from_name: Peter Mackay

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore MoS,
	NCs for languagereasons.

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Delirium
> Sent: Saturday, 19 November 2005 07:52
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore
> MoS, NCs for languagereasons.
>
> Peter Mackay wrote:
>
> >I'm having difficulty with the notion that the name "Ivory
> Coast" could
> >possibly be described as "widely used" or "widely known".
> >
> >With a straight face, that is.
> >
> >
> Well, there are over 2,200 results on google news for "Ivory
> Coast".  It may not be widely discussed in bar conversations,
> but anyone who's been reading the news has seen it come up
> quite a bit in the past few years.

Do tell?

I reckon that anybody who really cares  - about a dozen Wikipedians,
apparently - should politely discuss the matter on the talk page and come to
some sort of consensus. Whatever the result is, have one name redirect to
the other, and whoever wants information on the country is going to be taken
to the correct article whatever they type in.

Peter, who doesn't want this information, and wishes that the brainpower
devoted to the matter could be directed more productively.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Anthere

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Family Circumstances was Re: Arbitration Committee
 members granted checkuser tool

body:
Jim Trodel wrote:

>  Anthere
>
>  You have my deepest sympathies re losing your baby. My wife and I lost our
> first child - she would have been 12 next week, and I have been thinking
> often about here this past week since we were able to go back to where she
> is buried for a visit (we live in a different state now about 1800 miles
> away), and then I came across your note. Although we now have 4 living
> children, I sometimes feel the loss acutely, but I have hope for the future
> as I am sure you do also. I am sure you have a great support group that
> helped you through it all; feel free to drop me a line if you ever need to
> talk. I offer because sometimes people just don't understand that
> months/years later you may just need to rehash stuff again.
>  I also wanted to thank you for your dedicated service and leadership on the
> wikipedia - especially considering the totality of the circumstances you
> describe above.
>  Jim
>
> --
> Jim (trodel at gmail.com)
> "Our love may not always be reciprocated, or
> even appreciated, but love is never wasted"
> - Neal A Maxwell

I thank you for your kind words Jim.
I know other wikipedians went through this as well. And I know that the
reality and the pain of the loss are not so easy to understand unless
similar events have occured to self. It is much harder for you, as mine
will never have a birthday.

Some months ago, I went to a wikimeet, and a wikipedian put two candles
in a church. When I asked why, the answer was "one for your kid and one
for mine". I hope for this one, and for others who wrote me privately,
that their loss will be followed by new happiness.

Ant


from_name: Sam Korn

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias (was
	Howdidthis happen (comixpedia??))

body:
On 11/19/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> AfD has nothing to do with merging, though, except that it's often
> recommended as part of a keep vote for something to do with the article
> after its AfD listing is finished. Anyone can merge an article any time
> without going to AfD to get "permission" about it. I've merged plenty of
> articles myself that way.

The logical conclusion of this is that merge votes are actually votes
to keep.  That is not true.  Neither are they votes to delete.  They
are votes to merge, and neither side may claim them as their own.

If we have to have sides, which it seems we do.

--
Sam


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikimedia Servers and Organization

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
<snip>
> The apache load figures are unreliable at the moment because there is a
> number of hung processes on each machine waiting for an NFS share that is
> never going to start working again.
<snip>

If any root is interested in fixing those apaches, I listed them in a
bug report on bugzilla:

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


list: foundation-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Cleaning up Wikibooks

body:
Any File wrote:

>This definition is not only , in my opinion, not only cumbersome,
>but also open a serious question: What is a textbook?
>
>Just as an example why a cookbook is not a textbook? In many school
>cookbook are used as a textbook. Morover they are used in some small
>lecture course about cooking. What should be consider as a textbook?
>Just what is normally used in American High school?
>
A joke book could be a text book for a writing course or a drama course
about stand-up comedy

>And should the subject only be limited to normal subject textbook are
>written about?
>
>For instance there exist a lot of book about chess (and many of them
>not only dealt about chess, but are even organized in lesson). Anyway
>I have never seen a textbook about chess (because chess is not taught
>at school).
>
>
There have beenany number of self-teaching books about chess.  One type
has you following a game, and rates you on the move that you would make
in any given position.  Chess may not be a part of the standard
curriculum in American high-schools, but there are private schools and
schools in other countries which consider chess an important tool for
developping critical thinking.

Ec


list: wikimedia-l


references:
<c7c362ce0511180821y5f0751f0n4994f8d165d1f2b6@mail.gmail.com>	<dlm5jm$75d$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<dln5pi$al1$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
 > If any root is interested in fixing those apaches, I listed them in a
> bug report on bugzilla:

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3869

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore MoS,
	NCs for language reasons.

body:
On 11/17/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> When the news of last
> year's tsunami broke I had to pause to determine what this major
> affected city of Chennai was.
>

Quite.


from_name: Michael Snow

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Interpreting merge votes (was Wikipedia's provable
 anti-expertise bias)

body:
Sam Korn wrote:

>On 11/19/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>
>>Isn't it? If an article gets one third "keep" votes, one third "merge"
>>votes, and one third "delete" votes, the article gets kept. Even if an
>>article gets 100% merge votes, it's still "kept" - the old title gets
>>turned into a redirect and the information that was there gets moved
>>into an existing article the redirect points to. And this isn't a
>>binding forever and ever result like "delete" is, either, so the
>>material could eventually get split back out and moved to the old title
>>again one day if it grows enough to warrant it. I myself can think of
>>two cases where I merged articles after an AfD, complaints arose from
>>people who didn't like the resulting merged article, so I split the
>>material back out again to the original location and that was that.
>>
>>I see "merge" as a vote to keep accompanied by a recommendation for how
>>to clean up the kept article afterward.
>>
>>
>Merge is a vote to merge. I don't see putting words into nominators'
>mouths as acceptable.  If people vote merge, they aren't necessarily
>giving anyone permission to enterpret their vote in any other way.
>
>
Here's an illustration to clarify the point. Quite a few articles get
deleted for inherently inappropriate subject matter, such as
agenda-pushing conspiracy theories. Suppose someone writes [[Swiss
incitement of the Paris riots]]. A nomination like this will normally
see quite a few merge votes, as in "merge any verifiable information
into the article about the recent civil unrest in France."

These merge votes are most certainly not votes to keep even a redirect
at [[Swiss incitement of the Paris riots]]. The title is absolutely
ludicrous and needs to be deleted, and these people realize that.
However, they vote to merge out of concern that we salvage factual
information that may not be in the real article, before deleting the
bogus one.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject:
[WikiEN-l] need to work out clear policies on
	MANDATORY	and	OPTIONAL rules on WP

body:
Ray Saintonge stated for the record:
> Tom Cadden wrote:
>
>>  No. I expect professionalism not amateurishness.
>
> Your point is well made.  Your interpretation of the rules should be
> enforced on all Wikipedian editors who are being paid.  Amateur ones
> should be exempt.
>
> Ec

I agree most emphatically.  Wikipedians who act unprofessionally should
have their pay cut dramatically, if not fired outright.  I think we
should have iron-clad policy to this effect.

--
  Sean Barrett     | I specifically asked you not to
  sean at epoptic.org | program my Internet with pornography.
                   | I want it removed immediately.


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
J?rgen Herz wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I used the last hours trying to dig in the infrastructural
> organization of the Wikimedia servers. My starting points where
> [[meta:Wikimedia_servers]] and Ganglia and my motivation was
> Wikipedias slowness in the last time.
>
> In contrast to my expectations, the database servers are far away from
> being under high load. It even seems the pressure is so low, you can
> easily live without holbach and webster for days (resp. over a month).
> Bottlenecks are Apaches and Squids (yes, I know that's nothing new for
> you).
>
> But like all other clusters too, the load is very unequally
> distributed over the machines. For example the Yahoo! squids showed
> yf1003 9.39, yf1000 7.60, yf1004 1.60, yf1002 1.44, yf1001 0.73
> at noon (UTC) today and similar load values (albeit with a different
> distribution) at other times.

That's just ordinary random variation. The 15 minute load average is much
more closely clustered than the 1 minute load average.

> Or the Apaches in Florida:
> 16 Apaches with load around 15, 9 between 1.5 and 2, 8 between 1 and
> 1.5 and 10 less than 1.
>
> Where does this come from, or is this wanted? Wouldn't a more balanced
> load be better?

The apache load figures are unreliable at the moment because there is a
number of hung processes on each machine waiting for an NFS share that is
never going to start working again. But there's still a few points I can
make about this:

* The apache load also sees quite a lot of random variation from minute to
minute. This is unavoidable, and in my opinion, harmless. We can't tell how
much CPU time a request will require before we let apache accept the
connection. That's why we have multiprocessing.
* Perlbal suffered from a couple of load balancing problems, such as
oscillation of load between the perlbal servers. When we switched to LVS,
with weighted least connection scheduling, load distribution became much
more stable on the 10 minute time scale.
* Currently we're not using a higher weight for the dual-CPU apaches than
for the single-CPU apaches. It's likely that the optimal concurrency level
for dual-CPU machines is higher than for single-CPU machines. I'm not sure
what impact this has on throughput, but I suspect it would be fairly small,
especially in times of high load. To have high throughput, you just have to
have *enough* connections queued or active in order to keep the CPU busy,
and at high load that condition is likely to be satisfied.

The crucial thing to avoid in load balancing is a wide divergence in request
service time, wide enough to be user-visible. At the moment, we don't seem
to have that, except in a few special cases. A couple of hundred
milliseconds divergence is acceptable, it's when you get into the seconds
that you have a problem.

This is data from the last 24 hours or so:

mysql> select pf_server,pf_time/pf_count from profiling where pf_name='-total';
+-----------+------------------+
| pf_server | pf_time/pf_count |
+-----------+------------------+
| srv15     |  204.56651921613 |
| goeje     |  201.84655049787 |
| srv16     |  153.09295690508 |
| srv49     |  103.67533112583 |
| srv12     |  142.05136531207 |
| srv45     |  171.57344543147 |
| srv29     |  137.25579172808 |
| srv39     |   169.4883604123 |
| srv20     |     149.64453125 |
| srv18     |  159.00027606007 |
| srv41     |  143.65079066265 |
| srv22     |  159.61156337535 |
| srv25     |  141.55984462781 |
| srv21     |  142.70388359744 |
| diderot   |  324.14045643154 |
| rabanus   |   208.7263215859 |
| humboldt  |  834.82322485207 |
| srv43     |  129.96146801287 |
| avicenna  |  173.68361557263 |
| srv27     |  428.79877888655 |
| srv19     |  229.72577751196 |
| srv28     |  148.12455417799 |
| srv35     |  125.47606219212 |
| srv48     |  142.57025343643 |
| srv37     |  147.24074616948 |
| srv32     |  145.71093201754 |
| srv46     |  161.01125266335 |
| srv24     |  175.73745958135 |
| srv44     |  173.76259793447 |
| srv14     |  143.50663395904 |
| srv11     |  146.01194914544 |
| srv30     |  162.15520549113 |
| srv23     |  169.26885457677 |
| srv0      |  269.70157858274 |
| srv38     |  182.01380813953 |
| srv17     |  143.32407831225 |
| srv34     |  120.18475895904 |
| srv13     |   165.9256635274 |
| alrazi    |  203.50503060089 |
| srv50     |  152.40960211391 |
| srv36     |  210.69465332031 |
| hypatia   |  169.72124821556 |
| srv47     |  161.01089421174 |
| friedrich |  180.30277434721 |
| srv40     |  168.59215472028 |
| srv3      |  145.29130517183 |
| srv33     |  119.75965134641 |
| srv4      |  149.60560154037 |
| kluge     |  173.34889083873 |
| rose      |  675.57995605469 |
+-----------+------------------+
50 rows in set (0.01 sec)

Humboldt and rose need attention, but I wouldn't worry about the rest.

> Other point: The Yahoo! Squids do virtually nothing between 18:00 and
> 0:00 (and machines besides yf1000-yf1004 to virtually nothing around
> the clock). How nice would it be make them helping out the other
> overloaded machines in Florida and Netherlands at least in these six
> hours.

This was an intentional part of our architecture. Local squid clusters serve
local users, this reduces latency due to network round-trip time (RTT). Of
course, this only makes sense if that network RTT (200ms or so) is greater
than the local service time due to high load. Hopefully we can fix our squid
software problems and add more squid hardware to Florida (which is the only
site where it truly seems to be lacking), and thus maintain this design.
Spreading load across servers distributed worldwide is cheaper but
necessarily slower than the alternative of minimising distance between cache
and user.

It might interest you to know that as soon as I came to terms with the fact
that the knams cluster would be idle at night, I promoted the idea of using
that idle CPU time for something useful, like non-profit medical research.
We've now clocked up 966 work units for Folding at Home:

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=userpage&username=wikimedia%2Eorg

> And no, I don't criticize anyone or know how to do it better. But
> available informations look strange to me - it would be great to get
> some explanations.
>
> Speaking of explanations. I've three more simple questions:
> 1. Squids at lopar idle all the time since dns has been moved of them.
> What where the problems with them and will they be back soon?
> 2. Commons is very slow since the move from the prior "overloaded"
> server to the new one. Any explanation to satisfy a simple user?
> And what server is the new one?

Brion answered those two well enough.

> 3. I read about new machines srv51-70. Where do they come from? Can't
> see a recent order for them or they are mentioned on
> [[meta:Wikimedia_servers]].

No idea. I just use the things.

-- Tim Starling


body:
On 11/18/05, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
> I'm having difficulty with the notion that the name "Ivory Coast" could
> possibly be described as "widely used" or "widely known".
>
> With a straight face, that is.
>

As far as I'm aware, it's the most commonly used name of the country
in the UK.  The BBC uses it, Sky News, the Guardian, the Times, it's
used in common speech and in local newspapers.  You may want to argue
that the French name is also common, and you may even find evidence to
support your claim, but it really won't do to say that the name Ivory
Coast is not widely known and used.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Michael Crouch

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Preserving GFDL requirements when splitting articles

body:
I'm trying to improve the English Wikipedia's documentation on article
moves, and I had a GFDL question.  I hope this is the right place;
feel free to point me elsewhere.

Articles on En are often split in a cut-and-paste way, with material
from one article removed and put into another article.  None of the
documentation (that I can find) mentions anything about maintaining
the necessary authorship information.

I've been told several times (on [[Wikipedia:Help desk]] and
[[Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)]]) to simply mention in the edit
summary "This material moved from [[Foo]]".  Is this adequate for the
GFDL requirements?  I know we might not have a perfect solution to
this, but I didn't want to add anything to the documentation without
making sure it was correct.

In case it helps, I'm trying to update [[Wikipedia:How to rename
(move) a page]] and [[Wikipedia:How to break up a page]].

-- Creidieki


from_name: charles matthews

body:
"Tony Sidaway" wrote

>The BBC uses it

BBC World Service uses CI:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/worldservice/psims/ScheduleSDT.cgi?Pg=Co&Co=CI%3aCote%20D%27Ivoire%3a0%2d45

so that's enough half-truths for the moment.

Charles


body:
 "Carbonite" wrote

> It looks like the BBC also uses "Ivory Coast":

We know that.  What I object to is the hammering away at ''BBC uses IC'' as
if that is an argument.  I'm not exactly surprised that the BBC uses both.
WP is a 'World Service', just like the BBC's much-respected World Service
is.  Contrast the BBC's evident flexibility, with the deeply dim insistence
that the English Wikipedia can never make exceptions to its own MoS.  (I
know there are bad arguments put forward on both sides.)

Charles


subject:
[WikiEN-l] need to work out clear policies on MANDATORY
	and	OPTIONAL rules on WP

body:
Sam Korn wrote:

>On 11/17/05, Tom Cadden <thomcadden at yahoo.ie> wrote:
>
>
>>I have no difficulty whatsoever in knowing what mandatory means. It means 'the criteria for forming a judgment must be as defined'. You seem not to understand that votes on mandatory issues on individual pages cannot overturn mandatory rules. They set one set of criteria and one set of criteria only for decision taking.
>>
>> A review of pages shows that some users on some pages are creating their own personalised criteria in place of the mandatory criteria and making decisions that completely conflict with the mandatory requirements of the MoS, based on their own made up criteria. That is not allowed under MoS rules.
>>
>> I don't think, Sam, you grasp the issue.
>>
>>
>I don't think, Tom, you grasp my point.
>
>The MoS is the list of rules.  The rules say that the most common name
>must be used.  The enterpretation is situation-specific.  In your
>opinion, Ivory Coast is more common.  In others', it is C?te d'Ivoire.
>
I don't think that the word "must" appears in the rule.

Ec


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wiki about every person in the world

body:
On 11/19/05, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> Would you consider an article about plain old Ilyanep who hasn't ever done
> anything very notable to be encyclopedic?
>
> Or how about baby Gary who's 3 months old?
>
If you're asking me this you must not know me very well.  Yes, of
course I would.


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject: [Foundation-l] .eu domains soon

body:
We'll check for it.

Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Jan Kulveit <jk-wikifound at ks.cz> wrote:
>> the 1st sunrise period for .eu domain registration is going
>> to begin soon - 7 December 2005
>> only domain names which are registred EU community/national
>> trademarks will be registered.
>
> Our domain applications for wikipedia.eu and wikimedia.eu have been in progress
> for a month but I am not aware of the trademark application status. Apparently
> anybody can still submit applications for those exact same domains? Not good.
>
>> Because of trademark issues and eu regulations concernig
>> who can apply for .eu, I'm affraid it will be a bit
>> complicated. I hope someone from the foundation can take care
>> of it.
>
> I think our legal dept needs to look at this ASAP. I?ve CCd their list.
>
> -- mav
>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] .eu domains soon


body:
Tom Cadden wrote:

>  No. I expect professionalism not amateurishness.
>
Your point is well made.  Your interpretation of the rules should be
enforced on all Wikipedian editors who are being paid.  Amateur ones
should be exempt.

Ec


from_name: Kat Walsh

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias

body:
On 11/19/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
> The academics at my uni think the wikipedia is mildly offensive, in
> the sense that they enjoy being paid to write
> books/journals/whathaveyou, and don't enjoy seeing amateurs giving it
> away for free. Because of this, and our noticable failings, students
> are penalised if they attempt to cite the wikipedia as a source at my
> uni.
>
> I just now returned from an 8 hour seminar wherein we were repeatedly
> informed that free, non-governmental information on the internet is
> dubious at best, and should be avoided for anything other than
> commercial or general knowledge queries. Instead, the online
> university  database was praised (it includes a subscription to
> britannica, btw ;)
>
> Jack (Sam Spade)

Well, I'd've gotten penalized for citing Wikipedia too, but I'd also
have gotten penalized for citing Britannica. However, various features
of Wikipedia made it much better as a quick study aid than the more
academically respectable references, and no one was ever the wiser.
And it is good as a study aid -- but most university students I know
*need* to be cautioned that not everything they read on the internet
that looks legit is true. (I love Wikipedia, and I am an optimist,
but, well...)

-Kat
[[User:Mindspillage]]
wannabe academic

--
"There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily
escaped the chronicler's mind."  --Douglas Adams


body:
Stephen Bain wrote:

>On 11/17/05, Tom Cadden <thomcadden at yahoo.ie> wrote:
>
>
>>I've been looking at some pages and noticed that there is a haphazard application of rules on WP, specifically a failure to distinguish between mandatory and optional rules.
>>
>>
>...
>
>
>> None of those are criteria recognised in the Manual of Style, which sets the simple criteria 'the most common name used in English', not 'the most common name likely to be used in the future', 'the name we would like to use', or 'the name the government tells us to use' but simply the most common name in use as of now.
>>
>>
>WP:NC is "policy", which means it is official. But the page does carry
>this proviso:
>
>"It is important to note that these are conventions, not rules written
>in stone. As Wikipedia grows and changes, some conventions that once
>made sense may become outdated, and there may be cases where a
>particular convention is "obviously" inappropriate. But when in doubt,
>follow convention."
>
>It's interesting to note that all of the individual naming
>conventions, for example [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common
>names)]], are specifically tagged as guidelines, and not policies.
>Although they carry much weight, they nevertheless fall into your
>category of the rules that "may" be followed.
>
>
It follows too that if flexibility is written into the policy then that
flexibility is as much a part of the policy as its more specific terms.

Parallel to that we also have on    [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use
English)]]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_%28use_English%29>

> Some cases are less clear-cut. There is a trend in part of the modern
> news media and maps to use native names of places and people, even if
> there is a long-accepted English name.

Ec


subject:
[WikiEN-l] need to work out clear policies onMANDATORYandOPTIONAL
	rules on WP

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>2. I am *ALSO* saying that letting a government tell Wikipedia what to
>do is a dangerous erosion of our editorial independence. We can simply
>say in the article that Ivory Coast's government "forbids" anyone -
>inside or outside their jurisdiction - to translate the country's name
>(if this is really so). But since our servers are in Florida, I think we
>can safely assume we are outside their jurisdiction.
>
This argument is particularly laughable.  I don't think anyone on either
side is arguing on the basis that any country's courts will be charging
anyone for improper use of the country's names.  Just because a country
has laws to establish standards or procedures doesn't mean that they
will ever need to argue the details in court.  Respect for a country's
laws goes much deeper than a simple fear of prosecution.

Ec


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Interpreting merge votes (was Wikipedia's provable
	anti-expertise bias)

body:
Michael Snow wrote:

> These merge votes are most certainly not votes to keep even a redirect
> at [[Swiss incitement of the Paris riots]]. The title is absolutely
> ludicrous and needs to be deleted, and these people realize that.
> However, they vote to merge out of concern that we salvage factual
> information that may not be in the real article, before deleting the
> bogus one.

They should be voting "merge and delete", then. If they just vote
"merge" then calling that a delete vote is itself putting words into
mouths, whereas keeping is the default.


body:
geni wrote:

>On 11/17/05, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>
>>There you go, Ed.  If you can't take francophones as part of 'us', that's
>>your problem.  I could think only of two other examples, Saint-Pierre et/and
>>Miquelon, which has gone with 'and', and Reunion, which has compromised as
>>R?union, where the French is 'La  R?union'.  There is really no precedent to
>>be drawn here.
>>
>>Charles
>>
>>
>Francophones are not a signifact part of the english speaking community
>
>
What does that have to do with it?

Ec


from_name: Jack Lynch

body:
The academics at my uni think the wikipedia is mildly offensive, in
the sense that they enjoy being paid to write
books/journals/whathaveyou, and don't enjoy seeing amateurs giving it
away for free. Because of this, and our noticable failings, students
are penalised if they attempt to cite the wikipedia as a source at my
uni.

I just now returned from an 8 hour seminar wherein we were repeatedly
informed that free, non-governmental information on the internet is
dubious at best, and should be avoided for anything other than
commercial or general knowledge queries. Instead, the online
university  database was praised (it includes a subscription to
britannica, btw ;)

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 11/18/05, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Fastfission wrote
>
> >As an aside, it would be interesting to have a fairly comprehensive
> discussion of what academic experts think of Wikipedia, in relation to
> teaching as well as just generally.
>
> They're going to think it's patchy, aren't they?
>
> Most academics are remarkably poor at popularization.  They write as
> experts, for experts.  Any technical slip will catch their eye, before all
> the work going into access and presentation.
>
> Most non-user academics are going to miss the point about hypertext.  An
> area of WP with good navigation can get you in an hour what might cost a
> week of a well-appointed library.  But only academics who actually remember
> the mazy, hazy grad student days  of bombardment by things about which one
> should already know will rate that aspect.
>
> Most popularizing academics will find the tone of WP rather subdued.  (This
> is a good thing.  We have no need to do boosterism. )
>
> Charles
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>On 18/11/05, Andrew Venier <avenier at venier.net> wrote:
>
>
>>"23.2A1 Use the English form of the name of a place if there is one in
>>general use.  Determine this from gazetteers and other reference sources
>>published in English-speaking countries.  In case of doubt, use the
>>vernacular form."
>>
>>A standard of "in general use" is perhaps less open to dispute than a
>>standard of "most common".
>>
>>
>I confess, knowing cataloguers, I wonder how much of this was
>someone's bright idea of reducing the number of special characters
>that would have to be dealt with when not strictly necessary... :-)
>
>
My copy of the 5 volume "Library of Congress Subject Headings" for 1998
prefers "C?te d'Ivoire".

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: "Mandatory"

body:
steve v wrote:

>But now there seems to be a leadership gap on en.wikipedia -- where pencil rules written by ad-hoc concensus are generally unreviewable even by the Arbcom. In that context, yes, the notion of 'making people do stuff' seems rather rude and lacks any meaning. Even when there is community or committee consensus, if its consensus without responsiveness or rationality, then (not unlike our recent 'page views' rank on Alexa) a case of 'one step forward two steps back.'
>
Rules, to be meaningful, need very broad support.  The more so when the
structures are highly complex.  "Rules" here tend to be developed by
small groups who happen to be interested in the subject matter at the
time.  They become valid because people follow the, not the reverse.  It
would be ideal to have a coherent and organized body of rules governing
everything we do, but that is unattainable.  If I go away from editing a
topic for two years, and then come back I fully expect to become
involved in discussions that may have taken place in the interim.  I'm
not going to argue everything; I will find some changes to be very
positive even if I opposed them two years ago, but there are others
where I will certainly re-open debate.  It's important to be able to do
that, because there are very few policies that should be unchangeable,
or that should be carved into mandatory rock.

Leadership is more than saying, "this is the way it must be."  Sometimes
that is the only way to go, but a leader who does this needs to accept
the consequences of such actions, and use that technique with great
reservation.  It requires patiently listening and giving weight to
reasonable arguments without being intimidated by rule drones.

Ec


body:
Sam Korn wrote:

> Merge and delete is not a possible vote. People should not have to
>
>vote in such a specific way to prevent vote-hijacking.
>
>
Sure it is.

*'''Merge''' [[Poisonous influences of fruit]] into [[Kumquat]] and
delete. Good content, but it doesn't stand alone well and it's at a
misleading title.

I just made that up but I can easily imagine a case where something like
this would be worth doing. As for whether it's "hijacking" a vote, I'm
not sure what you mean. If an article got one third "keep" votes, one
third unqualified "merge" votes, and one third "delete" votes, should it
be deleted or not?


from_name: Delirium

body:
Jack Lynch wrote:

>Regrding anti-expert bias, does anyone think verifiable experts should
>be allowed to cite themselves when editing wiki articles relating to
>their skills? I'm not sure what I think, but it seems an important
>question. I can definitely see it being a major step towards a
>citable, peer-reviewed journal level of quality.
>
>
I don't see how that would help at all; quite the opposite.  I'm not in
favor of a blanket prohibition against citing yourself, but it should be
viewed with caution and vetted by others.

This isn't unique to Wikipedia, anyway.  In "real" academic
publications, the same caveat applies: People are much more likely to
cite themselves in situations where it is not really appropriate to do
so.  This is why, when citation indices are compiled, self-citations
aren't included in the counts.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [HelpDesk-l] permission

body:
Fastfission wrote:

>On 11/16/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>This is all still only one of the four factors in fair use.  If we use a
>>fair use image our obligation to the downstream user is to let him know
>>that we are invoking fair use.  That forwarns him of possible problems.
>>A for-profit downstream user has a responsibility to do his own due
>>dilligence.  It would be completely irresponsible for him to say in
>>court that he used because Wikipedia said it was fair use.
>>
>>
>I think you're missing my point, which is that the "possible problems"
>warning is basically something which says, "If you use this file in
>any way which is not educational/not-for-profit/encyclopedic, you
>might be committing a copyright violation." It's a very strong
>limitation on re-use. And it only applies in the USA, but that's
>another question alltogether.
>
Certainty in many cases will remain unattainable.  If a fair use image
can be replaced by an acceptable free one we do better to replacxe it.
I don't think that will always be possible.  A warning is only an
alternative solution.

>*We're* not imposing that restriction, of course. It's built into the
>law, which favors our sort of usage over most others. However, if we
>use a considerable amount of content under that clause, we end up
>creating not an encyclopedic built on free content, but one based on
>educational-only content, even if it is not any particular license
>which says that. It is a de-facto limitation. The use of "fair use"
>media will mean that we are never truly creating a truly "free"
>encyclopedia -- we're creating one that will have to be filtered
>through carefully if is ported to for-profit contexts.
>
There is no single criterion for how much is too much.

>My argument isn't one about people getting sued in court -- it's one
>about people not being able ot use our content. It's about someone
>looking at it and saying, "Gee, I guess I can't use this photograph,
>since I'm not using it in an educational context." Which was a usage
>situation which I thought was more restrictive than we wanted to
>impose (even if we are imposing it implicitly rather than explicitly).
>
Maybe I'm just not as worried about the downstream users  as you.

Ec


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration Committee members granted checkuser
	tool

body:
Why can't a bot do that?  You wouldn't have to pay it.

How will this ideal admin know the difference between a rule and a
guideline?

Ec

Jack Lynch wrote:

>Thats not an ideal admin. My ideal admin has no experience being an
>admin on wikipedia, and need not be an editor. Instead, he would be
>someone paid to follow and enforce rules, not make them up as goes
>along.
>
>Jack (Sam Spade)
>
>On 11/17/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 11/17/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>That is so shocklingly inaccurate I am unsure where to begin
>>>explaining the differences between paid employee's and volunteers to
>>>you.
>>>
>>>
>>Really? Ok the ideal admin know wikipedia backwards and has plently of
>>experence of being an admin on wikipedia. Sounds like sinior admins.
>>--
>>geni
>>


from_name: Milos Rancic

body:
On 11/19/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 11/18/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> > Wikipedia's policy is not to have an article about every human.
>
> Oh, sorry, I've never seen this policy.

At least implicit ;)


body:
steve v wrote:

>On 11/14/05, Jack Lynch  wrote:
> > I rather pay someone who is willing to be accountable and who we can
>
>
>>therefore expect to be responsible.
>>
>>Jack (Sam Spade)
>>
>>
>
> Sam Korn wrote:
>I rather pay for servers so we get an encyclopaedia that works.
>
>Sam
>
> Besides, money doesnt bring about accountability. OTOH accountability and 'accounting' are quite related -- proper accounts and counting are the outward and visible signs of inward accountability.
>
>
Money can buy some very creative accountants.  Some dramatic
bankruptcies have proven that.

Ec


body:
Jack Lynch wrote:

>On 11/17/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>>>>I personally am perfectly willing to pay a fee for expert adminship.
>>>>>Have you seen the recent fund-drives? I've never donated money (just
>>>>>time) to the wikipedia, but I would for paid admins I could trust.
>>>>>
>>>>>Jack (Sam Spade)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>Our past history on that front has been less than ideal. Anyway where
>>>>are you going to get these expert admins from?
>>>>
>>>>
>>The dynamics in an organization can easily change when it has paid
>>staff.    I very much prefer an environment where everyone is working
>>for the love of what they believe rather than the love of money.
>>
>>
I don't. What your describing is a social experiment, and the sort of

one I find violently objectionable. See [[communism]].

I think that we have some people here who would disagree with your determination that communism is implied by people doing what they believe.

I hesitate to characterize a system that would find living according to one's belief to be "violently objectionable".

Ec


body:
On 11/19/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 11/19/05, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Would you consider an article about plain old Ilyanep who hasn't ever done
> > anything very notable to be encyclopedic?
> >
> > Or how about baby Gary who's 3 months old?
> >
> If you're asking me this you must not know me very well.  Yes, of
> course I would.
>
By the way, I don't think the term notable is very meaningful.
Clearly we don't require things to be extraordinary in order to
include them in Wikipedia.  For instance, we include every city in the
US, some of which are obviously not extraordinary.  So I really don't
see how the question of notability does anything other than beg the
question.  If something should be included in Wikipedia, then by
definition it is notable.  If something shouldn't be included, then by
definition it is not notable.

As for the term encyclopedic, that term likewise can't possibly be
used in a strict sense.  There is plenty in Wikipedia that never would
appear in a traditional encyclopedia.  However, I do see the term
encyclopedic as having some use, in determining the type of content.
You wouldn't include an article about a word in an encyclopedia, for
instance (although Wikipedia does include some articles about words, I
believe inappropriately).  But you would include an article about a
person.  So what makes an article on one person encyclopedic but
another non-encyclopedic?  I don't see any reasonable place to draw
the line, so I don't think there should be one drawn at all.


body:
Craig Schiller wrote:

>Actually, GFDL quite specifically *requires* that if an article is
>merged into another one, the old title has to be kept as a redirect in
>order to preserve the edit history.
>
>This is what's meant by "merge and delete is not a possible vote". We
>can all *imagine* situations where it's the preference we would *want*
>to express, but that's a moot point: it's quite explicitly not a
>*permissible* vote under the terms of GFDL.
>
>
Ah, I hadn't considered that. How could a merge ever result in a delete,
then? To comply with the GFDL we'd have to do one of those
delete-move-restore tricks that would shuffle the two edit histories
together, and if the two articles had never been together before that
would probably result in a bit of a mess.


body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:

> It's not accurate to say that merge == keep *or* that merge == delete.
> Merge == merge.  Fortunately, it's usually the people pushing an
> "inclusionist" or "deletionist" view that take the "merges should be
> reinterpreted" line, and not the closing admins.

They do have to interpret it one way or the other, though, since except
in the rare case of history merges it comes down to a binary decision of
either pressing the "delete" link or _not_ pressing the "delete" link.
Merge votes push the result one way or the other, don't they?

Perhaps we're talking at cross-purposes through differing
interpretations of exactly what is meant by "keeping" an article or
"deleting" it? It seems like a very black-and-white situation to me.


body:
On 11/19/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Isn't it? If an article gets one third "keep" votes, one third "merge"
> votes, and one third "delete" votes, the article gets kept. Even if an
> article gets 100% merge votes, it's still "kept" - the old title gets
> turned into a redirect and the information that was there gets moved
> into an existing article the redirect points to. And this isn't a
> binding forever and ever result like "delete" is, either, so the
> material could eventually get split back out and moved to the old title
> again one day if it grows enough to warrant it. I myself can think of
> two cases where I merged articles after an AfD, complaints arose from
> people who didn't like the resulting merged article, so I split the
> material back out again to the original location and that was that.
>
> I see "merge" as a vote to keep accompanied by a recommendation for how
> to clean up the kept article afterward.

Merge is a vote to merge. I don't see putting words into nominators'
mouths as acceptable.  If people vote merge, they aren't necessarily
giving anyone permission to enterpret their vote in any other way.

So don't.

--
Sam


body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:

>> Perhaps we're talking at cross-purposes through differing
>> interpretations of exactly what is meant by "keeping" an article or
>> "deleting" it? It seems like a very black-and-white situation to me.
>
> With "vote" interpretation, obviously if one "merge vote" was the
> difference between keeping and deleting, it'd be a no consensus keep
> (er, I hope).  That doesn't mean that "merge" is being interpreted as
> "keep", it just means that there's no consensus to delete outright.

That looks like a different premise contributing to our disagreement,
then, because I'd count that as "keeping" the article and therefore as
the merge vote being interpreted as "keep". A vote that wasn't
interpreted as either keep or delete would just be equivalent to a
"comment" or somesuch.

(swapping the order of your comments here, since I wanted to respond to
the more fundamental one first)

> Worl, ideally, if an admin closes '''merge''', she'd either
>   a) do the merge herself, or
>   b) tag both articles for merging
>
> Perhaps that's too much effort, I dunno.  I'm not an admin.  I know I
> haven't done very many merges off my own bat, too.

Ideally, sure, but I wouldn't necessarily consider this to be an
official part of "closing" the AfD. Merging articles is in the same
class of actions as fixing spellings or reorganizing paragraphs within a
page, a general editing task that doesn't require the sort of rigid
officialism that deletion has wound up needing. I've done plenty of
merges on my own when I stumble across pages that I think need it, and
ideally pages that needed merging would never be listed on AfD in the
first place since that's explicitly mentioned in the deletion guidelines
as something that doesn't warrant AfD.


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Village pump inside of Navigation bar

body:
On 11/19/05, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think that's a very good idea. At times, it's really hard for me to find
> the village pump on other language wikipedias I'm not very familiar with
> (such as Spanish or Russian) and wouldn't know the name of it.

Just go on the English village pump (or some other language that you
know well) and follow the interwiki links.

Alfio


body:
On 11/19/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I just now returned from an 8 hour seminar wherein we were repeatedly
> informed that free, non-governmental information on the internet is
> dubious at best, and should be avoided for anything other than
> commercial or general knowledge queries. Instead, the online
> university  database was praised (it includes a subscription to
> britannica, btw ;)

If it's anything like my son's college, it will make Wikipedia look a
bit silly on most academic subjects.  I don't see why Wikipedia should
expect to compete at academic level.


body:
On 11/19/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Merge is a vote to merge. I don't see putting words into nominators'
> mouths as acceptable.

People who vote to merge are implicitly acknowledging that the
information must be kept.  A merge can be undone by any editor,
resulting in the status quo ante.  It follows that a merge is a keep
by another name.  it's merely an editing operation and one that can be
(and sometimes is) performed by a non-admin editor after an AfD close.


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 11/19/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> People who vote to merge are implicitly acknowledging that the
> information must be kept.  A merge can be undone by any editor,
> resulting in the status quo ante.  It follows that a merge is a keep
> by another name.  it's merely an editing operation and one that can be
> (and sometimes is) performed by a non-admin editor after an AfD close.

That is still putting things into people's mouths.  If someone wants a
keep, let them say so.  It is a sad reflection of the
inclusionist/deletionist debate that each "side" considers a merge
vote "theirs".

--
Sam


from_name: Uwe Brauer

subject: [Wikitech-l] Moodle, newgroups for Threading (was: LiquidThreads)

body:
Hello

When I wrote about the lack of threading capabilities in the
WikiPedia discussion page, I had only experience with relative
low frequented discussions pages, for which the Wikipedia
software was uncomfortable but still ok. However now I am on
discussion page with a lot of hot debated contributions. That is
a sort of nightmare, since a lot of people are editing that page
at the same time, try to chance the outline and as a result
contributions get either malformed or changed or even deleted in
short it is a PITA.

So I would like to know.

    - is it possible to use for example parts  of the software of
      the moodle project http://moodle.org. That is open software
      for course management. Every course has its own, mailing
      list like,  discussion page. Now the parallels to wikipedia
      seem obvious course=article. However in reality can that
      software be used for wikipedia?

    - Would it be possible that instead of  providing a link to a
      discussion  page,   provide a    link  to  a  corresponding
      *newsgroup*. That is every   article page should   have its
      newsgroup (or mailing list if that would be easier.)

Regards

Uwe Brauer


from_name: Craig Schiller

body:
On 11/19/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

> >Merge and delete is not a possible vote. People should not have to
> >vote in such a specific way to prevent vote-hijacking.
> *'''Merge''' [[Poisonous influences of fruit]] into [[Kumquat]] and
> delete. Good content, but it doesn't stand alone well and it's at a
> misleading title.

Actually, GFDL quite specifically *requires* that if an article is
merged into another one, the old title has to be kept as a redirect in
order to preserve the edit history.

This is what's meant by "merge and delete is not a possible vote". We
can all *imagine* situations where it's the preference we would *want*
to express, but that's a moot point: it's quite explicitly not a
*permissible* vote under the terms of GFDL.

Craig


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2005/11/19, Alfio Puglisi <alfio.puglisi at gmail.com>:
>
> On 11/19/05, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think that's a very good idea. At times, it's really hard for me to
> find
> > the village pump on other language wikipedias I'm not very familiar with
> > (such as Spanish or Russian) and wouldn't know the name of it.
>
> Just go on the English village pump (or some other language that you
> know well) and follow the interwiki links.

Not all languages can be reached through these. Might be that they do not
have one, I do not know that.

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Sam Korn wrote:

>On 11/19/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>everybody considers a merge vote as a de-facto keep vote, because
>>thats what the rules say. If they think otherwise they are mistaken.
>>
>>
>Please cite this rule and tell me which everyone thinks this.  I had
>thought "everybody" meant that all the members of a community, or at
>least a very large supermajority.  Once again, I fear you are moulding
>the facts until they become *your* facts.
>
>The rules do *not* say that merge == keep.
>
>
So what!  It obviously pains those who have a black and white outlook
that someone should try to find an alternative solution.  But it often
happens when you try to break up a street fight both fighters will turn
against you.

Ec


body:
2005/11/19, Michael Crouch <creidieki at gmail.com>:
>
> I'm trying to improve the English Wikipedia's documentation on article
> moves, and I had a GFDL question. I hope this is the right place;
> feel free to point me elsewhere.
>
> Articles on En are often split in a cut-and-paste way, with material
> from one article removed and put into another article. None of the
> documentation (that I can find) mentions anything about maintaining
> the necessary authorship information.
>
> I've been told several times (on [[Wikipedia:Help desk]] and
> [[Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)]]) to simply mention in the edit
> summary "This material moved from [[Foo]]". Is this adequate for the
> GFDL requirements? I know we might not have a perfect solution to
> this, but I didn't want to add anything to the documentation without
> making sure it was correct.

Simply speaking: No, it is not enough according to the GNU/FDL, but
Wikipedia is interpreting the GNU/FDL so freely anyway that adding this to
it does not differ much either.

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


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias (was
	How	didthis happen (comixpedia??))

body:
Sam Korn wrote:

>On 11/17/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>What's your basis for saying that they are worthless?  Putting them in a
>>separate "fun stuff" section makes it clear that these are not the most
>>"important" facts about the subject.
>>
>>
>We are an encyclopaedia, not a fan site.  Almost always, these points
>bear no relation to the rest of the article, are unsourced, and make
>the article read badly.  They are a net loss to the encyclopaedia.
>
How is it that there is no relation?  These trivia still need to relate
to the subject of the article.  Almost everything in the Guinness Book
of Records is trivial, and it has been consistently popular

>The facts therein can almost always be written into the text of the
>article.  If they can't, the fact is almost certainly too irrelevant
>to mention.
>
>
We're not building an encyclopedia of pomposity!

Ec


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 11/19/05, Craig Schiller <craigbear at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually, GFDL quite specifically *requires* that if an article is
> merged into another one, the old title has to be kept as a redirect in
> order to preserve the edit history.
>
> This is what's meant by "merge and delete is not a possible vote". We
> can all *imagine* situations where it's the preference we would *want*
> to express, but that's a moot point: it's quite explicitly not a
> *permissible* vote under the terms of GFDL.

Is that actually, technically true?  I believe the GFDL only requires
us to keep the list of contributors.  Keeping the history is the
easiest way of doing that, but not the only.

-Matt


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore MoS, NCs for language
	reasons.

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Peter Mackay wrote:
>
>> I'm having difficulty with the notion that the name "Ivory Coast" could
>> possibly be described as "widely used" or "widely known".
>>
>> With a straight face, that is.
>
> Well, there are over 2,200 results on google news for "Ivory Coast".
> It may not be widely discussed in bar conversations, but anyone who's
> been reading the news has seen it come up quite a bit in the past few
> years.

Ask 100 people on the street to name as many African countries as they
can, and how many would include the Ivory Coast under either name?

Ec


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias
	(wasHowdidthis happe

body:
JAY JG wrote:

> Merge votes are typically "merge whatever is useful". It's not an
> endorsement of the current contents, certainly not all of them, and
> it's definitely a statement that wherever the contents should be, it's
> not *here*.  Some editors pretend that 10 deletes, 4 merges, and 3
> keeps means the article should stick around, when, in fact, it's a
> strong statement that *this* article should not exist, though it's
> possible that the information in it belongs somewhere else.

So then merge it. A "keep" result doesn't mean "don't ever touch this
article again!", it just means "don't delete." Normal editing can
proceed from there.

On the other hand, "merge whatever is useful" is a subjective
interpretation unless the voters explicitly describe what they think is
useful - perhaps they think it's _all_ useful, perhaps they just like
the navbox at the bottom. So someone merging solely on the basis of
merge votes (for example, a closing admin who is just obeying
"consensus") should IMO do it as conservatively as possible to make sure
nothing useful gets left behind. Other editors who come along later can
edit based on more detailed criteria and value judgements.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias (was
	Howdidthis happen (comixpedia??))

body:
On 11/19/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
> everybody considers a merge vote as a de-facto keep vote, because
> thats what the rules say. If they think otherwise they are mistaken.

Please cite this rule and tell me which everyone thinks this.  I had
thought "everybody" meant that all the members of a community, or at
least a very large supermajority.  Once again, I fear you are moulding
the facts until they become *your* facts.

The rules do *not* say that merge == keep.

--
Sam


body:
Puddl Duk wrote:

>>I just now returned from an 8 hour seminar wherein we were repeatedly
>>informed that free, non-governmental information on the internet is
>>dubious at best, and should be avoided for anything other than
>>commercial or general knowledge queries. Instead, the online
>>university  database was praised (it includes a subscription to
>>britannica, btw ;)
>>
>>Jack (Sam Spade
>>
>>
>Get used to it. As long as we have no validation/review/vetting/rating
>mechanism we will always be in various stages of dubiousness.
>
Yes and no, but that's gradually being worked out.

The problems won't stop if we are more accurate.  As long as we are
challenging vested interests our material will always be seen as
dubious, whether or not it's true.


body:
My heart is warmed by the pleasent replies. :)

Regrding anti-expert bias, does anyone think verifiable experts should
be allowed to cite themselves when editing wiki articles relating to
their skills? I'm not sure what I think, but it seems an important
question. I can definitely see it being a major step towards a
citable, peer-reviewed journal level of quality.

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 11/19/05, Kat Walsh <mindspillage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/19/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The academics at my uni think the wikipedia is mildly offensive, in
> > the sense that they enjoy being paid to write
> > books/journals/whathaveyou, and don't enjoy seeing amateurs giving it
> > away for free. Because of this, and our noticable failings, students
> > are penalised if they attempt to cite the wikipedia as a source at my
> > uni.
> >
> > I just now returned from an 8 hour seminar wherein we were repeatedly
> > informed that free, non-governmental information on the internet is
> > dubious at best, and should be avoided for anything other than
> > commercial or general knowledge queries. Instead, the online
> > university  database was praised (it includes a subscription to
> > britannica, btw ;)
> >
> > Jack (Sam Spade)
>
> Well, I'd've gotten penalized for citing Wikipedia too, but I'd also
> have gotten penalized for citing Britannica. However, various features
> of Wikipedia made it much better as a quick study aid than the more
> academically respectable references, and no one was ever the wiser.
> And it is good as a study aid -- but most university students I know
> *need* to be cautioned that not everything they read on the internet
> that looks legit is true. (I love Wikipedia, and I am an optimist,
> but, well...)
>
> -Kat
> [[User:Mindspillage]]
> wannabe academic
>
> --
> "There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily
> escaped the chronicler's mind."  --Douglas Adams
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
everybody considers a merge vote as a de-facto keep vote, because
thats what the rules say. If they think otherwise they are mistaken.

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 11/19/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/19/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > People who vote to merge are implicitly acknowledging that the
> > information must be kept.  A merge can be undone by any editor,
> > resulting in the status quo ante.  It follows that a merge is a keep
> > by another name.  it's merely an editing operation and one that can be
> > (and sometimes is) performed by a non-admin editor after an AfD close.
>
> That is still putting things into people's mouths.  If someone wants a
> keep, let them say so.  It is a sad reflection of the
> inclusionist/deletionist debate that each "side" considers a merge
> vote "theirs".
>
> --
> Sam
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 11/19/05, Pawe? Dembowski <fallout at lexx.eu.org> wrote:
> > If you're asking me this you must not know me very well.  Yes, of
> > course I would.
>
> What about verifiability?
>
What about it?  Are you suggesting that a wiki about every person in
the world wouldn't require verifiability?  Because I really don't
think a wiki without verifiability would work.


body:
On 11/19/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> On 11/20/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > So what makes an article on one person encyclopedic but
> > another non-encyclopedic?  I don't see any reasonable place to draw
> > the line, so I don't think there should be one drawn at all.
>
> I think the same, but there is a very complex pseudo-science about
> "what/who is notable and what/who is not". On (English) Wikipedia, of
> course.
>
> So, the idea is to start a wiki about every person in the world. First
> of all, biographies of "notable persons" would go there (just copy).
> After that all people would be able to write about themselves, their
> family, relatives, friends.
>
> Of course, there should be some way to check variability, but I am
> sure that it can be solved.

Well, if "biographies of "notable persons" would go there (just
copy)", then you're proposing a fork of Wikipedia.  And while it may
be unlikely to convince people to put articles about less famous
people in Wikipedia, I think it's even less likely that Wikimedians
are going to allow a fork.

Anthony


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com>
>
>On 11/19/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Merge is a vote to merge. I don't see putting words into nominators'
> > mouths as acceptable.
>
>People who vote to merge are implicitly acknowledging that the
>information must be kept.  A merge can be undone by any editor,
>resulting in the status quo ante.  It follows that a merge is a keep
>by another name.  it's merely an editing operation and one that can be
>(and sometimes is) performed by a non-admin editor after an AfD close.

Merge votes are typically "merge whatever is useful". It's not an
endorsement of the current contents, certainly not all of them, and it's
definitely a statement that wherever the contents should be, it's not
*here*.  Some editors pretend that 10 deletes, 4 merges, and 3 keeps means
the article should stick around, when, in fact, it's a strong statement that
*this* article should not exist, though it's possible that the information
in it belongs somewhere else.

Jay.


from_name: Jtkiefer

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:

>Wikipedia has no legal right to "interpet the GFDL", when people save
>text they give permission to use the text under a certain license, and
>if you don't follow that license you're guilty of copyright
>infringement.
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
Then we're guilty of quite a bit of copyright infringement.

-Jtkiefer


subject:
[WikiEN-l] need to work out clear policies on MANDATORY and
	OPTIONAL rules on WP

body:
On 11/19/05, Tom Cadden <thomcadden at yahoo.ie> wrote:
> If you want to create a credible encyclop?dia and not a semi-literate, semi-credible,
> semi-accurate joke. YES.

This is rather disproportionate, don't you think?  I am rather
surprised that a little debate of which of two names for a small
African country should be used, either of which would be quite IMO
acceptable as an article title, is creating this much heat.  Wikipedia
will not seem more or less literate, credible or accurate because we
use [[Cote d'Ivoire]] instead of [[Ivory Coast]], or the other way
round.

As many people have pointed out, 'Use common names' is a general
GUIDELINE for Wikipedia, which we do not, in fact, follow completely.
Many subject areas, supplementary naming conventions, or WikiProjects
define naming conventions that do not follow Use Common Names.

-Matt Brown


body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_Policy#What_to_do_with_a_problem_page.2Fimage.2Fcategory

Btw, "once again"? Wtf, I don't even know you...

Jack (Sam Spade)


from_name: Marco Chiesa

body:
We are actually trying to draw a line on it.wikipedia. Clearly, I am not an
encyclopedic entry, while George Bush is. Drawing a line is not easy, but in
most cases it is easy to decide if somebody is above or under the line.
Borderline cases are discussed, that helps to draw the line.
Cruccone

On 11/19/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 11/19/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > On 11/19/05, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Would you consider an article about plain old Ilyanep who hasn't ever
> done
> > > anything very notable to be encyclopedic?
> > >
> > > Or how about baby Gary who's 3 months old?
> > >
> > If you're asking me this you must not know me very well. Yes, of
> > course I would.
> >
> By the way, I don't think the term notable is very meaningful.
> Clearly we don't require things to be extraordinary in order to
> include them in Wikipedia. For instance, we include every city in the
> US, some of which are obviously not extraordinary. So I really don't
> see how the question of notability does anything other than beg the
> question. If something should be included in Wikipedia, then by
> definition it is notable. If something shouldn't be included, then by
> definition it is not notable.
>
> As for the term encyclopedic, that term likewise can't possibly be
> used in a strict sense. There is plenty in Wikipedia that never would
> appear in a traditional encyclopedia. However, I do see the term
> encyclopedic as having some use, in determining the type of content.
> You wouldn't include an article about a word in an encyclopedia, for
> instance (although Wikipedia does include some articles about words, I
> believe inappropriately). But you would include an article about a
> person. So what makes an article on one person encyclopedic but
> another non-encyclopedic? I don't see any reasonable place to draw
> the line, so I don't think there should be one drawn at all.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
On 11/19/05, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com> wrote:
> We are actually trying to draw a line on it.wikipedia. Clearly, I am not an
> encyclopedic entry, while George Bush is. Drawing a line is not easy, but in
> most cases it is easy to decide if somebody is above or under the line.
> Borderline cases are discussed, that helps to draw the line.
> Cruccone

My criterion is simple: is there enough independantly verifiable
information available on the person in order to make an article?  If
there is, then the subject is notable.  If there isn't, the subject
isn't notable.

This is also what Wikipedia policy says.

Sam


body:
On 11/19/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_Policy#What_to_do_with_a_problem_page.2Fimage.2Fcategory
>
> Btw, "once again"? Wtf, I don't even know you...
>
> Jack (Sam Spade)

I have absolutely no idea what that link is supposed to demonstrate.
It does not concern voters; it concerns nominators.

As for the "once again", it just happens that I can read, and make use
of this ability.

--
Sam


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Family Circumstances was Re: Arbitration Committee
	members granted checkuser tool

body:
I can't understand what either of you feel, being far too young to
have kids of my own, but I can offer you a few minutes silence out of
respect. I lost a brother before he was born, but that was even before
I was born, so I don't really remember that.

The least we can offer is sympathy and understanding.

On 11/19/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Jim Trodel wrote:
>
> >  Anthere
> >
> >  You have my deepest sympathies re losing your baby. My wife and I lost our
> > first child - she would have been 12 next week, and I have been thinking
> > often about here this past week since we were able to go back to where she
> > is buried for a visit (we live in a different state now about 1800 miles
> > away), and then I came across your note. Although we now have 4 living
> > children, I sometimes feel the loss acutely, but I have hope for the future
> > as I am sure you do also. I am sure you have a great support group that
> > helped you through it all; feel free to drop me a line if you ever need to
> > talk. I offer because sometimes people just don't understand that
> > months/years later you may just need to rehash stuff again.
> >  I also wanted to thank you for your dedicated service and leadership on the
> > wikipedia - especially considering the totality of the circumstances you
> > describe above.
> >  Jim
> >
> > --
> > Jim (trodel at gmail.com)
> > "Our love may not always be reciprocated, or
> > even appreciated, but love is never wasted"
> > - Neal A Maxwell
>
> I thank you for your kind words Jim.
> I know other wikipedians went through this as well. And I know that the
> reality and the pain of the loss are not so easy to understand unless
> similar events have occured to self. It is much harder for you, as mine
> will never have a birthday.
>
> Some months ago, I went to a wikimeet, and a wikipedian put two candles
> in a church. When I asked why, the answer was "one for your kid and one
> for mine". I hope for this one, and for others who wrote me privately,
> that their loss will be followed by new happiness.
>
> Ant
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


body:
On 11/19/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> I don't think that the word "must" appears in the rule.

Fair point.  It wouldn't really matter if they did anyway, because
that's why IAR was created: to get around overly legalistic points.

--
Sam


body:
On 11/20/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> They should be voting "merge and delete", then. If they just vote
> "merge" then calling that a delete vote is itself putting words into
> mouths, whereas keeping is the default.

Merge and delete is not a possible vote.  People should not have to
vote in such a specific way to prevent vote-hijacking.

--
Sam


from_name: Pawe³ Dembowski

body:
> If you're asking me this you must not know me very well.  Yes, of
> course I would.

What about verifiability?

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


body:
On 11/20/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> So what makes an article on one person encyclopedic but
> another non-encyclopedic?  I don't see any reasonable place to draw
> the line, so I don't think there should be one drawn at all.

I think the same, but there is a very complex pseudo-science about
"what/who is notable and what/who is not". On (English) Wikipedia, of
course.

So, the idea is to start a wiki about every person in the world. First
of all, biographies of "notable persons" would go there (just copy).
After that all people would be able to write about themselves, their
family, relatives, friends.

Of course, there should be some way to check variability, but I am
sure that it can be solved.


body:
And just to say: If every specie is notable, then every human is notable, too.

On 11/20/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> On 11/20/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > So what makes an article on one person encyclopedic but
> > another non-encyclopedic?  I don't see any reasonable place to draw
> > the line, so I don't think there should be one drawn at all.
>
> I think the same, but there is a very complex pseudo-science about
> "what/who is notable and what/who is not". On (English) Wikipedia, of
> course.
>
> So, the idea is to start a wiki about every person in the world. First
> of all, biographies of "notable persons" would go there (just copy).
> After that all people would be able to write about themselves, their
> family, relatives, friends.
>
> Of course, there should be some way to check variability, but I am
> sure that it can be solved.
>


body:
> And just to say: If every specie is notable, then every human is notable, too.

The existence of every species is verifiable. It's not the case with
every human.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


body:
On 11/20/05, Pawe? Dembowski <fallout at lexx.eu.org> wrote:
> > And just to say: If every specie is notable, then every human is notable, too.
>
> The existence of every species is verifiable. It's not the case with
> every human.

I don't expect that we would have 6 billion (or 10 or more?) articles
at the first time, but we would start to work on that. There are
social numbers and other proofs that some person exists.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] [WikiEN-l] Status of article rating feature?

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
>> So. What's up with Special:Validate?
>
> It's on my list for this week, I'll see about getting it turned on and
> working.

I'm tweaking, fixing, and reworking various bits of it (display
formatting fixes, better code reuse, using revision IDs instead of
unreliable timestamps in places, etc).

Will try to have it ready to try out tomorrowish.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20051120/e1618677/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Sergey Samoylov

subject: [Wikitech-l] About tables templates in wikimedia

body:
Hi there....

I've downloaded wikinews and installed on my mediawiki.
There is a page like
http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php/Template:Hurricane_2005_Infobox

On wikinews site all text from template is consisted in the table from right
side but on my site it's just a usual rows.

The difference between sorce code generation when processed
{{InfoboxStart|infotitle=[[w:Hurricane|Hurricanes]] - 2005}} wiki code.

On my site:

Avian Flu

On wikinews:

Avian Flu

Template:InfoboxStart is

 '''{{{infotitle}}}'''

So there is redundant
 on my site. Without this tag table is OK!
I've checked 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6(developer version) there is the same
situation.

Is it a bug in Parser.php or it's some settings in mediawiki?

Thank you
Sergey


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Preserving GFDL requirements when splitting articles

body:
On 11/19/05, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2005/11/19, Michael Crouch <creidieki at gmail.com>:
> >
> > I'm trying to improve the English Wikipedia's documentation on article
> > moves, and I had a GFDL question. I hope this is the right place;
> > feel free to point me elsewhere.
> >
> > Articles on En are often split in a cut-and-paste way, with material
> > from one article removed and put into another article. None of the
> > documentation (that I can find) mentions anything about maintaining
> > the necessary authorship information.
> >
> > I've been told several times (on [[Wikipedia:Help desk]] and
> > [[Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)]]) to simply mention in the edit
> > summary "This material moved from [[Foo]]". Is this adequate for the
> > GFDL requirements? I know we might not have a perfect solution to
> > this, but I didn't want to add anything to the documentation without
> > making sure it was correct.
>
>
> Simply speaking: No, it is not enough according to the GNU/FDL, but
> Wikipedia is interpreting the GNU/FDL so freely anyway that adding this to
> it does not differ much either.

Wikipedia has no legal right to "interpet the GFDL", when people save
text they give permission to use the text under a certain license, and
if you don't follow that license you're guilty of copyright
infringement.


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Subject: cookie based sockcheck,
	a prelude to cookie based blocking

body:
Brion Vibber (brion at pobox.com) [051119 06:20]:
> David Gerard wrote:

> > Can a cookie carry between different IPs for the same browser? i.e.,
> > user hangs up and dials again for a different IP?

> Yes, but it's also trivially easy to remove or just reject. It's only an
> effective measure against the painfully naive. (Of which there are many,
> alas. ;)

Actually, from vandal/troll-chasing on en:, I strongly suspect there are
enough as a proportion that this simple measure would help greatly.

- d.


from_name: Jack Lynch

body:
I wasn't talking about people doing what they believe, I was talking
about refusing to consider taking on paid employee's due to
philosophical or political predispositions. Its rather a non-issue
however, since their doesn't seem to be any interest in the idea.

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 11/20/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Jack Lynch wrote:
>
> >On 11/17/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>>>>I personally am perfectly willing to pay a fee for expert adminship.
> >>>>>Have you seen the recent fund-drives? I've never donated money (just
> >>>>>time) to the wikipedia, but I would for paid admins I could trust.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>Jack (Sam Spade)
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>Our past history on that front has been less than ideal. Anyway where
> >>>>are you going to get these expert admins from?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>The dynamics in an organization can easily change when it has paid
> >>staff.    I very much prefer an environment where everyone is working
> >>for the love of what they believe rather than the love of money.
> >>
> >>
> I don't. What your describing is a social experiment, and the sort of
>
> one I find violently objectionable. See [[communism]].
>
> I think that we have some people here who would disagree with your determination that communism is implied by people doing what they believe.
>
> I hesitate to characterize a system that would find living according to one's belief to be "violently objectionable".
>
> Ec
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Delirium

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Ask 100 people on the street to name as many African countries as they
> can, and how many would include the Ivory Coast under either name?

I don't see how that's relevant.  The relevant question is, of people
who know of the country under some name, how many know it under one
versus the other?

-Mark


from_name: Peter Mackay

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore MoS,
	NCs for language reasons.

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Tony Sidaway

>
> On 11/18/05, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
> > I'm having difficulty with the notion that the name "Ivory Coast"
> > could possibly be described as "widely used" or "widely known".
> >
> > With a straight face, that is.
>
> As far as I'm aware, it's the most commonly used name of the
> country in the UK.  The BBC uses it, Sky News, the Guardian,
> the Times, it's used in common speech and in local
> newspapers.  You may want to argue that the French name is
> also common, and you may even find evidence to support your
> claim, but it really won't do to say that the name Ivory
> Coast is not widely known and used.

The UK must care more about small nations. Here in Australia most people,
when asked for information on the widely-known Ivory Coast, would go "Huh?",
a few smartarses might suggest that it is some sort of resort for elephants,
but only a few know that it is actually a landlocked Asian kingdom.

Seriously, I couldn't care what name is used, so long as the seeker after
knowledge gets to the right article, and the question is resolved on the
talk page with politeness and respect.

Peter (Skyring)


from_name: Tom Cadden

body:
Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:Are we really going to say that a
naming convention is more important than the community?

If you want to create a credible encyclop?dia and not a semi-literate, semi-credible, semi-accurate joke. YES.

 If you simply want to be in a community, go to a chat room.

 Thom

---------------------------------
 Yahoo! Model Search  - Could you be the next catwalk superstar? Check out the competition now


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: need to work out clear policies on
	MANDATORYandOPTIONAL

body:
Craig Schiller <craigbear at gmail.com> wrote:
And a very real case could be made that in day-to-day English
conversational usage, "Holland" is still technically a more common
name for the country than "the Netherlands", but for obvious reasons
nobody who valued their reputation as a Wikipedia editor would even
*think* of suggesting anything other than "the Netherlands" as that
article's title.

 That is not remotely comparable. Holland is NOT the name of the country. The name is the Netherlands. The comparable example would be whether Wikipedia should use 'The Netherlands' or its Dutch translation as the name of the article, with Dutch speakers queuing up to say "well that is the only name we ever hear it being called, so use the Dutch version.

 Cote d'Ivoire and Ivory Coast are just translations of each other. They are not different names, like Holland and the Netherlands. If the Ivorian government had introduced a whole new name, and not merely a translation then there would be no problem. But (as they are entitled to do) they have chosen to use one linguistic variant on the name as the exclusive form to use. They have also (as they are not entitled to do) ordered the world to use their name in French. Our rule is simple. Use the most common name that is widely used by English speakers, once it is correct. By a difference worldwide of over 60% English speakers translate the name of the country into English. Under our MoS rules therefore it is the English translation that should be used, just as on Italian Wikipedia it would be the name generally used by Italian speakers worldwide, on Russian Wikipedia it would be the name used by Russian speakers. French speakers can no more demand that Wikipedia use a French name when
 English speakers generally don't than English speakers can demand that French speakers use an English name when French speakers generally don't. It is a black and white case. It is patiently obvious.

 All encyclop?dias to ensure co-ordination in house styles follow their own MoS. They may use different criteria in their own MoS to decide what to use, but whatever criteria they use they follow. On Wikipedia you seem to think we can make it up as we go along, and then wonder why we would earn for ourselves the laughter of other encyclop?dias and readers. Why would they trust us when WE seem to think facts can be decided by means of a vote, not objectively set, neutrally applied criteria.

 If WP wants to be taken seriously as a credible sourcebook then it has got to apply credible, objective uniform standards, not make-it-up-as-we-go-along rules that change depending on who votes what way on individual pages that act like semi-independent republics in what they decide.

 Thom

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger  NEW - crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail


body:
 > Some cases are less clear-cut. There is a trend in part of the modern
> news media and maps to use native names of places and people, even if
> there is a long-accepted English name.

 Actually that is a trend largely though not exclusively associated with the American media. English speakers outside the US, for example, do not say or hear Turino for Turin.

---------------------------------
  Win a Yahoo! Vespa NEW - Yahoo! Cars has 3 Vespa LX125s to be won Enter Now!


subject:
[WikiEN-l] need to work out clear policies onMANDATORYandOPTIONAL
	rules on WP

body:
Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>Francophones are not a signifact part of the english speaking community
>
>
What does that have to do with it?

Ec
That is patiently obvious. French language usage does not impact on English users. If something is being targeted at English language users then the concerns of French speakers are irrelevant, as are the concerns of English language speakers when writing in French for French language speakers.

---------------------------------
How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos. Get Yahoo! Photos


body:
Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
My copy of the 5 volume "Library of Congress Subject Headings" for 1998
prefers "C?te d'Ivoire".

And the relevance of that is???

 You can just see the world's English language users basing their linguistic use on the US Library of Congress subject headings for 1998. Come of it.

---------------------------------
 Yahoo! Model Search  - Could you be the next catwalk superstar? Check out the competition now


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias (was How
	didthis happen (comixpedia??))

body:
Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
 >
We're not building an encyclopedia of pomposity!
Sometimes it seems that we are not building an encyclop?dia at all with some of rubbish that gets in it.

---------------------------------
To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre.


body:
Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
 Ask 100 people on the street to name as many African countries as they
can, and how many would include the Ivory Coast under either name?

Ec
 Probably about 25. Almost all could name South Africa. Zimbabwe would be remembered because of constant news coverage of Mugabe. Ivory Coast (called the Ivory Coast) features in the European media once every 2-3 months, going by a review of news sites.

---------------------------------
 Yahoo! Model Search  - Could you be the next catwalk superstar? Check out the competition now


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias

body:
Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote: Puddl Duk wrote:

>>I just now returned from an 8 hour seminar wherein we were repeatedly
>>informed that free, non-governmental information on the internet is
>>dubious at best, and should be avoided for anything other than
>>commercial or general knowledge queries. Instead, the online
>>university  database was praised (it includes a subscription to
>>britannica, btw ;)
>>
>>Jack (Sam Spade
>>
>>
>Get used to it. As long as we have no validation/review/vetting/rating
>mechanism we will always be in various stages of dubiousness.
>
Yes and no, but that's gradually being worked out.

But we are a long way off from adequate in terms of proper control of articles. I came across one edit that had been sitting in an article for a month. The article had been edited numerous times but no-one had spotted the clanger. I happen to know a bit about the topic and realised immediately it was a totally made up bit of vandalism.

 Among stuff surviving in articles which I came across lately were
 * a made up papal encyclical
 * a claim that Diana Princess of Wales believed that her husband was a shape-shifting lizard from outer space
 * a non-existing Irish government department

 How could any academic remind a site that allows stuff like that sit there, unchallenged in articles for long periods of time? I recently wrote an article for an Irish newspaper about a topic I had seen on Wikipedia. The article was fascinating but to be on the safe side I decided to double check it. 90% was A1. But there were 4 monster errors, all added in month ago but never checked. I hope that no kid in using that article for an essay quoted any of the errors. For every five good articles there is a dud in WP. And within each good article there seems to be dud facts. In a host of areas we are scarily far off encyclop?dia standard.

---------------------------------
To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre.


body:
Tom Cadden <thomcadden at yahoo.ie> wrote:

Ray Saintonge  wrote: Puddl Duk wrote:

>>I just now returned from an 8 hour seminar wherein we were repeatedly
>>informed that free, non-governmental information on the internet is
>>dubious at best, and should be avoided for anything other than
>>commercial or general knowledge queries. Instead, the online
>>university  database was praised (it includes a subscription to
>>britannica, btw ;)
>>
>>Jack (Sam Spade
>>
>>
>Get used to it. As long as we have no validation/review/vetting/rating
>mechanism we will always be in various stages of dubiousness.
>
Yes and no, but that's gradually being worked out.

But we are a long way off from adequate in terms of proper control of articles. I came across one edit that had been sitting in an article for a month. The article had been edited numerous times but no-one had spotted the clanger. I happen to know a bit about the topic and realised immediately it was a totally made up bit of vandalism.

 Among stuff surviving in articles which I came across lately were
 * a made up papal encyclical
 * a claim that Diana Princess of Wales believed that her husband was a shape-shifting lizard from outer space
 * a non-existing Irish government department

 How could any academic remind a site that allows stuff like that sit there, unchallenged in articles for long periods of time? I recently wrote an article for an Irish newspaper about a topic I had seen on Wikipedia. The article was fascinating but to be on the safe side I decided to double check it. 90% was A1. But there were 4 monster errors, all added in month ago but never checked. I hope that no kid in using that article for an essay quoted any of the errors. For every five good articles there is a dud in WP. And within each good article there seems to be dud facts. In a host of areas we are scarily far off encyclop?dia standard.

 Another example: tonight I wrote an article on the Royal Assent in the Irish Free State. I know a lot about the topic and have read the major books on the crown and the Free State. Everything in there is verifiable and anyone who knows the facts will see it is 100% kosher. But how many others on WP would know about the topic? I could have sneaked in made-up facts and who would know? Who would know if an expert on science sneaked in dodgy facts into a highly technical article on biotechnology? Might it be weeks, or months before someone with similar knowledge came along, took one look and bellowed 'what the hell?? That is made-up rubbish.' In other words much of what we have on WP we have on trust. On popular pages on popular topics errors can be spotted quickly. But on obscure topics we have to trust that editors are not making up stuff. Or that they are not getting a fact wrong by accident: that a meeting took place on the 6th and not the 7th, that a book title had the word 'in'
 not 'on', etc.

 That is Wikipedia's greatest weakness. I don't know if I read a science article whether it is true or false. At least on Brittanica I know it has been thoroughly vetted. But I can't be sure that the same article on WP was. So how do I know it really is trustworthy?

---------------------------------
  Win a Yahoo! Vespa NEW - Yahoo! Cars has 3 Vespa LX125s to be won Enter Now!


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wiki about every person in the world

body:
On 11/20/05, Pawe? Dembowski <fallout at lexx.eu.org> wrote:
> > Only if there is stuff to write about it.  If not, it can happily be
> > merged into a "list of websites" or some such thing.
>
> There's plenty of stuff that can be written about non-notable
> websites.
> I wrote this, for example:
> http://wikipocalypse.duckandcover.cx/index.php?title=Duck_and_Cover
> but I don't think it should ever be in Wikipedia.
>
> --
> Ausir
> Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
> http://pl.wikipedia.org

Websites and webpages are a much different story than people.  I can't
think of any reason to ever have an entire article about a web page.
Maybe you could prove me wrong, though.

For websites on the other hand it really depends on how longstanding
the site is.  But if the site is longstanding enough to have been
written about in acceptable third-party sources then it's probably big
enough to include in an encyclopedia.

Duck and Cover is definitely something I'd like to see in Wikipedia.
I'm not sure how much *could* be said about it that would fall under
the rules of NPOV, verifiability, and no original research (in fact,
though it claims to have been made in 1998 Internet Archive only goes
back to 2004), but assuming the facts in the article could be fact
checked, I think it should be included (and therefore, it is notable).

Anthony


body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:

>> Simply speaking: No, it is not enough according to the GNU/FDL, but
>>
>>Wikipedia is interpreting the GNU/FDL so freely anyway that adding this to
>>it does not differ much either.
>>
>>
>Wikipedia has no legal right to "interpet the GFDL", when people save
>text they give permission to use the text under a certain license, and
>if you don't follow that license you're guilty of copyright
>infringement.
>
It seems as though you don't understand the concept of interpretation.
Anybody has the right to interpret any legal text the way he wants.
This does not mean that his interpretation will be correct.  What you
state is nothing more than your interpretation of what licensing is about.

Ec


body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>There is a difference here between simply hosting your content,
>hosting it with modifications, copying it to a different part of
>Wikipedia, and copying it to an entirely different project.  The first
>is pretty obviously legal.  The second is more questionable, and you
>could argue that you have a right to revoke the permission (certainly
>upon any violation of the GFDL which is ongoing).  The last two are
>even more legally shaky, but there are plenty of arguments that it is
>legal even outside the GFDL.
>
Whether these licenses may be revoked is a dubious prospect.  If someone
revokes the GFDL that he has granted to Wikipedia what is the effect on
the downstream user who has himself copied the material based on the
licensing provisions that he found in Wikipedia, and which were
perfectly valid at the time?   Anything but irrevocable licenses could
lead to serious absurdities.

Ec


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Notability of web pages and people;
	and article merging/splitting

body:
On 11/20/05, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2005/11/20, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com>:
>
> > > So every webpage is notable? You can get information from the page
> > itself
> > > and from the Internet Archive.
> >
> > Only if there is stuff to write about it. If not, it can happily be
> > merged into a "list of websites" or some such thing.
>
>
> I was talking of web pages, not websites. And how do you decide if there's
> something to write about it?
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels

Just because something is notable doesn't mean it has to have its own
separate article.  I'd say most, if not all, information about web
pages would be better off merged with something else.  The way "you
decide" if there's something to write about it is the same way "you
decide" whether or not any bit of information improves an article or
makes it worse, using a wiki.

People, on the other hand, tend to have separate identities from one
another, and merging generally isn't a good idea.  I especially hate
when one person is redirected to another person, and I don't think
that should ever be done.  "Baby Gary who's 3 months old" might find a
better home on a page about his family though, at least for a while.
But please not as a separate section unto itself.

That's another pet peeve I have - when multiple different articles are
"merged" into a single one in a way that puts each article as a
separate headline (sometimes even with its own external links and
other subsections).  I guess this is done as a compromise between
those who want to delete the information and those who want to keep
it, but it seems like the worst of both worlds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Answers (a redirect to [[List of
Google services and tools]]) is an example of where this disgusting
technique takes place.  I fail to see how this is a better way of
organizing things.  A list should be a list.  An article on Google
services and tools should discuss the relationship of the tools and
services to one another, and discuss general trends which Google is
making, not present a bunch of separate articles stuck together on one
page.

Anthony


from_name: Ryan Delaney

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

On 11/20/05, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:

>>I think it depends whether you look at it from a content- or page-based
>>POV. Those who want merges generally want the content kept, so they
>>can't be considered fans of deletion. However, they certainly don't
>>want the page kept (indeed, some will even ask for the article to be
>>deleted, rather than left as a redirect ... presumably this will involve
>>some ultra-complicated wacky history merge thing).
>>
>>It's not accurate to say that merge == keep *or* that merge == delete.
>>Merge == merge. Fortunately, it's usually the people pushing an
>>"inclusionist" or "deletionist" view that take the "merges should be
>>reinterpreted" line, and not the closing admins.

A merge vote means "merge the content elsewhere and then create a
redirect".  Someone who votes merge doesn't want the page deleted,
they want the content merged elsewhere. It's important to understand
this, because if we copy content and then delete the original article,
we are violating the GFDL by failing to preserve the edit history.
Instead, we merge content and create a redirect.

Consequently, there is no need for the closing administrator to count
"merge" as anything but a keep vote. Someone who votes merge wants the
article kept, because the article must be kept in order to merge the
content and comply with the GFDL.

Ryan
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFDgIlz6MKb8lYmCtcRAoW6AJ9f0s4KYidpqNo++/wapnIpiIJrMACgrUSu
Oaywq1X6kE3XiWTKWSVsgg8=
=gqJh
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Sam Korn wrote:

>On 11/19/05, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>We are actually trying to draw a line on it.wikipedia. Clearly, I am not an
>>encyclopedic entry, while George Bush is. Drawing a line is not easy, but in
>>most cases it is easy to decide if somebody is above or under the line.
>>Borderline cases are discussed, that helps to draw the line.
>>Cruccone
>>
>>
>My criterion is simple: is there enough independantly verifiable
>information available on the person in order to make an article?  If
>there is, then the subject is notable.  If there isn't, the subject
>isn't notable.
>
>This is also what Wikipedia policy says.
>
Great!  I'm glad to see that I can include a biography of Erwin G. Ward
of South Weymouth, MA.  He was a stamp collector whose obituary appeared
in the "American Philatelist" for December, 1920. :-)

Ec