subject: [WikiEN-l] Clutch is on a POV tirade

body:
Um, we're still talking about Clutch's views about social work.

I fail to see what this has to do with Wikipedia.

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Ireland]] and [[China]]

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>Ray (Eclecticology) wrote:
>
>"The official name for any country is the long form..."
>
>Sorry, but I stopped reading at that point.
>
>I think what he meant (or should have said) is the following, which is
>subtly yet crucially different:
>
>>>>The official name for any *government* is the long form.
>>>>
Although this does not change my agreement about the naming of the
articles.  I disagree with you factually about the use of long forms.
 The long form is the formal and official name of a country that it
would use in international legal documents.  It is not the name of any
particular government, even though the name may be changed by successive
governments to reflect their particular points of view.

>China, whether it's "really" one country or not, currently has two
>sovereign political divisions: PRC and ROC.
>
That too is debatable.  I happen to support the view that Taiwan is not
a part of China, and that its government has no business calling itself
China.  Chinese occupation of Taiwan only began at the end of the Ming
dynasty - a fairly short time by Chinese standards.

>If one division claims
>jurisdiction over the other, we should mention that in the article. But
>we should absolutely not respect one side's claims over the other. We
>must remain neutral, even if "everyone knows" that the only legitimate
>government of all of China is X.
>
All the more reason for the meaning of [[China]] to be fairly open-ended.

Eclecticology


from_name: Tom Parmenter

subject: [WikiEN-l] Clutch is on a POV tirade

in_reply_to:
<20021209172022.GA24182@reactor-core.org> (message from Jonathan
	Walther on Mon, 9 Dec 2002 09:20:22 -0800)

body:
L.I.C.S.W. means "Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker".  It is
a license from the government that allows one to conduct business and
charge insurance companies for performing clinical social work.  All
of those categories I listed are called social work in the United
States (note the S.W. in the license).  I have no idea what the
different functions are called in Vancouver (pause to note that
Vancouver is the most beautiful city in North America, at least of the
ones I have seen).

You seem to be saying that only the ones you hate are social workers,
what you call the "nanny state" (a dead giveaway of POV) and I call
the "cruel orphan warden" hypothesis (smarty-pants version of same),
and all the others are something else.  But, at least in the states,
they all go to social work school and they all call themselves social
worker and no amount of bluster will change it, although I grant the
terminology may be different in Canada.

Tom P.
O88

|From: Jonathan Walther <krooger at debian.org>
|Content-Disposition: inline
|Sender: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 09:20:22 -0800
|
|
|--pWyiEgJYm5f9v55/
|Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
|Content-Disposition: inline
|Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
|
|On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 12:22:46PM -0500, Tom Parmenter wrote:
|>1 - social worker -- employee of government agency, working under a
|>budget and administering policies in the context of individuals having
|>some kind of problem (sometimes with the government)
|
|This is a social worker.
|
|>2 - social worker -- employee of private social services agency
|>working with individuals having some kind of problem
|
|These used to be called social workers, but with the passing of the work
|house, no longer are.
|
|>3 - social worker -- employed by private agency providing
|>psychotherapeutic support, often with problem solving included
|
|Nor are these.
|
|>4 -- social worker -- self-employed, providing psychotherapeutic
|>support under health insurance, often with problem solving included.
|
|Same.  Often this would be called a "Community health support worker",
|"Community health nurse", or similar.  Not a social worker.
|
|>All have weighty responsibilities, which means all have some
|>opportunity/danger of doing harm. =20
|
|When one human being gains power over another, there will be abuses and
|resentment.  Nanny fascism is still fascism.
|
|Jonathan
|
|--=20


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] the problem with languages being separate from namespaces

in_reply_to:
<1039430140.23215.51.camel@rdaneel.vibber.org> from Brion Vibber
 at "Dec 9, 2002 02:35:37 am"

body:
> At present the following characters are allowed in titles:
> [-,.()' &;%!?_0-9A-Za-z\/:\x80-\xFF]

Please remove '&' from this list: links to a page with '&' in it do not
go right; they go to just the part before the '&'. So a page with '&' in
the title is for all practical purposes unreachable.

Andre Engels


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RDF feed of Wikipedia updates

body:
On Mon, 2002-12-09 at 03:19, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> > An RDF feed listing the last 10 non-minor updates to Wikipedia is
> > available at http://www.wikipedia.org/tools/feed-en.rdf (replace 'en' as
> > desired to get a feed for the other languages). Updated every half hour,
> > so it may miss things at busier times. ;)
>
> Great!  I'm using this in my RSS import to http://susning.nu/Wikipedia
>
> Why isn't it generated on the fly, just like the Recent Changes page?

Originally there was some weirdness with the APC cache, plus I was
concerned that ''another'' million things knocking over the server for
updates might worry it, but it seems smooth enough now so there's
probably no good reason except that the static copy gets served a little
faster.

If you want a live live feed, you can go to the script directly:
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/FeedRDF.php
etc

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
Larry is right, and I'm getting of tired of carrying on 4 or more threads with Clutch.

Jonathan, the NPOV is what it is. Jimbo and Larry aren't going to change it, so I suggest you stop clutching at the hope that your arguing will pan out.

Now, please. Stop trying to change an immutable policy and focus on productive work -- such as your technical suggestions about namespaces, or providing *facts* for the articles -- or I'm going to leave you in the clutches of the peremptory reverters, bwah ha ha ha ha!

Ed Poor
P.S. If you think I'm bluffing, try me. :-|

-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Sanger [mailto:lsanger at nupedia.com]
Sent: Monday, December 09, 2002 1:25 PM
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Clutch is on a POV tirade

I don't get it.  Why are we discussing the actual merits of Jonathan's
views of social workers?  That plainly doesn't advance the *on-topic*
discussion, which concerns the standards of neutrality, one iota.  To
bring this debate to an end, why do we have to do any more than observe
that there is a difference of opinion, and perhaps (on the relevant talk
page) discuss how to make the article reflects this sensibly and
neutrally?

Larry


subject:
[Wikitech-l] the problem with languages being separate from
	namespaces

body:
On Mon, 2002-12-09 at 08:27, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> If ? is in that list, how can we support the following?
>
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/foo?lang=en
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/foo?lang=en&action=edit

(At the moment, that wouldn't work, as we overwrite the query string
when using the /wiki/foo alias; you'd just get /w/wiki.phtml?title=foo.
However, it probably should work and it's easy to tweak the apache
config for it.)

> How do we know that the title of the page is not foo?lang=en
> instead of being "foo", and having the argument lang=en applied to it?

Because the page [[foo?lang=en]] would be
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/foo%3Flang%3Den

> I really don't like the ':' separator in the URL section for namespaces,
> because it shows up as a hex encoded string, instead of ':' in my urlbar.

Your browser, like Mozilla, has a greater affinity for the hex codes and
likes to display them even when it doesn't have to. What can I say.

> Can we find some other syntax (not necessarily syntax within the [[]])
> for accessing pages and specifying their namespace in the URL?

Why?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Clutch is on a POV tirade

body:
On 12/9/02 10:39 AM, "Jonathan Walther" <krooger at debian.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 03:40:20PM +0000, tarquin wrote:
>> Jason Williams wrote:
>>> Consensus and niceness are good things, but contention and
>>> argument drive the wheel faster and produce more comprehensive
>>> results.
>> You've been watching too much Babylon 5.
>> I'm with the Vorlons -- conflict may promote growth, but it's not a
>> healthy way to do so.
>>
>> The social workers I have encountered have been idiots, not pathological
>> liars. I've found it's the structure they work within (and their
>> pen-pusher mentality which means they can *never* look outside of it)
>> which has caused me problems in the past.
>> If we want to criticize social workers, we need evidence, like specific
>> cases -- and we also need to present the wider picture.

<anecdotes of malicious social workers snipped>

> And theres plenty more where that came from.  Shall I continue?

Not on the list. Try Wikipedia. And anecdotes are of limited utility. There
are as many evil doctors and soldiers and teachers as there are social
workers. And what can be said is not that doctors, soldiers, and teachers
are the foot soldiers of the ivory tower social engineers that
governments and big businesses hire to keep the masses under control, but
that there are abuses of power and problems of accountability, which are
endemic to all bureaucracies with more power than accountability.

You don't get to say, "Doctors are often found in hospitals, and play a hand
in ear-marking newborn babies for potential seizure and kidnapping by
government adoption departments," which I'm sure they do, under a certain
definition of "potential seizure and kidnapping".

Or "Teachers are widely hated".

Or "Soldiers are trained to treat their feelings and gut more important
than reason, rationality, and respect for the human dignity of those they
seek to help. "

That's not to say that there aren't endemic problems with social workers,
doctors, soldiers, or teachers. That just wasn't the way to go about it.

What's annoying is that you should know this.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Encoding system

body:
On Mon, 2002-12-09 at 11:00, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> There are two encodings: $wgInputEncoding and $wgOutputEncoding
>
> What do they mean ?

Roughly speaking:
* $wgInputEncoding is the char encoding used internally, in the database
and in processing.

* $wgOutputEncoding is the char encoding we talk to the browser with;
when outputting the page, we do an iconv() from input to output
encodings if they're different. (If the two encodings don't cover the
same range of characters, there will be data loss.)

* $wgEditEncoding is an ugly hack I put in to get the X-conversion
people wanted for the Esperanto wikipedia. If this is different from
$wgOutputEncoding, we convert form input from this to input encoding and
back.

The Language class has an iconv() wrapper, so custom conversions can be
used.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Languages & namespaces

body:
On Mon, 2002-12-09 at 10:48, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> And a redesign of table schema means we
> can design it so that generating a regular wiki page only involves ONE
> query, instead of the current TWELVE.  A long term redesign of the
> software could definately be beneficial.

Surely it would take two:
*fetch current page's contents, view count, restrictions, and last
edited date
*check existence, size/type of all linked pages

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Languages & namespaces

body:
Clutch wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>I would argue that a really logical structure would have *4* levels:
>>language, namespace, talk (a boolean), and title.

>Well, since we are doing a redesign, why not have 4?  If that floats
>your boat.  Just figure out what changes would need to be made to the
>schema on http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Clutch/mod_wiki

Well, *you* are doing a redesign, not *we* ^_^.
Only [[User:Clutch]] has modified [[en:User:Clutch/mod_wiki]] --
although Eloquence (Erik Moeller) and Brion Vibber have commented.
I'd rather work on PediaWiki itself (which I don't have time to do yet).
So you can implement my idea on a really logical structure if you like,
but I won't try to figure out how to do it myself -- at least not now.

-- Toby


from_name: Jason Williams

subject: [WikiEN-l] Clutch is on a POV tirade

body:
On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 05:45:02AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Our process should not be a competitive process of posting POV claims
> and daring others to fix them.

I'm not so sure this is a good general rule. Probably if used in too
many cases or taken to extremes then it is a bad thing, but used
sensibly it can be a good thing in my opinion.

If I start an article about something controversial and I stick to
a bland NPOV stub, chances are it'll get ignored or only get minor
corrections and additions. If I start with a blatantly biased stub
which makes outrageous claims, you can almost guarantee one or more
gangs of people will become very interested in expanding the article.

Of course, once you've "hooked" some people, you have to revert to
being fair and neutral otherwise it's counter-productive.

Consensus and niceness are good things, but contention and
argument drive the wheel faster and produce more comprehensive
results.

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

"If you happen to meet a crocodile, don't stick your head in its mouth.
Every now and then, and who knows the reason, people ignore this advice,
which is sad because they die, but very stupid because they were warned.
They had a choice. The moral of the story is this - you can't afford to
be stupid. There are crocodiles..." -- Press Gang


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] wikipedia mailling lists to usenet

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> I would recommend that they set us up read-only.

> > Gmane is a mail-to-news portal that never expires its messages.

I have found that Gmane.org has already archived several messages that
I have sent to various mailing lists, and I'm having a hard time to
make the owner (Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen) understand that this is in
violation of copyright law and that he does not have my permission.
Since I don't sign any contract or attach a license when I post a
message to a mailing list, I retain the full copyright with the only
implied license to distribute the message to the current members and
for archiving in the list's own archive.

> > Gmane can encrypt addresses to make address harvesting difficult, and
> > heeds X-No-Archive and related headers.

If I set the X-No-Archive header in my posts to the Wikipedia lists,
will Wikipedia (Bomis) allow that header to pass through, so to avoid
archiving of my posts at Gmane and similar sites?

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


subject: [Wikitech-l] Speeding up the database (was: Languages & namespaces)

body:
Yes, Jonathan. If you want to become an admired contributor around here, PLEASE OH PLEASE redesign the table schema so that queries run much faster!!

Ed Poor


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
I have tested news.gmane.org and it's an excellent idea. I for one think
we should make use of this resource. It's great to be able to read
mailing list archives in threaded form without a) subscribing, b)
downloading large archive tarballs.

Copyright objections seem silly, I see no difference between a read-only
gmane archive and a mailing list archive mirror. Basically, if the
Wikipedia list maintainers think that a mirror is a valuable resource,
then the implied contract extends to said mirror.

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


from_name: Mark Christensen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Languages & namespaces

body:
> >  A long term
> > redesign of the software could definitely be beneficial.
>
> We have done it twice, without much benefit.
> I'm all for evolutionary way.

Actually, we'd never have made it this far without the "revolutionary"
redesign done by Lee earlier this year.  Our performance old PHP code
was breaking under far less load than we have all the time now.

While, we do need to improve our DB performance, but without better
stats, we can't say for certain that there aren't any PHP bottlenecks.
And PHP bottlenecks could eventually arise if we improve DB performance
significantly.

I'm all for the evolutionary way, but I think there's room for someone
who wants to work on a revolutionary way while others improve our
current system.

Yours
Mark Christensen


subject: [Wikitech-l] Languages & namespaces

body:
Okay, I've read everything Jonathan has written. But I'm still not
happy.

What is the problem we are trying to solve?

How does the current software help solve this problem?

What does the current software do to cause this problem or make this
problem worse?

What will the proposed solution do, to address the above.

How can we test the proposed solution?

Ed Poor, a professional client/server programmer with over 35 years of
experience using computers

"Opinions expressed by me on the list are mine alone, not my employer's"


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Ireland]] and [[China]]

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>* [[Germany]] => the country, with links to (1) West Germany (defunct),
>(2) East Germany (defunct) and (3) whatever the heck the current
>government is calling itself.
>
>
At the moment, that would be "bankrupt"... ;-)

Magnus


subject: [Wikitech-l] Languages & namespaces

body:
> Yes, but we were limited by MySQL each time.  Have you used
> Postgres or Oracle or Sybase before?  I have a hard time
> expressing briefly how great SQL92 compliance is compared to
> the subset that MySQL supports. Using MySQL for this is
> walking the long way around the bay when you could paddle the
> Postgres canoe directly across it in a fraction of the time.


from_name: tarquin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Clutch is on a POV tirade

body:
Jason Williams wrote:

>
>Consensus and niceness are good things, but contention and
>argument drive the wheel faster and produce more comprehensive
>results.
>
>
>
You've been watching too much Babylon 5.
I'm with the Vorlons -- conflict may promote growth, but it's not a
healthy way to do so.

The social workers I have encountered have been idiots, not pathological
liars. I've found it's the structure they work within (and their
pen-pusher mentality which means they can *never* look outside of it)
which has caused me problems in the past.
If we want to criticize social workers, we need evidence, like specific
cases -- and we also need to present the wider picture.

>
>


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> gmane archive and a mailing list archive mirror. Basically, if the
> Wikipedia list maintainers think that a mirror is a valuable resource,
> then the implied contract extends to said mirror.

Yes of course, as long as I'm aware of this when I post to the list.
The problem is that Gmane archives many lists, where I think the list
owner and most members don't know about it.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik
  Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxk?ping, Sweden
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


body:
On Mon, 2002-12-09 at 15:42, Lars Aronsson wrote:

> Yes of course, as long as I'm aware of this when I post to the list.
> The problem is that Gmane archives many lists, where I think the list
> owner and most members don't know about it.

Given the craziness of a concept like copyright in the modern
information age, the only reasonable approach is often to ignore it
until problems arise. If specific list owners have problems with gmane,
they will certainly complain.

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


from_name: elian

subject: [WikiEN-l] Clutch is on a POV tirade

body:
"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> writes:

> Please try to understand the difference between objective fact and
> neutrality. For example, that North Korea, Cuba, and the Soviet Union
> were ruled by murderous tyrants is IMHO a "fact". Incredible as it may
> seem, there are some contributors who dispute this fact. So, we are
> forced by *our own policy* to step back from asserting "the truth" and
> humbly stating that "According to sources X, Y and Z these lands were
> ruled, etc."

No.
That they have killed xy-thousand people may be a fact.
That they have suppressed political opposition by censure etc. may be a
fact.
That they were "murderous tyrants" is a moral judgement.

greetings,
elian
my obedit for this post:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikomachische_Ethik
--
help microsoft stamp out piracy. give linux to a friend today!
(c) copyleft 2000 by surf


subject: [WikiEN-l] Clutch is on a POV tirade

body:
Tom Parmenter wrote:

>L.I.C.S.W. means "Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker".  It is
>a license from the government that allows one to conduct business and
>charge insurance companies for performing clinical social work.  All
>of those categories I listed are called social work in the United
>States (note the S.W. in the license).  I have no idea what the
>different functions are called in Vancouver (pause to note that
>Vancouver is the most beautiful city in North America, at least of the
>ones I have seen).
>
>You seem to be saying that only the ones you hate are social workers,
>what you call the "nanny state" (a dead giveaway of POV) and I call
>the "cruel orphan warden" hypothesis (smarty-pants version of same),
>and all the others are something else.  But, at least in the states,
>they all go to social work school and they all call themselves social
>worker and no amount of bluster will change it, although I grant the
>terminology may be different in Canada.
>
I, like Jonathan, live in the Vancouver area, and for the purposes of
this discussion don't see any significant difference between Social
Workers in Canada and the United States.  The terminology may be
different, but that doesn't change the fact that educational standards
need to be met before a person can call himself a social worker.  The
categories of social work that Tom listed are just as valid here as there.

Jonathan's response seemed to make it clear that he was only concerned
with one of the four categories, social workers employed by government.
 This and some of the other discussion suggests that his criticism of
social workers is misplaced.  When commissions here have investigated
the operation of the provincial government's Child Protection Branch,
they have determined that the social workers which it does employ have
chronically huge case loads that do not permit the workers to give each
case the attention which it needs.  The current provincial government's
obsession with eliminating deficits at the same time that it is giving
tax cuts for its more affluent supporters frequently means that spending
cuts will have the greatest effect on those who can least afford it.
 Adequate funding for social services would go a long way toward
reducing the abusive incidents that Jonathan reports.

Eclecticology


subject: [WikiEN-l] Clutch is on a POV tirade

body:
Tom Parmenter wrote:

>Ignorance is no defense of non-NPOV:
>
>1 - social worker -- employee of government agency, working under a
>budget and administering policies in the context of individuals having
>some kind of problem (sometimes with the government)
>2 - social worker -- employee of private social services agency
>working with individuals having some kind of problem
>3 - social worker -- employed by private agency providing
>psychotherapeutic support, often with problem solving included
>4 -- social worker -- self-employed, providing psychotherapeutic
>support under health insurance, often with problem solving included.
>
>All have weighty responsibilities, which means all have some
>opportunity/danger of doing harm.
>
>The amount of pen-pushing varies, but category 4, where my wife
>performs much of her social work, requires as much as any to appease
>the insurance companies.
>
>Tom Parmenter
>married to an L.I.C.S.W. (not an idiot, possibly more intelligent than
>Tarquin), former food-stamp recipient, currently unemployed, and
>Ortolan88
>
>
>
Apologies, Tom.
I meant type 1.
I'll tell you the long saga of me versus my local social services one
day. It will take a large number of beers (and ideally some
shadow-puppets for the action scenes!)
but it boils down to said social workers repeatedly quoting regulations
at me, despite my pointing out that they didn't apply to particular case
in question; and then them being unable to actually tell me which person
or body was responsible for the regulations' existence, and which person
or body had the power to overrule it -- since they seemd to timid to do so.
it took about 2 years for the whole thing to be sorted out.
... sigh ...

-- tarquin

>
>


body:
Jonathan Walther wrote:

> I really don't like the ':' separator in the URL section for namespaces,
> because it shows up as a hex encoded string, instead of ':' in my urlbar.
>
> Can we find some other syntax (not necessarily syntax within the [[]])
> for accessing pages and specifying their namespace in the URL?

Removing the : from the wikipedia system would not only mean all
wikipedians having to learn new syntax, but also to move and redirect a
zillion entries, not to speak of fixing these links on countless pages.

And even if we just make some "URL wrapper" for namespaces, I don't see
the advantage. If you want to unite all language databases in a single
one, why change the syntax? Just add an extra field to the table.
"en:talk:stuff" will do just fine IMHO.

Magnus


subject: [Wikitech-l] Encoding system

body:
On Mon, 2002-12-09 at 16:32, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> So I should just ignore $wgOutputEncoding and pass $wgInputEncoding as an
> argument to texvc right ?

If the argument is to say what encoding the data you're feeding it is
in, then yes.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Languages & namespaces

body:
On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 10:17:49AM -0800, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 10:14:09AM -0800, Toby Bartels wrote:
> >Because all 3 levels have substantially different meanings.
> >I would argue that a really logical structure would have *4* levels:
> >language, namespace, talk (a boolean), and title.
> >But the current user interface is designed with 3 in mind.
>
> Well, since we are doing a redesign, why not have 4?  If that floats
> your boat.  Just figure out what changes would need to be made to the
> schema on http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Clutch/mod_wiki

Stop now !

Why are we doing another redesign ?
Weren't 2 we had so far enough ?

Please make only evolutionary changes - fix only what's broken,
add new features without breaking existing ones, fix performance problems
and not introduce new. This way everyone will be happy.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Encoding system

body:
There are two encodings: $wgInputEncoding and $wgOutputEncoding

What do they mean ?


from_name: Giskart

body:
Lars Aronsson heeft geschreven:
> Yes of course, as long as I'm aware of this when I post to the list.
> The problem is that Gmane archives many lists, where I think the list
> owner and most members don't know about it.

Everbody can enter a request to add a mailinglist to Gmane.
But Gmane sends a message to the list administrator to inform the admin
about this. Also to make the conection to gmane a new special gmane list
member must be subcribed. It is the responibility of the list
administrator to read his email and inform his users, not of Gmane.

I have done that for WikiNL-l.

Giskart


subject: [Wikitech-l] Languages & namespaces

body:
On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 10:48:24AM -0800, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> So, whether Wikipedia ever uses it or not, I am doing this.  But I want
> to ensure that we COULD host the Wikipedia on it.  And because it is
> written in C as a custom Apache module, with Postgres backend, I will be
> able to make it very fast and efficient.

C won't help any, database is the bottleneck, not PHP script.

> If we switch to Postgres, to get the benefits of Postgres we must do a
> redesign of the table schema, at least.  Did anyone notice that Postgres
> is now fully SQL92 compliant?  And a redesign of table schema means we
> can design it so that generating a regular wiki page only involves ONE
> query, instead of the current TWELVE.  A long term redesign of the
> software could definately be beneficial.

We have done it twice, without much benefit.
I'm all for evolutionary way.

> The better we design the future Wikipedia software, the easier it will
> be to write, maintain, and extend.
>
> In the process of the redesign, we hope to make it so that current
> issues with the Wiki software are natural and easy to solve.  Join in if
> you like.

Most important current issues are:
* poor markup
* no media independence
* 15-or-so-pass parser instead of good hierarchical LALR parser
* slow database
* poor mirroring ability
* no dedicated offline client

I'm currently working on first two (well, three).

Rewriting it in C won't help with any of these issues.

Moving current script to Postgres is easy modulo FULLTEXT index.
Better think what to do with that one.

Oh, and think how to you implement database mirroring, as
this is what lost most after move from filesystem database (rsync)
to MySQL.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Languages & namespaces

body:
Jonathan Walther wrote:

> I like the Wikipedias version of what it is to be a "Wiki", and want to
> use it for many other projects, groups, and committees.  For that
> purpose, I am doing the redesign, so I and others can easily deploy the
> Wikipedia software in a wide variety of contexts.

There are other wiki software projects that aim at a broad range of
uses. This one is for running wikipedia. If others can use it too, fine.
Focus should remain on wikipedia.

> So, whether Wikipedia ever uses it or not, I am doing this.  But I want
> to ensure that we COULD host the Wikipedia on it.  And because it is
> written in C as a custom Apache module, with Postgres backend, I will be
> able to make it very fast and efficient.

OK, I understand that, and though I don't have experience with Postgres,
I agree about the C part. I wrote a C++ wiki parser as
proof-of-principle once, and it was fast as hell on my local machine,
compared to the PHP software (which was using cached pages!). It got
lost in some systems crash or Linux update, though ;-)

> If we switch to Postgres, to get the benefits of Postgres we must do a
> redesign of the table schema, at least.  Did anyone notice that Postgres
> is now fully SQL92 compliant?  And a redesign of table schema means we
> can design it so that generating a regular wiki page only involves ONE
> query, instead of the current TWELVE.  A long term redesign of the
> software could definately be beneficial.

Now *that* would really help!

Magnus


from_name: Paul Ebermann

body:
"Jimmy Wales" skribis:

> Erik Moeller wrote:
> > I have tested news.gmane.org and it's an excellent idea. I for one think
> > we should make use of this resource. It's great to be able to read
> > mailing list archives in threaded form without a) subscribing, b)
> > downloading large archive tarballs.
>
> How are their archives an improvement over ours?

It is a NNTP-Interface, not HTTP.

You can get them with a newsreader, not
with a browser.

(There is also a Web-interface, IIRC).

Paul


subject: [WikiEN-l] Clutch is on a POV tirade

body:
On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 10:55:35AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > If I start an article about something controversial and I stick to
> > a bland NPOV stub, chances are it'll get ignored or only get minor
> > corrections and additions. If I start with a blatantly biased stub
> > which makes outrageous claims, you can almost guarantee one or more
> > gangs of people will become very interested in expanding the article.
>
> I don't agree.  This is a tempting idea, but I don't think the
> empirical evidence supports it.  What actually happens is that
> contentious beginnings delay the proper expanasion of an article
> because tempers are high.

Fair enough; you certainly have vastly more experience than me, and I'm
prepared to defer to that. I'd offer [[UK Firefighter strike 2002]] as
the most recent example of my point (although not a particularly
striking example), though.

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Languages & namespaces

body:
On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 11:46:30AM -0800, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 08:22:42PM +0100, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> >We have done it twice, without much benefit.
> >I'm all for evolutionary way.
>
> Yes, but we were limited by MySQL each time.  Have you used Postgres or
> Oracle or Sybase before?

Yes.

> I have a hard time expressing briefly how
> great SQL92 compliance is compared to the subset that MySQL supports.
> Using MySQL for this is walking the long way around the bay when you
> could paddle the Postgres canoe directly across it in a fraction of the
> time.

I'm more concerned about row-level locking really.
Could you try to make minimal number of changes necessary to make Wikipedia
run on Postgres so we can see how much would better locking help ?
Then we could make it even faster.

> >Most important current issues are:
> >* poor markup
> >* no media independence
> >* 15-or-so-pass parser instead of good hierarchical LALR parser
> >* slow database
> >* poor mirroring ability
> >* no dedicated offline client
> >
> >I'm currently working on first two (well, three).
>
> I agree and I would love to see your thoughts on all of these issues,
> and how best to solve them.  The last two items should be fairly simple,
> if we require users to install Apache on their local boxes.

Not really. SQL databases are hard to mirror - nothing close to rsync
comes for free with them.

> How can we improve markup?  I too feel it might be lacking somehow.

Now I'm implementing <math> tags, see all these "TeX, version X" threads
on wikitech-l for details.

> What do you mean by media independance?

Mainly being able to export pure-HTML versions and plaintext dict versions.

> >Rewriting it in C won't help with any of these issues.
>
> By using C, we can use lex and yacc to make an excellent LALR parser

You would have hard time, as C doesn't implement good text processing
or symbolic trees processing.

texvc is in ocaml now.

> Postgres will solve the slow database issue.
>
> >Moving current script to Postgres is easy modulo FULLTEXT index.
> >Better think what to do with that one.
>
> No, Postgres really does require a full redesign to reap the benefits.

80% of benefit comes with 20% of effort usually, of course if you start
from right 20%.

But how do you plan to implement searching in Postgres ?

> >Oh, and think how to you implement database mirroring, as
> >this is what lost most after move from filesystem database (rsync)
> >to MySQL.
>
> Replication (database mirroring) comes with Postgres; we have a choice
> of the dbmirror, and the dbbalancer contributed modules.  We can choose
> synchronous or asynchronous; I recommend asynchronous for speed.

How do they compare to rsync ?


from_name: Dan Keshet

subject: [Wikitech-l] using wikipedia script for private wiki

body:
Dear WikiTech,

I have downloaded and installed the Wikipedia script from CVS, and have
set it up for use in a private wiki I am running.  I picked the
wikipedia script because it is such a well- and actively-maintained
script and it has so many useful features that I'm used to as an active
wikipedian.

Overall, I found customizing the script quite easy.  I don't know if
generalization of the script to other wiki applications is one of your
goals, but if it is, then the following would be helpful:

1) Wikipedia-specific strings in $wgAllMessagesEn:

Many of the messages in $wgAllMessagesEn are wikipedia-specific.  I
overrode these by creating a $wgAllMessagesEn in LanguageEn.php, which I
figured would change less than Language.php.  I was able to resolve this
without much problem, but it would be nice if this array could be split
into smaller chunks, to make it easier to override one variable but not
all.  It would be really nice if one of the smaller arrays could be a
$wgLocalStringsEn with defaults commented out in LocalSettings.php

2) Namespace, Interwiki

It would be nice if it were obvious how to override namespace names and
the interwiki array in LocalSettings.php so you don't have to hunt it
down.

Also, unrelated, I noticed after I changed the text for "Recent Changes"
that it actually resolves each link in the text (which I assume costs
database lookups).  This seems colossally wasteful to me.  People are
not going to be in the business of linking to non-existing articles on
recent changes very long, and recent changes is one of the most
frequently-hit articles, no?

Thanks for your work,

~~~

PS. please cc: me on answers.


body:
Jimmy Wales heeft geschreven:
> I would recommend that they set us up read-only.

That seems logical, but it is not.

I explain;

Whit a gmane.org read-only usenet group;

If you send a posting to the group, reply to newsgroup you get a
auto-reply that the list is read-only. Logical.

If you send a message to "reply to poster" or you fill in the posting
email adress of the list the message goes to the list and the newsgroup
but Gmane.org has nothing to do whit it. It is only a email that you
send to the list.

The list administrator has full control about it.

If it is a non read-only Gmane.org usenet group (like
"gmane.sciencs.linguistics.wikipedia.nederlands" = WikiNL-l );

If you send a posting to the group, reply to news group, you are sending
a email to Gmane.org and the are forwarding it to the posting email
adress of the list. That is all. (the "from" is the poster, not gmane)

The list administrator has still full control about it.

I have asked especialy to a admin of Gmane about this to be sure.
If sombody wants to send some test posting you can use WikiNL-l.

I have disabled the sending of emails to the current list users of
wikiNL-l except for; Jason, Andere Engels, Giskart and new subcribers
from now until 2002-12-10 , 15:00 UTC.

About the archive;

Yes, Gmane creates a public archive. But the current list archives are
already public.

In general, remember; this Gmane/usenet thing does not changes anything
to the lists, it gives only a additional user interfase.

Giskart


subject: [Wikitech-l] Languages & namespaces

body:
On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 03:38:31PM -0500, Mark Christensen wrote:
> The first being a redesign of the table space, and upgrade of the DB to
> the most recent version of Postgres, with modification of the current
> PHP code.  This could be an evolutionary process, with the one
> "revolutionary" moment being the upgrade to Postgres and concurrent
> update of the PHP code to remove the MySQLisms.  Once we are on the new
> system, the tables and queries could be updated a few at a time to
> improve performance incrementally and evolutionarily.
>
> The second stage would then be upgrading  -- with the improved table
> structure -- to the new ModWiki software.

This is exactly what I'd like to see - that is - just stage 1.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Languages & namespaces

body:
On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 03:24:20PM -0500, Mark Christensen wrote:
> While, we do need to improve our DB performance, but without better
> stats, we can't say for certain that there aren't any PHP bottlenecks.
> And PHP bottlenecks could eventually arise if we improve DB performance
> significantly.

Programming languages like PHP and to even greater extend Perl,
provide both very high and very low level features, and if PHP/Perl program
actually happen to be a bottleneck, it's usually possible to profile it
(very important) and fix - for example some regular expresion may be called
very often, while it could be easily changed into a couple of index() and
a substr(), and things like that.


body:
Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:

> If you want a live live feed, you can go to the script directly:
> http://www.wikipedia.org/w/FeedRDF.php
> etc

Hey, that's great! Genial invention... just one small suggestion to
improve: could you include the language name in the channel title?

channel:title:The English Wikipedia
channel:title:Die Deutsche Wikipedia

If you subscribe to more than one Wikipedia they have identical names...

Another question: what would be better (for Wikipedia performance) to keep
track of recentchanges on Wikipedia? If many people use RDF or reload good
old RC?

Should we add WikipediaRDF-Feed to <http://www.syndic8.com>?

greetings,
elian, just discovering RDF: so much information :-)
--
linux is like indian tent:
no gates, no windows & apache inside


subject: [Wikitech-l] Encoding system

body:
On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 01:52:14PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Mon, 2002-12-09 at 11:00, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > There are two encodings: $wgInputEncoding and $wgOutputEncoding
> >
> > What do they mean ?
>
> Roughly speaking:
> * $wgInputEncoding is the char encoding used internally, in the database
> and in processing.
>
> * $wgOutputEncoding is the char encoding we talk to the browser with;
> when outputting the page, we do an iconv() from input to output
> encodings if they're different. (If the two encodings don't cover the
> same range of characters, there will be data loss.)
>
> * $wgEditEncoding is an ugly hack I put in to get the X-conversion
> people wanted for the Esperanto wikipedia. If this is different from
> $wgOutputEncoding, we convert form input from this to input encoding and
> back.
>
> The Language class has an iconv() wrapper, so custom conversions can be
> used.

So I should just ignore $wgOutputEncoding and pass $wgInputEncoding as an
argument to texvc right ?


from_name: Jonathan Walther

subject: [WikiEN-l] Clutch is on a POV tirade

body:
On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 04:54:58PM -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>Adequate funding for social services would go a long way toward
>reducing the abusive incidents that Jonathan reports.

To the contrary; when the current budget cutting government got voted
in, and sliced the social workers budget in half, the number of child
seizures dropped in half too.  Since 90% of the seizures end up being
ruled "unnecessary", that's a very positive step in the right
direction.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, release candidate 1

body:
Changes:
* Charsets other than UTF-8 supported, Latin1 and Latin2 only now (Wikipedia uses
    only Latin1 and UTF8), but it requires to edit exactly 3 lines to add another
    encoding (1 line to add new type to encoding_t, another to say what is its name,
    and third to say what should be LaTeX header for it). If no or unknown encoding is
    passed, texvc assumes it is UTF-8. At least it is right if it's some ASCII-only
    string.
* texvc_cgi.phtml now generates right HTTP Content-Type headers with encoding
* both OutputPage.php and texvc_cgi.phtml pass encoding to texvc
* (not really related to texvc, but also included) <pre> changed back to old behaviour

Now the only important unresolved things are CJK support and PNG transparency.
But I think we can live without them for now.

Oh, and texvc should allow more characters in \mbox{}, not only letters
and those with 8th bit set.

Please check this patch and comment.
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from_name: Jimmy Wales

in_reply_to: <1039468644.24215.12.camel@rdaneel.vibber.org>; from brion@pobox.com on Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 01:17:22PM -0800

body:
One risk of a live feed of this is that a few jackasses may think it's
a good idea to hammer the server every 5 seconds so as not to miss
anything.  But that's something we can just look out for.

Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Mon, 2002-12-09 at 03:19, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> > Brion Vibber wrote:
> > > An RDF feed listing the last 10 non-minor updates to Wikipedia is
> > > available at http://www.wikipedia.org/tools/feed-en.rdf (replace 'en' as
> > > desired to get a feed for the other languages). Updated every half hour,
> > > so it may miss things at busier times. ;)
> >
> > Great!  I'm using this in my RSS import to http://susning.nu/Wikipedia
> >
> > Why isn't it generated on the fly, just like the Recent Changes page?
>
> Originally there was some weirdness with the APC cache, plus I was
> concerned that ''another'' million things knocking over the server for
> updates might worry it, but it seems smooth enough now so there's
> probably no good reason except that the static copy gets served a little
> faster.
>
> If you want a live live feed, you can go to the script directly:
> http://www.wikipedia.org/w/FeedRDF.php
> etc
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


body:
On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 03:48:37AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>One risk of a live feed of this is that a few jackasses may think it's
>a good idea to hammer the server every 5 seconds so as not to miss
>anything.  But that's something we can just look out for.

I was reading up on that; theres something in the HTTP protocol that can
be used so people can only download the new RDF file if it has actually
changed.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Languages & namespaces

body:
On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 01:53:19PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
>Surely it would take two:
>*fetch current page's contents, view count, restrictions, and last
>edited date
>*check existence, size/type of all linked pages

Add a third one: we need to know if the user has read his Talk page
since it was last modified.

For the second one, don't we just need to check the existance and type
of the linked pages?  Why bother about the size?

We do also need to get the size of the primary page.

What do the "restrictions" on a page consist of?  Whether it is
readable or editable?

Still, that is a 2/3 savings.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Languages & namespaces

body:
On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 09:15:14AM -0500, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>Any savings you predict are only guesses. I don't think we can predict
>the performance benefits of cutting down the *number* of separate
>queries.
>
>If you think otherwise, what is your basis?

Prepared queries.  A few complex queries can be optimized ahead of time
as prepared queries so you can execute them time after time without any
parsing and optimization overhead in the database itself.  The fewer
queries there are, the less time spent communicating to the database
(which isn't fast) and the less time on the client side doing parsing
that the database server itself has been optimized for.

I am predicting a big savings.  I cannot at this point predict how much
of a savings; we are still in design stage, and input on how to set up
the database schema for maximum optimizability is welcome.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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body:
Dan Keshet heeft geschreven:
> Dear WikiTech,
[cut]

FYI This person is not a list member.
Manual apporved posting

Giskart


subject: [Wikitech-l] Database queries: (was Languages & namespaces)

body:
On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 09:51:33AM -0500, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>Well, how about supplying a complete printout of all the queries we
>currently use. You could start with the queries needed to view a typical
>page.

Alas, the queries are thoroughly mixed into the PHP code.  Disentangling
them is a big job.  That's why I find it easier to work on the redesign.

>Some pages have no links to other pages. I would *guess* this would get
>loaded faster on average than pages with links.

It is a rare page that has NO links.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia and anti-Semitism

in_reply_to: <E079C39257D0D845AC39E2CA261C43E007042C@sm-nyny-xm04.nena.wdpr.disney.com>; from Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com on Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 10:55:07AM -0500

body:
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1998, says that Anti-Semitism
is "Opposition to, or hatred of, Semites, esp. Jews.".

Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Can the Wikipedia say that a certain person is anti-Semitic? Or must
>an article step back and say only that the person is "regarded as
>anti-Semitic?"

Well, this may not be helpful in the important borderline cases, but some
people declare themselves to be anti-Semitic.

> Does it serve our neutrality policy to say rather that such a person
>is "universally regarded" or "all but universally regarded" as
>anti-Semitic?

In some cases, yes.  But we need not add these sorts of qualifiers
unless there does exist someone (noteworthy) who says otherwise.
"Although the Institute for Historical Change is all but universally
regarded as anti-Semitic, the Institute itself denies it, claiming
instead blah blah blah."  Compare with "Both critics and defenders of
The Institute for Changing History agree that it is anti-Semitic."
Or "KillTheJews.com is an openly anti-Semitic website."

(All examples made up just now.  Real examples exist, of course.)

> If someone ever quotes a Wikipedia article in a newspaper or book,
>should they be able to say, "According to Wikipedia, Joe Blow is
>anti-Semitic".

It's possible, but because the term is "hot", it's unlikely.

"According to Wikipedia, Joe Blow is a Canadian citizen."  Of course,
if Joe Blow _denies_ it, or if there is any significant opposition,
then we should "go meta" and not assert it ourselves, even if we think
it's true.

> Is there any difference between stating that a certain person
>studied at a university and stating that the person "is anti-Semitic"?
>
> Perhaps I am making a fact-value distinction:
> * studied at the university (fact)
> * is anti-Semitic (value judgement)

I see the point you are making, except that being anti-Semitic isn't
always a value judgment, and is sometimes just a simple fact.  It
turns out, of course, that in the vast majority of cases, the label is
at issue.

Some people legitimately say "I'm not anti-Semitic, I just oppose the
specific policies of the Israeli government."  Other people
illegitimately say "I'm not anti-Semitic, but I don't want Jews in my
neighborhood."

But I guess there are some people who openly embrace the term.

> I'm not really asking for a chorus of opinions from the list, but an
>authoritative, once-and-for-all pronouncement from the Founders.

Not my style, exactly, for better or worse.  :-)

So how's this for a non-authoritative, tentative and subject to change
pronouncement:

In almost all cases, it's better to go meta with a contentious label
like anti-Semitic.  This need not involve soft-pedalling the issue.

------------

Here's another possibly contentious term: "white supremacist".  The
difference here is that the term is not as often applied to people who
don't accept the term.  Saying that the KKK is a white supremacist
organization is uncontroversial, even though the term does carry with
it, to normal people, a negative moral judgment.

Here's a real website: http://www.jewwatch.com/ I only mention them to
condemn them and hold them up for ridicule.  They are anti-Semitic,
and I'd feel comfortable with the Wikipedia saying so.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Ireland]] and [[China]]

body:
Eclecticology wrote:

>Ed Poor wrote:

>>"The official name for any country is the long form..."
>>I think what he meant (or should have said) is the following, which is
>>subtly yet crucially different:
>>The official name for any *government* is the long form.

>Although this does not change my agreement about the naming of the
>articles, I disagree with you factually about the use of long forms.
>The long form is the formal and official name of a country that it
>would use in international legal documents.  It is not the name of any
>particular government, even though the name may be changed by successive
>governments to reflect their particular points of view.

This disagreement may reflect a peculiar usage
of the term "government" in the United States.
I know that in the UK (so I suspect in Canada too),
the "government" consists of the various ministers in the cabinet,
and one gets a "new" government every time the parliamentary coalition changes.
Even in the US, we apply terms this way to parliamentary systems:
"The government of Prime Minister Tony Blair has fallen,
and elections have been called for next Thursday." (I wish).
To an American, however, the government is the whole shebang,
the cabinet, the legislature (including the opposition party!),
and especially the reams of bureaucracy that affect one's daily life.
Just because there's been an election doesn't mean that
the Department of Motor Vehicles has changed -- it's the same government.
I remember hearing in junior high that the US Constitution is good because
Italy (say) has had dozens of governments since the end of WWII,
while we've had the same stable government since 1787.
I no longer recall if I heard this from an ignoramus or a joker,
but it's true only if you change the meaning of the word "government"
between the two halves of the sentence.

Anyway, the name "People's Republic of China" is not used by the country.
It's used by the government -- this one, and previous ones back to Mao's.
It's a political name that wouldn't exist without a government to attach it to.
If the Chinese abolished government, it would no longer apply to anything,
yet the country of China would continue to exist.
Nobody would *change* the name; the Chinese people would continue
to call the country "China" (Mandarin "Zhong1guo2") then as now as before.

We can perhaps avoid further debate by saying that the long form
is the "official political name" for a country:
a name imposed on the country (and officially so)
by the dominant political entity there.

>>China, whether it's "really" one country or not, currently has two
>>sovereign political divisions: PRC and ROC.

>That too is debatable.  I happen to support the view that Taiwan is not
>a part of China, and that its government has no business calling itself
>China.  Chinese occupation of Taiwan only began at the end of the Ming
>dynasty - a fairly short time by Chinese standards.

Similarly, the PRC's territory includes Tibet, arguably not part of China.

>>If one division claims
>>jurisdiction over the other, we should mention that in the article. But
>>we should absolutely not respect one side's claims over the other. We
>>must remain neutral, even if "everyone knows" that the only legitimate
>>government of all of China is X.

>All the more reason for the meaning of [[China]] to be fairly open-ended.

-- Toby


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> 4) Ed has repeatedly used his administrative powers to protect the page in
> an attempt to prevent edit conflicts. At first, I had no problem with that,
> but now he is getting involved in the debate and locking the page from further
> edits to protect his version at the same time.

That sounds like a bad idea, and I'm sure Ed will not do this.

> 5) Ed holds the position that, even if nobody disagrees with the fact that
> Wagner was an anti-Semite, it should be attributed, even if the attribution is
> something as fishy as "is universally regarded as".

Well, that seems like a good way to compromise.  It doesn't soft-pedal
anything, but it gets us out of the business of making a potentially
controversial judgment.

I don't know must about Wagner's anti-semitism (though I don't doubt
it), so I don't know if anyone disputes it.  Would Wagner have disputed
it?

> Furthermore, I consider Ed's use of his administrative privileges to protect
> articles he is involved in an abuse of said privileges. He should only use
> them in the way he initially did, as a "time out" to direct discussions in
> case of conflicts to the talk page, but he should not even do that if he states
> a position in the matter.

I agree that it's not good to use administrative powers "in the heat
of battle".

Do you want sysop access, Erik?  You should have it.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] request that Ed Poor's sysop powers be frozen

body:
Dan Keshet wrote:
> Because of this, I would like to request that Ed Poor's sysop powers be,
> at the very least, frozen until he can prove that he is capable of not
> abusing them.

I'm sure Ed will not do this again, and that he just made a mistake.  It's
not his style.

--Jimbo


body:
Wagner was not defined by his anti-Semitism; he was defined by his
music, which was universally humanist.  To make his anti-Semitism out to
be as important as his music is really really unbalanced.  The version
Ed had was fine.  Noone today reads any of Wagners "anti-Semitic" works,
but millions listen to his music with pleasure.  It is appropriate that
it be mentioned Wagner was anti-Semitic, but to devote more than a
passing mention to it as if it was the man's raison d'etre for existing
does a gross injustice to a man who is dead and unable to defend himself.

You should be thankful Ed was protecting the page; where Ed left in a
whole paragraph on Wagners anti-Semitism, I wanted to reduce it to a
single sentence.  But I can live with Ed's version as an acceptable
compromise.

Jonathan

On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 05:33:31PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
>> I'm not really asking for a chorus of opinions from the list, but an
>> authoritative, once-and-for-all pronouncement from the Founders.
>
>That's all nice and good, but before you do so, you should present an
>accurate and complete summary of the facts that made you pose this question.
>
>1) Since Clutch started an Edit War by unilaterally removing large parts of
>the Richard Wagner article on the English Wikipedia (one of several edit wars
>he got involved in yesterday), that article has been edited back and forth.
>
>2) Specifically, it has been debated whether statements about Wagner's
>anti-Semitism should be part of the article, or moved into a separate article
>because they "distract" from Wagner's work as Clutch argued. Unfortunately, so
>far, Clutch has succeeded in separating this part from the main article, even
>though we include dubious and extensive claims about anti-Semitism in the Noam
>Chomsky article.
>
>3) That Wagner was an anti-Semite has not seriously been disputed by anyone,
>including Clutch. Wagner's publication "Das Judenthum in der Musik", where
>he accuses Jews of being hateful, greedy, powerful and heartless matches any
>reasonable definition of anti-Semitism perfectly.
>
>4) Ed has repeatedly used his administrative powers to protect the page in
>an attempt to prevent edit conflicts. At first, I had no problem with that,
>but now he is getting involved in the debate and locking the page from further
>edits to protect his version at the same time.
>
>5) Ed holds the position that, even if nobody disagrees with the fact that
>Wagner was an anti-Semite, it should be attributed, even if the attribution is
>something as fishy as "is universally regarded as".
>
>6) I have countered this position with the analogy of requiring similar
>attribution for statements like "Wagner attended university at ..".
>
>The point here is, if there is no disagreement about facts among people
>whose opinions are verifiable and should be included in the article, I see no
>point in attributing any claims, regardless of the nature of the statement. As
>someone (Jimbo?) pointed out in the North Korea example, if North Korea
>actually disputes the numbers, that's a verifiable fact. If somebody, say, disputed
>the authenticity of Wagner's publication, that would be a verifiable fact.
>In these cases, we would clearly have to tone down the claims. But if there
>are no counter-opinions, why should we?
>
>Furthermore, I consider Ed's use of his administrative privileges to protect
>articles he is involved in an abuse of said privileges. He should only use
>them in the way he initially did, as a "time out" to direct discussions in
>case of conflicts to the talk page, but he should not even do that if he states
>a position in the matter. Otherwise he is no longer a sysop or a moderator
>but an editor, which is not the function assigned to him. If I recall
>correctly, this is not the first time this has come up, so I think some kind of
>reaction is in order.

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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body:
On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 08:39:19AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>Dan Keshet wrote:
>> Because of this, I would like to request that Ed Poor's sysop powers be,
>> at the very least, frozen until he can prove that he is capable of not
>> abusing them.
>
>I'm sure Ed will not do this again, and that he just made a mistake.  It's
>not his style.

Jimbo, Ed did not make a mistake.  The good work Ed did has been
seriously misrepresented on this list.  I think commendation is in order
for the way that he handled the edit wars that have kept erupting over
the Wagner page.

Ed has done his best to only freeze the article on a relatively NPOV,
non-biased version; neither my desired changes nor the oppositions
changes were allowed to partisanly carry the day.

I request Ed Poor's sysop status not be frozen.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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body:
On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 08:38:29AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>I agree that it's not good to use administrative powers "in the heat
>of battle".
>Do you want sysop access, Erik?  You should have it.

Given Eriks partisan war-editing, I humbly request that he not be given
sysop powers.  I don't trust him to use them wisely.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Jimbo, I know you like compromise, but I generally prefer consistency. If we
> do this in this article, we should use a phrase such as "is universally
> regarded as" in any sentence that falls into the same class, i.e. makes a value
> statement about a person that the majority sees as negative, but which is
> nevertheless not disputed. Is this a policy you would want?

But there are further distinguishing characteristics here, I think.
Each case will be different, and so no general rule of this type is
advisable.

> "I'm just not ready for that kind of commitment" ;-). I think it's good for
> some of the more involved people to keep an eye on how it looks from down
> here instead of up there, if you know what I mean.

Yow, then I need to re-emphasize what sysop powers are all about.

There is no "down here" and "up there".  Sysop powers are purely a
technical matter, to be treated solely in that capacity.  They should
not be used as tools or weapons in a debate.

We are all wikipedians, meeting on the equal field of wiki.  That is
why people are upset at Ed Poor for protecting the page.

--Jimbo


in_reply_to: <20021210164455.GA4359@reactor-core.org>; from krooger@debian.org on Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 08:44:55AM -0800

body:
No one is freezing anything.  Ed's a good guy.  He's built up a lot of
trust.  I don't agree with what he did in this case.  It's no big deal.

> Ed has done his best to only freeze the article on a relatively NPOV,
> non-biased version; neither my desired changes nor the oppositions
> changes were allowed to partisanly carry the day.

Right, but as I was saying the other day, what I'd like to see is all
parties to dispute working with good will and compassion to reach
mutually agreeable solutions.  We don't fight, we work for mutual
good.  It's not about sparring non-NPOV factions reaching an
equilibrium of exhaustion -- it's about people of good will working to
avoid factionalism in the first place.

This is not always possible -- some people are just jerks or kooks, and
that's that.  But reasonable people can work together reasonably.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Languages & namespaces

body:
-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Walther [mailto:krooger at debian.org]
Sent: Tuesday, December 10, 2002 8:44 AM
To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Languages & namespaces

On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 01:53:19PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
>Surely it would take two:
>*fetch current page's contents, view count, restrictions, and last
>edited date
>*check existence, size/type of all linked pages

Add a third one: we need to know if the user has read his Talk page
since it was last modified.

For the second one, don't we just need to check the existance and type
of the linked pages?  Why bother about the size?

We do also need to get the size of the primary page.

What do the "restrictions" on a page consist of?  Whether it is
readable or editable?

Still, that is a 2/3 savings.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Role of a sysop: (was: Wikipedia and anti-Semitism)

in_reply_to: <E079C39257D0D845AC39E2CA261C43E007042E@sm-nyny-xm04.nena.wdpr.disney.com>; from Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com on Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 12:00:00PM -0500

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> * A sysop should only use his administrative privileges as a "time
> out" to direct discussions in case of conflicts to the talk page,
> but he should not do that if he states a position in the
> matter. Otherwise he is no longer a sysop or a moderator but an
> editor, which is not the function assigned to him.

I'm not even really comfortable with that, unless things have gotten
way out of hand or something.  Most importantly, we should ALL exert
social pressure for co-operation rather than Usenet-style argument.  It's
hard, but it has worked wonders for us so far.

> BTW, I do not actually hold the position that, even if nobody
>disagrees with the statement that Wagner was an anti-Semite, it should
>be attributed. Rather, I asked Jimbo for a policy clarification on
>this point. And got one, quite promptly. Whereupon I immediately
>unprotected the page -- as promised.

I'm doubtful that my ramblings really clarified anything.  But if you
saw light, I'm glad to have been mumbling in the vicinity.  :-)

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Languages & namespaces

body:
Jonathan,

Any savings you predict are only guesses. I don't think we can predict
the performance benefits of cutting down the *number* of separate
queries.

If you think otherwise, what is your basis?

Ed Poor
Software Estimation expert


subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX, release candidate 2

body:
On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 06:45:10PM +0100, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>Main changes:
>* matrices support
>* more characters inside \mbox are allowed
>* more AMS symbols supported
>
>I think texvc is ready for Wikipedia now, but I'd prefer if it
>received more testing before that happens.
>
>The only thing that yet has to be done is to integrate math.sql
>with the rest of SQL code for creation/upgrade of Wikipedia database.

I would really prefer using a Math or TeX namespace instead of <math>
tags.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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body:
Well, how about supplying a complete printout of all the queries we
currently use. You could start with the queries needed to view a typical
page.

Some pages have no links to other pages. I would *guess* this would get
loaded faster on average than pages with links.

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia and anti-Semitism

body:
Jonathan Walther wrote:

>Jimmy Wales wrote:

>>I agree that it's not good to use administrative powers "in the heat
>>of battle".
>>Do you want sysop access, Erik?  You should have it.

>Given Eriks partisan war-editing, I humbly request that he not be given
>sysop powers.  I don't trust him to use them wisely.

OTC, he's the one arguing that sysop powers shouldn't be used in edit wars.

I support giving Erik (Eloquence) administrator status on [[en:]].

Discussion of this should move to <wikiEN-l>.

-- Toby


body:
Eloquence wrote in part:

>5) Ed holds the position that, even if nobody disagrees with the fact that
>Wagner was an anti-Semite, it should be attributed, even if the attribution is
>something as fishy as "is universally regarded as".

But Wagner is *not* universally regarded as anti-Semitic.
This means that we clearly have to make it "widely regarded",
regardless of whether we should state as fact what is universally regarded.

I will try to find an argument that I read against the charge
(and not on some sort of revisionist web site either!),
so that I can summarise it on Wikipedia.
But the gist was that anti-Semitism is
a nationalist philosophy originiating in the 19th century
that goes beyond merely accepting a society's dominant prejudices.
Analogously, there's a difference between being a white supremacist
and believing that blacks commit more crimes than whites in the US
(a false but not uncommon belief here).

-- Toby


body:
On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 10:02:23AM -0800, Toby Bartels wrote:
>>Given Eriks partisan war-editing, I humbly request that he not be given
>>sysop powers.  I don't trust him to use them wisely.
>
>OTC, he's the one arguing that sysop powers shouldn't be used in edit wars.

Wrong. He only protested Ed's use of sysop powers when the version he
wanted didn't get frozen; he didn't complain when Ed froze versions I
didn't like earlier.

Erik was very involved himself in edit-warring; not good attributes for
a sysop.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Interlanguage links

body:
I have been asked by Ben-Zin on the de wikipedia for a special page that
lists articles in one language that link to another, but are not linked
back.

This reminds me of an issue I raised some time ago here: AFAIK, the
interlanguage links are *not* stored anywhere except in the article
body. While this is sufficient for display of the links on viewing,
every database search for these links needs to be based on non-indexed
fulltext search, which strikes me as somewhat inefficient.

To solve that issue, I see two proposals:
1. Store the interlanguage links in a table of the "source" language.
The normal links table might be sufficient.
2. Store the interlanguage links in a new database, shared by all languages.

#2 has IMHO several advantages:
* every language wiki software has to know only that location, instead
of cross-referencing with *all* other language databases
* faster access for multiple languages (e.g., show all pages in de,fr,eo
that link to en but are not linked back)
* can store other meta information (what's the name of the user
namespace in German etc.)
* no need to change the existing databases; every language needs to run
a script once to fill in the existing namespaces

I think this is getting high priority as more wikipedias are changed to
Phase III.

Magnus


body:
Can the Wikipedia say that a certain person is anti-Semitic? Or must an article step back and say only that the person is "regarded as anti-Semitic?"

Does it serve our neutrality policy to say rather that such a person is "universally regarded" or "all but universally regarded" as anti-Semitic?

Consider the following:

If someone ever quotes a Wikipedia article in a newspaper or book, should they be able to say, "According to Wikipedia, Joe Blow is anti-Semitic".

My interpretation of our neutrality policy may be a bit shaky, but something smells wrong here. The hypothetical quote above makes it seems like we are endorsing a view.

Is there any difference between stating that a certain person studied at a university and stating that the person "is anti-Semitic"?

Perhaps I am making a fact-value distinction:
* studied at the university (fact)
* is anti-Semitic (value judgement)

I'm not really asking for a chorus of opinions from the list, but an authoritative, once-and-for-all pronouncement from the Founders.

Ed Poor


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>Can the Wikipedia say that a certain person is anti-Semitic? Or must an article step back and say only that the person is "regarded as anti-Semitic?"
>
>Does it serve our neutrality policy to say rather that such a person is "universally regarded" or "all but universally regarded" as anti-Semitic.
>
"Anti-Semitic", or even the subtly different "anti-semitic", is a
characterization which, like "murderous tyrants", has a broad range of
interpretations that depend on personal points of view.  Even insisting
that a person who uses the term must use the term exactly as it is
defined in [[Anti-semitism]] doesn't help us.  Most of them probably
will not have read that article.  If they don't read the NPOV article.....!

The phrase "is regarded" is another problem.  Like any grammatically
passive phrase, it begs the question, "By whom?"

Saying that Joe Blow is anti-Semitic is an ad hominem argument, unlike
saying that Joe Blow's statement was anti-Semitic.  So characterizing
the statement is far more palatable.

>Consider the following:
>
>If someone ever quotes a Wikipedia article in a newspaper or book, should they be able to say, "According to Wikipedia, Joe Blow is anti-Semitic".
>
They can say anything they want, and they will.  Adding the words,
"According to Wikipedia...", doesn't even prove that it was in Wikipedia
unless the reader is astute enough to check his facts. We have
absolutely no control over this Jimmy is willing to waste money on
lawyers to prosecute people for stupidity.

>Is there any difference between stating that a certain person studied at a university and stating that the person "is anti-Semitic"?
>
>Perhaps I am making a fact-value distinction:
>* studied at the university (fact)
>* is anti-Semitic (value judgement)
>
There is a difference.  The first statement is falsifiable in Popper's
sense of the term; the second is not.

>I'm not really asking for a chorus of opinions from the list, but an authoritative, once-and-for-all pronouncement from the Founders.
>
Lots of luck!  Authoritative pronouncements tend to be un-Wikipedian.

I would favour a list of words and phrases that carry with them a
presumption that they violate neutrality.  This does not mean that they
would be completely outlawed, but there use would be subject to some
restrictions.  They could not be used in blanket statements.  They must
be attributed to an identifiable source, and not to some vague "almost
everybody".  "Anti-semitism", "murderous tyrant", and "pseudoscience"
would all qualify for the list.

Eclecticology


body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>I've been on several sizeable projects where what you suggest, i.e.,
>starting over, was tried. When they jumped into it without any clear
>idea of what they were doing, the attempt failed in each case.
>
>The most expensive failure cost the firm then employing me, which shall
>remain nameless, $8 million. Early on, I told the project manager and my
>boss that the project was doomed and why, in considerable detail. Then I
>made sure everyone on my team found jobs elsewhere.
>
>If you can't answer any of my questions, I'm going to avoid
>participating. I don't like failure.
>
This sounds like something out of a Dilbert comic strip.  Dilbert should
be required reading in any business administration program.

Eclecticology


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
I've been on several sizeable projects where what you suggest, i.e.,
starting over, was tried. When they jumped into it without any clear
idea of what they were doing, the attempt failed in each case.

The most expensive failure cost the firm then employing me, which shall
remain nameless, $8 million. Early on, I told the project manager and my
boss that the project was doomed and why, in considerable detail. Then I
made sure everyone on my team found jobs elsewhere.

If you can't answer any of my questions, I'm going to avoid
participating. I don't like failure.

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikitech-l] (no subject)

body:
Wikipedia.org suddenly became inaccessible a few minutes ago. This was shortly after I locked a page, hoping to quell an NPOV dispute.

I'm not assuming that NPOV vandals are attacking the server in response to my action, but I'm not ruling it out either :-(

Anyway, Brion, could you please restart the server or something?

Ed Poor  <-- writing at 11:24 A.M. Tuesday, U.S. East Coast timezone


body:
I haven't read all the appropriate mailing lists but I scanned them to
see if this subject was being discussed already.  If it is being
discussed in a place I couldn't find, I apologize and please let me
know.

The "Richard Wagner" article has been repeatedly stagnated by untimely,
inappropriate freezing by Ed Poor, who is both one of the authors of the
page and one of the participants in the talk page discussion.  It is a
grave breach of trust for somebody with "sysop" powers to "pull rank" by
freezing an article he is editing.  Sysop isn't supposed to be a rank,
but a measure of trust. Trust which at least I have totally lost in
him.  This is not the first time he has done this and it is not the
first time people have called him on it.

Because of this, I would like to request that Ed Poor's sysop powers be,
at the very least, frozen until he can prove that he is capable of not
abusing them.

Thank you,

Dan Keshet
PS: please cc: me on answers; I am not on any of these lists.


body:
Erik, are you Eloquence? I'm a bit confused about who everyone is.

Anyway, I have unprotected the [[Richard Wagner]] page as promised, since Jimbo answered the question about NPOV.

And if anyone wants me to stop being a sysop because of this, well, let me just point out that no one seemed to mind the page block when it stopped Jonathan (aka Clutch). In fact, this is the first objection I've heard in a long time (months ^_^).

I will do whatever it takes to make peace, but if I'm told to back off then I'll just let there be war.

I will do as I'm told, as always :-)

your humble servant,
Ed Poor


body:
Well, thank you, Erik, for that magnanimous statement of support.

I take it to mean that my sysop rights should be melted, rather than frozen. Or am I all wet? ;-)

Ed Poor


body:
I agree with Erik's "eloquent" suggestion wholeheartedly, which I have paraphrased as follows:

* A sysop should only use his administrative privileges as a "time out" to direct discussions in case of conflicts to the talk page, but he should not do that if he states a position in the matter. Otherwise he is no longer a sysop or a moderator
but an editor, which is not the function assigned to him.

I intend to follow this suggestion to the letter.

BTW, I do not actually hold the position that, even if nobody disagrees with the statement that Wagner was an anti-Semite, it should be attributed. Rather, I asked Jimbo for a policy clarification on this point. And got one, quite promptly. Whereupon I immediately unprotected the page -- as promised.

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Sysops and war-editing (was: Wikipedia and anti-Semitism)

body:
LOL, I actually support Erik's sysop nomination! He and I are on the
same side, even if we had a little dust-up over Wagner. You, Jonathan,
on the other hand <grin> need a bit more seasoning first before we put
the database in your [[user:Clutch]]es.

Ed Poor


body:
On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 07:32:36PM +0100, elian wrote:
>Rather I'd suggest a temporary ban of RK because of repeated NPOV abuses,
>if that didn't entail accusations of Anti-Semitism on Wikipedia.

My earlier statements requesting clarification of Wikipedia policy came
from my observing the way RK on the one hand, ignores it, and on the
other hand accuses others of ignoring it.

I too would support a temporary ban of RK.  He is always biasing things.

RK may be a Jew, but banning him for his persistent and long-standing
disrespect for the NPOV policy does NOT constitute anti-Semitism.

Seeing RK receive some consequences for his behavior would go a long way
toward reassuring me that it is safe to stick to the NPOV approach
without fear of people like him instantly reverting my edits and calling
me an "anti-Semitic vandal".

RK has recently branched out from attacking the Jehovah's Witness
articles and started biasing the articles on Mormonism and drove away
some Mormon contributors who were contributing NPOV material based on
their firsthand experience.

Also, I have caught RK making some edits to the JW articles that show he
clearly is pulling information out of his ass.  One item in particular:
he wrote "Book X published by the JW's claims Y about changes in their
doctrines."  In fact, that book makes the opposite case.  It is part of
a long-standing pattern of abuse where RK has shown his only interest is
to dig up muck on a group, and not to provide a neutral, balanced view.

URL here:

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Doctrines_of_Jehovah%27s_Witnesses&diff=478728&oldid=478595

A lot of RK's bias consists of emotionally loaded terms.  Everything is
"alleged" or "claimed" or "mysteriously". Or he will say "All scholars
disagree" and other similar absolute statements.  Worse than his edits
are his attacks on people who try to neutralize his emotionally laden
verbage to something more suitable to the Wikipedia.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] My goodness, people!!! Aka WTF?  (was  Wikipedia and anti-Semitism)

body:
On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 12:37:49PM -0800, Julie Hofmann Kemp wrote:
>1) Yes, Erik is Eloquence, and has been involved in many edit wars on
>subjects which he has little expertise.
>
>2) More importantly, what IS the problem?  Clutch, we don't know each
>other, but you cannot NOT mention Wagner's anti-Semitism.  It may have

Let's be clear. I wasn't eliminating mention of Wagners anti-Semitism.
But I was attempting to restore balance to the article by giving it
appropriate importance.  Devoting half the article to discussing the
man's anti-Semitism was clearly way out of line.

>therefore.   Speaking of which, I hope there is something similar in the
>article about that nice Mr. Luther...

The brief discussion of anti-Semitism in Luther's article is closer to
what I had in mind for the Wagner article.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [WikiEN-l] sysop trust

body:
Hi all,

If you think that this is an aberration and Ed will not abuse sysop
trust in the future, then I consider this issue to be adequately
handled.  But I do hope that if we are forced to revisit this issue
(with Ed or anybody else), we are quick to act on it.

Cheers,

Dan Keshet


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Role of a sysop

body:
> > BTW, I do not actually hold the position that, even if nobody
> >disagrees with the statement that Wagner was an anti-Semite, it should
> >be attributed. Rather, I asked Jimbo for a policy clarification on
> >this point. And got one, quite promptly. Whereupon I immediately
> >unprotected the page -- as promised.
>
> I'm doubtful that my ramblings really clarified anything.  But if you
> saw light, I'm glad to have been mumbling in the vicinity.  :-)
>
> --Jimbo

LOL! I nominate Jimbo for "king of the world" rights ;-)

Summing up:
* A sysop should not use his powers as weapons in a debate
* A sysop shouldn't use protection unless things have gotten way out of hand
* Let's all cooperate with good will and avoid factionalism

Ed Poor   <-- not frozen, but considerably melted


from_name: Julie Hofmann Kemp

body:
1) Yes, Erik is Eloquence, and has been involved in many edit wars on
subjects which he has little expertise.

2) More importantly, what IS the problem?  Clutch, we don't know each
other, but you cannot NOT mention Wagner's anti-Semitism.  It may have
had little to do with his music, but Wagner very influential in the rise
of German nationalist thought (of the more conservative to extreme
type).  Whether or not Wagner himself had anything to do with it, one
cannot discuss him without at least mentioning the affinity Hitler had
for his music -- the Ring cycle especially, as an ur-German saga...

3 )An historian might deal with this by saying something like, "Wagner
is seen by many to have been anti-Semitic, or at least to have supported
the idea of anti-Semitism  This belief is generally based on one of
Wagner's own works [insert name here], in which he describes the Jews
as..."  In this was, no one is labeling or falsely accusing anybody of
anything -- just offering a generally held conclusion and the basis
therefore.   Speaking of which, I hope there is something similar in the
article about that nice Mr. Luther...

Jules


body:
Dan,

There are about 10 replies on the mailing lists on this issue. Would you like me to forward those to you?

Ed Poor (not frozen but considerably melted)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] By the way...

body:
In this case, I think Eloquence is dead-on in his assessment of the
Wagner situation.  The articles should be merged -- we cant just start
creating really lame sub-articles because a couple of people object to
including an unpleasant truth or two.  The beauty of being literate is
that we should be able to create coherent wholes.  Perhaps if there were
more about other aspects of his life, the anti-Semitism would not stand
out as much?  His relationship with Cosima -- somewhat notorious at the
time, gets hardly a mention.

Jules

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from_name: Bridget

from_email: Bridget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] anti-semitism

body:
I think we should avoid mention of it unless there is something more particular that you have regarding this anti-semitism. Did Wagner write a song titled, "I hate the Jews, la la la lala" or did he write some paper, if so, what did he say in the paper?

---------------------------------
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body:
>5) Ed holds the position that, even if nobody disagrees with the fact that
>Wagner was an anti-Semite, it should be attributed, even if the attribution is
>something as fishy as "is universally regarded as".

Excuse me, but I do not hold this position. I actually have no opinion on Wagner or how we ought to refer to him.

While I was wrong to protect the page, what I did right was to ask publicly for a clarification of policy to settle the very question Erik thought I had a position on.

Ed Poor


body:
On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 04:29:55PM -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
>It's inappropriate to claim "There were ice ages" without providing the
>supporting evidence, but the claim itself is fine.

Actually, there is a lot of evidence from scientists, atheist and
otherwise, that earths cool periods never were ice ages, in the sense
of huge ice sheets covering more than a quarter of the earths surface area.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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