru


body:
On 8/22/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/21/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> > My support for the whole endeavour, for one. The appearance of
> > professionalism, for another. This thing looks like it was just a
> > knee-jerk reaction to bad publicity.
>
> There's no doubt, it *was* a knee-jerk reaction to bad publicity, but
> not a bad one. Calling it an experiment was a mistake, since everyone
> now expects introduction, method, results, analysis, conclusion, in
> that order. However, we haven't had any more Seigenthalers, and
> there's certainly no sign that anything has become dramatically worse.
> Maybe Wikipedia could have been "even better" than it is now, for the
> same time period? We could have been up to 1.6 million articles? Who
> knows.
>
> Steve

Have you ever considered the possibility that there haven't been any
more Seigenthalers is because the MSM is jaded with that sort of
thing?

And that's a rather cavalier attitude to take about the possibility
that we've shot ourselves in the foot to the tune of thousands and
thousands of articles and possibly editors.

~maru


body:
On 8/22/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/22/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We could have been up to 1.6 million articles? Who
> > knows.
>
> Is it a bad thing that we're not?
......

Yes, it is. We've got a really long way to go before we reach anything
like comprehensiveness. We still have articles to write that are
treated in other general encyclopedias. Go see the Missing
Encyclopedia Articles Project, for example. Or take a look at this
thing Piotrus wrote, wherein he estimates en will be largely complete
in terms of article entries at 400 million entries:
[[User:Piotrus/Wikipedia interwiki and specialized knowledge test]].

~maru


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>I find this statement "it is also one of the world's leading
>repositories of comical misinformation and nonsense." very misleading
>and basically incorrect. I'd accept "It is also *potentially* one
>of..." You feel like asking a journalist to start pressing "random
>article" and to stop when he's found 3 blatant, ridiculous mistakes of
>the type mentioned in this article...
>
>Maybe we need to come up with an analogy to describe these errors.
>Maybe something like cars on a freeway, which the vast majority of the
>time works well. There are occasional breakdowns, but they don't
>matter much, and get fixed pretty quickly. And just occasionally
>there's a big wreck that lasts a few hours. That kind of thing...
>
As long as the press maintains its compulsion to apologize for looking
at us we can only bask in the publicity.  What more can we ask of them
then that they get the url right? :-)

Ec


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 8/22/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> [snip]
>> Deleted versions can't be relied on, who knows when the deletion
>> database will be cleared again?
>
> That doesn't reflect our current practices.

Do you know of anyplace I could find out what our current practices are?
 I hunted around a bit and deletion review was the only policy page I
could find that mentioned the issue one way or another. If it's
inaccurate I should correct it.

>> All I ask is a little transparency. There's no reason for any of this to
>> be kept secret.
>
> What do you think is being kept secret.

In your previous post all you said was "Analysis has been done, results
will be published." Who's doing the analysis? Is there any indication of
where and when will the results be published? Finding out anything about
what's been going on with this "experiment" has been like pulling teeth,
it's nine months in now and this is the first time I've heard even this
much.

> Don't mistake Jimbo's inability to be simultaneously aware of the work
> of every single participant as an indicator of secrecy.

It's my own inability to find out any of these details myself that I'm
more worried about.

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from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 8/22/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, it is. We've got a really long way to go before we reach anything
> like comprehensiveness. We still have articles to write that are
> treated in other general encyclopedias. Go see the Missing
> Encyclopedia Articles Project, for example. Or take a look at this
> thing Piotrus wrote, wherein he estimates en will be largely complete
> in terms of article entries at 400 million entries:
> [[User:Piotrus/Wikipedia interwiki and specialized knowledge test]].

Yes, I talked to Piotrus about his research. ... I also contributed
one of the longest lists of missing articles (the missing music
subjects, 46k subjects).

I'm still skeptical. I too can generate numbers to support a postion,
for example Wikipedia's word count is what.. 10x Britannica? Article
acount... 18x?

Lets start with a simple question: What percentage of new articles
created today fulfil requests from the Missing Encyclopedia Articles
Project? Of the ones that do, what percentage of those are created by
'new' users?

To the first part, we know the answer must be vanishingly small
because there are a huge number of new articles created every day
(>5k). If more than a tiny fraction were created every day we would be
done already.   I can't guess at who created them, but it would be
easy enough to check the lists and see who created them... Anyone want
to try?

The argument I think you're presenting here is counter productive:
that we are still working on making an encyclopedia. We're not. We've
made an encyclopedia. Now need need to move on and work on making an
encyclopedia that doesn't suck.

New articles are still important, as you've pointed out... But I've
seen no evidence that new article creation belongs even on the top 100
task list for making our encyclopedia not suck.

Just because we know a lot more about new article creation than things
like stability, verifiability, and consistency is not a reason to give
new article creation more importance than it is due.


body:
On 22/08/06, Kate Garry <KGarry at newstalk.ie> wrote:

> I appreciate you taking the time to talk with George this evening on his
> drive-time show 'The Right Hook'. Also taking part in the discussion will be
> Irish Times and Newstalks Technology Correspondent, Karlin Lillington.
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hook

That went really nicely!

I had locked [[George Hook]] myself before the interview. He noticed
and mentioned it in the chat, so I unlocked it live on air (and have
noted it was unlocked at his request).

Please don't lock it again, but do keep a close watch on it over the
next day or so to the best of living bio standards!

- d.


body:
Rob Church wrote:
> On 21/08/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>> Because it would require a DB query with an execution time proportional to
>> the number of articles in the category? Having categories with lots of
>> members is fine, as long as we don't try to traverse them all the time.
>
> That would be it. I couldn't find an effective method which Domas
> would agree with.
>
>> The efficient way to do it would be to enumerate the category members,
>> saving the results to a table for later lookup. The entries in this special
>> table could have an expiry time. Is that how you were planning on doing it?
>
> I don't bother planning things any more. Having four months' worth of
> notes turn useless is not a fun experience.
>
> More details? Enumerate them when, and save which results?

Say if you have a large category. You could find a random member like this:

$res = $dbr->select('categorylinks','cl_from',array('cl_to'=>$cat));
$rand = mt_rand(0, $dbr->numRows($res) - 1);
$dbr->dataSeek($rand);
$randomRow = $dbr->fetchObject($res);

By selecting all members of the category into a buffer, we have implicitly
assigned each row of the result set an number between 0 and N-1. This is
what I mean by enumeration. Once you have this enumeration, you pick a
random number between 0 and N-1 and then quickly retrieve it. But it's slow,
because you have to load all the members every time you want to pick a
random one.

Here's how you could save the enumeration:

$res = $dbr->select('categorylinks','cl_from',array('cl_to'=>$cat));
$i = 0;
$enumRows = array();
while ( $row = $dbr->fetchObject( $res ) ) {
   $enumRows[] = array(
     'ce_index' => $i++,
     'ce_from' => $row->cl_from,
     'ce_to' => $cat
   )
}
$dbw->insert('categoryenum', $enumRows);
$dbw->insert('categoryenum_info', array(
   'cei_cat' => $cat,
   'cei_count' => $i,
   'cei_expiry' => wfTimestamp(TS_MW, time() + $expiry)
);

Once you've done that, you can quickly pick random members from the set:

$count = $dbr->selectField( 'categoryenum_info', 'cei_count',
   array( 'cei_cat' => $cat ) );
$rand = mt_rand( 0, $count - 1 );
$randRow = $dbr->selectRow( 'categoryenum', '*',
   array( 'ce_index' => $rand, 'ce_to' => $cat ) );

This is fast as long as you have indexes on cei_cat and (ce_to,ce_index).
I've left out a few details, such as:

* Expiry.
* Refreshing existing enumerations. This could be done with a simple
delete/insert, but better performance might be obtained by deleting
individual items, and then filling the gaps by moving entries from the end
of the enumeration to the middle.
* Verification. You can quickly verify that the element that you pick from
the cached enumeration is still in the category, and if it's not, you can
try again. After a few iterations, you'd have to either give up or declare
the enumeration expired and regenerate it.

Hopefully you get the idea though.

Come to think of it, that incremental refresh algorithm above would be fast
enough to perform on page save, in LinksUpdate.php. Then you wouldn't need
expiry, and it wouldn't be a cache anymore, just a permanent data structure.
You could just add a cl_index column to the categorylinks table.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 8/22/06, Charlie Reams <calr3 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> Can someone point me to one of these cycles?

The best hypothetical I could come up with is Humans > Science >
Anthropology > Humans.  Anthropology is a subset of Science, but
Science is something done exclusively (that we know of) by humans, and
Humans are Anthropology's subject of study.  If we separated "strict
sub/superset" (as current category system) and "related to" (not as
current category system: symmetric and non-transitive), as many have
suggested, there should never be any need for circularity.


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Random article from a category

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
>
> The efficient way to do it would be to enumerate the category members,
> saving the results to a table for later lookup. The entries in this special
> table could have an expiry time. Is that how you were planning on doing it?

I'm not sure I understand why you're coming up with a new scheme when
there exists already a scheme for "Random Article".

"Random Article" works by having a page_random column in the pages table
which just contains a random number.

In my mind, therefore, the obvious solution is to add a cl_random column
to the categorylinks table. Then you select a random article from a
category in the same way you select a random article from the entire site:

	$sql = "SELECT page_id,page_title
		FROM $categorylinks, $page $use_index
		WHERE page_namespace=$namespace AND page_is_redirect=0
		AND cl_random>$randstr AND cl_to=$category
		AND page_id=cl_from
		ORDER BY cl_random";
	$sql = $db->limitResult($sql, 1, 0);
	$res = $db->query( $sql, $fname );

The index, of course, would be on (cl_to, cl_random).

Timwi


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 22/08/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> In my mind, therefore, the obvious solution is to add a cl_random column
> to the categorylinks table. Then you select a random article from a
> category in the same way you select a random article from the entire site:

That isn't what the *links tables are for, however.

Rob Church


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/21/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Surprised that you didn't name this one, since it is one of the more
>>useful human oriented ones (and a primary application for the living
>>people cat):
>>
>>e) Produce a filtered recent changes feed
>>(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchangeslinked&target=Category%3ALiving_people)
>
> Lots of these functionalities would be better if they handled
> subcategories, but for that to work we really need a better subcatting
> system. But I haven't got a solution yet.

Not wanting to suggest anything here, but I'll just throw something in
that I came up with at work.

Essentially, I maintain a website that has "categories", and some
features need to work for "this category and all its sub-categories".
Since the category tree can theoretically grow arbitrarily, I figured
that iterative queries ("cycling" through the sub-categories) is
unacceptable, so instead I've done this:

  * Create a new table, "CategoryTC" (TC = transitive closure) which has
    only two columns, "AncestorCID" and "CID" (CID = category ID). Each
    row in this table tells you that the category CID is somewhere below
    AncestorCID in the category tree.
    (For the pedants: It's actually the transitive-symmetric closure,
    i.e. every category is also its own ancestor.)

  * In your SQL query, instead of
      some_variable=$cid
    you say
      some_variable=tc.CID and tc.AncestorCID=$cid
    or
      some_variable IN (select CID from CategoryTC
                        where AncestorCID=$cid)
    and it works for sub-categories within the same query.

  * When creating, deleting or re-parenting categories, obviously the
    transitive closure needs to be kept up to date. This is easier than
    it sounds.

  * The CategoryTC table makes it absolutely trivial to prevent the
    creation of loops in the category tree.

The system would need some re-thinking for MediaWiki because in
MediaWiki, the category structure is not a tree as it is in my case. In
fact, MediaWiki's category structure isn't even acyclic, even though I'm
pretty sure most people would agree that it should be acyclic and that
the system should enforce acyclicity by rejecting edits that would
create a category loop.

Timwi


body:
> If I do a random walk on en Wikipedia, almost every page seems to have
> some tag needing something ("This page is in need of <insert your pet
> peeve here>"). This reminds me of all these "under construction" pages
> in the earlier days of the web.

There is a very important difference between the two, though. The "under
construction" pages are an excuse for a lack of content. They were
supposed to show to the visitor that someone's working on it and that
it'll be ready "Soon?". The Wikipedia tags, however, are an invitation
to participate, i.e. a request to someone else. They are a productivity
tool, and they are meant to help improve the content, not the visitor
frequency.

Timwi


from_name: Robert Jones

subject: [Wikitech-l] Sanitizer.php

body:
Thank you for your reply.

I can use most html on the wiki, just not the tags/attributes with
characters ! and - as they get converted in the same way that tags not
included in the Sanitizer get converted. I am looking for a way around
this as I need to use a !DOCTYPE tag and a http-equiv at the top of my
article. Putting them in a skin won't work as I need to have the
choice of including them or not on each page.

Regards,

Bob Jones

On 8/22/06, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> What kind of html are you trying to insert?
> Those html can't appear *into the article*.
> <!DOCTYPE must appear on the top of the page, before the html. It will be
> provided by the skin, not the user.
> 'http-equiv' is parameter of <meta tag, which only appears into <head> As
> the article is part of the body, shouldn't appear neither.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
Rob Church wrote:
> On 21/08/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
>
>>I'd ask if anyone has any statistics on how often those tags are
>>affixed and removed, but...
>
> Wikipedians prefer to highlight and tag problems than to take 30
> seconds to fix them, it seems. I can understand that larger cases crop
> up, and warrant attention from more than one person, but stupid little
> unsourced stubs don't need to be tagged - either find a source on the
> web, or find reference that a source might exist within five minutes,
> or "prod" it, or whatever we do now.

People on Wikipedia do what they want if it's allowed. They will NOT do
something else, especially not something that is more work, if something
they want to do is discouraged or even forbidden; they'll just not do it
at all.

Therefore, discouraging work that actually helps the encyclopedia is a
very bad idea indeed.

Timwi


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
On 8/22/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> PR firms can't effectively completely change their identity twice a
> week... doing so would substantially obstruct their ability to obtain
> and maintain customer relationships.

This is an interesting point. If we can get to a point where PR firms
edit under a disclosed name (by making transparent editing beneficial
to them), then they have an incentive in not doing anything stupid
here: protecting their reputation. No PR company would want a story
"PR company blatantly inserts bias at Wikipedia" written about them.
That's just bad PR after all.

I'm still keen to hear what this "appearance of impropiety" thing is
that we're so keen to avoid.

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Date fields in DB

body:
Domas Mituzas wrote:
> Hi!!!!
>
>>With Domas to read for them, I think the future of literature and the
>>English language is sound.
>
> ?

I think his attempted joke might have meant smoething like this:
* Fewer and fewer people _read_ (especially instructions & manuals)
* Thus, more and more people think it's pointless to write anything
* But fortunately, there's Domas who still reads things!
* Therefore, people will continue to write.

Or something. :)
Timwi


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
It was a BoF discussion.  There were essentially no materials
presented; I made a short extemporaneous opening statement, and then
opened the floor for discussion, which ensued for about an hour.
There may be an audio recording, although if there is I am not aware
of it.  Sorry.

Kelly

On 8/22/06, Nyenyec N <nyenyec at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Kelly,
>
> I've read your email on wikien-l. I'd be very interested in your
> presentation. Is there a way I could access it online?
>
> Thanks,
> nyenyec
>
> On 8/21/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > At my Wikimania presentation ("Does Consensus Scale?") one participant
> > brought up the consensus building methodolgy used at Apache; someone
> > else during Wikimania (Lessig, perhaps) mentioned IETF "rough
> > consensus".  My counterpoint to both of these suggestions (and which I
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
Hi Magnus,

> Or we could use a "mixed" solution:
> * I upload my file to a publically accessible file (ftp or http, no
> matter), if it's not already online
> * I call "Special:Upload?source=web"
> * The upload <input> is replaced with a simple text input row for the URL
> * Instead of using the PHP upload mechanism, MediaWiki just copies the
> file through ftp/http

Why are you suggesting an extra different upload page? Why not just add
a radio button right there on the Upload page?

However, as Brion Vibber already mentioned, there are significant
security issues with this. I have a suggestion that might solve them; if
I have overlooked a security problem that this doesn't solve, please let
me know.

My suggestion is thus:

  * The upload page displays (if the "upload from web" option is
    selected) a randomly-generated token. This token is generated only
    once for every user, and then stays the same.
  * When uploading a file, the user needs to submit two URLs:
    * One that points to a text file containing the above token
    * One to the actual file he wants to upload
  * The upload is allowed only if the two files are on the same domain
    (or in the same directory, depending on how draconian you want it).

Ideas? Criticism?
Timwi


body:
> Now, as I mentioned before, I don't' have experience with writing code to
> deal with zillions of hits, but I think a simple implementation of "find all
> pages belonging to category1 AND category2" is accomplished using a sql like
> this pseudocode:  "select pages, count(pages) as count where
> (category='category1' or category='category2') group by pages having
> count='2'"

Heh, I wonder how you came up with this SQL... it's definitely not the
most straightforward way of doing it, and (I'm afraid) also not the most
efficient. It feels like it was deliberately trying to be more clever
than necessary ;)

You method would:
* retrieve all pages from category1
* retrieve all pages from category2
* sort the whole list
* group them (i.e. replace runs with their counts)
* filter out those where the count is 2

The straightfoward method would be:

select a.page from categorylinks a
where a.category='category1' AND EXISTS (
	select * from categorylinks b
	where a.page=b.page AND b.category='category2'
)

This would:
* retrieve all the pages from category2
* find all the pages in category1 that are any of those

I don't have MySQL handy, but tested this on MSSQL and the second method
was way faster. :)

Timwi


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 22/08/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/22/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

> > All I ask is a little transparency. There's no reason for any of this to
> > be kept secret.

> What do you think is being kept secret.

It's that your messages in this thread are the first I've heard that
anyone was actually looking at the situation rather than just treating
no anon page creations as the way things are henceforth. And it is
reassuring that it's being looked at, and particularly that you are
:-)

- d.


from_name: Delirium

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Blocking anon page creation was an experiment,
 wasn't it?

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>New articles are still important, as you've pointed out... But I've
>seen no evidence that new article creation belongs even on the top 100
>task list for making our encyclopedia not suck.
>
>
I'd certainly put it in the top 100, even the top 10, although probably
not the top 3.  When a user looks up an article, the worst possible
result would be to find a misleading or otherwise incorrect article.
The second-worst result would be to find no article.  The third-worst
would be to find a somewhat shoddy but not misleading or wrong article.
So I'd rank "we don't cover that at all" pretty high on the list of ways
our coverage of a topic could suck.

I know I'm still frequently annoyed that I have to look elsewhere for
information in seemingly basic subjects because we don't yet cover
them.  For example, there are 20+ former prime ministers of Greece on
which we have no article, and thousands of basic computer science topics.

-Mark


from_name: Mark Clements

subject: [Wikitech-l] Date fields in DB

body:
"Timwi" <timwi at gmx.net> wrote in message
news:ecfgto$a0c$3 at sea.gmane.org...
> Domas Mituzas wrote:
> > Hi!!!!
> >
> >>With Domas to read for them, I think the future of literature and the
> >>English language is sound.
> >
> > ?
>
> I think his attempted joke might have meant smoething like this:
> * Fewer and fewer people _read_ (especially instructions & manuals)
> * Thus, more and more people think it's pointless to write anything
> * But fortunately, there's Domas who still reads things!
> * Therefore, people will continue to write.
>
> Or something. :)
> Timwi

Nope - I didn't get it either. :-)

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


from_name: Andreas

body:
Simetrical wrote:
> Trust issues wouldn't be that tricky, I don't think, at least from our
> point of view.  Admins could already do some fairly nasty stuff
> privacy-wise via Javascript, right?  Trackers and so on.  Hell, they
> could probably take over the computers of 10% of our viewers, who are
> doubtless using some atrociously vulnerable version of IE from about
> three years ago.  Anyone trustworthy enough to send the client
> arbitrary Javascript is probably trustworthy enough to send the client
> arbitrary Java.
>
> On 8/21/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Discuss, don't bitch about "zomg use JavaScript" instead; that's as
>> bad as all the half-assed shouting about rewriting MediaWiki in
>> brainfuck.
>>
>
> Hey, Javascript is Turing-complete and has full access to the
> browser's I/O.  What *can't* you do with it?  :P
>
>
Okay, fair enough question.
But before I go off "into the deep" to figure that out, does this
question entail that JavaScript sections for the purpose of running
interactive labs  *will* be accepted? It seems to me (as you discuss
above) that we will have the exact same issues of auditing/approving of
these scripts to avoid any malware being inserted. If this is case, why
risk the possible constraints and performance loss by not going for
applets right away?

  Andreas =:-)


subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
On 22/08/06, Sydney aka FloNight <poore5 at adelphia.net> wrote:

> They bill the customers and then move on to a new company name, leaving businesses angry at us for not putting their article on Wikipedia.
> I think this type of illegal activity is a real possibility and is another reason that we should ban PR firms from our site. With this policy we will not be caught up in the illegal activity.

I wouldn't think we'd be held liable for someone else acting
unethically in such a manner. And Wikipedia has always tended to wait
until there's an actual problem before locking things down.

(On the other current topic, anon article creation vs
Seigenthaler-style incidents, I think WP:LIVING, more active quality
patrolling and particularly the hard work of the Living Biographies
Project has done much more to deal with such problems.)

- d.


body:
On 8/22/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> The system would need some re-thinking for MediaWiki because in
> MediaWiki, the category structure is not a tree as it is in my case. In
> fact, MediaWiki's category structure isn't even acyclic, even though I'm
> pretty sure most people would agree that it should be acyclic and that
> the system should enforce acyclicity by rejecting edits that would
> create a category loop.

Heh, I'm apparently not "most editors". I know I keep harping on, but
if we don't define what the relationship "subcategory" means, how do
we know that cycles are meaningless? In particular, how would you know
where to break a cycle? In some of our fuzzier areas, the subcategory
relationships are so vague and arbitrary that there doesn't seem any
major harm in following the chain and ending up back where you
started.

Steve


body:
On 8/22/06, Andreas <awolf002 at earthlink.net> wrote:
> But before I go off "into the deep" to figure that out, does this
> question entail that JavaScript sections for the purpose of running
> interactive labs  *will* be accepted?

Well, you could already include them in Monobook.js (page-specific
Javascript is also possible: just check the page's name from the
globally-available variables and compare it to a list, and write the
page-specific JS file to the current JS if applicable).  So yes, of
course.


from_name: Charlie Reams

subject:
[Wikitech-l] How bad is a category with 21,
 008 pages for the servers?

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Heh, I'm apparently not "most editors". I know I keep harping on, but
> if we don't define what the relationship "subcategory" means, how do
> we know that cycles are meaningless? In particular, how would you know
> where to break a cycle? In some of our fuzzier areas, the subcategory
> relationships are so vague and arbitrary that there doesn't seem any
> major harm in following the chain and ending up back where you
> started.
>
> Steve
Can someone point me to one of these cycles? I don't remember seeing
one, although I've no doubt they exist. I just can't imagine a situation
in which much is gained by allowing it and, given that certain features
would be a lot easier if the system were guaranteed cycle-free, I think
we might be better off disallowing them. But I'd like to see a few of
them "in the wild" before making my mind up.

Charlie


from_name: Christopher Larberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
On Wed, 2006-08-23 at 00:39 -0400, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> There are a lot of drive-by commentless date changes. Much (but not
> all of them) are vandalism.  They are often difficult to fact check,
> and these days with so much vandalism reverted by bots, I'm worried
> that even more date changes are being missed.

I can't necessarily speak for anyone else, but my instinct would be to
revert edits that consist solely or almost solely of uncited date
changes on sight and ask the editor responsible to provide a reference
in the article if he or she wants to re-add . As editors, we should have
a high standard of verifiability for such basic and easily researched
facts as dates.
--
Christopher Larberg <christopherlarberg at gmail.com>
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subject:
[WikiEN-l] Blocking anon page creation was an experiment,
	wasn't it?

body:
On 22/08/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> New articles are still important, as you've pointed out... But I've
> seen no evidence that new article creation belongs even on the top 100
> task list for making our encyclopedia not suck.

True. OTOH, writing new articles is easy. OTOOH, it behooves those of
us who find something we wanted to look up in Wikipedia isn't there
and promptly write an article for it to write a *good* article. I try
to. At least a clear description and a good reference. Something that
will be *of use* to a reader who wants to know about the topic. (Last
example created by me: [[lxrun]]).

I don't want to add something saying this to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Newarticletext unless we can
sensibly remove something else (per the wisdom of [[m:instruction
creep]]. Ideas to talk page thereof please.

- d.


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject:
[WikiEN-l] editorial judgment and process (was Re: Defamation
 policy hypothetical)

body:
G'day David,

> On 22/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On 8/21/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>Doesn't seem to happen on WP:RFA so nothinbg something we need concern
>>>ourselves with in this case
>
>>Is there *anything* about WP:RFA which we can either be proud of or
>>want to apply elsewhere on Wikipedia?
>
> [[Horrible Example]]

That reminds me of a quotation you may have heard before (I know Tony
has):

   If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible
   warning.

--
Mark Gallagher
"But the visibility was very poor, and you yourself admit that you were
being struck by thunderbolts all the time, which must have distracted
your attention, so it is more than probable you were mistaken."
- Esmond Haddock, /The Mating Season/


body:
On 22/08/06, Joe Szilagyi <joe at rootology.com> wrote:

> There's a dispute going on that relates to the defamation discussion
> that is ongoing:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons#.22Conspiracy_theorist.22
> Specifically, the question is whether labeling someone a conspiracy
> theorist is pejorative and a violation of policy, and if it's
> sourced--if he is considered one--whether it should be in the article
> lead. I agree with this: "It should not be WP editorial position to
> characterize anyone in such a pejorative term (no matter how accurate),
> but presenting outside characterization is OK."

I'd say presenting *notable* outside characterisation is OK, if you're
sure it's notable. I think even strong supporters of [[David Icke]]
would have a hard time seriously arguing the point, for example.

- d.


body:
On 8/22/06, Charlie Reams <calr3 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> Can someone point me to one of these cycles? I don't remember seeing
> one, although I've no doubt they exist. I just can't imagine a situation
> in which much is gained by allowing it and, given that certain features
> would be a lot easier if the system were guaranteed cycle-free, I think
> we might be better off disallowing them. But I'd like to see a few of
> them "in the wild" before making my mind up.

They're obviously not easy to find since we have no built in features
to do that, and every time one becomes known, it gets fixed :) Maybe
Magnus's tool can help us out? I don't think we have any permanent,
accepted ones, if that's what you're asking...they just happen from
time to time when enough sufficiently dubious category links get
made...

Steve


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-08-23

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Template infinite loop... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 412 of 429 tests (96.04%) FAILED!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Date vandalism

body:
There are a lot of drive-by commentless date changes. Much (but not
all of them) are vandalism.  They are often difficult to fact check,
and these days with so much vandalism reverted by bots, I'm worried
that even more date changes are being missed.

I believe this is one of the most serious and shameful areas of
factual error on Wikipedia, although perhaps it is not the most urgent
nor the easiest to improve on...

An example:
Tonight I reverted a date vandalism to [[Pioneer plaque]] which was
made over a year ago
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pioneer_plaque&diff=14242706&oldid=13186287).

In that case, it would appear that the edits of a good user hid the bad diff.

Does anyone have any good ideas kicking around in their heads on how
to improve this situation... I've thought of some things but I'd like
to collect some ideas.


from_name: Bogdan Giusca

subject: [WikiEN-l] en: well on the way to ... 2 million!

body:
D> For example, we have at least a basic article on every single town in
D> the U.S. (thanks to the census database) and almost all in the U.K., but
D> don't even have articles for every state or province of some countries,
D> let alone all the cities and towns.

There are a lot of cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants for which
we have no article...

Fun fact: there is a European city with 160,000 inh. having no article!

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcorc%C3%B3n

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcorc%C3%B3n

D> There are people who have been
D> president or prime minister of a sovereign country for whom we don't yet
D> have a biography.

Of course there are loads of them. Not only PM/Prez, but also a lot of
kings and other rulers.

I can guess that the number of missing incumbents is around a couple of
thousands. Many of them ruled countries of which the average
westerner never heard. :-)


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/22/06, Charlie Reams <calr3 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> Can someone point me to one of these cycles? I don't remember seeing
>> one, although I've no doubt they exist. I just can't imagine a situation
>> in which much is gained by allowing it and, given that certain features
>> would be a lot easier if the system were guaranteed cycle-free, I think
>> we might be better off disallowing them. But I'd like to see a few of
>> them "in the wild" before making my mind up.
>>
>
> They're obviously not easy to find since we have no built in features
> to do that, and every time one becomes known, it gets fixed :) Maybe
> Magnus's tool can help us out? I don't think we have any permanent,
> accepted ones, if that's what you're asking...they just happen from
> time to time when enough sufficiently dubious category links get
> made...
>
> Steve
>
>
The problem is different senses of 'subcategory': there's [1] "the set
of objects in B are a strict subset of the set of objects in A", which
is loop-proof, and [2] 'B is a topic that is usually discussed in the
context of A'

For example:

London -[2]-> Thames Valley -[1]-> London, comes to mind

Russia -[2]-> Soviet Union -[1]-> Russia, as well.

Also, another entirely reasonable cycle would be:

Universe -[contains]-> Human beings -[who have]-> Human thought -[which
includes]-> Philosophy -[which studies the]-> Universe

See [[WordNet]] for a serious attempt to tease out the relationships
between concepts in detail: there are _lots_ of possible ways that one
thing can be related to another.

-- Neil


from_name: Frederik Eaton

subject: [Wikitech-l] problem with statistics

body:
I'm still using 1.6.6 so let me know if this is an old issue.

Every page load in my MediaWiki installation actually turns into two
requests, one with header

Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5

and one with header

Accept: image/png,*/*;q=0.5

both for the same URL (e.g.
GET /~frederik/pfcq/wiki/index.php/Domain_theory/Homomorphism_of_preorders
)

The pageview statistics are incremented twice, once for each request,
when I load a page. Is there a way to discriminate between the two
requests for more accurate statistics?

Thanks,

Frederik

--
http://ofb.net/~frederik/


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] perjorative terms under [[WP:LIVING]] in article lead

body:
On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 14:41:48 -0700, Joe Szilagyi <joe at rootology.com>
wrote:

>Specifically, the question is whether labeling someone a conspiracy
>theorist is pejorative and a violation of policy

If someone is verifiably identified as a conspiracy theorist by
reliable sources then of course we can say the same, with attribution
as necessary.  If the balance of informed opinion is that is what he
is, then attribution becomes unnecessary and we simply identify him as
a conspiracy theorist, with citations to back it up.  If the
conspiracy theories are a major part of the subject's notability - for
example, some members of "scholars for 9/11 truth" - then I see no
reason why it should not go in the lead.

That is not to judge any one individual case, but NPOV does not mean
*uncritical* POV.

I wrote the above before I checked the individual article under
discussion, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_E._Jones - guess what?
He's from scholars for 9/11 truth.  To call him a conspiracy theorist
is not in the least unreasonable, and to do so in the lead is fair,
given that physics professors from Brigham Young University are not
generally considered notable simply for being professors of physics at
Mormon U - his principal claim to fame is propounding absurd and
implausible theories about the WTC.

And hot damn if there isn't a cold fusion connection!  A friend of
mine worked in Fleischmann's lab in the late 80s.

Anyway, this guy is right up there on the grassy knoll with the "magic
bullet" crowd.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 8/22/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> I'd certainly put it in the top 100, even the top 10, although probably
> not the top 3.  When a user looks up an article, the worst possible
> result would be to find a misleading or otherwise incorrect article.
> The second-worst result would be to find no article.  The third-worst
> would be to find a somewhat shoddy but not misleading or wrong article.
> So I'd rank "we don't cover that at all" pretty high on the list of ways
> our coverage of a topic could suck.
[snip]

I think you need to interject some [[bayesian]] style reasoning into
the above...

Even if it were REALLY terrible to get no article, would it matter
much if it were very rare? If it were only mildly bad to get
inaccurate information, but it was fairly common how bad would that
be?

With 18x the article count of our competition... I *hope* that 'no
result' found isn't really due to a significant coverage problem... If
it is, then what reason do we have to believe that continuing the same
old process of creating articles will *ever* solve that problem?

Although our lack of logging makes it currently impossible to
substantiate with data, I strongly believe that we could get
substantially more improvement  on 'no article found' front for our
*readers* by improving our search ([[Double Metaphone]] enabled title
search, for example), creating redirects, better navigation tools,
improvements to main page layouts... etc..  than simply by writing
more articles at this point.

Unfortunately I can't even tell people what to fix until we have better data.

Recently, by using some third party search data we determined that
there were no pages for a large number of fairly common search
strings. A couple of coverage gaps were found... but their numbers
were dwarfed by the number of alternate representations and typeohs.
Many redirects and a few new pages have been created as a result ... I
believe many of these will be useful to readers, but we won't be able
to tell without page view data for them.


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] beta.wikiversity.org

body:
Luiz Augusto wrote:

>Are really in plans to create a beta.wikiversity.org for beta testing in
>non-English and non-German languages? Up today
>http://beta.wikiversity.org/returns a error message.
>
>Tiny suggestion: create the beta-testing wiki in wikiversity.org, like
>Wikisource and http://wikisource.org
>
>
>
So what is the point of this wiki that isn't being served by the
incubator?  This seems pointless to move content to this wiki from
Wikibooks (Wikiversity is on more than en.wikibooks), only to move it
again and again.

Or is the incubator Wikipedia only?

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] beta.wikiversity.org


from_name: SJ

body:
Did anyone present take notes?  I don't have a transcript from that
session online... --SJ

On 8/22/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> It was a BoF discussion.  There were essentially no materials
> presented; I made a short extemporaneous opening statement, and then
> opened the floor for discussion, which ensued for about an hour.
> There may be an audio recording, although if there is I am not aware
> of it.  Sorry.
>
> Kelly
>
> On 8/22/06, Nyenyec N <nyenyec at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi Kelly,
> >
> > I've read your email on wikien-l. I'd be very interested in your
> > presentation. Is there a way I could access it online?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > nyenyec
> >
> > On 8/21/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > At my Wikimania presentation ("Does Consensus Scale?") one participant
> > > brought up the consensus building methodolgy used at Apache; someone
> > > else during Wikimania (Lessig, perhaps) mentioned IETF "rough
> > > consensus".  My counterpoint to both of these suggestions (and which I
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
++SJ


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 8/22/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> > On 8/22/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> >> All I ask is a little transparency. There's no reason for any of this to
> >> be kept secret.
> >
> > What do you think is being kept secret.
>
> In your previous post all you said was "Analysis has been done, results
> will be published." Who's doing the analysis? Is there any indication of
> where and when will the results be published? Finding out anything about
> what's been going on with this "experiment" has been like pulling teeth,
> it's nine months in now and this is the first time I've heard even this
> much.
>
C'mon now, that's the great thing with retrospective analysis.  You
get to find out which data support your point *first*, then your
results are sure to be "correct".

Anthony


from_name: The Cunctator

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Making an encyclopedia (was Re: Re: Blocking anon page
	creation was an experiment, wasn't it?)

body:
On 8/22/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> The argument I think you're presenting here is counter productive:
> that we are still working on making an encyclopedia. We're not. We've
> made an encyclopedia. Now need need to move on and work on making an
> encyclopedia that doesn't suck.

I consider an encyclopedia something that contain's all the world's
knowledge -- and we're far from that. We've got a long way to go
before we've made an encyclopedia.

Your concept that we're not still working on making an encyclopedia is
pretty amazing.

> New articles are still important, as you've pointed out... But I've
> seen no evidence that new article creation belongs even on the top 100
> task list for making our encyclopedia not suck.
>
> Just because we know a lot more about new article creation than things
> like stability, verifiability, and consistency is not a reason to give
> new article creation more importance than it is due.

Comprehensiveness is as important as verifiability. Stability? Why is
that desirable?

And some degree of consistency is good but too much is the hobgoblin
of little minds.

Comprehensiveness, clarity, verifiability, and neutrality seem to be
more important than stability and consistency to me.


body:
On 8/22/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>
> >New articles are still important, as you've pointed out... But I've
> >seen no evidence that new article creation belongs even on the top 100
> >task list for making our encyclopedia not suck.
> >
> >
> I'd certainly put it in the top 100, even the top 10, although probably
> not the top 3.  When a user looks up an article, the worst possible
> result would be to find a misleading or otherwise incorrect article.

Why's that so bad? They can just edit it to fix it.

> The second-worst result would be to find no article.

Why's that so bad? They can just create it.

Oh wait, they can't. So that IS bad.

> The third-worst
> would be to find a somewhat shoddy but not misleading or wrong article.

Again, fixable. I'd think the obviously wrong article might be more
likely to motivate someone to fix it so maybe shoddy is a bad thing.

> So I'd rank "we don't cover that at all" pretty high on the list of ways
> our coverage of a topic could suck.
>
> I know I'm still frequently annoyed that I have to look elsewhere for
> information in seemingly basic subjects because we don't yet cover
> them.  For example, there are 20+ former prime ministers of Greece on
> which we have no article, and thousands of basic computer science topics.


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
On Wed, Aug 23, 2006 at 03:03:27PM +0200, Platonides wrote:
> Actually, the "upload from web" available for anyone would improve things,
> as there wouldn't be so much "no source". We could find the url from where
> it was caught. I am assuming the original url appearing on the summary.

It occurs to *me* that logging the source URL in the file history might
be useful in many circumstances.

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

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