from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [WikiEN-l] James I of England PROTECTED

body:
Hello,

due to an edit war of Susan Mason, Jtdirl and 172 I
protected the James I of England article. I reverted
the content to pre-edit-war state.

Matters should be sorted out before unprotecting.

	JeLuF


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] references

body:
Matt M. wrote:

>Regarding references: I generally only list multiple references when dealing
>with a highly contentious issue. It's a habit developed on the Straight Dope
>Message Board where the word "Cite?" can strike fear into the heart of any
>polemicist. As for articles that are largely factually based (geography, for
>example) I don't usually see the need, unless, at the outside, I'm exposing
>some rare and little-known fact. Basically, any fact that someone would be
>highly inclined to question is a fact I'm gonna put a citation for.
>
There is a second reason for citing references even in non-controversial
subjects.  There is always a practical limit to how much can be put into
an encyclopedia article, or there may be potential copyright or
trademark violation issues.  Where a reader has found a Wikipedia
article to be absolutely scintillating he may feel inspired to look more
deeply into the subject.  Providing references is then a service to the
reader.  In such circumstances providing references may not be a
necessity but it should still be strongly encouraged.

Eclecticology


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] references, admin request

body:
Regarding references:

Just a good idea to make a habit of listing references. It has the added
value of providing additional recourses to our readers regardless of the
established quality of the information.

Fred

> From: "Matt M." <matt_mcl at sympatico.ca>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 11:46:34 -0400
> To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] references, admin request
>
> Regarding references: I generally only list multiple references when dealing
> with a highly contentious issue. It's a habit developed on the Straight Dope
> Message Board where the word "Cite?" can strike fear into the heart of any
> polemicist. As for articles that are largely factually based (geography, for
> example) I don't usually see the need, unless, at the outside, I'm exposing
> some rare and little-known fact. Basically, any fact that someone would be
> highly inclined to question is a fact I'm gonna put a citation for.
>
> Also, Mav suggested that I apply for Admin status, so I'll do that now.
> Would someone also please explain what responsibilities come with this?
>
> Matt McLauchlin (Montrealais)
> Montreal, Quebec
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikipedia-l] references, admin request

body:
> >Also, Mav suggested that I apply for Admin status, so I'll do that now.
>
> and not too soon! you've certainly been around for long enough, in fact
> I thought you were an admin already ;-)

He is now.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fwd: partnering with nytimes to avoid registration

body:
--- Christopher Mahan <chris_mahan at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I think the reference should be listed as one might do in a research
> paper (do we have a reference style?), and include a link for
> convenience only.

Definitely. Links go bad all the time, especially newspaper links.
References without author, title and date are close to useless.

Axel

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
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http://tax.yahoo.com


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Complete Wikipedia on Pocket PC/Palm/EPOC device

body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:

> I wonder if we could license a selection of Wikipedia articles to
> either TomeRaider, or the hardware manufacturers.

They are of course welcome to use whatever they want under GFDL, and we
could provide them with a selection of articles, but beyond that we
cannot "license" articles to them, since we don't own the copyrights.

Axel

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://tax.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] references, admin request

body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
> Matt M. wrote:

> >Would someone also please explain what responsibilities come with
> >this?

> delete junk pages, keep the flow of Votes For Deletion in check
> (that's a pain in the ****, I don't do that much), keep an eye on
> vandals (be suspicious of IPs and new names, basically, and diff
> their edits. sad way to phrase it, but true. On the plus side, I
> get *very* pleasant surprises when I see all the great material
> people add).

I'd prefer if we kept the function of "sysop" separate from the above
described function of "vandalism protection". While vandalism
protection clearly requires sysop privileges,  not every sysop is
required to engage in vandalism protection. Otherwise, we can't
complain if many people don't want to be sysops.

> mediate edit wars if you've the stomach for it

Edit war mediation seems to be unrelated to sysop status.

In my mind, the only responsibilities that come with sysophood are to
follow the policies related to deleting and protecting pages and
blocking users, especially not to use those features in content fights.
And don't use the direct SQL database search if you don't know what
you're doing.

Axel

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://tax.yahoo.com


from_name: Matt M.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] references, admin request

body:
Regarding references: I generally only list multiple references when dealing
with a highly contentious issue. It's a habit developed on the Straight Dope
Message Board where the word "Cite?" can strike fear into the heart of any
polemicist. As for articles that are largely factually based (geography, for
example) I don't usually see the need, unless, at the outside, I'm exposing
some rare and little-known fact. Basically, any fact that someone would be
highly inclined to question is a fact I'm gonna put a citation for.

Also, Mav suggested that I apply for Admin status, so I'll do that now.
Would someone also please explain what responsibilities come with this?

Matt McLauchlin (Montrealais)
Montreal, Quebec


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] New source release...sort of...

body:
I'll try it out in a bit. Couple thoughts on first inspection:

rdf/recent.phtml doesn't output HTML. ;)  I recommend renaming it to
rdf/recent.php. (And simply calling on it as /rdf/recent, thanks to the
magic of Apache's MultiViews setting.)

maintenance/initialdata.sql has English text and password hashes
hardwired into it, and everything that this file does is immediately
replaced by populatedata() in install.php. Do we need it? And what's
with the automatic creation of WikiSysop and WikiDeveloper accounts?

And of course the docs are still out of date. ;)

In general I do like the restructuring; the source dir was getting a bit
cluttered. And at least in theory this should make it easier to share
one copy of stuff among multiple installations.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikien-l

from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] James I of England PROTECTED

body:
On Sat, 12 Apr 2003, tarquin wrote:
>
> Jens Frank wrote:
>
> >Hello,
> >
> >due to an edit war of Susan Mason,
> >
> Susan Mason is banned, no?

I made a post to [[Wikipedia:Annoying Users]] a couple of weeks
ago that someone under the name of Susan Mason was posting on
Wikipedia again. Should I have also sent an email to this list?
>
> >Jtdirl and 172 I
> >protected the James I of England article.
> >
> How did they managed to create controversy there?
>
Lir/Vera Cruz/Susan Mason seems capable of causing
controversy anywhere she/he posts.

I can't recall James I being associated with anything that would
push 172's buttons (off the top of my head, James I is known
for being the Scottish king who inherited the English throne,
sponsored a well-known translation of the Bible into English,
& was considered a leader by the Protestants on the Continent
during his reign), so I'm tempted to suspect -- until I see
what's happening -- that perhaps it's an editwar between
Susan Mason on one side, & Jtdirl & 172 on the other.
>
> >I reverted
> >the content to pre-edit-war state.
> >
> >Matters should be sorted out before unprotecting.
> >
Geoff


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Complete Wikipedia on Pocket PC/Palm/EPOC device

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:

>Today I released v1.1 of the Wikipedia to TomeRaider conversion script.
>See the script for version history:
>http://members.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/WikiToTome.pl
>Screenshots and much more info on my site:
>http://members.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/
>
>
I wonder if we could license a selection of Wikipedia articles to either
TomeRaider, or the hardware manufacturers.

I think it would make a spiffy selling point: "comes preloaded with a
50,000 article encyclopedia"

>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] James I of England PROTECTED

body:
Jens Frank wrote:

>Hello,
>
>due to an edit war of Susan Mason,
>
Susan Mason is banned, no?

>Jtdirl and 172 I
>protected the James I of England article.
>

How did they managed to create controversy there?

>I reverted
>the content to pre-edit-war state.
>
>Matters should be sorted out before unprotecting.
>
>
>
>


from_name: Zoe

subject: [WikiEN-l] James I of England PROTECTED

body:
I was curious about that myself, especially since he's seemed to have been writing as Dietary Fiber lately. Zoe

tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:Susan Mason is banned, no?

---------------------------------
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] references, admin request

body:
Matt M. wrote:

>Also, Mav suggested that I apply for Admin status, so I'll do that now.
>
and not too soon! you've certainly been around for long enough, in fact
I thought you were an admin already ;-)

>Would someone also please explain what responsibilities come with this?
>
delete junk pages, keep the flow of Votes For Deletion in check (that's
a pain in the ****, I don't do that much), keep an eye on vandals (be
suspicious of IPs and new names, basically, and diff their edits. sad
way to phrase it, but true. On the plus side, I get *very* pleasant
surprises when I see all the great material people add).
mediate edit wars if you've the stomach for it

>
>Matt McLauchlin (Montrealais)
>Montreal, Quebec
>
>
>


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: SM is DF

body:
This is against all of my principals, but I think a developer should check if Susan Mason, Lir, and Dietary Fiber are all using the same IP adress for a some edits. They probably aren't (for the reasons that IP banning isn't that effective) but if they are similar (ie same ISP) then I think we would have significant evidence to believe that they are the same person.  If they are, then I think a cookie solution would really help (well, hurt really) the people that are difficult like Susan Mason.

Lee Pilich <pilich at btopenworld.com> wrote: Cynic that I am, I feel pretty confident that Susan Mason and Dietary Fibre are indeed the same person - see this comment that Susan Mason left on a talk page recently (it was later deleted):

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(names_and_titles)&diff=821257&oldid=821251

It says in part: "the list of World War II people wouldn't exist if I hadn't created it", referring to [[List of people associated with World War II]]. In fact, as Deb pointed out, Dietary Fibre started that page; Susan Mason has never edited it at all.

lp (camembert)
WikiKarma: [[Quatuor pour la fin du temps]]

---------------------------------
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Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Susan Mason

body:
this is somewhat off topic, but what does AFAIK stand for?

tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:AFAIK...

---------------------------------
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Annoying Exchange with Another Contributor

body:
Not every person who acts like a jerk on Wikipedia is like
Lir/Vera Cruz/Susan Mason -- thank God -- but sometimes a
valuable contributor can start down that dark road without
thinking.

I'd like to direct the more senior, respected people on this
list to the discussion that I have been involved in on the
[[Wikipedia talk:Timeline standards]] page. Egil & I have
had a difference of opinions on how to handle various annual
entries prior to AD 1 that are too small.

There are a lot of points to this discussion, but the one
that has made me angry is that when told by the ``let's restore
the annual entries back to 2000 BC" group (well, pair -- Stan &
I) that 550 BC is not a good cut-off date to drop annual entries,
Egil's response was ``On basis of criticism that 550 BC is a
somewhat odd year, I've changed the cutoff to 500 BC."

I was at the point of dropping the whole discussion -- & probably
would have had he accepted a cutoff of 600 BC -- but I feel
Egil has acted with a certain lack of graciousness. (And yes,
I am using understatement here for effect.)

So would one of the more senior, respected people on this list
that I am petitioning look over our disagreement & either:

a) explain offline to Egil how he behaved in a less than
courteous manner; or

b) tell me offline to get a life.

In the best of all worlds, I would like to win my argument, have
annual entries back to 2000 BC -- even if they don't have content
at the moment -- & see George Bush impeached. I doubt I'll see
any of that actually happen, so I'm willing to settle with someone
talking Egil & hopefully convincing him to move this cutoff back
to 600 BC.

No further discussion on the mailling list is needed, but if I
could get an email offline from someone that she/he is looking
into it, I'll be happy.

Geoff


from_name: John R. Owens

subject: [WikiEN-l] Susan Mason

body:
On Sun, 13 Apr 2003, Lee Pilich wrote:

> Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2003 02:07:14 +0100
> From: Lee Pilich <pilich at btopenworld.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Susan Mason
>
> At 18:03 12/04/2003 -0700, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> >this is somewhat off topic, but what does AFAIK stand for?
>
> As far as I know, it stands for "as far as I know" :)
>
> lp (camembert)

And while we're at it, before you ask, "AFAICT" stands for "as far as I
can tell". ;)

See also: [[List of general acronyms]]

--
John R. Owens http://www.ghiapet.homeip.net/
Ah, arrogance and stupidity all in the same package.  How efficient of
you!
				--Londo Mollari


body:
Axel Boldt wrote:

>--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>I wonder if we could license a selection of Wikipedia articles to
>>either TomeRaider, or the hardware manufacturers.
>>
>>
>
>They are of course welcome to use whatever they want under GFDL, and we
>could provide them with a selection of articles, but beyond that we
>cannot "license" articles to them, since we don't own the copyrights.
>
>
>
Sorry, mistake in my wording.
I meant "provide them with nicely-packaged Wikipedia content in such a
way that they pay us for it to raise money for better servers"
:-)
feasible?


subject: [WikiEN-l] original research on wikipedia

body:
As the Wikipedia policy doesn't allow posting of
original research, I was wondering if there could be a
seperate wiki for original reasearch. I'm just 13, and
I obviously can't get my original research published,
but I have done some inventing/research with new
results, but not contradictory to known facts and
studies. (I created a teaching method for algebra that
worked on four out of four preschoolers and I'm
creating a more efficient language that is completely
regular and logical.) Nobody takes anything I do
seriously, though. If there were a wiki for this, I
could publish it instantaniously and it could still be
edited for errors in inferences and analyses of data,
in addition to the validity of the data itself.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com


body:
MIght this be an appropriate use for http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page?  Zoe

Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com> wrote:As the Wikipedia policy doesn't allow posting of
original research, I was wondering if there could be a
seperate wiki for original reasearch. I'm just 13, and
I obviously can't get my original research published,
but I have done some inventing/research with new
results, but not contradictory to known facts and
studies. (I created a teaching method for algebra that
worked on four out of four preschoolers and I'm
creating a more efficient language that is completely
regular and logical.) Nobody takes anything I do
seriously, though. If there were a wiki for this, I
could publish it instantaniously and it could still be
edited for errors in inferences and analyses of data,
in addition to the validity of the data itself.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

---------------------------------
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from_name: Stephen C. Carlson

subject: [WikiEN-l] SM is DF (was James I of England PROTECTED)

body:
At 12:54 AM 4/13/03 +0100, Lee Pilich wrote:
> Cynic that I am, I feel pretty confident that Susan Mason and Dietary
>Fibre are indeed the same person - see this comment that Susan Mason left
>on a talk page recently (it was later deleted):

For what is worth, I looked at the edit times of Susan Mason and
Dietary Fiber and they do not overlap, which is pretty amazing
if they were separate people since both of them are pretty heavy
editors.  (They also don't get into edit wars with each other.)

Stephen Carlson
--
Stephen C. Carlson                        mailto:scarlson at mindspring.com
Synoptic Problem Home Page   http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/synopt/
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words."  Shujing 2.35


subject: [WikiEN-l] Susan Mason

body:
AFAIK Susan Mason has not been unbanned by Jimbo.

Could a developer block the IP?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Susan Mason

body:
On Sat, 2003-04-12 at 16:24, tarquin wrote:
> AFAIK Susan Mason has not been unbanned by Jimbo.
>
> Could a developer block the IP?

"Susan Mason" connects from AOL (ergo, ever-shifting IPs which are
shared by many other AOL users). While on some level I'd *love* to block
off all access from AOL anyway, this would prevent a few real
contributors from accessing Wikipedia.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Lee Pilich

body:
Cynic that I am, I feel pretty confident that Susan Mason and Dietary Fibre
are indeed the same person - see this comment that Susan Mason left on a
talk page recently (it was later deleted):

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(names_and_titles)&diff=821257&oldid=821251

It says in part: "the list of World War II people wouldn't exist if I
hadn't created it", referring to [[List of people associated with World War
II]]. In fact, as Deb pointed out, Dietary Fibre started that page; Susan
Mason has never edited it at all.

lp (camembert)
WikiKarma: [[Quatuor pour la fin du temps]]

At 16:24 12/04/2003 -0700, you wrote:
>I was curious about that myself, especially since he's seemed to have been
>writing as Dietary Fiber lately.
>
>Zoe
>
>tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
>Susan Mason is banned, no?
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] references

body:
At 10:23 12/04/2003 -0700, you wrote:
>Matt M. wrote:
>
>>Regarding references: I generally only list multiple references when dealing
>>with a highly contentious issue. It's a habit developed on the Straight Dope
>>Message Board where the word "Cite?" can strike fear into the heart of any
>>polemicist. As for articles that are largely factually based (geography, for
>>example) I don't usually see the need, unless, at the outside, I'm exposing
>>some rare and little-known fact. Basically, any fact that someone would be
>>highly inclined to question is a fact I'm gonna put a citation for.
>There is a second reason for citing references even in non-controversial
>subjects.  There is always a practical limit to how much can be put into
>an encyclopedia article, or there may be potential copyright or trademark
>violation issues.  Where a reader has found a Wikipedia article to be
>absolutely scintillating he may feel inspired to look more deeply into the
>subject.  Providing references is then a service to the reader.  In such
>circumstances providing references may not be a necessity but it should
>still be strongly encouraged.

If by "references" we mean "further reading" (something which will
compliment and expand upon the article), then yes, let's have more of them
please. But if we mean "the sources I have used to write the article"
(which is my understanding of what "references" are), then I think it's a
bad idea to always provide them. On very obscure or controversial stuff, of
course sources have to be cited, but for info that is easily verifiable in
any one of hundreds of sources (and most of the article I work on are made
up of nothing more than this sort of info), I don't see the point.

In short, I think Montr?alais approach to citations in the right one.

lp (camembert)
WikiKarma: [[Gary Hume]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Susan Mason

body:
At 18:03 12/04/2003 -0700, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
>this is somewhat off topic, but what does AFAIK stand for?

As far as I know, it stands for "as far as I know" :)

lp (camembert)


body:
You can publish original research now on

http://www.internet-encyclopedia.info

However that site is little used and I can't promise anyone will ever read
it.

In general I wouldn't worry about being 13 years old. If you have done good
original material just write it up and submit it to an appropriate forum.
Sounds like you are working in education, mathematics and language. Your
focus needs to be on your work, not on your age and qualifications. Just
submit your material and keep copies. When you have enough self-publish both
on the web and as a print on demand book.  In other words focus on your work
and move forward.

You yourself (and most others) in similar circumstances are generally a poor
judge of the significance of your work. Better to error in the direction of
moving forward than in the direction of giving up.

As to whether a new wikipedia site should be created, sounds good. The site
should allow the signing of original material and for peer review as
Internet-Encyclopedia does.

Fred

> From: Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 21:13:56 -0700 (PDT)
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] original research on wikipedia
>
> As the Wikipedia policy doesn't allow posting of
> original research, I was wondering if there could be a
> seperate wiki for original reasearch. I'm just 13, and
> I obviously can't get my original research published,
> but I have done some inventing/research with new
> results, but not contradictory to known facts and
> studies. (I created a teaching method for algebra that
> worked on four out of four preschoolers and I'm
> creating a more efficient language that is completely
> regular and logical.) Nobody takes anything I do
> seriously, though. If there were a wiki for this, I
> could publish it instantaniously and it could still be
> edited for errors in inferences and analyses of data,
> in addition to the validity of the data itself.
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
> http://platinum.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: koyaanis qatsi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l digest, Vol 1 #266 - 14 msgs

body:
Stephen Carlson
> For what is worth, I looked at the edit times of
> Susan Mason and Dietary Fiber and they do not
> overlap, which is pretty amazing if they were
> separate people since both of them are pretty
> heavy editors.  (They also don't get into edit
> wars with each other.)

Hm, not clever enough to use separate browsers, I
guess.  And no, I don't have separate logins, though I
have squatted KoyaanisQatsi, KQ, and kq.

kq

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://tax.yahoo.com


from_name: John Knouse

body:
I know this is probably asking a lot, but couldn't someone
clean up messages to this list and delete repetitive html
encoding, just make everything plain text, get rid of a lot
of repeated quoting, etc?

--
John Knouse
jaknouse at frognet.net
www.jaknouse.athens.oh.us
+1.740.589.4575
PO Box 1196, Athens, OH 45701-1196

Author - F. P. Jones

English - Experience is that marvelous thing that enables
you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
French - L'exp?rience est cette chose merveilleuse qui te
permet de reconna?tre une erreur quand tu es en train de
la commettre .

Quote supplied courtesy of Verba Volant at:
http://www.logos.it/owa-l/press.rol_ml.verbavolant1?lang=en


body:
--- Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I'm just 13, and
> I obviously can't get my original research published,
> but I have done some inventing/research with new
> results, but not contradictory to known facts and
> studies. (I created a teaching method for algebra that
> worked on four out of four preschoolers and I'm
> creating a more efficient language that is completely
> regular and logical.)

You indeed don't have a chance on the logical language front. People
have worked on that problem starting with Leibniz, and hordes of
computer scientists/logicians are working on it at all times. You need
to know the relevant literature to publish in that field. Nevertheless,
you can submit your article to the preprint archive at arxiv.org,
mention it on usenet and hope for some constructive feedback.

Math education is very different though. If you have a good idea there,
you can publish easily. Write your work up nicely and go to the
brightest math teacher at your school, or just pick a random math ed
prof at a local college and show up at their office hour. After the
first shoots you down, go to the next. There are journals that happily
publish undergraduate research.

Axel

__________________________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Susan Mason

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>On Sat, 2003-04-12 at 16:24, tarquin wrote:
>
>
>>AFAIK Susan Mason has not been unbanned by Jimbo.
>>
>>Could a developer block the IP?
>>
>>
>
>"Susan Mason" connects from AOL (ergo, ever-shifting IPs which are
>shared by many other AOL users).
>
in that case, we probably have to go for a soft-security option of
shunning: watch his every edit, and revert mercilessly & hope he'll get
tired & go away
i think that should include trolling comments on talk pages too -- don't
respond, just revert.

> While on some level I'd *love* to block
>off all access from AOL anyway, this would prevent a few real
>contributors from accessing Wikipedia.
>
such as me :-)


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

body:
At 09:37 AM 4/13/03 -0700, John Knouse wrote:
>I know this is probably asking a lot, but couldn't someone
>clean up messages to this list and delete repetitive html
>encoding, just make everything plain text, get rid of a lot
>of repeated quoting, etc?

Probably not: the digest mode on LISTSERV is fully
automated, by design. You're asking for someone to, at least
daily, do a lot of tedious editing on something that's tangential
to our actual goal of creating an encyclopedia.

As a side note, 17-line signatures are often considered excessive.

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
> As the Wikipedia policy doesn't allow posting of
> original research, I was wondering if there could be a
> seperate wiki for original reasearch. I'm just 13, and
> I obviously can't get my original research published,
> but I have done some inventing/research with new
> results, but not contradictory to known facts and
> studies. (I created a teaching method for algebra that
> worked on four out of four preschoolers and I'm
> creating a more efficient language that is completely
> regular and logical.) Nobody takes anything I do
> seriously, though. If there were a wiki for this, I
> could publish it instantaniously and it could still be
> edited for errors in inferences and analyses of data,
> in addition to the validity of the data itself.

Yes, I have thought about this myself. It is definitely an interesting
idea, although without some internal approval/rating mechanism the noise
level will probably be fairly high, making it harder for valuable ideas to
cross media boundaries.

I don't think this is part of the Wikipedia mission, though. I could set
up a UseMod wiki for the purpose if you're interested and willing to
promote/populate it.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] The benefits of vandalism

body:
I've seen several articles that said things sounding remarkably similar to the tainted, incomplete, or just inaccurate stuff they tell me in school. For example, I saw an article called "War Hawks" where the only text was, "John C Calhoun was a member of the War Hawks."  Recently, in history class, I was told that John Calhoun was a war hawk, but it was phrased as a statement of fact.  They didn't even mention that 'war hawk' was a derogatory term. I can easily see how a kid who doesn't question school could have written an article like that.

daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:In a similar vein, someone wrote an article called "Separate but equal." Agreed, it wasn't written very well, but a few quick edits turned it into a stub that can be built up into an important article. My sense is that the article was written by a kid (no offense, LittleDan), but it still had some valuable material and this important topic was not covered at all. Now, at least, we have a stub on which we can build.

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from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Susan Mason

body:
This is a bit off topic, but what's the "Internet"?

-- Tim Starling

>From: Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
>Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Susan Mason
>Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 18:03:33 -0700 (PDT)
>
>this is somewhat off topic, but what does AFAIK stand for?
>
>tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:AFAIK...

_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail now available on Australian mobile phones. Go to
http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilecentral/hotmail_mobile.asp


body:
>As the Wikipedia policy doesn't allow posting of
>original research, I was wondering if there could be a
>seperate wiki for original reasearch. I'm just 13, and
>I obviously can't get my original research published,
>but I have done some inventing/research with new
>results, but not contradictory to known facts and
>studies. (I created a teaching method for algebra that
>worked on four out of four preschoolers and I'm
>creating a more efficient language that is completely
>regular and logical.) Nobody takes anything I do
>seriously, though. If there were a wiki for this, I
>could publish it instantaniously and it could still be
>edited for errors in inferences and analyses of data,
>in addition to the validity of the data itself.

I don't think an "original research wiki" would work, because people who
produce original research generally want the credit for it (or at least some
money). The lack of individual intellectual property is essential to the
WikiWiki structure. If you don't want any credit or return for your
research, I think you're in the minority.

The usual thing to do for someone like yourself is to publish your research
on a website, then publicise it through Usenet. Alternatively, you could
just be patient: develop your ideas, write a book, try to get it published
in maybe 5-10 years time. That way, if your ideas are any good, you might
make some money and get some recognition.

Zoe wrote:
>MIght this be an appropriate use for
>http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page?

No, I don't think so. That same page says:

:Meta-Wikipedia is not a disposal site for uncorrectable articles from
:the different Wikipedias, and it is not a hosting provider for
:personal essays of all types. If you're looking for a wiki-based
:community, check out MeatballWiki's community list.

-- Tim Starling.

_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail now available on Australian mobile phones. Go to
http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilecentral/hotmail_mobile.asp


from_name: Oliver Pereira

subject: [WikiEN-l] James I of England PROTECTED

body:
On Sat, 12 Apr 2003, tarquin wrote:

> How did they managed to create controversy there?

Susan Mason changed the text of [[James I of England]] to give the king's
English title before his Scottish title, changed the word "king" to
"British Monarch", and added a quote to the bottom of the article which
the king apparently once made.

Apparently this was "trolling". This is obviously some strange usage of
the word "trolling" that I wasn't previously aware of.

On the talk page, I have asked the parties involved to refrain from
posting tirades against individual contributors and tell us what the
problem with the article is. Hopefully when they have calmed down, they
will be able to do so. (On the talk page, that is, not the mailing list.)

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] The benefits of vandalism

body:
Recently I've found that some vandals have been putting silly sentences into
empty subjects that could potentially make good articles. For instance, last
week we had someone write some crap under Jim Jones and the Jonestown mass
suicide (don't remember the name of the article). While it was being blanked
(repeatedly, I might add), I googled and added a few sentences with content,
and we had a short article, while the vandal left. Today the same thing
happened with Israeli tree frog. Admittedly the article is just a sentence,
but it is a start. Maybe this can be a good way to deal with some of the
vandals: fill in some information, instead of just deleting.

In a similar vein, someone wrote an article called "Separate but equal."
Agreed, it wasn't written very well, but a few quick edits turned it into a
stub that can be built up into an important article. My sense is that the
article was written by a kid (no offense, LittleDan), but it still had some
valuable material and this important topic was not covered at all. Now, at
least, we have a stub on which we can build.

I know it won't work in all cases, but I suggest this in some cases as a way
of countering vandalism and actually benefitting from it.

Danny
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from_name: Paul Ebermann

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: URL change?

body:
"Brion Vibber" skribis:

> I didn't say it was being cached, that its content could be
> word-searched, or that it had been spidered through to other pages. I
> said it was *indexed*. Now, maybe Google uses some word other than
> "indexed" to mean "contained in a database of links which are shown to
> users when they search for words contained in the link". I'll buy that.
> Maybe the word they use is "florble". In that case, the page is being
> florbled despite our best efforts to stop it from being florbled.
>
> Is there any way we can tell google not to florble pages that are
> explicitly excluded by our robots.txt file so that people will stop
> complaining to *us* about google's overzealous florbling?

As I understand it:

The problem is that there are two parts of GoogleBot.

First step is collecting URLs and adding it to their
database, without doing any checking of it, nor
retrieving the page. This step actually uses nor
robots.txt nor meta-noindex of the given links.
meta-nofollow of the page containing the links
is probably used.

The second step (which can occur some weeks later)
is taking URLs from their database, and retrieve
the page. When they are excluded in the respective
robots.txt or by a meta-noindex, they are deleted
from the database.
(At the same time, step one is done with the links
on this page).

Between those two steps, the url stays in the
database, and whenever it contains the search-words
(in the url itself) it is shown as a search result.

> Hypothetically we could jimmy the page to not produce edit links if the
> user agent is googlebot, but that would be very annoying for several
> reasons:
>   1) The google-cached page would be missing those links.
>   2) This would screw with page caching. Google hits a lot of pages, and
> we'd have to either not cache any of its hits or be very careful in
> coding around it.

What about changing the edit urls, so that they don't
contain anything, which people would search?

For example

    http://pl.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=W.i.b.r.a.t.o.r&action=edit

or

    http://pl.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?articlenum=12345678&action=edit

Paul


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: please support offsite imags

body:
Not at all a surprise to me, and I certainly hope that we do spend most of our time working on not only new articles, but making the articles that are there even better.  Mine included.  I don't know why you feel you have to make this personal, but I think I can probably match my usefulness to the project against yours. Zoe

Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:Zoe wrote:
> "self appointed license policemen? I hope *all* of us are license
> policemen, unless we really don't care if the Wikipedia gets shut

It might come as a surprise to you, but some contributors actually
prefer to write new contents rather than *actively* monitoring the
Recent Changes page for possible copyright infringements. Lacking
a scientific census or poll, I would rank user activity by descending
size: 1) Reading, 2) writing, 3) policing, and 4) vandalizing.
We're very happy that activity (3) is bigger than activity (4), but I
also assume that activity (2) is bigger than activity (3). I could be
wrong, and it would be very interesting to see actual numbers if
anybody has tried to measure this.

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

_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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from_name: Luc Van Oostenryck

body:
On Sun, Apr 13, 2003 at 12:02:36AM -0400, Stephen C. Carlson wrote:
> At 12:54 AM 4/13/03 +0100, Lee Pilich wrote:
> > Cynic that I am, I feel pretty confident that Susan Mason and Dietary
> >Fibre are indeed the same person - see this comment that Susan Mason left
> >on a talk page recently (it was later deleted):
>
> For what is worth, I looked at the edit times of Susan Mason and
> Dietary Fiber and they do not overlap, which is pretty amazing
> if they were separate people since both of them are pretty heavy
> editors.  (They also don't get into edit wars with each other.)
>
> Stephen Carlson

Please, don't give them such idea.
It happened one time on sci.astro.amateur,
a multi-account troll was fighting against himself in a hopeless attempt to prove that X, Y & Z were different persons!

-- Looxix


from_name: Jesse Alter

subject: [WikiEN-l] Susan Mason

body:
tarquin wrote:

 >
 > Brion Vibber wrote:
 >
 >> On Sat, 2003-04-12 at 16:24, tarquin wrote:
 >>
 >>> AFAIK Susan Mason has not been unbanned by Jimbo.
 >>>
 >>> Could a developer block the IP?
 >>
 >> "Susan Mason" connects from AOL (ergo, ever-shifting IPs which are
 >> shared by many other AOL users).
 >
 > in that case, we probably have to go for a soft-security option of
shunning: watch his every edit, and revert mercilessly & hope he'll get
tired & go away
 > i think that should include trolling comments on talk pages too --
don't respond, just revert.

 From my experience with this user, and from speaking with them over
other mediums, I really do not think they will get tired and leave. When
Susan Mason gets blocked, they will create a new account, and begin
posting again. If their history can be a lesson, when Susan Mason is
blocked, a new user will be created (who will be useful for a while, and
then will grate on someone's nerves eventually), and that user will be a
little bit better than the last. Tuf-Kat put it well on my talk page:
There really wouldn't be any suspicion that a user is Lir once they
begin acting like a useful contributor. Since no amount of reasoning on
my part or anyone else's will keep this user off of Wikipedia, and
blocking the IP would keep off AOLers, I guess just block Susan Mason,
and let them create another account...block it when they commit
behaviors that go against Wikipedia guidelines. I will continue to talk
with the user of AIM and try to help them understand what behaviors
bother people and detract from Wikipedia.

--cprompt


from_name: cprompt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Susan Mason

body:
I'd also like to add that I have had no problems with Susan Mason or
Dietary Fiber on the two articles I was watching, that is, "James I of
England" and "History of Soviet Union". They were called trolls, they
were told to "go get a history book", and they were told repeatedly that
their views are wrong. The facts that I did check were correct, and
Susan Mason offered to cooperate. When someone said that "regime"
explains the Soviet Union better than "government", Susan Mason referred
to a dictionary entry, and I noticed that other online dictionaries both
say that regime means "the government in power". I told those who had
complaints against Susan Mason that they could make their case stronger
by outlining which facts and sentences Susan Mason was using were
incorrect. Then they could (theoretically) make a compromise, after
doing some fact-checking. Instead, I was told that Susan Mason is lying
and only pretends to cooperate, and that I was well-meaning but naive.
Any posts by Susan Mason were reverted immediately. See archived talk
page for History of Soviet Union, and my talk page.

--cprompt


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: URL change?

body:
Paul Ebermann wrote:
> The second step (which can occur some weeks later)
> is taking URLs from their database, and retrieve
> the page. When they are excluded in the respective
> robots.txt or by a meta-noindex, they are deleted
> from the database.

I'm trying to understand the causes of this problem, because I don't
want it to happen to me.  So far it hasn't happened to me, and it has
been a mystery to me why it happens to Wikipedia.  For susning.nu, I
use "meta noindex" only (no robots.txt), and I never see any edit
links on Google.

What you just wrote made me think that performance might be the key to
the problem: Perhaps the Wikipedia server was slow, timed out, or down
when Googlebot tried to retrieve the edit URL, so Google never
understood that this page was "noindex".  Given Wikipedia's large
number of pages and sluggish performance, this could easily happen to
some pages.  Not all, but enough many to become a problem.

The only real difference that I can think of between susning.nu and
Wikipedia is that my site's performance has always been pretty good.

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


body:
Zoe wrote:
> "self appointed license policemen?  I hope *all* of us are license
> policemen, unless we really don't care if the Wikipedia gets shut

It might come as a surprise to you, but some contributors actually
prefer to write new contents rather than *actively* monitoring the
Recent Changes page for possible copyright infringements.  Lacking
a scientific census or poll, I would rank user activity by descending
size: 1) Reading, 2) writing, 3) policing, and 4) vandalizing.
We're very happy that activity (3) is bigger than activity (4), but I
also assume that activity (2) is bigger than activity (3).  I could be
wrong, and it would be very interesting to see actual numbers if
anybody has tried to measure this.

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


from_name: Connie Davis

subject: [Wikitech-l] Broken link on your website

body:
There appears to be a problem on this page: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_infinitive
When we click on your link to: http://www.bartleby.com/64/C001/059.html)
we get the error: 404 File not found

We last examined your page on Mon Apr 14, 2003 at 03:02:52 AM EDT. If it
has not been updated since then, the link is most likely broken.

We discovered this error during our normal course of website content
checking for one of our search engine clients.

If you would like to receive notifications like this in the future if we
find pages unavailable, click here:
http://scclick.internetseer.com/sitecheck/clickthrough.jsp?I5s57j5e5k5c5j5o5l53M5pUSP3aQ6TV_Q59C5vTLHXyM_L_5aNPD53U5pXTxy5p5b5cKTU5d6u6uPxCM6uK5d6vNN5b5j5j5b605f5c5e5e5c5i5o5aXTCC5852P5s5f=e3

Click here to learn more about us:
http://scclick.internetseer.com/sitecheck/clickthrough.jsp?I5s57j5e5k5c5j5o5l53M5pUSWs5Q6TV_Q59C5vTLHXyM_L_5aNPD53U5pXTxy5p5b5cKTU5dTLHXyM_L_5aNPD5cKXSS5b6gzSLT6rLyRLyXPSWR55x5q5h=e3

Sincerely,

Connie Davis
InternetSeer.com
http://www.internetseer.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your email address was found during a prior visit to your website on
04-14-2003. The error listed above was verified from both of our
indexing servers in Philadelphia, Pa. and Los Angeles, Ca. This error could
have been caused by any number of events, including connectivity problems on
our part and/or connectivity problems in the Internet as we tried to reach
your site. This error should not be construed as a guaranteed problem on the
part of your website or hosting company since there are never any guaranteed
connection routes on the Internet.

If would like to be excluded from any potential future contact, click here:
http://scclick.internetseer.com/sitecheck/cancel.jsp?USX87uQ6TV_Q59C5vTLHXyM_L_5aNPD.e3

##wikitech-l at wikipedia.org## SRC=58
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from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Susan Mason

body:
There seems to be a defacto policy of reverting anything Susan Mason or
Dietary Fiber does without engaging in dialog with them. They have been
given the status of trolls (based on past behavior allegedly as the user
Lir). The problem is that their behavior has gradually improved and you now
see the dark side of what was once a reasonable effort to deal with a
troublesome user. I was particularly unimpressed by the alleged trolling in
the James I article, Dietary Fiber's article seems a bit better than the
other.  And in fact in the idiolatry article (although it is terribly
complicated) they seem to be more on the side of the angels than their
opponent.

I suspect their status as trolls needs to be reconsidered. However they may
be banned at this time. I seem to have lost track of their exact status. Oh
now I remember, they would be if they were not AOL.

Anyway, with such low status, it is considered ok to revert their edits
without considering their content or engaging in dialog with them. Or do I
have it wrong?

Fred

> From: cprompt <cprompt at tmbg.org>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 01:03:36 -0400
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Susan Mason
>
> I'd also like to add that I have had no problems with Susan Mason or
> Dietary Fiber on the two articles I was watching, that is, "James I of
> England" and "History of Soviet Union". They were called trolls, they
> were told to "go get a history book", and they were told repeatedly that
> their views are wrong. The facts that I did check were correct, and
> Susan Mason offered to cooperate. When someone said that "regime"
> explains the Soviet Union better than "government", Susan Mason referred
> to a dictionary entry, and I noticed that other online dictionaries both
> say that regime means "the government in power". I told those who had
> complaints against Susan Mason that they could make their case stronger
> by outlining which facts and sentences Susan Mason was using were
> incorrect. Then they could (theoretically) make a compromise, after
> doing some fact-checking. Instead, I was told that Susan Mason is lying
> and only pretends to cooperate, and that I was well-meaning but naive.
> Any posts by Susan Mason were reverted immediately. See archived talk
> page for History of Soviet Union, and my talk page.
>
> --cprompt
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
This seems to be a good deal.

Fred

From: Connie Davis <connie.davis at mail.internetseer.com>
Reply-To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 02:59:39 -0400 (EDT)
To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Broken link on your website

There appears to be a problem on this page:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_infinitive
When we click on your link to: http://www.bartleby.com/64/C001/059.html)
we get the error: 404 File not found

We last examined your page on Mon Apr 14, 2003 at 03:02:52 AM EDT. If it has
not been updated since then, the link is most likely broken.

We discovered this error during our normal course of website content
checking for one of our search engine clients.

If you would like to receive notifications like this in the future if we
find pages unavailable, click here
<http://scclick.internetseer.com/sitecheck/clickthrough.jsp?I5s57j5e5k5c5j5o
5l53M5pUSP3aQ6TV_Q59C5vTLHXyM_L_5aNPD53U5pXTxy5p5b5cKTU5d6u6uPxCM6uK5d6vNN5b
5j5j5b605f5c5e5e5c5i5o5aXTCC5852P5s5f=e3> .

We found this page by following a link on one of the URLs listed
below:URLDate Last Indexed             http://p1k3.com/2003/2     04-14-2003

Click here
<http://scclick.internetseer.com/sitecheck/clickthrough.jsp?I5s57j5e5k5c5j5o
5l53M5pUSWs5Q6TV_Q59C5vTLHXyM_L_5aNPD53U5pXTxy5p5b5cKTU5dTLHXyM_L_5aNPD5cKXS
S5b6gzSLT6rLyRLyXPSWR55x5q5h=e3>  to learn more about us.

Sincerely,

Connie Davis
InternetSeer.com
<http://www.internetseer.com/ep/setoc?NR5p764lad5aP5q5eMNNV5cSHVMU5bGxy=e3>

Your email address was found during a prior visit to your website on
04-14-2003. The error listed above was verified from both of our indexing
servers in Philadelphia, Pa. and Los Angeles, Ca.  This error could have
been caused by any number of events, including connectivity problems on our
part and/or connectivity problems in the Internet as we tried to reach your
site. This error should not be construed as a guaranteed problem on the part
of your website or hosting company since there are never any guaranteed
connection routes on the Internet.

If would like to be excluded from any potential future contact, click here
<http://scclick.internetseer.com/sitecheck/cancel.jsp?USX87uQ6TV_Q59C5vTLHXy
M_L_5aNPD.e3> .
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from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Susan Mason

in_reply_to: <3E98A010.6060602@planetunreal.com>; from tarquin@planetunreal.com on Sun, Apr 13, 2003 at 12:24:00AM +0100

body:
tarquin wrote:
> AFAIK Susan Mason has not been unbanned by Jimbo.
>
> Could a developer block the IP?

That's right.  Susan Mason/Lir/Vera Cruz is banned.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Susan Mason

body:
cprompt wrote:
> Instead, I was told that Susan Mason is lying and only pretends to
> cooperate, and that I was well-meaning but naive.

I would say that _in this particular case_ you were well-meaning but
naive.  Susan Mason is, as far as we have been able to determine, the
same person who has been banned on multiple occassions for repeated
bad behavior and a complete unwillingness to reform.  Yes, he can
sometimes act o.k., just long enough to get a little bit of political
support, but ultimately it blows up into a waste of time.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] [hardy@math.mit.edu: technicalities]

body:
----- Forwarded message from Michael Hardy <hardy at math.mit.edu> -----

From: Michael Hardy <hardy at math.mit.edu>
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 22:08:09 -0400 (EDT)
To: jwales at bomis.com
Subject: technicalities

   Hello.  Two useful features added to Wikipedia would be:

 o  Allowing a comment when one moves a page, so that one can
    justify the move to the world.

 o  Causing the "Recent changes" page _not_ to reload every
    time one returns to it, or at least making it possible to
    set one's preferences that way, so that one need not wait
    the sometimes unduly long time that it takes for it to
    display 500 changes (if 500 is, as in my case, how one sets
    one's preferences).

Is there any way to speed up the process of getting Google to
detect a Wikipedia page?  I'm not sure how many weeks it takes,
but maybe between four and ten.       -- Mike

--
Michael Hardy
hardy at math.mit.edu

----- End forwarded message -----


subject: [WikiEN-l] Making Wikipedia a multi-cultural encyclopedia

in_reply_to: <3E9AC0BA.5090308@airpost.net>; from rotem_dan@airpost.net on Mon, Apr 14, 2003 at 04:07:54PM +0200

body:
I think this is a very valuable analysis.

Rotem Dan wrote:
> Imagine I would write: "Rotem Dan was born in Holon, Gush-dan
> municipality" what would you understand by that?

No, but I would likely understand "Rotem Dan was born in [[Holon]],
[[Gush-dan]] municipality." (i.e. with potentially mysterious terms
linked)

Similarly, we could either write "Michael Jackson was born in [[Gary,
Indiana|Gary]], [[Indiana]]."  Or we could also add [[USA]] on there.
I think both are fine.

> (a bit extreme) example: taken from "Reverse Osmosis":
> The article starts like this:
> "Membrane separation technology in the application for water supply
> augmentation has been well recognised and is getting an important role
> in water treatment. The family of membrane processes is now very
> diverse. They are generally classified as microfiltration (MF),
> ultrafiltration (UF), ..."
>
> This is perfect gibberish to anyone not knowledgeable (or even expert!)
> in the field. I've noticed most computer-related and social/exact
> science articles are suffering from some degrees of it.

I agree with this critique of some articles!

> There are many more types of "Cultural Biases" which are not listed.
> However, I am by no means whishing to make Wikipedia more "Politically
> correct", I understand that most writers on e-Wikipedia are from English
> speaking countries and western cultures (USA and UK especially),  this
> should be changed. Until then, please be sensitive in what you write.

Yes, I understand what you are saying, and I think it's all good.

--Jimbo


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] The benefits of vandalism

body:
Thanks, Danny. I usually do precisely what you have outlined so clearly below. Please add your plan/advice to [[Wikipedia:dealing with vandalism]] or [[Wikipedia:turning vandalism into stubs]].

Really, really, thanks!! :-)

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: daniwo59 at aol.com [mailto:daniwo59 at aol.com]
Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2003 5:35 PM
To: wikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] The benefits of vandalism

Recently I've found that some vandals have been putting silly sentences into empty subjects that could potentially make good articles. For instance, last week we had someone write some crap under Jim Jones and the Jonestown mass suicide (don't remember the name of the article). While it was being blanked (repeatedly, I might add), I googled and added a few sentences with content, and we had a short article, while the vandal left. Today the same thing happened with Israeli tree frog. Admittedly the article is just a sentence, but it is a start. Maybe this can be a good way to deal with some of the vandals: fill in some information, instead of just deleting.

In a similar vein, someone wrote an article called "Separate but equal." Agreed, it wasn't written very well, but a few quick edits turned it into a stub that can be built up into an important article. My sense is that the article was written by a kid (no offense, LittleDan), but it still had some valuable material and this important topic was not covered at all. Now, at least, we have a stub on which we can build.

I know it won't work in all cases, but I suggest this in some cases as a way of countering vandalism and actually benefitting from it.

Danny

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body:
Danny,

I occasionally teach remedial math (and I got a 760 on the math SAT, so I know it pretty well). I would really like to see your algebra teaching method.

Please e-mail it to me, or upload it to the Metawikipedia or something.

Personally, I don't see any problem with a contributor writing up their own original research -- as long as it's clearly labelled. Please, Jimbo, allow LittleDan a little leeway here. For example, Axelboldt and I could review his results and then *we* (not LittleDan himself) could write an article. That wouldn't be "against policy", would it?

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Susan Mason

body:
Susan Mason was officially banned, weeks ago, but I guess none of the Developers ever got around to ENFORCING it. I locked the account in question this morning at 9:33 A.M.

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Jimmy Wales [mailto:jwales at bomis.com]
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 7:41 AM
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Susan Mason

tarquin wrote:
> AFAIK Susan Mason has not been unbanned by Jimbo.
>
> Could a developer block the IP?

That's right.  Susan Mason/Lir/Vera Cruz is banned.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Auto-revert (was: Susan Mason)

body:
I don't think anyone should be on auto-revert, with one exception.

Because:
* Auto-revert can lose good changes, along with the bad.
* Auto-revert provides no possibility for contributor improvement.
* Auto-revert is just plain mean.

Exception:
* Someone who signs in and then starts doing
  precisely what would get an 'IP user' banned

But even the lone exception is an emergency measure, until the sysop can contact a Developer (I'm thinking of mav and the 'MIT vandal').

If someone keeps breaking the rules, we need to give them a period of banning (what in my Uncle Ed incarnation I would call a "time out"). After the period expires, they can apologize suitably and resume as if nothing had ever happened (except people might watch them a bit more closely).

I'm pretty sure a temporary ban, such as I just described, is in accordance with Jimbo's policy.

Ed Poor


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
> From: Michael Hardy <hardy at math.mit.edu>
>    Hello.  Two useful features added to Wikipedia would be:
>
>  o  Allowing a comment when one moves a page, so that one can
>     justify the move to the world.

Could be helpful, yes.

>  o  Causing the "Recent changes" page _not_ to reload every
>     time one returns to it, or at least making it possible to
>     set one's preferences that way, so that one need not wait
>     the sometimes unduly long time that it takes for it to
>     display 500 changes (if 500 is, as in my case, how one sets
>     one's preferences).

It won't reload if it hasn't changed since you last visited it. However
on the english-language 'pedia this is unlikely. ;)

If you don't want changed pages to reload when you visit them again,
it's *your* responsibility to set your browsing habits accordingly:

* Don't use a browser that forces refreshes when using back/forward
or
* Keep a separate window or tab open for that page, and open links in
  other windows/tabs.

> Is there any way to speed up the process of getting Google to
> detect a Wikipedia page?  I'm not sure how many weeks it takes,
> but maybe between four and ten.       -- Mike

Well, we could pay google to scan the site more often. Keep in mind that
google still isn't finished with the scan of our site that it started last
month.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Automatic vandalism detection?

body:
> On 4/11/03 10:46 AM, "Marco Krohn" <marco.krohn at gmx.de> wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I saw just by chance that [[Rust]] was vandalized by simply adding the
word
> > "bull shit" to the text. Thinking about this I asked myself if it
wouldn't be
> > possible to add an automatic detection for this kind of vandalism?
Something
> > in the way the spam detection programs work. For the beginning a very
simple
> > heuristic algorithm that detects certain word  / word combinations would
be
> > sufficient.
> >
> > Of course the algorithm should not block the modification, simply
because it
> > is impossible to prevent false positives, but it could add the page to a
new
> > special page, making it easier to detect obvious cases of vandalism.
> >
> > Being still quite new to wikipedia I am not sure if this fits well in
the
> > wikipedia framework and if it is realizable, but nevertheless I would
like to
> > hear your comments.
> >
> Without calling it "vandalism", a word I still think is inappropriate for
> Wikipedia, automatic sifting of contributions is certainly a good idea.
>
> It would indeed be very interesting to see what would be the result of
> Bayesian ranking of contributions.

We may also detect big article size decrease (ex: 1 Kb -> 20 bytes).
I think the easer way to show hypothetical "vandalism" is to use different
font (color, italic or font) in RecentChange.
For exemple, display "red" the article where someone just added words like
"fuck" or big size decrease can be very useful.
It can be an option in Preferences.

Aoineko


from_name: tarquin

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>Zoe wrote:
>
>
>>"self appointed license policemen?  I hope *all* of us are license
>>policemen, unless we really don't care if the Wikipedia gets shut
>>
>>
>
>It might come as a surprise to you, but some contributors actually
>prefer to write new contents rather than *actively* monitoring the
>Recent Changes page for possible copyright infringements.
>

*PREFER*, yes.
But SOMEONE has to monitor RC for copyright & junk edits.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Susan Mason

body:
cprompt wrote:

>  Instead, I was told that Susan Mason is lying and only pretends to
> cooperate, and that I was well-meaning but naive.

How to put this ....
yup, that's about it. or rather, you're well-meaning but you've not
experienced Adam for yourself yet.

Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons], to give Susan Mason his real name, does a very good job
of sounding amiable and cooperative.
Most of us here have fallen for it -- including me.

After the "amiable cooperative" phase, there'll be a minor difference of
opinion, which you, in your good faith, will put down to a
misunderstanding. You'll then try and clear it up, and that's when the
fun starts.

as far as I'm concerned, he's on auto-revert: I am likely to revert his
edits, be they article or talk pages without even bothering to read them
first. We've lost too much time, had too much stress over this one
single poisonous individual.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] GFDL on printable version

body:
should we (briefly) mention the GFDL at the foot of printable versions?

Currently says:

/Retrieved from
"http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Backus-Naur_Form"
It was last modified 10:26 Apr 14, 2003./


subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Auto-revert

body:
tarquin wrote, "Susan Mason ... is still banned, but is getting around that by virtue of an AOL IP which we apear to be unable to block." (Ed Poor edited t's remarks for brevity)

Actually, it wasn't by virtue of his AOL IP; rather, it was Developer Inertia. Jimbo banned the Susan Mason account weeks ago, but I had another fit of soft-heartedness and managed to avoid carrying out the ban. The other developers were apparently content to follow suit -- or not to bid at all, or whatever the right metaphor is...

Anyway, I blocked the Susan Mason account today. Let me know if any other incarnations appear and start causing trouble.

Ed Poor


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

body:
I've been thinking about what you call "Educational biases" for a while.  And they don't just apply to cultures, they apply to anyone wanting to learn something who isn't in the middle of a class on a particular topic.  Maybe there could be lists of articles that one could read if one wanted to learn about a given topic. Then, at the bottom of the articles that are in this type of series of articles, there would be a link for next, a link for previous, a link to go back to the main list, and a short explanation of what those links are for.  For example, the reverse osmosis article could be in a celular biology tutorial.  Even if we made more links, in the articles, people would still find themselves wading through them in an attempt to learn something.  Wikipedia is well written, just not well-organized.

Rotem Dan <rotem_dan at airpost.net> wrote:3.
Prior knowledge, background, and education.
A lot of articles assume the reader is fairly (or even highly in the
scientific articles) educated and knowledgeable in the subject of the
article. For each article there should be an extensive background
paragraph(s), which specifically states what the article is about, it's
general field and it's uses in "Real life":

(a bit extreme) example: taken from "Reverse Osmosis":
The article starts like this:
"Membrane separation technology in the application for water supply
augmentation has been well recognised and is getting an important role
in water treatment. The family of membrane processes is now very
diverse. They are generally classified as microfiltration (MF),
ultrafiltration (UF), ..."

This is perfect gibberish to anyone not knowledgeable (or even expert!)
in the field. I've noticed most computer-related and social/exact
science articles are suffering from some degrees of it.

What does this have to do with "multi-cultural"?
In different places in the world, education is sometimes being conveyed
differently, or in a lower/higher level of detail then western
countries. In some places, high education (college/university) is not as
common (and affordable) as in western countries. Wikipedia writers
should understand this and be considerate, because these readers will
not be able to comprehend these articles if they are not given a full,
supportive background of the terms and fields.

I will call this type of writing an "Educational bias"

---------------------------------
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body:
Another thing that I didn't mention in my last post: the articles with an ordered list of links to learn something would be entitled "Tutorial:[subject]" unless there is something wrong with that name.

---------------------------------
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subject: [WikiEN-l] POV diatribe in "censorship" article

body:
Someone -- Steve I think -- wrote a POV diatribe entitled [[Censorship in the United States]]. I deleted the text and replaced it with a neutral stub.

Then someone reverted the article to the original diatribe, whereupon I reverted to Notheruser's version. I am just about to lock the article and bow out of further edits, if this nonsense persists.

A talk comment raised the amusing but irrelevant point that I had seemingly "censored" the censorship article. Not true.

I deleted a diatribe. It's not an encyclopedia article. There should be an encyclopedia article.

The US definitely does have censorship. I know quite a bit about it. The military censors news on the war. Courts censor "obscene" materials. School libraries, in a way, censor books by refusing to carry them -- although the public library in the same town might carry it.

One might even argue that news media censor non-liberal viewpoints, by refraining from any mention of them -- but that is probably stretching the word *censorship* a bit too far. There's no law against printing, mailing, selling or reading conservative newspapers or magazines.

Let's write an article on censorship -- but let's write it AS AN ENCYCLOPEDIA ARTICLE, not as a pro-censorship or anti-censorship diatribe.

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] User blocked

body:
I blocked 80.14.137.218 for re-posting the diatribe at [[Censorship in the United States]].

Ed Poor


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Censorship article

body:
--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> Steve Rapaport and a couple of others have argued
> that
> my reversion of the anti-censorship diatribe is
> wrong,
> on each of several specious grounds.
>
> Most amusingly (but dangerously), that my reversion
> amounts to "censorship". They seem to see some irony
> here,
> but this one in a series of errors or rhetorical
> tricks.
>
> Here is my response:
>
> 1. The article is not censored.
>
> 1a. The entire text of the article is at the top of
> the
>     talk page.
>
> 1b. That text, and some variations of it, are freely
>
>     available on the "Older Versions" page.
>
> 1c. The article is NOT PROTECTED.
>
> 2. All Steve and company need do is recast the
> diatribe
>    in the form of an article, a task I am willing to
> help
>    with.
>
> 3. Whether they know it or not, I hate censorship.
>
> 3a. I would L-O-V-E to see more articles on
> censorship in
>     the Wikipedia.
>
> 3b. I have no desire to hide the FACT that there has
> been
>     a lot of censorship in America.
>
> Apparently what Steve is pushing for is an unlimited
> right
> to put whatever he wants into an article. Well, he
> doesn't
> have that right, and calling my efforts to frustrate
> his
> assertion of this non-existent right is not
> "censorship",
> no matter how delicious the sensation of branding it
>
> "ironic" may be.

Ed.

1. Whatever you try to pretend now, what you did
appeared to be censorship. It is especially obvious as
you were the only one strongly against the content of
the article, when all the other ones merely said it
could be under another title

2. When I tried to talk to you about it, you just
didnot answer. Moving an article to a talk page, and
just "leaving" while saying "this is not good guys,
please do work it until it is" is not exactly a
collaborative way to resolve issues

3. You abused your sysop powers, while yourself
engaged in an edit war on this article, you threatened
Steve of being banned if he tried to revert the
artile. This is not exactly a good way to promote
confidence and collaborative work, and this is exactly
what I would call sysop abuse.

4. You banned an anonymous ip just after one edit
*you* disagreed with. I think it is pushing the red
button a little bit quickly, without giving the person
the opportunity to talk about what he was doing. This
again is not exactly a collaborative attitude

5. I wonder what would happen to me if I were adopting
exactly the same attitude than you on this
article...want a parallele ? Say, I don't appreciate
one article on iraq war, so I entirely moved it to the
talk page, and say "Hey, work on this, this is not
acceptable as it is not representative of all views".
Then, each time someone try to revert the article, I
will threaten to ban him ?

How many minutes until I am banned for doing so do you
think ?

6. And yes, last point, though you seem to imply the
opposite here, Steve has not been insisting on
preserving the article just as it was. You just never
let the opportunity to do anything on that piece.

Yes, that is ironic.

And yes, that is extremely sad also.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://tax.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Censorship article

body:
Steve Rapaport and a couple of others have argued that
my reversion of the anti-censorship diatribe is wrong,
on each of several specious grounds.

Most amusingly (but dangerously), that my reversion
amounts to "censorship". They seem to see some irony here,
but this one in a series of errors or rhetorical tricks.

Here is my response:

1. The article is not censored.

1a. The entire text of the article is at the top of the
    talk page.

1b. That text, and some variations of it, are freely
    available on the "Older Versions" page.

1c. The article is NOT PROTECTED.

2. All Steve and company need do is recast the diatribe
   in the form of an article, a task I am willing to help
   with.

3. Whether they know it or not, I hate censorship.

3a. I would L-O-V-E to see more articles on censorship in
    the Wikipedia.

3b. I have no desire to hide the FACT that there has been
    a lot of censorship in America.

Apparently what Steve is pushing for is an unlimited right
to put whatever he wants into an article. Well, he doesn't
have that right, and calling my efforts to frustrate his
assertion of this non-existent right is not "censorship",
no matter how delicious the sensation of branding it
"ironic" may be.

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Censorship article

body:
--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> Anthere,
>
> I always take your comments seriously. I am going to
> take some time off from Wikipedia while I think
> about what you wrote.
>
> Au revoir,

Merci Edmund;

Moi aussi

__________________________________________________
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Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://tax.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Censorship article

body:
I guess I shouldn't have blocked the IP of that one guy who wanted the POV version of the censorship article. Because wikipedia.org has been inaccessible ever since -- maybe a DOS attack, eh?

Ah, the delicious irony. If we won't let them dictate our editorial policy on controversial articles, they'll simply CENSOR the entire encyclopedia. Metaphors like the pot calling the kettle black would come to mind, but I'm too overwhelmed to think of any right now.

Anyway, when the 'pedia comes back up, would someone please un-block 80.14.137.218 for me?

Ed Poor


from_name: John R. Owens

body:
On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

> Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 11:06:36 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Making Wikipedia a multi-cultural encyclopedia
>
> Another thing that I didn't mention in my last post: the articles with
> an ordered list of links to learn something would be entitled
> "Tutorial:[subject]" unless there is something wrong with that name.
>

Ah, that's better. At first, I thought you were suggesting that the
conventional Wikipedia articles, otherwise pretty much as they are now,
should be linked in something like the Wiki bus tour, which I thought
would be rather sub-optimal as an introduction to a subject. Having a
namespace for them (note: not the technical use of namespace, I don't know
the technical term, just that there is one) like Tutorial: might be an
excellent approach.

--
John R. Owens http://www.ghiapet.homeip.net/
Capt. John Sheridan: I never thought there could be anyuthing worse than
	being all alone in the night.
Delenn Mir: But there is: being all alone in a crowd.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] older versions --> authors/editors

body:
On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, [iso-8859-1] Chuck Smith wrote:
> What would you think of changing the text "Older
> Versions" to "Authors/Editors" because this page does
> indeed show which authors and editors worked on the
> article.

I would find that utterly confusing; I would expect such a link to show
simply a list of individual editors, and would not click on it when
trying to see what the last three changes were. But then, I preferred the
original label, "History".

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Censorship article

body:
Sure, it was my end. Maybe divine retribution for being so heavy-handed? I'm usually so mild-mannered. In fact, my wife won't let me wear contact lenses, because when I take off my glasses, I might become "dangerously" handsome to other women. Hence, the Clark Kent look.

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Susan Mason

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>I suspect their status as trolls needs to be reconsidered.
>
Any banned user can be reinstated. The generally accepted method is:
email Jimbo or this list, ask to be allowed back, explain how you plan
to be non-trollish.

Adam knows he can do this. However, he just comes back in through a side
door - this isn't acceptable behaviour.


subject: [Wikitech-l] rollback conflicts

body:
could we do something about this?

I just re-reverted TUFKAT's rollback by mistake :(

how about just a message that says:

"the change you were trying to rollback has already been reverted by
user:foo"


body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>I don't think anyone should be on auto-revert, with one exception.
>
>Because:
>* Auto-revert can lose good changes, along with the bad.
>* Auto-revert provides no possibility for contributor improvement.
>* Auto-revert is just plain mean.
>
>
>
I quite agree. but Susan Mason has yet to aplogize and be welcomed back
to our little bunch of collegiately-spirited editors.

he is still banned, but is getting around that by virtue of an AOL IP
which we apear to be unable to block.
auto-revert is the human being equivalent of the IP block which is
already in place.

>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] http://www.countryguide.com

body:
On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, sannse wrote:

> Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 20:12:11 +0100
> From: sannse <sannse at delphiforums.com>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] http://www.countryguide.com
>
> A contributor has added links to http://www.countryguide.com/ on many pages
> (see
> http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=65.
> 41.45.22 )  I don't think the links are particularly useful, they just lead
> to more links and this just seems like advertising to me.  I'm inclined to
> remove them all, but am not sure enough to do so without checking first.
> What is policy on links like these?

	I agree, when this person first started adding them, it was even
worse, but I (along with another user or two) worked out a reasonable
compromise that let the links stay without being as POV as they were at
first (I think it revolved around use of a word like "excellent" to
describe it, and one other phrase). I'd really rather not see them at all,
but I didn't want to be too heavy-handed in refusing "contributions"
either (especially as I wasn't a sysop then). So I wouldn't be too
saddened by their loss.

--
John R. Owens http://www.ghiapet.homeip.net/
Londo Mollari:	You haven't changed.
Timov Mollari:	You have.  You've devolved.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Censorship article

body:
Anthere,

I always take your comments seriously. I am going to take some time off from Wikipedia while I think about what you wrote.

Au revoir,

Edmond Le Pauvre

-----Original Message-----
From: Anthere [mailto:anthere6 at yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 3:09 PM
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Censorship article

Ed.

1. Whatever you try to pretend now, what you did
appeared to be censorship. It is especially obvious as
you were the only one strongly against the content of
the article, when all the other ones merely said it
could be under another title

2. When I tried to talk to you about it, you just
didnot answer. Moving an article to a talk page, and
just "leaving" while saying "this is not good guys,
please do work it until it is" is not exactly a
collaborative way to resolve issues

3. You abused your sysop powers, while yourself
engaged in an edit war on this article, you threatened
Steve of being banned if he tried to revert the
artile. This is not exactly a good way to promote
confidence and collaborative work, and this is exactly
what I would call sysop abuse.

4. You banned an anonymous ip just after one edit
*you* disagreed with. I think it is pushing the red
button a little bit quickly, without giving the person
the opportunity to talk about what he was doing. This
again is not exactly a collaborative attitude

5. I wonder what would happen to me if I were adopting
exactly the same attitude than you on this
article...want a parallele ? Say, I don't appreciate
one article on iraq war, so I entirely moved it to the
talk page, and say "Hey, work on this, this is not
acceptable as it is not representative of all views".
Then, each time someone try to revert the article, I
will threaten to ban him ?

How many minutes until I am banned for doing so do you
think ?

6. And yes, last point, though you seem to imply the
opposite here, Steve has not been insisting on
preserving the article just as it was. You just never
let the opportunity to do anything on that piece.

Yes, that is ironic.

And yes, that is extremely sad also.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] User blocked

body:
Well, 2 out of 2 people commenting so far think I'm wrong, so effectively immediately I'm banning myself from Wikipedia (I'll still participate on this mailing list, though).

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Erik Moeller [mailto:erik_moeller at gmx.de]
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 3:10 PM
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] User blocked

> I blocked 80.14.137.218 for re-posting the diatribe at [[Censorship in the
> United States]].

This is an inappropriate use of sysop powers. You were involved in an edit
war regarding that article. You should have asked another sysop to protect
the page, or to block that IP (which, as far I can tell, is hard to
justify, given that the user has only made one edit).

Please do not use your sysop privileges to block users who make edits you
disagree with.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] http://www.countryguide.com

body:
But note that if you click on a country. The first link is right back to
Wikipedia.

Fred

> From: "sannse" <sannse at delphiforums.com>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 20:12:11 +0100
> To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] http://www.countryguide.com
>
> A contributor has added links to http://www.countryguide.com/ on many pages
> (see
> http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=65.
> 41.45.22 )  I don't think the links are particularly useful, they just lead
> to more links and this just seems like advertising to me.  I'm inclined to
> remove them all, but am not sure enough to do so without checking first.
> What is policy on links like these?
>
> Regards,
>
> sannse
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

body:
> (Chuck Smith <msochuck at yahoo.com>):
> What would you think of changing the text "Older
> Versions" to "Authors/Editors" ...

I believe it used to say "Article history" which would cover
both uses.  I don't when it changed.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


from_name: Jason Richey

subject: [Wikitech-l] wikipedia.de redirects to wikipedia.org

body:
I made the DNS change.  Someone else will have to make sure that the
server sends the correct site data for the hostname.

Jason

Kurt Jansson wrote:

> Jason or somebody else, could you please correct the redirection from
> www.wikipedia.de back to de.wikipedia.org? Thanks.
>
>
> Kurt
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


body:
On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, Jason Richey wrote:
> I made the DNS change.  Someone else will have to make sure that the
> server sends the correct site data for the hostname.

Should be ready.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikipedia-l] GFDL on printable version

body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
> should we (briefly) mention the GFDL at the foot of printable
> versions?
>
> Currently says:
>
> /Retrieved from
> "http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Backus-Naur_Form"
> It was last modified 10:26 Apr 14, 2003./

I think the GFDL needs to be mentioned, and it would also be nice to
show the stable URL
  http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus-Naur_Form
rather than the internal one given above.

Axel

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] GFDL on printable version

body:
On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, Axel Boldt wrote:
> I think the GFDL needs to be mentioned, and it would also be nice to
> show the stable URL
>   http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus-Naur_Form
> rather than the internal one given above.

Another issue is whether we should have a stable URL that goes to
_that particular_ revision. This is something people have requested for
purposes of citing Wikipedia articles in bibliographies, etc, where part
of the point is that people can check your citations to see if you quoted
or interpreted them accurately.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Rotem Dan

body:
Hello to all wikipedians, I'm fairly new to wikipedia, I have
accumulated a number of suggestions which all can be summed in one
phrase: "Making wikipedia a multi-cultural encyclopedia".

Here are the main guidelines (This refers to English wikipedia only):
1.
The language of use in e-wikipedia should be called "International
English". I know this is a pretty vague concept (it is highly debated
and sometimes ridiculed on alt.usage.english, sometimes said to be a
computer jargon) for now, I will use the definition: "English written
for an audience without cultural references".

An alternative (but sometimes vague) definition of "International
English": "The English language, usually in its standard form, either
when used, taught, and studied as a lingua franca throughout the world,
or when taken as a whole and used in contrast with American English,
British English, South African English, etc." (London: Edward Arnold,
1982, ISBN 0340586451).

Practical implications:
Use of Latin, Greek, French (culture specific) etc. derived forms of
words and phrases should be minimized, this arose from a short debate I
had with Martin (MyRedDice) on whether to use "Formulae" or "Formulas".
(I still don't know how to pronounce "Formulae" in speech :) ..)

I have noticed that most wikipedia articles are pretty fine with this
rule (The extreme contrast would be Wikipedia written like a Shakespeare
play , or like 1911 Britannica..)

Note: This has nothing to do with American Vs British Vs Canadian etc.
english. British english is taught in India, I think in south america
and mexico, they use forms of American english. Here in Israel we learn
mostly American, but some british english..

2.
The articles should not assume the reader has a specific cultural
affiliation. This is very problematic in the current form. Most articles
assume the reader has personal familiarity with "Westren" (or even
American!) ideas or way of life and culture. For example, "Popular
Music" and related articles, does not even recognize the fact that local
popular music widely exists in china, arab popular music, india etc..

I will call this type of writing "Cultural Bias"

Another thing that confuses international readers (and sometimes makes
them mad, in my case), Is reader's supposedly familiarity with US
geography. For example, in the "Michael Jackson" article:
"Michael Joseph Jackson was born on in Gary, Indiana to Joseph.."

Where on earth is "Gary, Indiana"? in Bangladesh?
Imagine I would write: "Rotem Dan was born in Holon, Gush-dan
municipality" what would you understand by that?

I will call this type of writing "Geographical Bias".

3.
Prior knowledge, background, and education.
A lot of articles assume the reader is fairly (or even highly in the
scientific articles) educated and knowledgeable in the subject of the
article. For each article there should be an extensive background
paragraph(s), which specifically states what the article is about, it's
general field and it's uses in "Real life":

(a bit extreme) example: taken from "Reverse Osmosis":
The article starts like this:
"Membrane separation technology in the application for water supply
augmentation has been well recognised and is getting an important role
in water treatment. The family of membrane processes is now very
diverse. They are generally classified as microfiltration (MF),
ultrafiltration (UF), ..."

This is perfect gibberish to anyone not knowledgeable (or even expert!)
in the field. I've noticed most computer-related and social/exact
science articles are suffering from some degrees of it.

What does this have to do with "multi-cultural"?
In different places in the world, education is sometimes being conveyed
differently, or in a lower/higher level of detail then western
countries. In some places, high education (college/university) is not as
common (and affordable) as in western countries. Wikipedia writers
should understand this and be considerate, because these readers will
not be able to comprehend these articles if they are not given a full,
supportive background of the terms and fields.

I will call this type of writing an "Educational bias"

There are many more types of "Cultural Biases" which are not listed.
However, I am by no means whishing to make Wikipedia more "Politically
correct", I understand that most writers on e-Wikipedia are from English
speaking countries and western cultures (USA and UK especially),  this
should be changed. Until then, please be sensitive in what you write.
Realize you're writing to an international audience with diverse culture
and beliefs, varied education levels and understanding of the english
language.

Keep up the great work on the living Wikipedia organism
Rotem Dan, of Tel Aviv, Israel.


from_name: Jason Williams

body:
On Mon, Apr 14, 2003 at 04:07:54PM +0200, Rotem Dan wrote:
> Prior knowledge, background, and education.
> A lot of articles assume the reader is fairly (or even highly in the
> scientific articles) educated and knowledgeable in the subject of the
> article. For each article there should be an extensive background
> paragraph(s), which specifically states what the article is about, it's
> general field and it's uses in "Real life":

Linking is the right answer here, in my opinion. You shouldn't
have to wade through a thorough grounding in computer science
before reading about how LL parsers work. Instead, [[Computer
science]] and [[Compilers]] should be prominently linked,
along with each technical term used.

I think -
 * Everybody should be able to understand broadly what an article
   is describing (LL Parsers are a technique used in computer
   science to interpret text, or something. You get the idea,
   I'm sure)

 * Everybody should be able to learn whatever they need to understand
   any given article merely by clicking within wikipedia. Obviously
   this is a [[platonic]] wikipedia that has the sum of all human
   knowledge contained within it :-)

 * Everybody should *not necessarily* be able to understand an
   article just by reading it

Oh, and many "borrowed" phrases from non-English languages are an
inseparable part of English vocabulary, in my opinion. If I mean
per se, or de facto, or de jure, I should be able to say so. Don't
steal away the richness of the language for the sake of avoiding
making people expand their vocabulary, please!


body:
On Mon, Apr 14, 2003 at 04:07:54PM +0200, Rotem Dan wrote:
> Prior knowledge, background, and education.
> A lot of articles assume the reader is fairly (or even highly in the
> scientific articles) educated and knowledgeable in the subject of the
> article. For each article there should be an extensive background
> paragraph(s), which specifically states what the article is about, it's
> general field and it's uses in "Real life":

Linking is the right answer here, in my opinion. You shouldn't
have to wade through a thorough grounding in computer science
before reading about how LL parsers work. Instead, [[Computer
science]] and [[Compilers]] should be prominently linked,
along with each technical term used.

I think -
 * Everybody should be able to understand broadly what an article
   is describing (LL Parsers are a technique used in computer
   science to interpret text, or something. You get the idea,
   I'm sure)

 * Everybody should be able to learn whatever they need to understand
   any given article merely by clicking within wikipedia. Obviously
   this is a [[platonic]] wikipedia that has the sum of all human
   knowledge contained within it :-)

 * Everybody should *not necessarily* be able to understand an
   article just by reading it

Oh, and many "borrowed" phrases from non-English languages are an
inseparable part of English vocabulary, in my opinion. If I mean
per se, or de facto, or de jure, I should be able to say so. Don't
steal away the richness of the language for the sake of avoiding
making people expand their vocabulary, please!

--

jason at jasonandali.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


body:
Jason Williams wrote:

>
>Linking is the right answer here, in my opinion. You shouldn't
>have to wade through a thorough grounding in computer science
>before reading about how LL parsers work. Instead, [[Computer
>science]] and [[Compilers]] should be prominently linked,
>along with each technical term used.
>
>I think -
> * Everybody should be able to understand broadly what an article
>   is describing (LL Parsers are a technique used in computer
>   science to interpret text, or something. You get the idea,
>   I'm sure)
>
>
>
Yes, absolutely.
Articles should begin with a clear overview.
"LL Parsers are a technique used in computer science to interpret text"
is a great begininng. The article can get very technically dense
straight away after that -- the layperson already has a quick idea of
*what* this thing is, and what they need to learn about before they can
tackle the detail.

On the matter of cultural bias, I  have mentioned this somewhere in our
policy pages. Don't for instance assume the reader has any idea what
"Thanksgiving" is -- things like that are important to bear in mind.

I always think: "write for an intelligent Martian, who is capable of
following links" ;-)