subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Requesting assistance re user:Bastique PLEASE HELP

body:
This has gotten progressively worse, now someone named Slimvirgin is
accusing me of being someone I have no clue who they are, please, PLEASE
will someone help?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sharon, Lois Bram <oneelephant at gmail.com>
Date: Mar 13, 2007 12:37 PM
Subject: Requesting assistance re user:Bastique
To: wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org

Hello,

I need to request assistance with an issue I am having with an administrator
who, for whatever reason, feels the need to be abusive and problematic
towards me. This is the first time I'm encountering something like this, the
rest of the time people have been extremely helpful, especially when I
didn't know how to fix something on the page for pixar's Cars film and they
helped troubleshoot a problem I saw with one of the images going over text.

What is going on is at the [[National Council of La Raza]] page. I saw that
there was an editing dispute there, editors disagreeing over the content of
the page and the nature of the group. I've been reading the sources supplied
by the various sides and it seems the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

However, user:Bastique saw fit to revert to a version he preferred, and then
semiprotected the page. This seems to be at odds with the protection policy
and admin policies which state that admin powers should not be used to win a
content dispute.

I reverted the page, and left a note on the talk page, the admins
noticeboard, and then Bastique's page as a friendly reminder of what policy
states:

Page history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=National_Council_of_La_Raza&action=history
Edit on talk page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ANational_Council_of_La_Raza&diff=114801400&oldid=114394497
Edit made to Bastique:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ABastique&diff=114803985&oldid=114197204

Bastique's response was to threaten me by saying "Don't revert me again": he
also reverted the page back and fully protected it this time, to "win" his
argument by preventing me from doing so. (see page history above).

He has since continued to attack me, violating WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA. He
directly called me a liar, and has been lying about the fact that he
threatened me, as well as accusing me of "gaming the system" which I am not
doing, and it seems obvious despite his claims to the contrary that he has
some stake in the content of the page, otherwise he would not have
reverted/locked it TWICE nor would he be spending this much time attacking
me for pointing out that his doing so is against policy.

It has gotten so bad that I had to create a new section regarding this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AAdministrators%27_noticeboard%2FIncidents&diff=114838915&oldid=114838462This
section fully explains my problem as well as containing the additional
difference links.

I do not know what else to do, this is scary to be treated in this manner by
an administrator, so I am posting here in hopes that someone can help.

Please, if anyone can help, it would be greatly appreciated.
User: One Elephant Went Out to Play...


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: James Farrar

subject: [WikiEN-l] Google Trends

body:
On 13/03/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 13/03/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > http://www.google.com/trends?q=wikipedia%2C+wiki%2C+open+source%2C++free+software%2C+linux+&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
> >
> > Draw your own conclusions. Don't bother attempting comparisons to
> > Britannica - they don't even rate a mention.
>
> It seems odd that Basque was the top language Google performing these searches.

That's not calculated in absolute terms:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/trends/about.html#4


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Jake Nelson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Look Who's Using Wikipedia

body:
On 3/7/07, Frederick Noronha <fred at bytesforall.org> wrote:
> Could someone hazard a guess on which areas the Wikipedia is strong
> in, and which areas it is still lacking? FN

Strong: detailed, accurate, advanced science articles (but see below).
US geography, cities, etc. are amazingly well-covered, beyond the base
Rambot articles (which themselves are a great resource).
Good coverage of current events, popular culture.

Weak: Major companies, primarily those in specialized fields, often
completely lack articles.
Many math and science articles are incomprehensible to most laypeople.
Locations and events in non-English-speaking countries tend to have
very little information, or it's badly out of date (in some cases, by
a few centuries).
Subjects from across all topics not covered due to "non-notability".

-- Jake Nelson
[[en:User:Jake Nelson]]


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Why cutting'n'pasting from Wikipedia is not a good
	idea

body:
A professional company that doesn't proofread their work?
I could understand it if they had used Wikipedia info and missed some sneaky
vandalism, but copying wholesale without checking it is inexcusable. They
deserve what they got.

It's true. People need to be educated. Just because it's a top search on
Google or just because it looks nice doesn't mean something is true. People
need to be more critical.

Mgm

On 3/12/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sioux_Lookout%2C_Ontario&diff=next&oldid=102936206
>
> http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2007/03/12/sioux-lookout-brochure.html
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: foundation-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Foundation-l] The community

body:
On 13/03/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Hsiang-Tai Chien wrote:

> > I think what Shi Zhao means is how to set up another language (like Chinese)
> > for the Planet Wikipedia feed and to make it as wide-open as Wikipedia.

> Sure, we can definitely do that!
> It would probably be good to have an initial list (opt-in, it's a little
> freaky to aggregate peoples' blogs without asking IMHO), and probably a
> central contact in each language to manage the list would be good. :)

That's pretty much what Erik's doing at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Planet_Wikimedia .

Note also on the talk page support for making it multilingual -
en.planet.wikimedia.org, etc. Which is as obviously a good idea in
retrospect as it was to make www.wikipedia.org a multilingual portal.

- d.


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] The community


from_name: Sharon, Lois Bram

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requesting assistance re user:Bastique PLEASE HELP

body:
Fine.

I'm leaving.

Jersey Devil outright threatened me, Slimvirgin posted the lies to the
administrators noticeboard, I am no longer interested in contributing to
Wikipedia if this is how you treat people.

Goodbye.
[[User: One Elephant Went Out to Play...]]

On 3/13/07, Sharon, Lois Bram <oneelephant at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This has gotten progressively worse, now someone named Slimvirgin is
> accusing me of being someone I have no clue who they are, please, PLEASE
> will someone help?
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Sharon, Lois Bram <oneelephant at gmail.com>
> Date: Mar 13, 2007 12:37 PM
> Subject: Requesting assistance re user:Bastique
> To: wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>
> Hello,
>
> I need to request assistance with an issue I am having with an
> administrator who, for whatever reason, feels the need to be abusive and
> problematic towards me. This is the first time I'm encountering something
> like this, the rest of the time people have been extremely helpful,
> especially when I didn't know how to fix something on the page for pixar's
> Cars film and they helped troubleshoot a problem I saw with one of the
> images going over text.
>
> What is going on is at the [[National Council of La Raza]] page. I saw
> that there was an editing dispute there, editors disagreeing over the
> content of the page and the nature of the group. I've been reading the
> sources supplied by the various sides and it seems the truth lies somewhere
> in the middle.
>
> However, user:Bastique saw fit to revert to a version he preferred, and
> then semiprotected the page. This seems to be at odds with the protection
> policy and admin policies which state that admin powers should not be used
> to win a content dispute.
>
> I reverted the page, and left a note on the talk page, the admins
> noticeboard, and then Bastique's page as a friendly reminder of what policy
> states:
>
> Page history:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=National_Council_of_La_Raza&action=history
> Edit on talk page:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ANational_Council_of_La_Raza&diff=114801400&oldid=114394497
> Edit made to Bastique:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ABastique&diff=114803985&oldid=114197204
>
> Bastique's response was to threaten me by saying "Don't revert me again":
> he also reverted the page back and fully protected it this time, to "win"
> his argument by preventing me from doing so. (see page history above).
>
> He has since continued to attack me, violating WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA. He
> directly called me a liar, and has been lying about the fact that he
> threatened me, as well as accusing me of "gaming the system" which I am not
> doing, and it seems obvious despite his claims to the contrary that he has
> some stake in the content of the page, otherwise he would not have
> reverted/locked it TWICE nor would he be spending this much time attacking
> me for pointing out that his doing so is against policy.
>
> It has gotten so bad that I had to create a new section regarding this:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AAdministrators%27_noticeboard%2FIncidents&diff=114838915&oldid=114838462This section fully explains my problem as well as containing the additional
> difference links.
>
> I do not know what else to do, this is scary to be treated in this manner
> by an administrator, so I am posting here in hopes that someone can help.
>
> Please, if anyone can help, it would be greatly appreciated.
> User: One Elephant Went Out to Play...
>


from_name: Liviu Andronic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Conspicuous only in its absence (was Moldavian)

body:
Mark,

talking about *lies* - you, the moldovanest of Moldovans, have you ever been
to Moldova? Listened to the way people talk? Do you know how Romanian sounds
like? Or the Moldovan dialect? My POV, and in real life (as opposed to this
list) I'm definitely not alone with it: in Moldova people speak and write
Romanian. In Latin or sometimes Cyrillic. They may call it Moldovan (as the
Constitution deems) or Romanian. I don't care: they all make use of Romanian
grammar and vocabulary. And about *distortions*: FYI, "mainly a reality of
the past" doesn't equal "nobody uses it today". And for the "hate" part, I'd
have appreciated a quotation.

On 3/9/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> You saying over and over that Moldovans say they speak Romanian. Check
> http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limba_moldoveneasca please where census
> results indicate clearly that in fact the majority claimed their
> native language as "Moldovan" (especially in rural areas).
>
> You are also saying over and over that all Moldovans hate Cyrillic, or
> that nobody uses it today. It is still taught in schools in
> Transnistria. You say this is something that kids don't want.
> Honestly, when I was in primary school or secondary school, I would
> not have cared if they taught us English in the Hebrew alphabet and
> told us we were Martians. Since when do kids care so much about
> school?
>
> The bottom line is that there are people who use Cyrillic, as well as
> many many people who still call their native tongue "Moldovan", both
> of which you constantly try to negate using lies and distortion. It is
> an undeniable fact.
>
> Mark
>
> On 09/03/07, Liviu Andronic <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 3/2/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Umm... we've been over this a thousand times, Liviu. You have hashed
> > > and rehashed the same arguments. People see through your lies and
> > > distortion
> >
> > Who's accusing others about lies and distortion, if not the master
> himself..
> > :)
> >
> >
> > every time, so trying again isn't going to do anything for
> > > you.
> > >
> > > Mark
> > >
> > > On 02/03/07, Liviu Andronic <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Hello,
> > > >
> > > > Verbosity is a prerequisite for my arguments to be understood.
> Otherwise
> > > > these are simply skipped.
> > > >
> > > > If, at a given moment, the Board wishes to reconsider its position
> on
> > > the
> > > > Moldovan Wikipedia, please regard the following points:
> > > >
> > > > 1. In its current form, mo.wiki is promoting an ideology. There is a
> > > slight
> > > > difference between "not being of a neutral point of view" and
> promoting
> > > an
> > > > ideology.
> > > >
> > > > 2. According to the recently adopted Language proposal
> > > > policy<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM:LPP>- that I suppose can be
> > > > applied to existing wikipedias to determine their
> > > > "validity" - there are three "essential" requisites that can be
> > > verified: a
> > > > valid ISO-639 code, language singularity and a viable community and
> > > > audience.
> > > >
> > > > The Moldovan Wikipedia fails on all three. The valid ISO code and
> the
> > > code
> > > > used for its domain are a coincidence, simply because ISO requires a
> > > > separate linguistic entity while the domain doesn't host such
> content.
> > > There
> > > > is no uniqueness since it is standard Romanian written in a
> different
> > > > script. There is no viable community and audience.
> > > >
> > > > 3. A basic objective of providing high-quality content to writers of
> the
> > > > "Moldovan language" will be hardly achieved, if you expect
> contributions
> > > > written in the Moldovan alphabet to "flow in" (when an un-freeze
> > > happens).
> > > > The script is mainly a reality of the past, while this objective
> could
> > > be
> > > > easier achieved if the two relevant projects were merged.
> > > >
> > > > You may consider some of these arguments as personal POVs. I believe
> > > that
> > > > these are backed up by different sources that are supposed to be
> > > > western-neutral and academic (the links in my messages are not for
> > > making it
> > > > prettier), while others on logical reasoning.
> > > >
> > > > Regards,
> > > > Liviu
> > > >
> > > > On 2/28/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > Hoi,
> > > > > According to what Erik wrote the other day, the pillars are, at
> this
> > > > > moment, not part of a "must have" doctrine for Wikipedia projects.
> > > Given
> > > > > that the WMF it self is not on firm grounds, how can you expect
> that
> > > the
> > > > > language committee is more firm. Having said that, you will fully
> > > > > misunderstand B?rto's position. Your verbiage  is just to cover
> that
> > > you
> > > > > do not want to address what is in front of you.
> > > > >
> > > > > Your whole argument is yet another political inspired tirade why
> > > things
> > > > > are as you see them. Again, political arguments do not wash.
> > > > >
> > > > > Thanks,
> > > > >     GerardM
> > > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Liviu
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Liviu


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia as a primary source

body:
It is increasingly common that subjects of articles wish to interact
directly with us and tell us that their article is wrong in some way.
It is, in my opinion, silly for us to reject even harmless corrections
on the grounds that they cannot be traced to a reliable source. If
Wikipedia itself becomes a primary source in the process of someone
commenting on "their" article, what is the problem with that from a
purely factual point of view? Depending on the nature of the
statement, such comments could be either incorporated as corrections
(date of birth) or attributed statements (".. denies that he ever had
sexual relations with that woman").

I wouldn't be surprised if such interactions are even common among
traditional encyclopedias, and corrections are simply quietly
incorporated (they don't have talk pages). The main problem with us
seems to be making the source "reliable", but there seem reasonable
ways to do so (OTRS, "update this website please", call a volunteer,
...). No, just like any credentials verification, WMF shouldn't be
involved directly. But while I generally fully support the need for
good sourcing in any article, I often find it absurd how people who
point out simple corrections are treated.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


list: commons-l

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject:
[Commons-l] Please do not delete images used on [[Wikimedia
	logo mosaic]]

body:
If the mosaic is going to get in the way of our fundimental mission
then we might need to reconsider if we should be keeping it at all.
... Although I agree with Erik's view that a few broken images in the
mosaic are not a bad thing.

In any case, a copy vio image should never be undeleted simbly because
it has not yet been replaced.

On 3/13/07, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/13/07, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Yes, mosaic pretty. Finding replacements for it
> > nice thing to do. But again, it's not a top priority, we shouldn't
> > stop doing what we're doing just to attend the mosaic. Onc eagain,
> > doing so it's a nice thing however.
>
>
> This page is linked from an official press release from the foundation. It
> is linked from the first frame of [[Commons:Welcome]] which is the first
> link on Commons Main page. So yes, I think keeping it without red links is
> important. It is sad if I am the only one.
>
> --
> Guillaume Paumier
> [[m:User:guillom]]
> http://www.wikimedia.org
>


from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
On 3/13/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sioux_Lookout%2C_Ontario&diff=next&oldid=102936206
> http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2007/03/12/sioux-lookout-brochure.html

One hopes they printed off the GFDL and stapled it to the brochure.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: geni

body:
On 3/13/07, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> It is the second time in two weeks I have to restore a deleted image that
> appears on the [[Wikimedia logo mosaic]]:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=Image%3ANorthwest+Airlines+Boeing+757-200.jpg
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=Image%3ATermografia+chiesa.jpg
>
> It may be because of our brand new CommonsDelinker (great tool btw), some
> admins may feel they can delete images without checking the usage of all
> photos. This is not the case. Please always checkusage before deleting. If
> you are about to delete an image appearing in the mosaic, find another one
> to replace it *before* deleting the bad one.

I fail to see any reason to hesitate when it come to deleteing likely copyvios.

--
geni


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Andrew Dunbar

subject: [Wikitech-l] TOC Extension - does this exist?

body:
On 13/03/07, Chris Marmo <wiki at prosimian.com.au> wrote:
> I'm currently searching for an extension which allows the TOC to be
> extracted from the page and used elsewhere in the skin (for example,
> in a sidebar - outside the confines of the article itself). It seems
> to be a common request yet I haven't been able to find any solutions.
>
> If this extension does not exist then I will be making one. It's my
> first time delving in to Mediawiki so I would appreciate any guidance
> on how to go about doing this.

Having recently played with this code I can say it sounds like a good
idea to me. The TOC code is tied to the parser and the output more
strongly than it need be. It should be free to be output as part of the
skin or part of the article. It should be quite easy to implement.

Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)

> I've found this post which seems to be an overview of what I need to
> do - can anyone expand on this?
>
> http://article.gmane.org/
> gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/17938/
>
> Best Regards,
> Chris
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
http://wiktionarydev.leuksman.com http://linguaphile.sf.net


subject: [Wikitech-l] RSS feeds for watchlists

body:
On 3/13/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> (In general we prefer small extensions over big ones; single-purpose,
> trim and fit is better than do-fifty-things. That's part of why things
> like DPL2 are not getting any attention paid to them.)

In that spirit, how about adding the feed functionality from
Recentchanges into Recentchangeslinked? Users could maintain a page in
their userspace with a list of links to pages they want to watch. This
would effectively allow watchlist feeds, with the proviso that it
would be public, not private.

I'm not entirely familiar with the feed code for RC, but I suspect
this would not be too difficult?

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Guillaume Paumier

subject:
[Commons-l] Please do not delete images used on [[Wikimedia logo
	mosaic]]

body:
Hello,

It is the second time in two weeks I have to restore a deleted image that
appears on the [[Wikimedia logo mosaic]]:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=Image%3ANorthwest+Airlines+Boeing+757-200.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=Image%3ATermografia+chiesa.jpg

It may be because of our brand new CommonsDelinker (great tool btw), some
admins may feel they can delete images without checking the usage of all
photos. This is not the case. Please always checkusage before deleting. If
you are about to delete an image appearing in the mosaic, find another one
to replace it *before* deleting the bad one.

And please, do not turn this thread into an endless argument about ? why
haven't all these images been verified before ?, I am sure they have been.

--
Guillaume Paumier
[[m:User:guillom]]
http://www.wikimedia.org
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URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/attachments/20070313/696bee55/attachment.htm


subject: [Commons-l] What colour are your bits?

body:
A think-piece on law versus strings of numbers.

http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/lawpoli/colour/2004061001.php

- d.


body:
On 3/13/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/13/07, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > It is the second time in two weeks I have to restore a deleted image
> that
> > appears on the [[Wikimedia logo mosaic]]:
> >
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=Image%3ANorthwest+Airlines+Boeing+757-200.jpg
> >
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=Image%3ATermografia+chiesa.jpg
> >
> > It may be because of our brand new CommonsDelinker (great tool btw),
> some
> > admins may feel they can delete images without checking the usage of all
> > photos. This is not the case. Please always checkusage before deleting.
> If
> > you are about to delete an image appearing in the mosaic, find another
> one
> > to replace it *before* deleting the bad one.
>
> I fail to see any reason to hesitate when it come to deleteing likely
> copyvios.
>

I fail to see any reason to not take some minutes to find a similar image to
replace it before the deletion.

--
Guillaume Paumier
[[m:User:guillom]]
http://www.wikimedia.org
-------------- section suivante --------------
Une pi?ce jointe HTML a ?t? nettoy?e...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/attachments/20070313/428e521c/attachment.htm


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN committer

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Added Joerg Baach (jhb), contractor working on stable versions.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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from_name: Jossi Fresco

subject: [WikiEN-l] Google Trends

body:
On Mar 13, 2007, at 11:18 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> The places where Jesus is more popular than Wikipedia are Spanish
> speaking
>
> These are also the places where Jesus is more popular than porn.
  Fascinating...

-- Jossi


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Liviu,

I am perfectly willing to answer all of those questions for you, but
it does not belong on-list because at this point it is a personal
discussion. If you really wanted an answer to any of those, feel free
to send me a private e-mail and I will answer those questions, but I
have a feeling you asked them for the point of debate rather than out
of genuine curiousity, and I am going to ask you to read my previous
e-mail wherein I stated I am disengaging from this debate.

Mark

On 13/03/07, Liviu Andronic <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mark,
>
> talking about *lies* - you, the moldovanest of Moldovans, have you ever been
> to Moldova? Listened to the way people talk? Do you know how Romanian sounds
> like? Or the Moldovan dialect? My POV, and in real life (as opposed to this
> list) I'm definitely not alone with it: in Moldova people speak and write
> Romanian. In Latin or sometimes Cyrillic. They may call it Moldovan (as the
> Constitution deems) or Romanian. I don't care: they all make use of Romanian
> grammar and vocabulary. And about *distortions*: FYI, "mainly a reality of
> the past" doesn't equal "nobody uses it today". And for the "hate" part, I'd
> have appreciated a quotation.
>
>
> On 3/9/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > You saying over and over that Moldovans say they speak Romanian. Check
> > http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limba_moldoveneasca please where census
> > results indicate clearly that in fact the majority claimed their
> > native language as "Moldovan" (especially in rural areas).
> >
> > You are also saying over and over that all Moldovans hate Cyrillic, or
> > that nobody uses it today. It is still taught in schools in
> > Transnistria. You say this is something that kids don't want.
> > Honestly, when I was in primary school or secondary school, I would
> > not have cared if they taught us English in the Hebrew alphabet and
> > told us we were Martians. Since when do kids care so much about
> > school?
> >
> > The bottom line is that there are people who use Cyrillic, as well as
> > many many people who still call their native tongue "Moldovan", both
> > of which you constantly try to negate using lies and distortion. It is
> > an undeniable fact.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 09/03/07, Liviu Andronic <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 3/2/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Umm... we've been over this a thousand times, Liviu. You have hashed
> > > > and rehashed the same arguments. People see through your lies and
> > > > distortion
> > >
> > > Who's accusing others about lies and distortion, if not the master
> > himself..
> > > :)
> > >
> > >
> > > every time, so trying again isn't going to do anything for
> > > > you.
> > > >
> > > > Mark
> > > >
> > > > On 02/03/07, Liviu Andronic <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > Hello,
> > > > >
> > > > > Verbosity is a prerequisite for my arguments to be understood.
> > Otherwise
> > > > > these are simply skipped.
> > > > >
> > > > > If, at a given moment, the Board wishes to reconsider its position
> > on
> > > > the
> > > > > Moldovan Wikipedia, please regard the following points:
> > > > >
> > > > > 1. In its current form, mo.wiki is promoting an ideology. There is a
> > > > slight
> > > > > difference between "not being of a neutral point of view" and
> > promoting
> > > > an
> > > > > ideology.
> > > > >
> > > > > 2. According to the recently adopted Language proposal
> > > > > policy<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM:LPP>- that I suppose can be
> > > > > applied to existing wikipedias to determine their
> > > > > "validity" - there are three "essential" requisites that can be
> > > > verified: a
> > > > > valid ISO-639 code, language singularity and a viable community and
> > > > > audience.
> > > > >
> > > > > The Moldovan Wikipedia fails on all three. The valid ISO code and
> > the
> > > > code
> > > > > used for its domain are a coincidence, simply because ISO requires a
> > > > > separate linguistic entity while the domain doesn't host such
> > content.
> > > > There
> > > > > is no uniqueness since it is standard Romanian written in a
> > different
> > > > > script. There is no viable community and audience.
> > > > >
> > > > > 3. A basic objective of providing high-quality content to writers of
> > the
> > > > > "Moldovan language" will be hardly achieved, if you expect
> > contributions
> > > > > written in the Moldovan alphabet to "flow in" (when an un-freeze
> > > > happens).
> > > > > The script is mainly a reality of the past, while this objective
> > could
> > > > be
> > > > > easier achieved if the two relevant projects were merged.
> > > > >
> > > > > You may consider some of these arguments as personal POVs. I believe
> > > > that
> > > > > these are backed up by different sources that are supposed to be
> > > > > western-neutral and academic (the links in my messages are not for
> > > > making it
> > > > > prettier), while others on logical reasoning.
> > > > >
> > > > > Regards,
> > > > > Liviu
> > > > >
> > > > > On 2/28/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Hoi,
> > > > > > According to what Erik wrote the other day, the pillars are, at
> > this
> > > > > > moment, not part of a "must have" doctrine for Wikipedia projects.
> > > > Given
> > > > > > that the WMF it self is not on firm grounds, how can you expect
> > that
> > > > the
> > > > > > language committee is more firm. Having said that, you will fully
> > > > > > misunderstand B?rto's position. Your verbiage  is just to cover
> > that
> > > > you
> > > > > > do not want to address what is in front of you.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Your whole argument is yet another political inspired tirade why
> > > > things
> > > > > > are as you see them. Again, political arguments do not wash.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Thanks,
> > > > > >     GerardM
> > > > > >
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Liviu
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Liviu
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


body:
On 3/13/07, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/13/07, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I fail to see any reason to not take some minutes to find a similar
> image to
> > replace it before the deletion.
>
> AS pretty as mosaic is, it's not a top priority. That's why.

If deleting images were so easy, we would let bots deal with it. You
(meaning you human commons admins) are supposed to have a brain and use it.
Of course it is easier to click the delete button without bothering
replacing it.

--
Guillaume Paumier
[[m:User:guillom]]
http://www.wikimedia.org
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body:
On 3/13/07, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> It is the second time in two weeks I have to restore a deleted image that
> appears on the [[Wikimedia logo mosaic]]:

In some way, the torn apart mosaic would be a nice visual indication
of the rate of content loss we suffer from copyvios. ;-)

I agree with you that it's good manners to check usage before
deleting, but I still prefer deleting a copyvio to leaving it alone.
Redundant and "low quality" images are another matter, though.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 3/13/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> De-slanting is not the same thing as a harmless correction. If we have
> no source for a birthdate, and the celebrity says it's wrong, we
> should just fix it.
>
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree there.  If we have no source for a
birthdate, then we shouldn't list a birthdate.

Why do we need a birthdate in an article in the first place?  If a
fact is so trivial that we're going to believe whatever one person
tells us on the matter, then it doesn't need to be in the encyclopedia
in the first place.

Anthony


from_name: Husky

subject: [Foundation-l] Planet Wikimedia: Add your blog feeds

body:
Maybe a tip: i had some trouble finding the RSS feed for the combined
articles. You automatically get one when browsing in Firefox or IE7, but i
usually search for the 'RSS' button or the feed icon (
http://www.feedicons.com/) first when i look for a feed.

-- Hay Kranen / [[User:Husky]]

On 3/11/07, shi zhao <shizhao at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> wikipedian blog :
>
> http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/10562095482036943678/label/wikipedian-blog
>
> by KJ
>
> 2007/3/11, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
> > We have just launched http://planet.wikimedia.org/ , which is an
> > aggregator for all on-topic wiki-related weblog (blog) posts by
> > participants in Wikimedia projects. The planet can be found at:
> >
> > http://planet.wikimedia.org/
> >
> > To get added, please follow the instructions at:
> >
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Planet_Wikimedia
> >
> > This is a kind of beta test, and right now, the planet is in the
> > English language; however, I have prepared a process for requesting
> > new languages to be set up here:
> >
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Planet_Wikimedia/New_language
> >
> > So please add your support if you wish to aggregate blog posts in
> > another language.
> >
> > Again, this is for on-topic posts, not for diary entries. All feeds
> > must either point to a blog which is almost exclusively about wikis,
> > or filtered (WordPress, Blogger and other common blog engines all
> > support filtered feeds by categorizing your posts, e.g., adding the
> > "wiki" category to all posts which you want to be included in the
> > planet). If this makes you feel uncomfortable, you can (in addition or
> > in substitution) add your blog to http://wikiblogplanet.com/ , which
> > does not filter posts for on-topicness. WikiBlogPlanet is run
> > independently by Nick Jenkins.
> >
> > I hope that this new tool will allow us to share useful and
> > interesting information, as well as opinions, more effectively across
> > project boundaries.
> > --
> > Peace & Love,
> > Erik
> >
> > DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
> > the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
> >
> > "An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
> > free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Chinese wikipedia: http://zh.wikipedia.org/
> My blog: http://talk.blogbus.com
> CNBlog: http://blog.cnblog.org/weblog.html
> Social Brain: http://www.socialbrain.org/default.asp
> cnbloggercon: http://www.cnbloggercon.org/
>
> [[zh:User:Shizhao]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Jim Wilson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Comprised IP address?

body:
It's _possible_ to lose your IP to someone else.  I believe this is more
likely for DSL than Cable.

On 3/13/07, Ian Tresman <it at knowledge.co.uk> wrote:
>
> I'd appreciate some user IP address advice.
>
> My Web site was attacked by someone with an IP address that is used
> on Wikipedia by someone who has not logged into a personal account.
> They have suggested that their User IP address may have been compromised.
>
> Is the following accurate:
>
> If their User IP was identified with, for example, a college, then
> several people could indeed be using the same Wikipedia User IP address.
>
> But if their IP address is identified with a private residential
> broadband account, then the only ways it could be compromised is:
>
> a. Someone else has access to the same computer
> b. The home computer has a Trojan giving access to an intruder
>
> Regards,
> Ian Tresman
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
On 3/13/07, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> If it's a copyvio, it should be deleted on sight, it being on the
> mosaic is no excuse for waiting (I was commenting on above's comment
> above copyvios).

Hey, I hate copyvios as much as everybody, I have deleted thousands of them,
I am clearly not saying we should keep copyvios with the excuse of them
being on the mosaic or any other much-viewed page. I am asking admins to
think a little and take 1 minute to find another image to replace it with an
image from the colours gallery [1].

[1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_logo_mosaic/Colours_gallery

--
Guillaume Paumier
[[m:User:guillom]]
http://www.wikimedia.org
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body:
On 3/13/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> I really don't see anything wrong with me footnoting a) as "was born
> in Such-and-Such<ref>Personal correspondence with the Wikimedia
> Foundation, June 17th, reference ABC1234567</ref>.

I disagree.  There are lots of problems with this.  1) You're not the
Wikimedia Foundation; 2) It's not a published source which can be
easily accessed; and 3) it's not a reliable source even if it's true,
as the person no doubt does not remember his own birth.

> Yes, we could ask
> them to issue a rather dull press release, or write a blog post, or
> (in one case I recall) update the details on their myspace page. But
> no reasonable academic or reporter objects to incorporating
> corrections of trivial, non-contentious details from those who know
> about the article; why should we?
>
Because we want to be better?  If the detail is so trivial as to not
matter if it's correct or not, why include it in the first place?
Alternatively, if the truth might actually matter, then we should make
sure to get it right.


body:
On 3/13/07, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Yes, mosaic pretty. Finding replacements for it
> nice thing to do. But again, it's not a top priority, we shouldn't
> stop doing what we're doing just to attend the mosaic. Onc eagain,
> doing so it's a nice thing however.

This page is linked from an official press release from the foundation. It
is linked from the first frame of [[Commons:Welcome]] which is the first
link on Commons Main page. So yes, I think keeping it without red links is
important. It is sad if I am the only one.

--
Guillaume Paumier
[[m:User:guillom]]
http://www.wikimedia.org
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from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Google Trends

body:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=wikipedia%2C+wiki%2C+open+source%2C++free+software%2C+linux+&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all

Draw your own conclusions. Don't bother attempting comparisons to
Britannica - they don't even rate a mention.

Steve


body:
On 3/13/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sioux_Lookout%2C_Ontario&diff=next&oldid=102936206
> http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2007/03/12/sioux-lookout-brochure.html

Lol! Funniest Wikipedia story in ages!

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rename admins to janitors

body:
On 3/13/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Do we really have regular contributors writers who do no
> editing/subediting at all? A few maybe. Not many.
>
> In any case, "editor" is IMO the right word for what most people do on
> Wikipedia most of the time.

In a book or newspaper, the editor has the final word. No Wikipedia
*ever* has the final word. From a functional perspective, "real"
editors and Wikipedia editors are similar. From an authority
perspective, they're vastly different. And it's the authority side
that is misreported all the time in newspapers.

Steve


from_name: Ron Ritzman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rename admins to janitors

body:
On 3/13/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> No Wikipedia[n] *ever* has the final word.

Not even Jimbo "800 pound gorilla" Wales?

Seriously though, "office actions" seem to come the closest to the
"final word", at least for a long time.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mechanical turks

references:
<b8ceeef70703112146k55cc4728p427d224e02b97bdd@mail.gmail.com>
	<fbad4e140703120131j1904cb3ewa386196e7cb113c4@mail.gmail.com>
	<b8ceeef70703120717h557517bu9a4bdae2111de4b2@mail.gmail.com>
	<3856.69.21.252.114.1173711561.squirrel@www.internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	<86lki2pama.fsf@elan.rh.rit.edu>

body:
On 3/13/07, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah. And surprising amounts of work could be done for fairly
> cheap, though it adds up. For example, at a cent a link, every
> page listed on [[Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links]] could
> be done once for only $1243.3 or so. (Obviously if you want
> another Turker to doublecheck, that's another 1243.3, but since
> they'll be checked when the edit goes live and hits someone's
> watchlist, I don't see the point).

Yep. That particular task is just begging for a good piece interface
to make it easier and quicker (like presenting ten links at a time
with context, and just clicking once to select from a list of options
where the link should go).

IMHO, if we got this off the ground and funded it privately for the
first $50 or so, finding someone to chip in a few thousand dollars
should not be too difficult. It would (I think) be the first time any
WMF money has gone directly to improving content, as opposed to
indirectly.

The Amazon.com idea sounds good and plausible btw.

Anyway, none of this can take place without a US-based person willing
to do some feasibility studies, and throw a few dollars at it. Once we
have that, we can investigate the best tasks to spend money on.

Any volunteers? I'll contribute $25 towards the first test if someone is keen.

Steve


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 3/13/07, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> Chris Marmo wrote:
> > I'm currently searching for an extension which allows the TOC to be
> > extracted from the page and used elsewhere in the skin (for example,
> > in a sidebar - outside the confines of the article itself). It seems
> > to be a common request yet I haven't been able to find any solutions.
>
> Seems easy to hack with JavaScript.

You will be roasted in the fires of hell for suggesting such a thing.

Yes, this should undoubtedly be split partly out of the parser.


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] 10 Things You Did Not Know About Wikipedia

body:
On 13/03/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> All of which served to reinforce the notion that Jimbo's role is
> clearly a very special one, and not merely the "voice of the people"
> idea suggested earlier.

Constitutional monarch with ever-decreasing powers with time. It's a
simple idea.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rename admins to janitors

body:
On 3/13/07, Christof Sperl <christof.sperl at gmail.com> wrote:
> So I think editor is a perfectly fine name for the thing we do.

If I tell you about a friend who is a writer for thiscoolmagazine.com,
what assumptions do you make? Is he paid? Does he have any
responsibility? Does he report to someone? What if I said he was an
editor? Would your assumptions be different?

Anyway, I think I've made my point - I'll leave it there.

Steve


body:
On 3/13/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
> The idea that anybody famous can call up the WP office

I think I explicitly said that the office shouldn't be involved at all in this.

> Just as we need to be known for not allowing corporations to buy slanted
> coverage, we need it to be known that celebrities can't get the slant
> they want just by asking.

It's not about slant. It's mostly about very basic, undisputed fact
corrections where the only objection is a dogmatic "Oh, you may *say*
your birth date is so-and-so, but can you *prove it with a reliable
source*"?. If there's no consensus for inclusion, then it wouldn't be
included, except in some cases as an attributed statement.

I'm not concerned about a slippery slope here. Wikipedians tend to be
pretty paranoid the moment anyone vaguely connected to an article says
anything (and rightly so). Policy and processes are built on
consensus; there will be no consensus for anything sinister. What I
propose is not sinister, it is reasonable.

Putting statements on blogs or websites is one way of making them
"official", but not the only way, and has its own problems (websites
disappear, especially those that were just set up to make some
Wikipedia editor happy). IMHO it would be perfectly fine for Wikipedia
to accept such statements & corrections directly, and to refer to them
as <ref>correction/statement submitted by XX, ticket ID #123, received
...</ref>. The main issue here is verifying identity, but that could
be handled by trusted people who have access to the respective OTRS
queue.

I agree that it is silly to <ref> diffs and talk pages, but having a
specific tracking system (which we incidentally are using already
anyway) be put to use for this strikes me as completely sound.

This is better than just letting subjects edit directly (because we
can trace it, because humans act as COI filters, and because we can
implement peer-to-peer methods of verification),  and it certainly
seems a lot more reasonable to me than current practices.

--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


from_name: Samuel L Bronkowitz

subject: [WikiEN-l] We're unstoppable!

body:
He was right then and he's right now.

On 3/13/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> David Gerard wrote:
> > Rob Enderle has come out against Wikipedia too. w00t! With adversaries
> > like these ...
> >
> > http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/must-read/56224.html
> >
> I actually know Rob Enderle (my wife got him his first Silicon Valley
> job), and well, back in the mid-90s, he was certain that Linux was a
> nice hobby OS, but wouldn't go much of anywhere.
>
> Stan
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fine, be that way.

body:
All of your supposed "arbitrators" refuse to respond to emails asking for a
sincere and honest review of my case.

They all refuse to acknowledge my right to demand that the results of the
lying, bullshit "checkuser" be made open, too.

Fine.

You've made an enemy. Wikipedia can rot and I'll help to ensure it does.

CountPointercount


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Mechanical turks (was: Re: Almeda University paying
	for positive Wikipedia edits)

body:
On 3/13/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
> Speaking of which, would the Foundation accept money to pay editors,

You would hope so.

Steve


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 13/03/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/14/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > It is increasingly common that subjects of articles wish to interact
> > directly with us and tell us that their article is wrong in some way.
> > It is, in my opinion, silly for us to reject even harmless corrections
> > on the grounds that they cannot be traced to a reliable source. If
>
> It's also silly for us to object to Joe Smith fixing his birthday on
> [[Joe Smith]] while simultaneously complaining that people don't seem
> to realise that people can edit the encyclopaedia themselves. See the
> other topic, about the history tab and the edit button being
> invisible.
>
>
> > Wikipedia itself becomes a primary source in the process of someone
> > commenting on "their" article, what is the problem with that from a
> > purely factual point of view? Depending on the nature of the
> > statement, such comments could be either incorporated as corrections
> > (date of birth) or attributed statements (".. denies that he ever had
> > sexual relations with that woman").
>
> You mean, if Joe Smith deletes "was seeing Jane Bloggs" from his
> article, we can then add "Joe Smith denies being in a relationship
> with Jane Bloggs" with a link to the diff as the citation for the
> denial? How pervertedly weirdly plausible.
>
> > ...). No, just like any credentials verification, WMF shouldn't be
> > involved directly. But while I generally fully support the need for
> > good sourcing in any article, I often find it absurd how people who
> > point out simple corrections are treated.
>
> Simple corrections from the source itself should just be accepted.

I do this all the time! The problem arises when the (honest,
good-faith, probably correct) correction sent to us doesn't have a
cite, but the existing detail does, because it's a common error or a
misconception or a differing interpretation or just one of IMDB's
bizzare glitches being quoted as gospel. Then we either balk at doing
it, or we do it and it gets reverted with a mistaken cite.

Two anecdotes.

a) A man was listed as being born in X, New York. He was actually born
in Y, New York, but for some reason the other one comes up a lot (I
think he went to school there), and a cite can be found for it but not
for X. Mentioned in passing only, nothing significant or depending on
it... but still just about citable.

b) A man whose deathdate was invariably wrong - he committed suicide,
and the newspaper obits got slightly confused and gave the date of
discovery whereas he had actually died the previous afternoon. Later
obituaries, in scholarly journals and the like, were generally
correct.

In a), I corresponded for a bit with the guy's son via OTRS when he
was wondering why his correction didn't seem to take; he was very
gracious about it, and was quite happy to accept that by our policies
we were going to have to live with yet another report printing the
wrong one, but nonetheless it seems silly.

In b), a friend of mine was somewhat annoyed that we had 'picked' the
wrong one, and I offered to look into it for her. I eventually got the
correct date in with a clarifying footnote clarifying; the crowning
piece of evidence in the little 'duelling citations' battle on the
talk-page was that I'd turned up a letter to a newspaper from a
relative of the subject which mentioned, in passing, the correct
deathdate - it seemed fair to accept that where sources differed,
going to a source as close as possible to the subject seemed the most
accurate.

These are, really, absolutely harmless corrections to make - there was
no significance to whether b) died on August 6th or 7th, there was no
contentious debate over a) and his claimed "hometown affiliation".
Simply little details that most sources get wrong, which we are in a
position to report correctly - and, perhaps, explain the error if
appropriate.

I really don't see anything wrong with me footnoting a) as "was born
in Such-and-Such<ref>Personal correspondence with the Wikimedia
Foundation, June 17th, reference ABC1234567</ref>. Yes, we could ask
them to issue a rather dull press release, or write a blog post, or
(in one case I recall) update the details on their myspace page. But
no reasonable academic or reporter objects to incorporating
corrections of trivial, non-contentious details from those who know
about the article; why should we?

> Anything vaguely controversial we should ask for something on their
> website we can link to. Ie, if we have a semi-reliable source saying
> someone was in the IRA, and they privately claim they weren't, we
> should at least ask to see a public declaration that they weren't.
> Then we can publish as "The Camden local paper says that he was in the
> IRA<ref.../>, a claim which he denies strongly<ref.../>

Mmmm... matters of denial or interpretation are probably over the line
I'd like to draw this at, but YMMV.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: Oldak Quill

subject: [WikiEN-l] Corporate Donors - Status?

body:
On 13/03/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/13/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Would an unpaid editor on the Wikipedia think "gosh, I should lie on
> > > Google's wikipedia page because they are one of dozens (hundreds?
> > > thousands?) of companies that have donated to the foundation."
> >
> > No, I wouldn't expect many editors to make a conscious decision to lie
> > on a corporate article, but our preferences and likes do manifest in
> > our editing.
>
> It could go either way. I remember thinking when looking at the
> [[Virgin United]] article last time that I would find it somewhat mean
> to be as hard-nosed towards their article as I might normally be. But
> I'm sure that other editors would be the opposite, perversely
> insisting on sources for *everything*, bringing up any dirt they can
> find, to challenge the notion that the company is getting a free ride
> on us.
>
> Come to think of it, the second way of thinking is more likely to
> prevail. A lot of our editors fiercely defend democracy, independence,
> freedom...

You're probably right - but what about the 20% who aren't committed
enough to Wikipedia's policy to reason in this way?

Still, bias influences and exterts in unexpected ways.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 3/13/07, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikilist at gmail.com> wrote:
> Jimbo's role is ambiguous, but it seems pretty clear that for
> day-to-day purposes, he can ignore consensus-gathering, which no one
> else on the project can do

"Day-to-day" seems like an exaggeration. Jimmy steps into disputes
relatively rarely, and they are not usually what I would call serious
long term issues (with all due respect to friends of Mr. Peppers or
owners of shiny userboxes). Ideally, I see Jimmy's role as that of the
respected founder who heals divisions in the community by cautiously
proposing compromises in difficult, heated situations. I think it's
also fine for him to focus the attention of the community on an
important issue for the purpose of brainstorming and consensus
finding.

His role, if you want to give it a name, is that of a representative
"head of state" for the English Wikipedia, but without any legal
basis. There are controls in place above & below him, and he has acted
with remarkable restraint even before this was the case. Of course I
don't agree with everything Jimmy says or does, but I don't think it's
reasonable to characterize him a "dictator" of anything, certainly not
now that his legal status is equal to mine, Kat's or Oscar's.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


from_name: stevertigo

body:
On 3/13/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> I think I explicitly said that the office shouldn't be involved at all in this.
and
> The main issue here is verifying identity, but that could
> be handled by trusted people who have access to the respective OTRS
> queue.

So its not an *office action, but a system of *trusted action, for
"very basic, undisputed fact
corrections" which people do themselves anyway?

> I'm not concerned about a slippery slope here. Wikipedians tend to be
> pretty paranoid the moment anyone vaguely connected to an article says
> anything (and rightly so).

This general claim about how Wikipedias tend to act needs a citation.
A "reliable" source,
preferably.

>What I propose is not sinister, it is reasonable.

Hmmm.

> IMHO it would be perfectly fine for Wikipedia
> to accept such statements & corrections directly, and to refer to them
> as <ref>correction/statement submitted by XX, ticket ID #123, received
> ...</ref>.
> I agree that it is silly to <ref> diffs and talk pages, but having a
> specific tracking system (which we incidentally are using already
> anyway) be put to use for this strikes me as completely sound.

What tracking system is this?
But we dont have a system set up to document first hand claims.
How would these be documented in a public way? Otherwise how would
this action be different from an unwiki office action?

> This is better than just letting subjects edit directly (because we
> can trace it, because humans act as COI filters, and because we can
> implement peer-to-peer methods of verification),  and it certainly
> seems a lot more reasonable to me than current practices.

People already do this. What's the issue?

-Stevertigo


from_name: Chris Marmo

subject: [Wikitech-l] Table of Contents (TOC) Extension

body:
I'm currently searching for an extension which allows the TOC to be
extracted from the page and used elsewhere in the skin (for example,
in a sidebar - outside the confines of the article itself). It seems
to be a common request yet I haven't been able to find any solutions.

If this extension does not exist then I will be making one. It's my
first time delving in to Mediawiki so I would appreciate any guidance
on how to go about doing this.

I've found this post which seems to be an overview of what I need to
do - can anyone expand on this?

http://article.gmane.org/
gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/17938/

Best Regards,
Chris

(sorry for the double post)


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Hoi,
I do not know if uniformity is good. Actually I doubt very much it is
good; one of the pillars of Wikipedia is "ignore all rules" and
uniformity assumes that people have to comply with a format. Uniformity
means that everybody shares the same values, works in a same way.
Uniformity means that there can be no change as it would destroy the
uniformity.

We should have communities of people working together on topics and
when, as a result of a good collaboration, there may be some uniformity
and this will be welcome as a by product. It should not be an aim in and
of itself.

It is like having the people who only do patrolling content determine
what content should look like. It is not their game. They are reactive,
they are not active. They do not assume good faith because it is too
easy to find what is wrong. Often they are correct, but having them
determine rules is absolutely dangerous. They go for the blanket rules.
They only look at the current patterns and do not have the vision to see
how much opportunity is lost.

I was told that the English Wikipedia was proposing a blanket ban for
paid for content. It was as expected a person who is proud to be only
patrolling who wrote the piece I was referred to. It is unlikely that
this person has any notion of other projects/languages it is just
reactive and imho sad. It is sad because the text of this proposal was
done in such a way that you cannot be against such a proposal.. It is a
hopeless proposal if there is also this need for the WMF to reach out.
It is hopeless because this type of determinism does not allow for some
common sense policies. It is hopeless because it shows there is no faith
that some good can come out of collaboration with other organisations.
It is myopic.

Uniformity is not necessarily good. No paid for contributions is not
necessarily good. Blanket policies are almost always not necessarily
good. It takes consensus coming from some polite conversations to
determine instances where conventional wisdom is in need for renewal
with some alternate approaches.

Thanks,
    GerardM

Marco Chiesa schreef:
> On 3/7/07, Frederick Noronha <fred at bytesforall.org> wrote:
>
>> Could someone hazard a guess on which areas the Wikipedia is strong
>> in, and which areas it is still lacking? FN
>>
>> I think Wikipedia is really strong in some pop culture niches (yes,
>>
> Pokemon may be one of that) and is weaker in some more scholarly subjects.
> But this varies from project to project and from topic to topic. There are
> articles which are the most complete essay ever written on the topic, there
> are articles that simply suck. Uniformity is something we're weak (basically
> people write about what they know and/or care about). We are strong in
> correcting factual mistakes, we are weak because we cannot guarantee if what
> we say is correct. We are strong because we give access to basic information
> of very many things to a huge lot of people, and for most of them we offer
> enough. We're far from being perfect, there's a lot to improve, but we're
> good at it.
>
> Marco/Cruccone


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [WikiEN-l] Google Trends

body:
It is interesting the slow rise of "wiki" after Wikipedia has
introduced the term to the public.

What I find more amusing is comparing "wikipedia" and "porn". Looks
like Wikipedia's caught up with porn in 2007! More interest in
Wikipedia, or less interest in porn? You decide. :)

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On 3/13/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/13/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > http://www.google.com/trends?q=wikipedia%2C+wiki%2C+open+source%2C++free+software%2C+linux+&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
> >
> > Draw your own conclusions. Don't bother attempting comparisons to
> > Britannica - they don't even rate a mention.
>
> I really don't think there are any conclusions to draw. "wiki" is
> obviously tied to wikipedia so of course they have risen slightly
> (well, that, and the fact that small wikis are becoming way popular).
> The other three, "open source", "free software" and "linux" are
> completely 100% unrelated to wikipedia. We all make a deep connection
> between wikipedia and those three, but the general public has NO idea
> that we are an off-shoot of the open source movement.
>
> I mean, if you are the guy looking up [[Boobs]] or [[Some strange
> anime]] (which would be about 75% of our audience), you're not gonna
> care about GFDL or free software or anything similar. Our audience
> just doesn't make that connection.
>
> --Oskar
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] Google Trends

body:
On 13 Mar 2007, 12:05:24, "Oskar Sigvardsson"
<oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:

> I really don't think there are any conclusions to draw. "wiki" is
> obviously tied to wikipedia so of course they have risen slightly
> (well, that, and the fact that small wikis are becoming way popular).
> The other three, "open source", "free software" and "linux" are
> completely 100% unrelated to wikipedia. We all make a deep connection
> between wikipedia and those three, but the general public has NO idea
> that we are an off-shoot of the open source movement.

True...  In general, the open source / free software and related
movements have had a great deal of impact on the world, but mostly in
a manner that's fairly invisible to the general public.  A huge
number of Web sites, used by millions of people every day, are
running on Apache servers under Linux, both of which are open-source,
but that's just infrastructure which is as invisible to the public as
the stuff below manholes in the street.  Many of the sites also use
products of other open-source projects such as Perl, PHP, and MySQL,
but that's only subtly signaled through file extensions in URLs and
error messages when something goes wrong.  Growing numbers of people
use the Firefox web browser and the Thunderbird e-mail client, but do
they know they're open-source or what that means?  Now Wikipedia has
become probably the most visible open-source / free project, but
people still don't understand its philosophical underpinnings.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


body:
On 13/03/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> If the mosaic is going to get in the way of our fundimental mission
> then we might need to reconsider if we should be keeping it at all.
> ... Although I agree with Erik's view that a few broken images in the
> mosaic are not a bad thing.
> In any case, a copy vio image should never be undeleted simbly because
> it has not yet been replaced.

Well, how was the mosaic constructed? How did we go through the images
finding ones of the right average colour? Presumably someone could do
a checking run again looking for verified-status images of the right
average colour for use as copyvio replacements on an ongoing basis.
The mosaic can cope with temporary holes while a violation is being
replaced if there's a pile of known-good replacements to hand.

- d.


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Google Trends

body:
On 3/13/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
<snip>
> These are also the places where Jesus is more popular than porn.

Dark places, evil places! Do not go there, children, for you will be
eaten alive by werewolfs!

--Oskar


body:
[duplicate, sorry]

On 13/03/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 3/13/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I really don't see anything wrong with me footnoting a) as "was born
> > in Such-and-Such<ref>Personal correspondence with the Wikimedia
> > Foundation, June 17th, reference ABC1234567</ref>.
>
> I disagree.  There are lots of problems with this.  1) You're not the
> Wikimedia Foundation; 2) It's not a published source which can be
> easily accessed; and 3) it's not a reliable source even if it's true,
> as the person no doubt does not remember his own birth.

1) I forgot the minor detail that I was corresponding with the chap via OTRS...

2) Does it have to be easily accessed by a random passer-by if the
Foundation can verify it? That is really the point of this
discussion... stating it won't work because of this is kind of
circular.

3) This is a bit silly. I can tell you all sorts of factual details
about my own birth which I don't remember, but I still know to be
true... am I an unreliable source because I got them from my mother or
my medical records? It also doesn't help with cases which aren't "give
a birthday"

> > Yes, we could ask
> > them to issue a rather dull press release, or write a blog post, or
> > (in one case I recall) update the details on their myspace page. But
> > no reasonable academic or reporter objects to incorporating
> > corrections of trivial, non-contentious details from those who know
> > about the article; why should we?
> >
> Because we want to be better?  If the detail is so trivial as to not
> matter if it's correct or not, why include it in the first place?

Okay, one we might have an interest in getting right... manner of
death. We usually give this if known. Not at all unknown for
obituaries to get it wrong, especially if published quickly; small
details in obituaries are rarely corrected afterwards for various
reasons (most often that the only people who know it's wrong are
otherwise preoccupied with mourning), and all too often that's the
last thing published on them before we come along.

Spouse's names, that's another one we get a good few corrections over.
Little things, yes, and we can say "why should we include them?", but
the fact is we *do* include them, and it really seems futile to insist
on a method whereby if we include them we get them wrong.

> Alternatively, if the truth might actually matter, then we should make
> sure to get it right.

Which this proposal is one means to achieve. Not everything someone
quibbles with the article over is significant, it's just that when it
is significant we're less happy to take their unadorned word for it...

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: Ian Tresman

subject: [Wikitech-l] Comprised IP address?

body:
I'd appreciate some user IP address advice.

My Web site was attacked by someone with an IP address that is used
on Wikipedia by someone who has not logged into a personal account.
They have suggested that their User IP address may have been compromised.

Is the following accurate:

If their User IP was identified with, for example, a college, then
several people could indeed be using the same Wikipedia User IP address.

But if their IP address is identified with a private residential
broadband account, then the only ways it could be compromised is:

a. Someone else has access to the same computer
b. The home computer has a Trojan giving access to an intruder

Regards,
Ian Tresman


subject: [Wikitech-l] Comprised IP address?

body:
At 21:33 13/03/2007, you wrote:
>It's _possible_ to lose your IP to someone else.  I believe this is more
>likely for DSL than Cable.

Sure, but
(a) not for a static IP address ?
(b) for a dynamic IP address, it would be unlikely that if you lose
an IP address, you'd get it back.
(c) You wouldn't lose the same IP address on several ocassions to the
same culprit?

Regards,
Ian

>On 3/13/07, Ian Tresman <it at knowledge.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > I'd appreciate some user IP address advice.
> >
> > My Web site was attacked by someone with an IP address that is used
> > on Wikipedia by someone who has not logged into a personal account.
> > They have suggested that their User IP address may have been compromised.
> >
> > Is the following accurate:
> >
> > If their User IP was identified with, for example, a college, then
> > several people could indeed be using the same Wikipedia User IP address.
> >
> > But if their IP address is identified with a private residential
> > broadband account, then the only ways it could be compromised is:
> >
> > a. Someone else has access to the same computer
> > b. The home computer has a Trojan giving access to an intruder
> >
> > Regards,
> > Ian Tresman
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Platonides

body:
Chris Marmo wrote:
> I'm currently searching for an extension which allows the TOC to be
> extracted from the page and used elsewhere in the skin (for example,
> in a sidebar - outside the confines of the article itself). It seems
> to be a common request yet I haven't been able to find any solutions.

Seems easy to hack with JavaScript.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Antwort:  template creation

body:
phpuser wrote:
> Hi christoph huesler,
> Thanks for your response.
> When i click xyz, a template should be created where user can enter any
> details(say schedule)
> when i click abc, a different template should be created where user can enter
> some other details(say news)
> This should be done using mediawiki.
> No as you said i will create one page called Template:<xyz>
> and another page called Template:<abc>
> Should i do this in function performAction in wiki.php using switch case 'raw'
> or is it something else?

You seem quite confused. Templates are like any other article. You don't
need to modify php files to create them!
Just link to them as if they were articles (but prepending Template: to
the name) or include them with : before, eg {{:xyz}} to use article xyz
instead of Template:xyz as {{xyz}} does.


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [Wikitech-l] Comprised IP address?

body:
> Sure, but
> (a) not for a static IP address ?
> (b) for a dynamic IP address, it would be unlikely that if you lose
> an IP address, you'd get it back.
> (c) You wouldn't lose the same IP address on several ocassions to the
> same culprit?

a) Definitely right
b,c) Probably right


subject: [Wikitech-l] Antwort: template creation

body:
> Hi christoph huesler,
> Thanks for your response.
> When i click xyz, a template should be created where user can enter any
> details(say schedule)
> when i click abc, a different template should be created where user can enter
> some other details(say news)
> This should be done using mediawiki.
> No as you said i will create one page called Template:<xyz>
> and another page called Template:<abc>
> Should i do this in function performAction in wiki.php using switch case 'raw'
> or is it something else?

What do you mean by "template"? It sounds like you might be meaning
"form", which is a very different thing. When you say the user enters
details, do you mean enters them in wikitext in an article like
{{abc|details go here}}, or do you mean entering them in text boxes
and clicking a submit button?


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Voice chat & VoIP systems

body:
On 3/13/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Apparently Kelly Martin has recommended Asterisk in private discussions
> that never reached anyone with the ability to make it happen.
>
> I'm told that Greg Maxwell has set up an experimental server of some
> kind, unspecified on the page:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/voip
>
> Greg or others, can you comment on server and client issues and make
> recommendations on what might be a good direction to move forward with
> this, as far as availability of clients, ease of use, quality etc?

Greg's server is Asterisk.  From what Greg told me last night (he's in
California on business and I don't know when he'll see this), it is
about as hard to set up as Apache.  I strongly suspect you'd have
little trouble finding someone to help with it if nobody in the
current tech team has the time to learn the system.  I can't spare the
time right now (I'm already backlogged at work, and we're moving house
just now), but I can probably give it more focus in a week or so when
things are bit less insane around here.

I reviewed Asterisk back in late 2005 when evaluating VoIP systems for
my employer.  We ended up selecting a different system, but it looked
to me like a decently good product.

Kelly


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.9.3 ImageMap Extension Errors and bugs

references:
<45F5A30E.6040602@wolfmountaingroup.com>	<45F5CC25.2070303@pobox.com>	<45F5C28E.6050906@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<45F5CE79.7010709@wolfmountaingroup.com>

body:
Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> I still, however, see some errors on MediaWiki formating (and of course,
> svg still does not render -- not certain
> this is a MediaWiki problem on the svg images though -- may be another
> FC5/FC6 specific problem).
>
> You may want to look at this page. I do have tidylib installed and running.

It doesn't validate...
http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikigadugi.org%2Fwiki%2FSun

> http://en.wikigadugi.org/wiki/Sun
>
> Note the tabs at the top of the screen are skewed and the font size
> suddenly gets smaller. May be related to the interwiki links not resolved
> properly at the bottom (the latest wikipedia-interwiki.sql is still not
> updated with all of the language codes in the dumps).

The problem is in [[Template:Portal]], which closes one more div than it
opens (already fixed in Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3APortal&diff=110684940&oldid=110653749).


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Voice chat & VoIP systems

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

There's been some interest lately in setting up a good voice-chat system
which could help in organization, preferably cross-platform and open source.

(Various people have used proprietary systems like Skype in the past,
and one of our interns at the office has been experimenting on his own
with Ventrilo, another proprietary system which doesn't have a Linux
client available.)

Certainly I'd love for us to have a good, usable, and "ideologically
pure" system available and would be happy to set up hosting for that.

Apparently Kelly Martin has recommended Asterisk in private discussions
that never reached anyone with the ability to make it happen.

I'm told that Greg Maxwell has set up an experimental server of some
kind, unspecified on the page:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/voip

Greg or others, can you comment on server and client issues and make
recommendations on what might be a good direction to move forward with
this, as far as availability of clients, ease of use, quality etc?

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Almeda University paying for positive Wikipedia edits

body:
On 3/11/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/03/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
> > Note in particular the endless self-justification in the Almeda
> > approach. I think that will undermine any attempt to find clever rules
> > that allow paid editing where there is even the slightest possibility of
> > conflict of interest. I'm sure any of us could rewrite that job
> > description to make full use of Wikipedia jargon. And if somebody's
> > income depends on them not getting the essential meaning behind our
> > words, they may be able to keep it up for quite a while.
>
> One problem I have with this kind of paid editing is that those who
> can afford to pay will have more NPOV, better written articles. Do we
> want the quality of parts of Wikipedia to be determined by who's
> paying for what?

Dirty hippy communist.


from_name: Tels

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Moin,

On Tuesday 13 March 2007 21:18:12 Simetrical wrote:
> On 3/13/07, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Chris Marmo wrote:
> > > I'm currently searching for an extension which allows the TOC to be
> > > extracted from the page and used elsewhere in the skin (for example,
> > > in a sidebar - outside the confines of the article itself). It seems
> > > to be a common request yet I haven't been able to find any solutions.
> >
> > Seems easy to hack with JavaScript.
>
> You will be roasted in the fires of hell for suggesting such a thing.

Uhm, why? Just moving the table around with CSS should be quite easy. I
mean, you could use position:relative or position: absolute?

> Yes, this should undoubtedly be split partly out of the parser.

Can you explain this a bit more?

I'd als like to mention this (shameless plug I know :-)

	http://bloodgate.com/wiki/index.php?title=POD:Graph

Note the TOC? :) Then consider that the entire page in wiki consists of
roughly:

	<pod>
	lots of text here
	</pod>

The TOC was created by the extension. (Technically, the extension should
even create two TOCs if you have two POD sources in the same article,
although that wasn't tried yet)

I haven't toyed around with moving the toc into the sidebare, but that was
exactly my idea for the following scenary:

* Upon loading the page, the toc is just below the toolbox
* when you scroll down, toolbox and menu scroll out to the top, so the TOC
  rises
* when the TOC hits the upper border of the window, it stays there

E.g. the toc scrolls with the window, but only up to the upper window border
so you can see it always, even on very long pages.

Problems with that approach:

* TOC might be longer than browser-window (special case this?)
* TOC parts cannot be collapsed, so you cant shorten the TOC (that could be
  done with more JSmagic)
* toc that is more wide than sidebar (will overflow/break)

But certainly an interesting area if interface research :D

All the best,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Tue Mar 13 23:14:16 2007 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Get one of my photo posters: http://bloodgate.com/posters
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Duke Nukem Forever will come out before Doom 3."

  -- George Broussard, 2002 (http://tinyurl.com/6m8nh)
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from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Google Trends

body:
On 3/13/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> The other three, "open source", "free software" and "linux" are
> completely 100% unrelated to wikipedia. We all make a deep connection

There is a steady downward trend for linux, while "free software" and
"open source" are really flat. So you could perhaps argue something
like the open-source, free Wikipedia succeeding despite no overall
trend towards open-source, free things. Or equally, that Wikipedia's
success is not helping the open source movement in general. Or
something.

Steve


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
> The reference to the birth records were being rejected because it just
> indicated that _a_ woman with the same name, claimed birthdate, and
> claimed birth location existed, not that it was the same _specific_
> woman the article was about.
>
> Against such obstinate nitpickery, what's a guy to do? I decided not to
> waste my time and moved on.
>
Huh - now I want to abuse my admin powers just this once and change the
main page to say "the free encyclopedia that only non-freaks may edit"....

I always thought the "proof of identity" was an interesting thought
experiment, but not something any rational person did in real life!

Stan


body:
On 3/13/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Every press call I get (typically one or two a day), I say "check the
> history" - one day it will leak into the public consciousness!

That history tab is 53 pixels by 18. How on Earth can they miss it???

Steve


body:
On 3/13/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> "If you see something really surprising, you should click the
> 'history' tab at the top of the page. It might be rubbish someone just
> added."

Wouldn't it be great if text that had just been added turned up red
with a squiggly line underneath it instead? Instead of trying to train
the entire universe, why not just fix the software?

Steve


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 13/03/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/14/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 2) Does it have to be easily accessed by a random passer-by if the
> > Foundation can verify it? That is really the point of this
> > discussion... stating it won't work because of this is kind of
> > circular.
>
> Erm, yeah, that's sort of what verif^H^H^H^H^Hattributability is all
> about. What would stop a reader putting down any random fact about
> anyone and claiming 'personal correspondance with WMF'?

Right now, what's to stop anyone uploading any image they choose and
claiming permission to GFDL it has been filed with WMF? Nothing,
except the fact we come down on them like a ton of bricks when we
catch them...

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


body:
On 13/03/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/14/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > talk-page was that I'd turned up a letter to a newspaper from a
> > relative of the subject which mentioned, in passing, the correct
> > deathdate - it seemed fair to accept that where sources differed,
> > going to a source as close as possible to the subject seemed the most
> > accurate.
>
> If you've got two sources saying different things, NPOV generally
> encourages you to cite both. I did something like this in [[Kate
> McTell]] where half the sources I used claimed that Ruby Glaze was a
> pseudonym, and half said they were two distinct people. IMHO it's much
> easier to convince the reader that you're right if you cite both
> versions and explain why one is more likely.
>
> > I really don't see anything wrong with me footnoting a) as "was born
> > in Such-and-Such<ref>Personal correspondence with the Wikimedia
> > Foundation, June 17th, reference ABC1234567</ref>. Yes, we could ask
> > them to issue a rather dull press release, or write a blog post, or
> > (in one case I recall) update the details on their myspace page. But
> > no reasonable academic or reporter objects to incorporating
> > corrections of trivial, non-contentious details from those who know
> > about the article; why should we?
>
> Well, the obvious problem is that a future editor is not going to know
> the background to the problem, and, following policy, will probably
> reinstate the "public record" version. That's why "private
> correspondance" just isn't good enough in most cases. It's just not
> durable enough.

Which is why any correspondence we use is footnoted as such, and filed
with the Foundation. You don't have to know the background to be able
to tell that when we have a footnote saying "correction from subject,
filed at X", there is probably a reason why it doesn't correspond to
the public record...

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: Voice of All

subject: [WikiEN-l] Status of stable versions?

body:
See: http://www.nabble.com/New-SVN-committer-tf3398256.html

A developer is currently working on this, and has allocated a branch:
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/branches/jhb/phase3/?sortby=date

David Gerard-2 wrote:
>
> On 13/03/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> On 3/13/07, Nyenyec N <nyenyec at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> > Where can I get an update on the status of the "Stable versions"
>> feature?
>
>> Technical work is ongoing. An update will be posted soon.
>
>
> :-D We eagerly await news!
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>

--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Status-of-stable-versions--tf3394180.html#a9469315
Sent from the English Wikipedia mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


body:
> Which is why any correspondence we use is footnoted as such, and filed
> with the Foundation. You don't have to know the background to be able
> to tell that when we have a footnote saying "correction from subject,
> filed at X", there is probably a reason why it doesn't correspond to
> the public record...

But then, the source the actually WMF, and WMF is not a reliable
source. Why should anyone trust some random person on OTRS to have
correctly interpreted the email and copied the information across
without making any typos, etc? The whole point of citing sources is so
readers can go and check for themselves to confirm it's right - citing
a private source is pretty much useless because it's really just
saying "I know I'm right, just trust me on it." Just because I'm the
foundation doesn't make me trustworthy.


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 13/03/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Simple corrections from the source itself should just be accepted.
>
> I do this all the time!

Last time I passed through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Beesley
there was a big fight going on over her birthdate. Two sources were
being cited; a link to the diff of an edit Angela made to Meta using her
logged-in account wherein she announced her birthdate, and a link to the
birth records for her claimed birth town that showed someone with her
name being born on that day.

The reference to Meta was being rejected on account of it being
unreliable and on account of it being a "self-reference" (which IMO is
not a correct interpretation of the manual of style guideline against
self-reference, it's intended simply to keep Wikipedia's contents
location-neutral in case someone else hosts it). Even the old [[WP:RS]]
guideline explicitly allows this sort of thing; "Self-published
material, whether published online or as a book or pamphlet, may be used
as a primary source of information about the author or the material
itself, so long as there is no reasonable doubt who wrote the material"

The reference to the birth records were being rejected because it just
indicated that _a_ woman with the same name, claimed birthdate, and
claimed birth location existed, not that it was the same _specific_
woman the article was about.

Against such obstinate nitpickery, what's a guy to do? I decided not to
waste my time and moved on.


from_name: John Vandenberg

body:
On 3/13/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/13/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "If you see something really surprising, you should click the
> > 'history' tab at the top of the page. It might be rubbish someone just
> > added."
>
> Wouldn't it be great if text that had just been added turned up red
> with a squiggly line underneath it instead? Instead of trying to train
> the entire universe, why not just fix the software?

And then a clippy can appear on the right hand side and say "This is
an archived copy of the article {{PAGENAME}}. Would you like to
* look at another random version
* find another article
* view the latest copy
* report it to the cops"

More seriously, I like the idea of making the header of an archived
version more pronounced, and adding a header to all user subpages.
In-place difference marking would be very handy too, but at the same
time it does require a significant enhancement.

--
John


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-03-14

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

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r20440).

Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

   1 new PASSING test(s) :)
      * 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line  [Has never failed]

   1 previously FAILING test(s) removed O_o
      * TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line  [First recorded appearance: 11-Nov-2006 12:40:23, 1.9alpha (r17532)]

  17 still FAILING test(s) :(
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (single parameter)  [Has never passed]
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (multiple parameters)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: dt/dd/dl test  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.  [Has never passed]

Passed 494 of 511 tests (96.67%)... 17 tests failed!


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Comprised IP address?

body:
2007/3/13, Ian Tresman <it at knowledge.co.uk>:

> If their User IP was identified with, for example, a college, then
> several people could indeed be using the same Wikipedia User IP address.
>
> But if their IP address is identified with a private residential
> broadband account, then the only ways it could be compromised is:
>
> a. Someone else has access to the same computer
> b. The home computer has a Trojan giving access to an intruder
>

c. They have an unprotected wireless network

And of course there is also the possibility that their IP is neither college
nor private but (for example) an ISP-based cache.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


body:
On 3/13/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Great idea, go write it! :-D

Yeah, tell me about it. I hate not knowing how to program in any of
these modern, useful, newfandangled languages.

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Voice chat & VoIP systems

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Kelly Martin wrote:
> On 3/13/07, Brion Vibber wrote:
>> Greg or others, can you comment on server and client issues and make
>> recommendations on what might be a good direction to move forward with
>> this, as far as availability of clients, ease of use, quality etc?
>
> Greg's server is Asterisk.  From what Greg told me last night (he's in
> California on business and I don't know when he'll see this), it is
> about as hard to set up as Apache.  I strongly suspect you'd have
> little trouble finding someone to help with it if nobody in the
> current tech team has the time to learn the system.

Good news; that should make it easy to start evaluating!

>  I can't spare the
> time right now (I'm already backlogged at work, and we're moving house
> just now), but I can probably give it more focus in a week or so when
> things are bit less insane around here.

I know how that is; I'm still getting furniture set up here. :)

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Rename admins to janitors

body:
On 3/13/07, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> So I guess the terminology is Wikipedia's "geek bias" showing up
> again... geeks tend to think of things in terms of the "functional
> perspective", while the outside world is more into power, authority,
> politics, personalities, and such.

Well, yeah. When you read "Joe Bloggs, an editor at The Times,
said...", do you think "wow, that must be an interesting job, I wonder
what software he uses", or "he's obviously important, I wonder what he
has to say".

Wait. What would *most people* think? :)

Steve, who swore he would drop this topic.