subject: [WikiEN-l] more WP:OFFICE shenanigans

body:
G'day Steve,

> On 3/14/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au>
> wrote:
>> We *don't* strive for balance.  We strive for a neutral
>> point-of-view. The distinction is small, but vital.
>
> Can you elaborate? I'm only just getting my head around WP:V. When I
>  understand NPOV, I'll be 2/3 of the way to Wiki-enlightenment.

I'm after a different trifecta, me.  I understand DICK and IAR just fine ...

Basically, balance is "give all sides of the story, however ridiculous".
  We see this a lot in political reporting, particularly in America, I
understand[0].

For example:

    Lyndon LaRouche is leading the charge to impeach Dick Cheney, whose
    plan to invade Iran and obliterate the area with nuclear weapons has
    been described as "Satanic".  Cheney supporters, however, insist that
    rumours about his alleged taste for mass-murder are slightly
    exaggerated.

"Balance" is a case of giving all participants in a case equal time,
without prejudice as to who one judges a participant and who one does
not (and "equal" is defined as "the side I like most gets more time").
It's a bankrupt concept that leads to absurdities like the one above
(which, incidentally, is a 100% true case), or --- if that's too subtle
--- the homeless bloke down the street getting equal time with a
government agency, while he explains that the CIA are performing secret
mind control experiments with gadgets they insert into his teeth while
he sleeps.

It is *not* neutrality, since, in allowing certain people a
disproportionate amount of say in an article, we're arguing that these
people are more significant, more important, and --- worst of all ---
more likely to have some connection to reality than they actually do.

WP:NPOV puts it like this:

    We should not attempt to represent a dispute as if a view held by a
    small minority deserved as much attention as a majority view, and
    views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented
    except in articles devoted to those views. To give undue weight to a
    significant-minority view, or to include a tiny-minority view, might
    be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. Wikipedia aims to
    present competing views in proportion to their representation among
    experts on the subject, or among the concerned parties.

But personally I think my version's better, because it mentions Lyndon
LaRouche and the CIA and mind-controlling gadgets, all of which (when
not written by the wrong author) instantly increases the value of *any*
email.

<snip />

[0] Australia has its own absurd version.  Anyone remember that fool
     Alston insisting that ABC News give the Coalition and Labor "equal
     time", so that one is not unfairly promoted over the other?
     Beautifully parodied (with dancing girls!) by /The Chaser/, way back
     in ... whenever it was.  Too many Coalition govts, I've lost count.
     2001?  1998?

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Captchas

body:
On 3/15/06, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yours? Yours is puny compared to mine!
>
> (Okay now we're really getting off-topic)
>
> (and of course I'm joking)

Last I cheack curps had by far the best record when it came to battles
of the bots.

--
geni


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: europanto

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Europanto

body:
Hay d?j? een plan f?r une europanto wikipedia
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/One_supporter#Europanto
but ... ;o)

--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Europanto-t1056989.html#a3413774
Sent from the Wikipedia General forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] exicornt switch

body:
Seeing as the user comes from AOL, I can't help but agree.

On 15/03/06, - Essjay - <essjaywiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> It has something to do with railroad track switching, I'm not exactly sure
> what. This has become a serious problem on many of the Wiktionaries. As I
> understand it, it was originally a problem on the English Wikipedia,
> complete with abusive sockpuppets and mass disruption; the problem has
> apparently been snuffed out there.
>
> A few days ago, a checkuser was done on the vandals on the wiktionaries; I'd
> suggest a checkuser on the corresponding user on the English Wikipedia, and
> if the results match up, a Jimbo-level ban. This is becoming a serious,
> serious problem.
>
> Essjay
>
> On 3/15/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > What, may I ask, did he claim was the meaning of "exicornt"? When I
> > read your e-mail, I just couldn't stop laughing.
> >
> > I've seen all sorts of weird vandals, as well as people trying to
> > plant false information, but the idea that somebody would invent a
> > word and claim it was real, especially something as ludicrous sounding
> > as "exicornt" (I don't believe any real English words end in -ornt,
> > and not many end in -rnt).
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 14/03/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hoi,
> > > On the en:Wiktionary there is a bozo who thinks it funny to create
> > > articles with titles like "exicornt switch". This is a non existing
> > > word. The guy insists to create this article and uses any means to get
> > > his way. I have been told that this guy is a user on the en.wikipedia as
> > > well. As the frustration of this guy is getting to a level where AOL is
> > > being blocked, I would like to know if we can cooperate and do something
> > > about this vandal.
> > >
> > > It is a daily annoyance. :(
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >    GerardM
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Essjay
> -----
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
> Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
> http://www.wikipedia.org/
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Don't remove a WP:OFFICE tag put there by Danny

body:
Delirium wrote:
> 1) How is someone calling up the Wikimedia Foundation and getting a page
> protected not going "over the head" of editors, and not acting in a
> "top-down manner"?  Even if justified in some cases, it's clearly doing
> just that.

The same effect could be achieved by any knowledgeable person by popping
into an irc channel and asking any of a large number of people to assist
with a serious problem.  If you, for example, protected a page with a
short explanation on the talk page that you think there's a serious
legal problem and asking people, as a courtesy, to leave the page
protected until the Foundation legal team has had an opportunity to
review the situation, then I would fully expect that to stick.

The problem is, people who are not part of our community don't know how
to do that, and they don't have the social power to do that.  Therefore,
they call the office.

WP:OFFICE is *temporary* and is *not* going "over the head" of editors.
 It is just one more fully functional and reasonable way for people to
interact with us -- one which is particularly helpful to people who are
dealing with a problematic Wikipedia article but who do not know
anything about the right way to edit wikipedia.

> 2) You have explicitly stated that we ought to treat articles on living
> people in a different manner than other articles.  Isn't that "some
> articles having different policies than other articles"?

Of course not!  It is no different than saying that articles about
obscure and difficult mathematical concepts are (and should be) treated
differently than articles on tourist landmarks.

The core policies are the same, but editorially speaking, the
application of the policies depends upon the local context of the
individual articles.

--Jimbo

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> Forgot to add the connection between the above points and the "some
> articles having different policies" -- it's because appealing to the
> Foundation is not official policy, but is an unwritten and semi-secret
> method for getting changes to happen, only those who know about that
> avenue (or figure it out) get to use it -- creating the effective
> policy difference.

This is a very contentious and misleading explanation.  Appealing to the
foundation *is* official policy, when the issue is serious, and we have
long published the phone number of the foundation widely so that people
who have any issue can call and complain.  This is hardly "unwritten"
and absolutely not "semi-secret".

And more... appealing to the foundation as a way to get around the
editors or NPOV is going to be a failure, because WP:OFFICE does not
permit that.  WP:OFFICE allows Danny to temporarily deal with things
during a time period when we are reveiewing the seriousness and validity
of complaints.

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


body:
Michael Snow wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
>>1. Calling the Foundation to complain about Wikipedia is not an
>>officially recognized way to change content on Wikipedia.
>>
>>
>
> This is the inaccurate statement. Contacting the Wikimedia Foundation
> with a complaint has been officially recognized as a way to address
> inappropriate content for as long as the organization has existed.
> That's why we have a designated agent, for example, as required by law.

Absolutely.

>>2. Calls to the Foundation complaining about Wikipedia content have led to
>>a) edits to Wikipedia by Foundation staff
>>b) Blanking of Wikipedia articles by Foundation staff
>>c) Protection of Wikipedia articles by Foundation staff
>>d) Various combinations of the above
>
> Also, deletion of Wikipedia articles as well as images and other files.
> I don't see a problem with this. Do you expect the Foundation to not do
> anything about legitimate complaints? It has to take action regarding
> such complaints, otherwise it loses any legal protection it has against
> being liable for the content on Wikipedia.

Additionally, if you review the sorts of things that are done to deal
with complaints, they are almost all done in a very routine way.  We are
most often assisting people who don't know about Wikipedia in doing
things that they could do for themselves.

And: nothing about the WP:OFFICE policy allows for permanent protection
of any article.  The actions taken are *temporary* to allow time to sort
things out which appear to be particularly serious.  Characterizing this
as "going over the heads of editors" is wildly inaccurate.

>>3. Actions listed above by Foundation staff are sometimes marked by
>>WP:OFFICE and any interference with such actions by any editor can
>>lead to revokation of editing/sysop rights.

And many other actions undertaken by various members of the community
are marked in a number of different ways, and any interference with such
actions by any editor can lead to a revokation of editing/sysop rights.
 This is not unusual, this is not *contra* the community, this is *part
of* the community process.

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


from_name: - Essjay -

subject: [Wikipedia-l] exicornt switch

body:
It has something to do with railroad track switching, I'm not exactly sure
what. This has become a serious problem on many of the Wiktionaries. As I
understand it, it was originally a problem on the English Wikipedia,
complete with abusive sockpuppets and mass disruption; the problem has
apparently been snuffed out there.

A few days ago, a checkuser was done on the vandals on the wiktionaries; I'd
suggest a checkuser on the corresponding user on the English Wikipedia, and
if the results match up, a Jimbo-level ban. This is becoming a serious,
serious problem.

Essjay

On 3/15/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> What, may I ask, did he claim was the meaning of "exicornt"? When I
> read your e-mail, I just couldn't stop laughing.
>
> I've seen all sorts of weird vandals, as well as people trying to
> plant false information, but the idea that somebody would invent a
> word and claim it was real, especially something as ludicrous sounding
> as "exicornt" (I don't believe any real English words end in -ornt,
> and not many end in -rnt).
>
> Mark
>
> On 14/03/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > On the en:Wiktionary there is a bozo who thinks it funny to create
> > articles with titles like "exicornt switch". This is a non existing
> > word. The guy insists to create this article and uses any means to get
> > his way. I have been told that this guy is a user on the en.wikipedia as
> > well. As the frustration of this guy is getting to a level where AOL is
> > being blocked, I would like to know if we can cooperate and do something
> > about this vandal.
> >
> > It is a daily annoyance. :(
> >
> > Thanks,
> >    GerardM
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Essjay
-----
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] [WikiEN-l ] Page protection vs. semi-protection

body:
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Guy Chapman aka JzG stated for the record:

> On Wed, 15 Mar 2006 11:08:53 +0000, you wrote:
>
>
>>>Personally, I find this thread about admin authority quite interesting.
>>>Especially as it coincides with [[Patrick Alexander (cartoonist)]] returning to
>>>[[WP:DRV]].
>
>
>>Its deletion and confirmation were a very good example of our
>>brain-dead deletion process.
>
>
> That's one way of looking at it.  Or you could assume good faith.
> Guy (JzG)

A reading from the Book of AGF:

"Of course, there's a difference between assuming good faith and
ignoring bad actions."

- --
 Sean Barrett     | The Internet is out of control, impossible to
 sean at epoptic.org | map accurately, and being used far beyond
                  | its original intentions. So far, so good.
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from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] more WP:OFFICE shenanigans

body:
On 3/14/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Mar 2006 06:01:54 -0500, you wrote:
>
> >So are we now going to ban road lobbyists from writing articles on
> >global warming?
>
> The articles on speed limits, speed cameras and so on are mostly
> written by people with an agenda against them :-)

Does Paul Smith edit?  I seem to recall seeing his name somewhere in
some Wikipedia context.  His Usenet posts are always worth a giggle.
Slightly less dim than most cranks.


from_name: Brian Dotson

body:
On 3/15/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:<snip>

> Additionally, if you review the sorts of things that are done to deal
> with complaints, they are almost all done in a very routine way.  We are
> most often assisting people who don't know about Wikipedia in doing
> things that they could do for themselves.
>
> And: nothing about the WP:OFFICE policy allows for permanent protection
> of any article.  The actions taken are *temporary* to allow time to sort
> things out which appear to be particularly serious.  Characterizing this
> as "going over the heads of editors" is wildly inaccurate.
>
> >>3. Actions listed above by Foundation staff are sometimes marked by
> >>WP:OFFICE and any interference with such actions by any editor can
> >>lead to revokation of editing/sysop rights.
>
> And many other actions undertaken by various members of the community
> are marked in a number of different ways, and any interference with such
> actions by any editor can lead to a revokation of editing/sysop rights.
> This is not unusual, this is not *contra* the community, this is *part
> of* the community process.

<snip>

As a site question: If the WMF makes itself available to arbitrate and be a
judge of article content, isn't the Foundation making itself liable for
*all* content on Wikipedia? In effect, by judging the content of one article
and placing it under WP:OFFICE protection, doesn't the Foundation open
itself up to litigation by other parties involving other content?

I'm no lawyer, that's why I'm confused and a bit concerned about this. And I
apologize if this was answered elsewhere in this thread; it's getting quite
long and unwieldy.

--
Brian W. Dotson
Website: http://bdotson.us
PGP Key: http://bdotson.us/pubkey.asc


from_name: nwilkins at bu.edu

subject: [WikiEN-l] Page protection vs. semi-protection

body:
>On Wed, 15 Mar 2006 11:08:53 +0000, you wrote:

>>> Personally, I find this thread about admin authority quite interesting.
>>> Especially as it coincides with [[Patrick Alexander (cartoonist)]] returning to
>>> [[WP:DRV]].

>>Its deletion and confirmation were a very good example of our
>>brain-dead deletion process.

Wed Mar 15 12:10:00 UTC 2006
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>That's one way of looking at it.  Or you could assume good faith.
>Guy (JzG)

Wed Mar 15 12:52:44 UTC 2006
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>Incidentally, did you look at the history of the user who kept
>re-creating the article?

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/DollyD
>http://tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/contribution_tree?namespace=0&user=DollyD&dbname=enwiki_p

>And these kinds of edits:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Patrick_Alexander&diff=34286252&oldid=34236527

>Which naturally arouses suspicions, good faith aside.
>Guy (JzG)

The recreations were, if I remember correctly, far from the POV job reverted by
Gaius Cornelius in the diff you give there.  And, at the time of the recreation,
the AfD page on the article said that the closing decision was "Keep"--the
article had been deleted without any explanation of why.  You can lambast me all
you want for closing that whilst not being an admin (that experience, of course,
being what makes this thread about admin authority so interesting to me).  But I
find it hard to dismiss an assumption that DollyD was, in good faith, attempting
to create an article about someone she thought deserved one.  Especially so soon
after your own good advice to Tony about assuming good faith.

-- Jonel


from_name: Ben Lowe

subject: [WikiEN-l] Few questions...

body:
[[List_of_adages_named_after_people]], from Amara's Law to Wirth's Law (both
laws cynical about the future of technology).

Ben

On 3/15/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/14/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > It's somehow related to Parkinson's Law.  Relatively speaking, the
> > Userbox War was the lesser in importance; that explains why it would be
> > more hotly debated. :-)
>
> I feel that you've hit on a key law of such things ;)
>
> Don't we have a list of those somewhere?
>
> -Matt
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] more WP:OFFICE shenanigans

body:
On 3/14/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> No Polish nationalists editing articles on Poland.  No strong religious
> believers (or strong atheists) editing articles on religion.  Etc.
>
> All do have some degree of merit---I would be more skeptical of an
> article on Christianity written by the Pope than I would be of one
> written by someone relatively neutral.  But are we actually going to
> have policies like that?

Eh? I would be skeptical of an article on Christianity that had never
been touched by a Christian. I would be skeptical of an article on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict that had never been touched by an Israeli
(or a Palestinian) for that matter.

The point is, you're saying "written" and I'm saying "touched". We
generally don't have articles "written" by one person - lots of people
stick a hand in and shape the article a bit. Particularly obnoxious
editors may have a large influence, but generally the overall result
takes into account the different influences fairly well.

Steve


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] more WP:OFFICE shenanigans

body:
On Wed, 15 Mar 2006 07:44:58 +0000, you wrote:

>Does Paul Smith edit?  I seem to recall seeing his name somewhere in
>some Wikipedia context.  His Usenet posts are always worth a giggle.
>Slightly less dim than most cranks.

Not to my knowledge, but there is an article on Safe Speed.  Smith
used to be half reasonable until his three month "outage", since he
returned from that his behaviour has been decidedly odd.

I particularly like the way he has decided that increasing mobile
phone use is "obviously" not the cause of any changes in road injury
rates, while speed cameras are although the change in rates is in no
way correlated with either the number of cameras or the length of road
covered, and in any case applies mainly to motorcyclists :-)
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright on Wikisource

body:
Yann Forget wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The question is asked whether we can host on Wikisource French authors whose
> works are not yet in the public domain in France, but are in the USA.
> Recently Villy and JB Soufron said we can't. JB Soufron supported the site
> "les Classiques des sciences sociales" when they host the very same works.
> Why not on Wikisource?
>
> However we do host such works in Wikisource for the last two years. Why
> changing policy now? On all subdomains, we apply US law regarding copyright.
> Why applying different laws, different standards, on different subdomains?
>
> More over, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of web sites hosted in US laws
> which have these kind of works. AFAIK, there never was any judgement against
> them. So I don't understand why Wikisource could not host these works.

Just on comment on this paragraph.
The fact other sites are not sued is not the proof it is legal. It may
simply be that such sites are not visible enough that the authors care.
However, it may be much more worthy to sue us.

> Further more, I would suggest than Wikisource should be hosted in Canada, so
> that the benefit of Canadian copyright law could be used.
>
> Regards,
>
> Yann
>


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright on Wikisource


from_name: jayjg

body:
On 3/13/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 3/13/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 3/13/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > Just allowing people to report errors isn't a problem.  The problems
> > > are acting on those reports without first verifying the true facts,
> > > and removing entire articles simply because some of the facts in that
> > > article are inaccurate.  Then of course there's the problem of
> > > protecting articles, though that one's probably arguable (now that
> > > semi-protection exists I can't personally think of a scenario where
> > > full protection is *ever* a good idea).
> > >
> > The argument is that since any form of protection is an unwanted
> > state, it's in certain senses better when it bothers more people -- it
> > motivates people to fix the underlying problems.
> [....]
> > If this doesn't make sense I can try to do a better job of explaining.
>
> No, that does make sense.  Though the way I see it, especially since
> the advent of the three revert rule, page protection only makes sense
> when dealing with sockpuppets, and semi-protection is a good
> protection against that which still allows established editors.
>
> And if page protection is only used in that way - in the face of a
> distributed sockpuppet attack, I really don't see how semi-protection
> hinders solving the underlying problems.
>
> But I suppose this presumes that page protection is only used in this
> limited sense, which doesn't reflect how it is actually used in
> practice.

Semi-protection is also used to stop banned editors with dynamic IPs from
editing; some of them are quite persistent.

Jay.


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Guardian article, pretty good

body:
"David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:fbad4e140603140535q5df89c8bg at mail.gmail.com...
> >From yesterday's Guardian:
> http://jobsadvice.guardian.co.uk/officehours/story/0,,1729329,00.html
> Also reprinted somewhat edited in the Hindustan Times:
> http://www.hindu.com/2006/03/14/stories/2006031405040900.htm
> Pretty good!

Excellent...I assume [[WP:SIGN]] has been notified?
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


body:
On 3/13/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/13/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > On 3/13/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 3/13/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > > Just allowing people to report errors isn't a problem.  The problems
> > > > are acting on those reports without first verifying the true facts,
> > > > and removing entire articles simply because some of the facts in
> that
> > > > article are inaccurate.  Then of course there's the problem of
> > > > protecting articles, though that one's probably arguable (now that
> > > > semi-protection exists I can't personally think of a scenario where
> > > > full protection is *ever* a good idea).
> > > >
> > > The argument is that since any form of protection is an unwanted
> > > state, it's in certain senses better when it bothers more people -- it
> > > motivates people to fix the underlying problems.
> > [....]
> > > If this doesn't make sense I can try to do a better job of explaining.
> >
> > No, that does make sense.  Though the way I see it, especially since
> > the advent of the three revert rule, page protection only makes sense
> > when dealing with sockpuppets, and semi-protection is a good
> > protection against that which still allows established editors.
> >
> > And if page protection is only used in that way - in the face of a
> > distributed sockpuppet attack, I really don't see how semi-protection
> > hinders solving the underlying problems.
> >
> > But I suppose this presumes that page protection is only used in this
> > limited sense, which doesn't reflect how it is actually used in
> > practice.
> >
> > To my mind, a fully protected page is the absolute worst state a page
> > can be in.  A vandalized but editable page is even better, in my
> > opinion.
> >
> Do you see how a semi-protected page could be worse than a fully protected
> page?

Not particularly.

Or, rather, having significant numbers of semi-protected pages could
> be worse than significant numbers of fully protected pages?

Let's try to quantify the problem here.  There are currently over a million
articles on Wikipedia.  Of them 14 (or 0.0014%) are currently permanently
protected, and 43 (or 0.0043%) are currently semi-protected.  Of the
semi-protected articles only two appear to be, for want of a better term,
"permanently semi-protected", George W. Bush and Jew; in the case of those
articles, the contributions by IP editors tend to consist almost exclusively
of vandalism, which usually starts up minutes after unprotection.  I can't
see how we're facing any sort of crisis at this point.

The argument hinges upon the assumptions such as that it's important
> to Wikipedia to a) encourage 1st-time editing or b) creating different
> classes of users is a long-term bad thing.
>

Given that 99.98% of Wikipedia articles are editable by first time editors,
I'm not seeing the relevance.  As for "different classes of users", we've
always had them, and I can't imagine how we wouldn't have them going
forward.  There are admins, bureaucrats, stewards, developers, etc.  As
well, because of page move vandalism, IP and new accounts have fewer
abilities than established accounts.

Wikipedia is a project which is attempting to create a great on-line
encyclopedia.  That is the goal.  Creating an on-line democracy, or
libertarian anarchy, is not the goal.

Jay.


from_name: Jean-Christophe Chazalette

subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright on Wikisource

body:
As I already told you, hosting material subject to copyright everywhere in
the world except in the USA is a mistake. The fact some texts by Andr? Gide
are PD-US because written before 1923 won't impress Gide's heirs. Foundation
has certainly better things to do with its money than spending it in lost
cases.
villy ~~JC
PS: and please please stop telling that the fact the servers are in the USA
is good enough to strictly care only for the US law - with the Yahoo case,
you should know better.  Foundation could be sued right here in Paris and
should spend money on explaining how it comes that its site, reachable in
France, offers copyrighted material for free.

2006/3/14, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net>:
>
> Hi,
>
> The question is asked whether we can host on Wikisource French authors
> whose
> works are not yet in the public domain in France, but are in the USA.
> Recently Villy and JB Soufron said we can't. JB Soufron supported the site
> "les Classiques des sciences sociales" when they host the very same works.
> Why not on Wikisource?
>
> However we do host such works in Wikisource for the last two years. Why
> changing policy now? On all subdomains, we apply US law regarding
> copyright.
> Why applying different laws, different standards, on different subdomains?
>
> More over, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of web sites hosted in US
> laws
> which have these kind of works. AFAIK, there never was any judgement
> against
> them. So I don't understand why Wikisource could not host these works.
>
> Further more, I would suggest than Wikisource should be hosted in Canada,
> so
> that the benefit of Canadian copyright law could be used.
>
> Regards,
>
> Yann
>
> --
> http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
> http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright on Wikisource


from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright on Wikisource

body:
On 3/14/06, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:

> The question is asked whether we can host on Wikisource French authors whose
> works are not yet in the public domain in France, but are in the USA.
> Recently Villy and JB Soufron said we can't. JB Soufron supported the site
> "les Classiques des sciences sociales" when they host the very same works.
> Why not on Wikisource?
>
> However we do host such works in Wikisource for the last two years. Why
> changing policy now? On all subdomains, we apply US law regarding copyright.
> Why applying different laws, different standards, on different subdomains?
>
> More over, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of web sites hosted in US laws
> which have these kind of works. AFAIK, there never was any judgement against
> them. So I don't understand why Wikisource could not host these works.
>
> Further more, I would suggest than Wikisource should be hosted in Canada, so
> that the benefit of Canadian copyright law could be used.

Again (this was already discussed on the French mailing list regarding
another matter), thinking that because the sites are in Florida (or
anywhere else in the world) that you can avoid, as a French resident,
French law, is quite disturbing indeed. Living in France, you *have*
to respect French law. So as contributors, we should always respect
the law of the country we live in in the first place.

This is, imho, basic  common sense, and (again) I am appalled that
anyone could ever suggest the contrary.

Anyway, let's get "lawyery" here.

Circular 38b of the United States Copyright office
(http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ38b.pdf) states:

"[This circular] amends section 104A of the Copyright Act to provide
for the automatic restoration of copyright in certain foreign works
that are in the public domain in the
United States but are protected by copyright or neighboring rights in
the source country. The effective date for restoration of copyright
for works from countries that are currently eligible is January 1,
1996.

and:

"Copyright in eligible works was restored January 1, 1996. To be
eligible, the work must meet all the following requirements:"

1. At the time the work was created, at least one author (or
rightholder in the case of a sound recording) must have been a
national or domiciliary of an eligible country. An
eligible country is a country, other than the United States, that is a
member of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and
Artistic Works (Berne Convention), is a member of the World Trade
Organization (WTO), or is subject to a presidential proclamation that
extends restored copyright protection to that country on the basis of
reciprocal treatment to the works of U.S. nationals or domiciliaries;
2. The work is not in the public domain in its source country through
expiration of the term of protection;
3. The work is in the public domain in the United States because the
work did not comply with formalities imposed at any time by the U.S.
law,4 the work lacked subject
matter protection in the United States in the case of sound recordings
fixed before February 15, 1972, or the work lacked national
eligibility in the United States; and
4. If published, the work must have first been published in an
eligible country and must not have been published in the United States
during the 30-day period following its first publication in that
eligible country.

And finally (can't get any clearer)

Term of Copyright
The copyright in any work in which copyright is restored will last for
the remainder of the term of copyright that the work would have
enjoyed if the work had never entered the public domain in the United
States.
Generally, the U.S. copyright term for works published before January
1, 1978, lasts for 95 years from the year of first publication. [snip]
For works published on or after January1, 1978, the term of copyright
is the life of the author plus 70 years.

For example:
I)A French short story that was first published without copyright
notice in 1935 will be treated as if it had both been published with a
proper notice and properly renewed, meaning that its restored
copyright will expire on December 31, 2030 (95 years after the U.S.
copyright would have come into existence).

This said, I am not a lawyer and have probably gotten all of that
wrong...(I didn't read the fine print).

Cheers,

Delphine

--
~notafish


subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright on Wikisource


body:
On 3/14/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 14/03/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Also reprinted somewhat edited in the Hindustan Times:
> >
> >  http://www.hindu.com/2006/03/14/stories/2006031405040900.htm
>
> I'm a bit bemused by the fact that the Grauniad is apparently
> distributing their stories with a two-year-old copyright date...

Very odd.  Having worked for Guardian Unlimited I went scurrying for
the feeds to see if they had forgotten to update their copyright date,
but that seems to be fine.  Possibly the Hindustan Times obtained the
story through a wire feed, which would probably have come (for
historical reasons I won't bore you with) via a different route from
the news office.


body:
On 3/15/06, nwilkins at bu.edu <nwilkins at bu.edu> wrote:
> Personally, I find this thread about admin authority quite interesting.
> Especially as it coincides with [[Patrick Alexander (cartoonist)]] returning to
> [[WP:DRV]].
>

Its deletion and confirmation were a very good example of our
brain-dead deletion process.


from_name: Fastfission

subject:
[WikiEN-l] When Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs
	2.5license makes sense

body:
On 3/15/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Being an HTML dweeb myself, I'm unsure whether to agree entirely (HTML
> > is not programming), get irritated (only a very silly minority think of
> > themselves as "programmers"), or sit in the corner and cry (I don't know C).
> >
>
> HTML dweebs can become programmers if they learn PHP or Javascript... :)

Ah, but 'tis a fine line between programming and "mere scripting", is it not?

FF


body:
"Steve Bennett" <stevage at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:f1c3529e0603140537x739a1e9aq9e8df2e1ce3917c1 at mail.gmail.com...
> On 3/14/06, Mark Gallagher
> <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>> Just a point ... there's no such thing as "html commands".
> Tell that to 351,000 google hits. By that measure we should create
> [[HTML commands]] straight away.
> Anyway, it's just a question of perspective. You could probably mount
> a case for saying that <IMG> is a command that loads an image from
> disk, resizes it, adds a border and displays it on the screen in a
> scrolly window!

You would then be lynched by a rampaging mob of disrespectable C hackers who
think it's disgraceful that HTML dweebs are allowed to call themselves
"programmers".

HTH HAND
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


list: wikitech-l

from_name: chris muse

subject: [Wikitech-l] Database redundancy

body:
We have been looking into possibly setting up a MySQL cluster to avoid some
of the complexities of a master-slave environment. Does the mediawiki code
support MySQL clustering? Has anyone tried testing a cluster with Wikipedia
or a smaller db? Also, how does wikipedia currently handle automatic
failover of a master-slave transition and then also later the slave-master
transition when the master comes back online? What do your scripts do now to
deal with that and what kind of monitoring do you to make sure everything is
in good health?

Thanks,
Chris


from_name: Gerben van der Stouwe

subject: [Wikipedia-l] exicornt switch

body:
One thing i can think of is making that page with a space in it or a
redirect to the mainpage. Then lock it. That way the vandal won't be
able to disrupt that article again. Of course usefull additions can't be
made as well but its the only viable solution I can think of, as
blocking AOL is definitly not what we want, isn't it.
greetz gerbennn

Mark Williamson schreef:
> Seeing as the user comes from AOL, I can't help but agree.
>
> On 15/03/06, - Essjay - <essjaywiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>> It has something to do with railroad track switching, I'm not exactly sure
>> what. This has become a serious problem on many of the Wiktionaries. As I
>> understand it, it was originally a problem on the English Wikipedia,
>> complete with abusive sockpuppets and mass disruption; the problem has
>> apparently been snuffed out there.
>>
>> A few days ago, a checkuser was done on the vandals on the wiktionaries; I'd
>> suggest a checkuser on the corresponding user on the English Wikipedia, and
>> if the results match up, a Jimbo-level ban. This is becoming a serious,
>> serious problem.
>>
>> Essjay
>>
>> On 3/15/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> What, may I ask, did he claim was the meaning of "exicornt"? When I
>>> read your e-mail, I just couldn't stop laughing.
>>>
>>> I've seen all sorts of weird vandals, as well as people trying to
>>> plant false information, but the idea that somebody would invent a
>>> word and claim it was real, especially something as ludicrous sounding
>>> as "exicornt" (I don't believe any real English words end in -ornt,
>>> and not many end in -rnt).
>>>
>>> Mark
>>>
>>> On 14/03/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Hoi,
>>>> On the en:Wiktionary there is a bozo who thinks it funny to create
>>>> articles with titles like "exicornt switch". This is a non existing
>>>> word. The guy insists to create this article and uses any means to get
>>>> his way. I have been told that this guy is a user on the en.wikipedia as
>>>> well. As the frustration of this guy is getting to a level where AOL is
>>>> being blocked, I would like to know if we can cooperate and do something
>>>> about this vandal.
>>>>
>>>> It is a daily annoyance. :(
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>>    GerardM
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Essjay
>> -----
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
>> Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
>> http://www.wikipedia.org/
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>
>
> --
> "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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body:
On Wed, 15 Mar 2006 11:08:53 +0000, you wrote:

>> Personally, I find this thread about admin authority quite interesting.
>> Especially as it coincides with [[Patrick Alexander (cartoonist)]] returning to
>> [[WP:DRV]].

>Its deletion and confirmation were a very good example of our
>brain-dead deletion process.

That's one way of looking at it.  Or you could assume good faith.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Database redundancy

body:
chris muse wrote:
> We have been looking into possibly setting up a MySQL cluster to avoid some
> of the complexities of a master-slave environment. Does the mediawiki code
> support MySQL clustering?

We don't support MySQL Cluster at this time, as it's currently limited in many
ways. (Everything must fit in memory, can't have certain field types, etc.)

> Also, how does wikipedia currently handle automatic
> failover of a master-slave transition and then also later the slave-master
> transition when the master comes back online?

We currently handle failover manually by switching things around from the
primary master to a standby. The previous master then gets cleaned up, put back
into service as a slave, and is available as a standby for the next exciting
failure.

> what kind of monitoring do you to make sure everything is
> in good health?

Not enough; servmon is currently broken and offline.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Retrieving article deleted for NN

body:
I sent the deleted content to him.

On 3/15/06, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/16/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hello all,
> >   An article dear to my heart (well, more an article about a subject
> > dear to my heart) has apparently recently deleted for non-notability.
> > Although I actually agree with that designation, I suddenly sympathise
> > with anyone who's had an article deleted! Particularly some of the
> > (good faith) remarks made on the AfD page like "Delete. It still
> > amazes me some of the topics that people think are notable." -
> >
> > Just wondering whether it's possible for me to get the content (and if
> > possible, history) of the article back? There are probably more
> > appropriate places to host it. Or maybe even trim it down and merge it
> > into some other article.
> >
> >
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Engineering_Music_Society
> >
> > Steve
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> Steve,
>
> I was one of those people who voted to delete this article and I stand by
> the vote although I sympathise with you.
>
> You could go to Deletion review. However, I suggested in the discussion
> that
> the subject could warrant a brief mention on the University of Melbourne
> article. However, unless it had members who went on to have notable
> musical
> careers or had some other form of impact on the wider world, I don't think
> it warrants a standalone article.
>
> Regards
>
>
> Keith Old
> _______________________________________________
> 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 Wed, 15 Mar 2006 11:08:53 +0000, you wrote:

>Its deletion and confirmation were a very good example of our
>brain-dead deletion process.

Incidentally, did you look at the history of the user who kept
re-creating the article?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/DollyD
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/contribution_tree?namespace=0&user=DollyD&dbname=enwiki_p

And these kinds of edits:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Patrick_Alexander&diff=34286252&oldid=34236527

Which naturally arouses suspicions, good faith aside.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [Wikitech-l] Database redundancy

body:
chris muse wrote:
> What mediawiki code would need to be rewritten and has anyone tried to
> do a cluster with the non-supported stuff as a regular InnoDB? Is it
> just the blob stuff that's a problem? I was also just kind of curious
> of what the game plan was on the horizon, if you were holding out
> until MySQL added support in a later version or if other things were
> eclipsing database stuff at the moment.

Currently waiting for the upcoming versions which allow disk-backed data, etc.
No point in rushing in when our own contributors who are MySQL employees are
telling us to wait for it to mature a bit. :)

> What is the general consensus on Oracle?


from_name: MHart

subject: [Wikitech-l] Writing a Forum Extension

body:
I wrote a forum extension that could just show forum stuff within the wiki
page. It would show a forum's threads or an individual topic. Clicking on
something would take you to the forum where you could post and such.

It's still running in my wiki, but it isn't being used... because the forum
isn't being used. I've found that an email group is the preferred way for
people to talk about the wiki rather than use the forum.

The extension works with phpBB and essentially scrapes the forum and shows
the results in a hide-able DIV. The <forum></forum> options include show and
hide (if you want to start out with the forum shown). Clicking a link that
the extension creates hides or shows the div with the forum.

Here's the syntax: <forum>show=1,f=1,t=1,title=Some Title</forum>  where f=#
some forum number, t=# some topic number, title is what to show in the
hide/show link.

You can have it if you want - just drop me an email. Maybe I should post
this on meta...

- MHart

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nathan Spaeth" <loplin at gmail.com>
To: <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2006 9:24 PM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Writing a Forum Extension

>I am planning on adding forum functionality to my wiki via extension. I'dd
> first like to get comments from those of you more knowledgeable in regards
> to php and MediaWiki. I would appreciate suggested modifications, or even
> better, signs of support, so that I know that I'm not going about this in
> a
> bassackwords way. Solutions to the problems at the bottom are especially
> looked for. Here is my plan (which makes extensive use of subpages):
>
> It would be called via something like <forum><forum>. This could be on
> talk
> pages or main article pages. This will create a thread index, much like
> you
> see with your normal VBulletin or PHPbb type forums. This page and all of
> its subpages should then (desirably) be protected from editing.
>
> Each thread would be a subpage of the the initial article. Each message
> would be a subpage of the article. Each message would be included into the
> thread page via template includes ( {{{{}}}} ).
> So using 'Gatorade' as an example, we would have these potential addresses
> (with Taste as a potential thread Title)...
>
> Gatorade                 -The thread index
> Gatorade/Taste       -The Taste thread, containg all of the messages in
> this
> thread
> Gatorade/Taste/16  -The 16th message of the Taste thread, viewed by itself
>
> or
>
> Talk:Gatorade                 -The thread index
> Talk:Gatorade/Taste       -The Taste thread, containg all of the messages
> in
> this thread
> Talk:Gatorade/Taste/16  -The 16th message of the Taste thread, viewed by
> itself
>
>
> Some benefits of this system:
> Requires very little modification to the main MediaWiki code. = Easy to
> update MediaWiki in the future
>
> It prevents people from making multiple threads with the same title. If
> someone else came down a few months later and wanted to talk about
> 'Taste',
> if they managed to avoid the 'Search' function they migh Possibly use the
> same title as before, in whichcase they would get a warning about it and
> the
> suggestion of adding on to the previous discussion if necessary.
>
> It is easy to link to forums instead of the conventional way with urls
> like
> :
> http://someforum.somesite.com/viewtopic.php?t=138
> http://someforum.somesite.com/viewforum.php?f=3&sid=e48431baee22f58e06561de4a6a5cf9d
> and
> http://someforum.somesite.com/index.php?s=3843d342de247afe550768eae06be2d2&showtopic=911
>
> It Doesn't require it's own db schema and content is fully integrated with
> MediaWiki.
>
> Some drawbacks:
> Its a bit clunky because it doesn't have its own db schema.
>
> There were some other ones, but I forgot them now :/
>
>
> Here are some problems I know I will face when implementing this:
> The disabling of directly editing a whole Namespace and only the namespace
> or, all potential article subpages for one particular Article.
> Preventing each edit or new message from showing up on recent changes and
> instead have a more Customized Recent Changes Message like 'Talk:Gatorade
> :
> Loplin posted a reply in the Taste thread.'
>
>
> Again, comments are appreciated.
> Thanks
> Nathan Spaeth
>
> --
> If you have a penny and I have a penny, and we exchange pennies, we both
> have one penny but if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange
> ideas, then, we will both have two ideas.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: geni

body:
On 3/15/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Delirium wrote:
> > 1) How is someone calling up the Wikimedia Foundation and getting a page
> > protected not going "over the head" of editors, and not acting in a
> > "top-down manner"?  Even if justified in some cases, it's clearly doing
> > just that.
>
> The same effect could be achieved by any knowledgeable person by popping
> into an irc channel and asking any of a large number of people to assist
> with a serious problem.  If you, for example, protected a page with a
> short explanation on the talk page that you think there's a serious
> legal problem and asking people, as a courtesy, to leave the page
> protected until the Foundation legal team has had an opportunity to
> review the situation, then I would fully expect that to stick.
>

Are you withdrawing WP:OFFICE from those areas not involveing legal
threats? If no the above defence fails.

--
geni


from_name: Anuradha Ratnaweera

subject: [Wikitech-l] Next and previous links

body:
Hi all,

I am looking for Mediawiki extensions to do the following, and to
write them if they don't exist:

- show links to the next and previous articles (in alphabetical order)
- provide some index pages to the wiki, so visitors can "browse" the
wiki without using the search box

Please let me know if there are any existing extensions that can do
this.  Thanks in advance.

        Anuradha
--
http://www.linux.lk/~anuradha/
http://anuradha-ratnaweera.blogspot.com


from_name: Brian

subject: [Wikitech-l] Moving article

body:
Phil Boswell wrote:

>"Rudy Koot" <r.koot at students.uu.nl> wrote in
>message news:44184DEC.7020908 at students.uu.nl...
>
>
>>We are planning to move the article "11th edition of the Encyclop?dia
>>Britannica" to "Encyclop?dia Britannica Eleventh Edition". As there are
>>some odd 15000 articles linking to it, could this cause any problems?
>>
>>
>
>Probably not.
>
>Those links are not automatically altered: the software creates a REDIRECT
>where the old article was pointing at the new article. It is then your job,
>assuming you are the "mover", to go through the list of links to that
>REDIRECT and update them.
>
>Assuming you are talking about en.wikipedia.org, I can heartily recommend
>AutoWikiBrowser for such a job, which can be found at [[WP:AWB]].
>
>HTH HAND
>
>
A bot could do this much more easily.


from_name: Death Phoenix

body:
Me too. Basically, anyone listed in [[:Category: User undeletion]], which is
linked to {{user recovery}} (note: this is NOT a userbox).

On 3/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 15 Mar 2006 18:45:22 +0100, you wrote:
>
> > there's several admins quite willing to retrieve content if you
> >don't plan on reposting exact copies
>
> Me, for one.
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Servien Ilaino

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Europanto

body:
Hoi,

Ich ne denk pas that een Europanto Wikipedia ist een bon idee, een couple de
spr?ker sollen be gebruikt und rien ne sollen pas het f?rst?r.

It's more like a fun language, but as I said some languages will be used
more than others, it also seems like a project which is more intended for
fun than a serious encyclopedia.

Serv

2006/3/15, europanto <europanto at gmail.com>:
>
>
> Hay d?j? een plan f?r une europanto wikipedia
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/One_supporter#Europanto
> but ... ;o)
>
>
> --
> View this message in context:
> http://www.nabble.com/Europanto-t1056989.html#a3413774
> Sent from the Wikipedia General forum at Nabble.com.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
On Wed, 15 Mar 2006 06:48:31 -0800, you wrote:

>> That's one way of looking at it.  Or you could assume good faith.
>> Guy (JzG)

>A reading from the Book of AGF:
>"Of course, there's a difference between assuming good faith and
>ignoring bad actions."

Yup.  In this case it is not that simple.

Steve Block made a good point, but the delete supporters were looking
at the content of the article as written by "fan" DollyD.  Multiple
re-creation does not aid calm.

Which is why I suggested at DRV that we sit back and wait a while
(it's OK, we won't miss the deadline - there isn't one).  Steve seemed
happy enough with that.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: - Essjay -

subject: [Wikitech-l] what happens to cvs-access?

body:
Having the same problem, and I hear that many others have as well. Is this a
problem with SourceForge?

Essjay

On 3/15/06, Heinz <h-j.luecking at t-online.de> wrote:
>
> i get no access
>
> http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/wikipedia
>
> heinz
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
Essjay
-----
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Should AfD pages be blanked?

body:
On 3/15/06, Ben Lowe <ben.lowe at gmail.com> wrote:
> What exactly *is* the policy on this?  Any old-timers want to weigh in,
> either here or "down there" on the Wiki?

Per what Jimmy said and common sense, we'll blank AFDs normally on
request or if there's a good reason to do so.  However, it would be a
good idea to document who requested it and why - either in the summary
field for the blanking edit or on the talk page.

It's understandable that we might not want our AFD debate being the #1
Google return for someone's name or even a company name - partly
because our debates can be sometimes a bit bare-knuckle.  I'd rather
hide the debate after the fact than try to make people be less
forthright in their opinions!

-Matt


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Europanto

body:
Ik demande mi wie Wikicity gebraucht, ei kukaan me trora ;)

Serv

2006/3/15, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com>:
>
> Servien Ilaino wrote:
> > Hoi,
> >
> > Ich ne denk pas that een Europanto Wikipedia ist een bon idee, een
> couple de
> > spr?ker sollen be gebruikt und rien ne sollen pas het f?rst?r.
> >
> > It's more like a fun language, but as I said some languages will be used
> > more than others, it also seems like a project which is more intended
> for
> > fun than a serious encyclopedia.
> >
>
> Perhaps a Wikicity?
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] more WP:OFFICE shenanigans

body:
On 3/15/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Is there a legitimate reason for it besides fear that some
> jackass in the media is going to say "lol wikipedia lets pedophiles edit
> articles relating to pedophilia"?

I suspect that when such article appears, it will be with rather less
of the 'lol's and rather more of the high moral outrage.  With a
lynch-mob to follow, naturally.

-Matt


from_name: Rich Morin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Where is the database Schema, etc?

body:
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
At 5:57 PM -0800 3/12/06, Brion Vibber wrote:
> We've already provided documentation, so if you have specific
> questions after reading these documents, you'll need to go
> ahead and actually ask them... :)

Works for me...

-r

Q:  Are there any changes in the DB schema for MW 1.6?

Q:  Is there any column-level documentation of the tables?

    What I'd like is a 1-2 line definition of each column, with
    extra attention paid to foreign keys, etc.  If there isn't
    such a resource, at present, I'd be willing to set up some
    templates and keep track (at least, initially :-) of the
    submitted definitions.

Q:  Are ERDs available for 1.5.X and/or 1.6?

    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:DER_Mediawiki.PNG

Q:  Where did the ERDs come from?

    The page doesn't indicate the image's provenance, save for:

      * (del) (cur) 15:18, 7 November 2005 . . Lamassa (Talk)
        . . 870x424 (15614 bytes) (Diagram Entity Relationship
        from the mediawiki database 1.4.X)

    I'd like to know how it was generated, by whom, etc.

Q:  General "image map" comment/question

    Although the ERD Diagram, is an image map, it has only one
    "region".  Is there a convention for using multi-region image
    maps?  On a diagram such as this, one possibility is to make
    the  "background" link to the "Image" page.

Q:  Speculative "image map" comment/question

    Would you like to have the icons (and perhaps, edges) on the
    ERD Diagram link to specific pages?  Pop-ups could give short
    descriptions of each item.  And, if you want to get fancy, an
    image-mapped diagram of the "local neighborhood".

    FWIW, I did something very similar to this for a NASA project:

      http://www.slac.stanford.edu/exp/glast/flight/web/a_pnp/Pack_LSE.shtml
      http://www.slac.stanford.edu/exp/glast/flight/web/e_tut/diagrams.shtml
      http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/MBD/mbd_cs_fsw.php

Q:  What is the story on "User_Talk:Foo" links/pages?

    The User_talk:Lamassa link brings up a non-existent page.
    Is this a way to send a note to "Lamassa"?  (The page gives
    no hints.)  If not, what is it and where is it documented?

That should get us started (:-).

-r
--
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm            Rich Morin
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/resume     rdm at cfcl.com
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/weblog     +1 650-873-7841

Technical editing and writing, programming, and web development


body:
>From thier status page:

(* 2006-03-13 12:42:16* - Project CVS Service )   As of 2006-03-12 pserver
(anonymous) CVS services, along with tarballs and ViewCVS are down for
projects that start with the letters e, i, j, o, v, w and x. We hope to
resolve this issue in the next 2 days.

Hmmm, so much for next two days....

Essjay

On 3/15/06, Carl F?rstenberg <azatoth at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Their svn-service at the moment is much better than their cvs-access.
>
> On 3/15/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Public Health Alert: SourceForge anon CVS is known to be shit. And the
> > regular access isn't much better, either. I expect it's borked right
> > now, give it a few.
> >
> >
> > Rob Church
> >
> > On 15/03/06, - Essjay - <essjaywiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Having the same problem, and I hear that many others have as well. Is
> this a
> > > problem with SourceForge?
> > >
> > > Essjay
> > >
> > > On 3/15/06, Heinz <h-j.luecking at t-online.de> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > i get no access
> > > >
> > > > http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/wikipedia
> > > >
> > > > heinz
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > > > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Essjay
> > > -----
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
> > > Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
> > > http://www.wikipedia.org/
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
Essjay
-----
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


subject: [Wikitech-l] Database redundancy

body:
> We don't support MySQL Cluster at this time, as it's currently limited in many
> ways. (Everything must fit in memory, can't have certain field types, etc.)

What mediawiki code would need to be rewritten and has anyone tried to
do a cluster with the non-supported stuff as a regular InnoDB? Is it
just the blob stuff that's a problem? I was also just kind of curious
of what the game plan was on the horizon, if you were holding out
until MySQL added support in a later version or if other things were
eclipsing database stuff at the moment. What is the general consensus
on Oracle?

Thanks,
Chris

On 3/15/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> chris muse wrote:
> > We have been looking into possibly setting up a MySQL cluster to avoid some
> > of the complexities of a master-slave environment. Does the mediawiki code
> > support MySQL clustering?
>
> We don't support MySQL Cluster at this time, as it's currently limited in many
> ways. (Everything must fit in memory, can't have certain field types, etc.)
>
> > Also, how does wikipedia currently handle automatic
> > failover of a master-slave transition and then also later the slave-master
> > transition when the master comes back online?
>
> We currently handle failover manually by switching things around from the
> primary master to a standby. The previous master then gets cleaned up, put back
> into service as a slave, and is available as a standby for the next exciting
> failure.
>
> > what kind of monitoring do you to make sure everything is
> > in good health?
>
> Not enough; servmon is currently broken and offline.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


body:
Rich Morin wrote:
> Q:  Are there any changes in the DB schema for MW 1.6?

Yes, we have made some changes so far. You can compare the commented tables.sql
files between 1.5 and the current 1.6 in CVS HEAD to see all such changes.

> Q:  Is there any column-level documentation of the tables?
>
>     What I'd like is a 1-2 line definition of each column, with
>     extra attention paid to foreign keys, etc.  If there isn't
>     such a resource, at present, I'd be willing to set up some
>     templates and keep track (at least, initially :-) of the
>     submitted definitions.

You will find *exactly* this in tables.sql, which is why I referred you to it.

> Q:  Are ERDs available for 1.5.X and/or 1.6?

No.

> Q:  Where did the ERDs come from?

We don't have any ERDs. If any exist, they were created by third parties and we
have no knowledge of htem.

> Q:  What is the story on "User_Talk:Foo" links/pages?
>
>     The User_talk:Lamassa link brings up a non-existent page.
>     Is this a way to send a note to "Lamassa"?  (The page gives
>     no hints.)  If not, what is it and where is it documented?

Click "edit" and write a message on the page.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 3/15/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/13/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 3/13/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > On 3/13/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > On 3/13/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > > > Just allowing people to report errors isn't a problem.  The problems
> > > > > are acting on those reports without first verifying the true facts,
> > > > > and removing entire articles simply because some of the facts in
> > that
> > > > > article are inaccurate.  Then of course there's the problem of
> > > > > protecting articles, though that one's probably arguable (now that
> > > > > semi-protection exists I can't personally think of a scenario where
> > > > > full protection is *ever* a good idea).
> > > > >
> > > > The argument is that since any form of protection is an unwanted
> > > > state, it's in certain senses better when it bothers more people -- it
> > > > motivates people to fix the underlying problems.
> > > [....]
> > > > If this doesn't make sense I can try to do a better job of explaining.
> > >
> > > No, that does make sense.  Though the way I see it, especially since
> > > the advent of the three revert rule, page protection only makes sense
> > > when dealing with sockpuppets, and semi-protection is a good
> > > protection against that which still allows established editors.
> > >
> > > And if page protection is only used in that way - in the face of a
> > > distributed sockpuppet attack, I really don't see how semi-protection
> > > hinders solving the underlying problems.
> > >
> > > But I suppose this presumes that page protection is only used in this
> > > limited sense, which doesn't reflect how it is actually used in
> > > practice.
> > >
> > > To my mind, a fully protected page is the absolute worst state a page
> > > can be in.  A vandalized but editable page is even better, in my
> > > opinion.
> > >
> > Do you see how a semi-protected page could be worse than a fully protected
> > page?
>
>
> Not particularly.
>
> Or, rather, having significant numbers of semi-protected pages could
> > be worse than significant numbers of fully protected pages?
>
>
> Let's try to quantify the problem here.  There are currently over a million
> articles on Wikipedia.  Of them 14 (or 0.0014%) are currently permanently
> protected, and 43 (or 0.0043%) are currently semi-protected.  Of the
> semi-protected articles only two appear to be, for want of a better term,
> "permanently semi-protected", George W. Bush and Jew; in the case of those
> articles, the contributions by IP editors tend to consist almost exclusively
> of vandalism, which usually starts up minutes after unprotection.  I can't
> see how we're facing any sort of crisis at this point.
>
> The argument hinges upon the assumptions such as that it's important
> > to Wikipedia to a) encourage 1st-time editing or b) creating different
> > classes of users is a long-term bad thing.
> >
>
> Given that 99.98% of Wikipedia articles are editable by first time editors,
> I'm not seeing the relevance.  As for "different classes of users", we've
> always had them, and I can't imagine how we wouldn't have them going
> forward.  There are admins, bureaucrats, stewards, developers, etc.  As
> well, because of page move vandalism, IP and new accounts have fewer
> abilities than established accounts.

We haven't always had them. Back in the UseMod days there was just
about one class of user. Each year a few new layers of hierarchy and
bureaucracy are added.

> Wikipedia is a project which is attempting to create a great on-line
> encyclopedia.  That is the goal.  Creating an on-line democracy, or
> libertarian anarchy, is not the goal.

Right. But one might convincingly argue that certain architectural
principles are central to the success of the project. One important
principle should be that the only reason an article should get more
difficult to improve over time is that it is approaching perfection.

It shouldn't become more difficult because editing would require
engaging a thicket of non-human-understandable templates or dealing
with a 100,000 word document, or satisfying anything other than
objective criteria to make a change.

If Wikipedia articles get frozen in stone we lose in the long run.

Stuff like that.

It's not a coincidence that Wikipedia is a successful project and that
Wikipedia has an open structure, process, and architecture.


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright on Wikisource

body:
Furthermore, our *goals* -- neverminding the legal problesm that
Jean-Christophe Chazalette wrote about -- our *goals* include a very
high degree of reusability.  Hosting materials that are subject to
copyright everywhere in the world except in the USA is a mistake on the
simple grounds that such work would not be redistributable anywhere else.

This is why we should take a very very skeptical eye toward the use of
"fair use" even in English.

! Chris Sherlock wrote:
> Jean-Christophe Chazalette wrote:
>
> As I already told you, hosting material subject to copyright everywhere in
> the world except in the USA is a mistake. The fact some texts by Andr? Gide
> are PD-US because written before 1923 won't impress Gide's heirs. Foundation
> has certainly better things to do with its money than spending it in lost
> cases.
> villy ~~JC
> PS: and please please stop telling that the fact the servers are in the USA
> is good enough to strictly care only for the US law - with the Yahoo case,
> you should know better.  Foundation could be sued right here in Paris and
> should spend money on explaining how it comes that its site, reachable in
> France, offers copyrighted material for free.
>
> I was under the impression that the U.S. had treaties with France and in
> some circumstances will honour their laws. Is this the case or not?
>
> Chris
> TBSDY
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright on Wikisource


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Too much agglomeration

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>Someone please tell me how this article
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_Naval_Base
>
>is better off not being broken up into separate entries.
>
Wow, it's sure grown since I looked at it last. I think it's ready
to be its own project now - gitmo.wikimedia.org, complete with
full bios of all the prisoners and all the guards, and entries
like [[15 March 2006 at Gitmo]] to record the events of each day
(only the *notable* events of course).

Stan


from_name: SJ

subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright on Wikisource

body:
On Wed, 15 Mar 2006, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Furthermore, our *goals* -- neverminding the legal problesm that
> Jean-Christophe Chazalette wrote about -- our *goals* include a very
> high degree of reusability.  Hosting materials that are subject to
> copyright everywhere in the world except in the USA is a mistake on the
> simple grounds that such work would not be redistributable anywhere else.
>
> This is why we should take a very very skeptical eye toward the use of
> "fair use" even in English.

In counterpoint, Wikipedia is a prime example of the importance of fair
use as a catalyst for better information and education.  To the extent
that the world is still working out the 'right' way to allow commentary,
satire, and analysis while protecting author's rights, it is relevant that
Wikipedia takes advantage of fair use.  Changing policy to stop doing so
would likewise influence those ongoing "fair use standards" debates.

SJ

> ! Chris Sherlock wrote:
>> Jean-Christophe Chazalette wrote:
>>
>> As I already told you, hosting material subject to copyright everywhere in
>> the world except in the USA is a mistake. The fact some texts by Andr? Gide
>> are PD-US because written before 1923 won't impress Gide's heirs. Foundation
>> has certainly better things to do with its money than spending it in lost
>> cases.
>> villy ~~JC
>> PS: and please please stop telling that the fact the servers are in the USA
>> is good enough to strictly care only for the US law - with the Yahoo case,
>> you should know better.  Foundation could be sued right here in Paris and
>> should spend money on explaining how it comes that its site, reachable in
>> France, offers copyrighted material for free.
>>
>> I was under the impression that the U.S. had treaties with France and in
>> some circumstances will honour their laws. Is this the case or not?
>>
>> Chris
>> TBSDY
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>


subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright on Wikisource


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Europanto

body:
I agree here, although it would be interesting if somebody wrote a
Europanto script.

Mark

On 15/03/06, Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> > Servien Ilaino wrote:
> >
> >> Hoi,
> >>
> >> Ich ne denk pas that een Europanto Wikipedia ist een bon idee, een couple de
> >> spr?ker sollen be gebruikt und rien ne sollen pas het f?rst?r.
> >>
> >> It's more like a fun language, but as I said some languages will be used
> >> more than others, it also seems like a project which is more intended for
> >> fun than a serious encyclopedia.
> >>
> >>
> >
> > Perhaps a Wikicity?
> >
> >
> As I said when this was last brought up, it should only take the writing
> of a fairly simple script, and you can munge en: and Wiktionary more or
> less instantly into over 1,000,000 Europanto articles. Given that, why
> bother? In my opinion, once you've realized this, the task becomes about
> as interesting as Sudoku does once you've written a constraint-search
> solver.
>
> -- Neil
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Too much agglomeration

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> Someone please tell me how this article
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_Naval_Base
>
> is better off not being broken up into separate entries.
>
I count four sections that are already broken off into separate entries:

[[Camp Delta]]
[[Camp Iguana]]/
/[[Combatant Status Review Tribunal]]
[[Periodic Report of the United States of America to the United Nations
Committee Against Torture]]

It looks like it could use more, though. Is anyone trying to stop you
from doing it? I don't see anything obvious in the history or talk pages
discussing this issue.


body:
On 3/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/15/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It shouldn't become more difficult because editing would require
> > engaging a thicket of non-human-understandable templates or dealing
> > with a 100,000 word document, or satisfying anything other than
> > objective criteria to make a change.
> >
> > If Wikipedia articles get frozen in stone we lose in the long run.
>
> The devil's advocate might ask, what changes need to be made to
> [[George W Bush]] that aren't getting made because it's all too much
> hard work?
>
> In other words, the semi-protected articles probably *are* approaching
> perfection. In as much as GWB can ever be perfect.
>
Wouldn't be a very good devil's advocate. There's been millions of
consequences of the Bush presidency, and millions to come. Until the
corpus of George W. Bush-related entries covers all of them, the
articles won't be perfect. As the gateway to that information,
[[George W. Bush]] will constantly need to change.

Or shorter: W. still has two years to go in his presidency. An article
about W. that stopped history at 2006 would be strangely incomplete.


from_name: Pär Törnell

subject: [WikiEN-l] My IP is blockt for incorrect reasons

body:
After a controverse regarding the page "Swedish democrats" me and user Wgee have agreed that the material I have contributed with shall stand - and not be removed. The administrator FloNight have helped us reaching this agreement. That the material NOT shall be deleted is also her opinin.

  The user 'liftarn' however don?t care about this and keeps deleting my contributions. I want to continue working with the material, as I, WGee and FloNight have agreed about. Then its obvious that its ?liftarn? that is going against this agreement and not me.

  When I reinsert what he delets, he reports ME for violation of the three-revert rule and get my IP blocked. Can anyone help to correct this?

  Regards, SweHomer IP 81.231.226.14


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Moving article

body:
"Rudy Koot" <r.koot at students.uu.nl> wrote in
message news:44184DEC.7020908 at students.uu.nl...
> We are planning to move the article "11th edition of the Encyclop?dia
> Britannica" to "Encyclop?dia Britannica Eleventh Edition". As there are
> some odd 15000 articles linking to it, could this cause any problems?

Probably not.

Those links are not automatically altered: the software creates a REDIRECT
where the old article was pointing at the new article. It is then your job,
assuming you are the "mover", to go through the list of links to that
REDIRECT and update them.

Assuming you are talking about en.wikipedia.org, I can heartily recommend
AutoWikiBrowser for such a job, which can be found at [[WP:AWB]].

HTH HAND
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Ben Lowe

subject: [WikiEN-l] Should AfD pages be blanked?

body:
What exactly *is* the policy on this?  Any old-timers want to weigh in,
either here or "down there" on the Wiki?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Wales&diff=43955204&oldid=43930440

Ben


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] more WP:OFFICE shenanigans

body:
Matt Brown wrote:

>On 3/14/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>
>>Should we extend this to a general policy?
>>
>>
>
>No.  Allowing pedophile-fears to define our policy is an even more
>extreme example of letting the edge cases define the general than we
>already do.  I emphatically do not agree with barring subject experts
>from participating in articles on their specialty, and that is what
>this kind of policy will end up doing.  After all, it's hard to be an
>expert in anything and not have strong opinions about the topic, one
>way or another.
>
>Rather, we should simply be strict about our existing policies like
>NPOV, and ensuring that pedophiles and their apologists do not get to
>slant articles in their direction - especially since theirs is an
>extreme minority viewpoint, and the NPOV policy states that views held
>by an extreme minority do NOT have to get equal space (or indeed any
>space, in some cases).
>
>
I agree wholeheartedly, which is why I find Jimbo's actions on
[[en:Justin Berry]] so disturbing.  I have no problems banning a user
(either entirely, or from certain types of articles) if they can't edit
neutrally; I have no problems reverting their non-neutral edits and
removing inaccurate/slanted information; and so on.  A blanket
prohibition on any text ever touched by the user being in the article,
though---even going so far as to insist that their neutral contributions
be independently rewritten by someone else---seems to be a bit of a
witch-hunt.  Is there a legitimate reason for it besides fear that some
jackass in the media is going to say "lol wikipedia lets pedophiles edit
articles relating to pedophilia"?  Self-identified Satanists who've
edited [[en:Satanism]] had better hope the U.S. media doesn't have a
recurrence of its 1990s moral panic over Satanism!

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright on Wikisource

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Furthermore, our *goals* -- neverminding the legal problesm that
>Jean-Christophe Chazalette wrote about -- our *goals* include a very
>high degree of reusability.  Hosting materials that are subject to
>copyright everywhere in the world except in the USA is a mistake on the
>simple grounds that such work would not be redistributable anywhere else.
>
>
I agree with that, but there needs to be a balance short of "only host
materials that are freely redistributable in every single country in the
world", lest we end up having to follow the most restrictive copyright
laws in the world.  Under that interpretation, we could, for example,
never post the King James Version of the Bible, because in the United
Kingdom its publication is controlled in perpetuity by the Monarch.  Not
to mention all the many books we can't legally distribute in countries
like China for reasons unrelated to copyright.

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright on Wikisource


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Wed, 15 Mar 2006 18:45:22 +0100, you wrote:

> there's several admins quite willing to retrieve content if you
>don't plan on reposting exact copies

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


from_name: Rudy Koot

subject: [Wikitech-l] Moving article

body:
Hello,

We are planning to move the article "11th edition of the Encyclop?dia
Britannica" to "Encyclop?dia Britannica Eleventh Edition". As there are
some odd 15000 articles linking to it, could this cause any problems?

Cheers,

Ruud


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
Hello all,
  An article dear to my heart (well, more an article about a subject
dear to my heart) has apparently recently deleted for non-notability.
Although I actually agree with that designation, I suddenly sympathise
with anyone who's had an article deleted! Particularly some of the
(good faith) remarks made on the AfD page like "Delete. It still
amazes me some of the topics that people think are notable." -

Just wondering whether it's possible for me to get the content (and if
possible, history) of the article back? There are probably more
appropriate places to host it. Or maybe even trim it down and merge it
into some other article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Engineering_Music_Society

Steve


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

subject: [WikiEN-l] more WP:OFFICE shenanigans

body:
On 3/15/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> I agree wholeheartedly, which is why I find Jimbo's actions on
> [[en:Justin Berry]] so disturbing.  I have no problems banning a user
> (either entirely, or from certain types of articles) if they can't edit
> neutrally; I have no problems reverting their non-neutral edits and
> removing inaccurate/slanted information; and so on.  A blanket
> prohibition on any text ever touched by the user being in the article,
> though---even going so far as to insist that their neutral contributions
> be independently rewritten by someone else---seems to be a bit of a
> witch-hunt.  Is there a legitimate reason for it besides fear that some
> jackass in the media is going to say "lol wikipedia lets pedophiles edit
> articles relating to pedophilia"?  Self-identified Satanists who've
> edited [[en:Satanism]] had better hope the U.S. media doesn't have a
> recurrence of its 1990s moral panic over Satanism!

Not a very good comparison, that; how about, say, self-identified
members of Stormfront editing [[Simon Wiesenthal]]?

Which is not to say that it would be completely impossible for them to
edit that article in a neutral fashion.  But AGF doesn't mean being
hopelessly naive; when the presumption of ulterior motives -- and
highly malicious ones, at that -- is so strong as to require that even
superficially neutral and well-referenced edits be exhaustively
verified, it seems easier for everyone just to not have the individual
editing the article in question at all.

Kirill Lokshin


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
Yes, there's several admins quite willing to retrieve content if you
don't plan on reposting exact copies. Only Tony Sidaway comes to mind
right now. I'm afraid, I'm too busy doing other stuff.

Mgm

On 3/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello all,
>  An article dear to my heart (well, more an article about a subject
> dear to my heart) has apparently recently deleted for non-notability.
> Although I actually agree with that designation, I suddenly sympathise
> with anyone who's had an article deleted! Particularly some of the
> (good faith) remarks made on the AfD page like "Delete. It still
> amazes me some of the topics that people think are notable." -
>
> Just wondering whether it's possible for me to get the content (and if
> possible, history) of the article back? There are probably more
> appropriate places to host it. Or maybe even trim it down and merge it
> into some other article.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Engineering_Music_Society
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Too much agglomeration

body:
Someone please tell me how this article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_Naval_Base

is better off not being broken up into separate entries.


body:
The only reason an article should become more difficult to edit is
because its content is inherently harder to improve, not because it's
practically more difficult to edit.

That's one of the reasons I'm so strongly against agglomeration --
massive, multi-topic articles are much more difficult to edit than
concise, single-idea articles, even though any given massive,
multi-topic article might be as well written as any single-idea
article.

On 3/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ok, we were arguing different things. I was saying that it's
> acceptable that an article like GWB become more diffficult to edit.
> You're saying that it's not acceptable that it become frozen.
>
> On 3/15/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 3/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 3/15/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > It shouldn't become more difficult because editing would require
> > > > engaging a thicket of non-human-understandable templates or dealing
> > > > with a 100,000 word document, or satisfying anything other than
> > > > objective criteria to make a change.
> > > >
> > > > If Wikipedia articles get frozen in stone we lose in the long run.
> > >
> > > The devil's advocate might ask, what changes need to be made to
> > > [[George W Bush]] that aren't getting made because it's all too much
> > > hard work?
> > >
> > > In other words, the semi-protected articles probably *are* approaching
> > > perfection. In as much as GWB can ever be perfect.
> > >
> > Wouldn't be a very good devil's advocate. There's been millions of
> > consequences of the Bush presidency, and millions to come. Until the
> > corpus of George W. Bush-related entries covers all of them, the
> > articles won't be perfect. As the gateway to that information,
> > [[George W. Bush]] will constantly need to change.
> >
> > Or shorter: W. still has two years to go in his presidency. An article
> > about W. that stopped history at 2006 would be strangely incomplete.
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] more WP:OFFICE shenanigans

body:
On 15/03/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:

> > Ok, but is this really true? I can't imagine minority views ever
> > getting much airtime on mainstream American news?
>
> It's not so much a case of "minority views" as "batshit views".  Taking
> the LaRouche example --- it is not so much the insignicance of LaRouche
> that is important, to me, in the balance/neutrality debate, as it is the
> utter disconnection from reality.  Dick Cheney isn't going to launch
> nukes against Iran tomorrow, and Lyndon LaRouche would certainly not be
> his strongest opponent were he to attempt to do so.
>
> Sometimes, of the two main sides of any story, only one is indeed the
> truth.

(...)

This reminded me of an article I read the other week:

http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2006/02/what_are_newspa.html

"Another stance explicitly held by most newspapers is demonstrated by
the article above from Sunday's paper. Newspapers are against racist
hate groups. Reporting on such groups assumes the perspective that
their successes, like traffic deaths, are a Bad Thing to be reported
as bad news. Articles like the one above include quotes from people at
the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League not
just to provide "balanced" comments from the other side, but to
provide /corrective/ comments from the /right/ side."

Same theme, I guess.

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


from_name: ABCD

subject: [WikiEN-l] Should AfD pages be blanked?

body:
On 3/15/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's understandable that we might not want our AFD debate being the #1
> Google return for someone's name or even a company name

Due to recent changes to <http://en.wikipedia.org/robots.txt>, AFD
debates no longer show up in Google, or other search engines that
respect [[robots.txt]] (most do).

ABCD


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright on Wikisource

body:
Hi,

And oh, I forgot to say that if the new rule is to apply French laws to French
language projects, then first do it on the French Wikipedia, which goes
against French laws in many ways, the first of all by allowing "fair use",
then it would be proper to do it on Wikisource.

Regards,

Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre


subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright on Wikisource


subject: [WikiEN-l] more WP:OFFICE shenanigans

body:
Kirill Lokshin wrote:

>On 3/15/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>
>>I agree wholeheartedly, which is why I find Jimbo's actions on
>>[[en:Justin Berry]] so disturbing.  I have no problems banning a user
>>(either entirely, or from certain types of articles) if they can't edit
>>neutrally; I have no problems reverting their non-neutral edits and
>>removing inaccurate/slanted information; and so on.  A blanket
>>prohibition on any text ever touched by the user being in the article,
>>though---even going so far as to insist that their neutral contributions
>>be independently rewritten by someone else---seems to be a bit of a
>>witch-hunt.  Is there a legitimate reason for it besides fear that some
>>jackass in the media is going to say "lol wikipedia lets pedophiles edit
>>articles relating to pedophilia"?  Self-identified Satanists who've
>>edited [[en:Satanism]] had better hope the U.S. media doesn't have a
>>recurrence of its 1990s moral panic over Satanism!
>>
>>
>
>Not a very good comparison, that; how about, say, self-identified
>members of Stormfront editing [[Simon Wiesenthal]]?
>
>Which is not to say that it would be completely impossible for them to
>edit that article in a neutral fashion.  But AGF doesn't mean being
>hopelessly naive; when the presumption of ulterior motives -- and
>highly malicious ones, at that -- is so strong as to require that even
>superficially neutral and well-referenced edits be exhaustively
>verified, it seems easier for everyone just to not have the individual
>editing the article in question at all.
>
>
Why is it not a good comparison?  There are many people who would argue
that Satanists are no better than Stormfront members (possibly worse, if
you believe the network-TV exposes on "satanic cults").

If indeed an individual keeps making superficially neutral edits that
turn out not to be, then I would favor banning them---but *because of
that*, not because they happen to be a neo-Nazi, or a pedophile, or a
Satanist, or whatever the moral-panic-du-jour is.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] more WP:OFFICE shenanigans

body:
On 3/15/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Why is it not a good comparison?  There are many people who would argue
> that Satanists are no better than Stormfront members (possibly worse, if
> you believe the network-TV exposes on "satanic cults").
>
> If indeed an individual keeps making superficially neutral edits that
> turn out not to be, then I would favor banning them---but *because of
> that*, not because they happen to be a neo-Nazi, or a pedophile, or a
> Satanist, or whatever the moral-panic-du-jour is.

My point wasn't so much about the type of person editing (although an
argument can be made that our level of care here should be directly
proportional to the size and intensity of the pitchfork-wielding mob
after Jimbo if we screw up), but about the type of article.
Biographies, being highly susceptible to defamation and the like, are
of significantly less risk than articles on general topics.

Are there some particular biographies where we should be wary of
Satanist manipulation?  ;-)

Kirill Lokshin