subject: [Wikitech-l] Special:Desysop

body:
Rob Church wrote:
>
> On 15/08/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Andrew Garrett wrote:
>> > Questions, comments and requests for demonstrations are more than
>> welcome.
>> This is obviously going to be a great help to other users of Mediawiki as
>> well. It makes good sense to have a proper UI for as many of these
>> delicate
>> operations as we can manage.
> Phil, MediaWiki contains a built-in rights management interface.
> It makes more sense to me if we fixed up one extension for Wikimedia
> which combined Makesysop, Makebot, Giverollback and now
> this...thing...into something manageable and useful. Configuration can
> determine what groups can grant and revoke which rights.
> Four different pages to do similar tasks is pushing the boundaries.
>
Can't argue with that...in my defence, m'lud, I have no access to anything
like that AFAIK so had no way of knowing about it.

Another way of looking at it is that this would give local administrators
the choice of having a monolithic interface which does everything, or simply
enabling the individual operations as they wanted.

Obviously it would make sense to coordinate the monolithic and separate
interfaces to ensure they use common code where appropriate.

So now we need some way of configuring the configuration tools...<lapses
into incoherent babble>

Well, at least now we have something to work with...quite the wiki-way ;-)

Cheers...HAND
--
Phil
PS Good to hear from you, even if you are rightfully chastising me for my
woeful ignorance ;-)
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Special%3ADesysop-tf2108462.html#a5812151
Sent from the Wikipedia Developers forum at Nabble.com.


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)

body:
On 8/15/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Under the Florida Statutes, the members of a non-profit have a right
> to remove any board member upon a majority vote.  (Florida Statutes
> 617.0808)  So no, legal membership would make a difference if a few
> board members did something outrageously stupid.

I didn't realize that (note to self: read Florida Statutes). That's a
pretty compelling argument for membership -- it could be a long term
safeguard for the Foundation's principles. Do you think chapter
membership could be treated as equivalent to membership in the
Foundation?

> "If a corporation has no members or its members do not have the right
> to vote, the directors shall have the sole voting power."  (Florida
> Statutes 617.0721).  If "it is perfectly possible" to do so, then I
> for one would like to see an example of a US non-profit organization,
> with no members, that elects its directors - preferably a Florida one.

I think without legal membership, the current election should be seen
as a poll which is interpreted as binding by the Board, but which
could be legally interpreted otherwise. That is not an ideal situation
if our position is that we trust the many more than the few.

> What would you consider too small a number of members as compared to
> active volunteers, and why would you consider this number too small?

I think that depends on exactly where membership would be relevant.
Would there be members-only mailing lists? Would participation in the
committees require membership?

> Regarding anonymity, I think that keeping Wikimedia governance
> separate from Wikipedia editing (for example) increases anonymity.  In
> order to have elections you have to have some sense of identity,
> otherwise sockpuppetry would run rampant.  But that identity doesn't
> have to be connected to your edit history.

Do membership records have to be public?

Erik


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)


from_name: Milos Rancic

subject:
[Foundation-l] Serbian admin desysopped (was: Emergency on
	Wiktionary)

body:
Walter Vermeir wrote:
> I have just done a de-sysop/de-bureaucrat on the Serbian Wikpedia. There
> the have (now) 40 sysops and of those 25 are bureaucrat.
>
> That is from my POV an irresponsible number of bureaucrats. I do not
> know how many active user there are. The have 34700 articles.

Just to say that no one (including Boris) abused sysop/bureaucrat
rights on Serbian Wikipedia (there were some small incidents related
to admin rights; but enwiki is full of that). Boris abused his
contributor's rights (including a lot of lying on a lot of places,
impersonating other people, making sockpupptes with abusive intentions
etc.).

My POV is that admin/bureaucrat rights should not be a big deal. In
general, people are more responsible with admin/bureaucrat rights, as
well as they are more motivated to contribute to Wikipedia.

Also, there is one important message with such policy: there is no
small faction of people who are keeping rights for themselves; anyone
with good contributions and non-confrontative relations with others
should become admin/bureaucrat.

But, mainstream on the most of Wikimedian projects now is that
admin/bureaucrat permissions are not technical rights for trusted
users, but political power. Such thinking rises in Serbian Wikipedian
community, too. So, it seems that Serbian Wikipedia would have smaller
number/percentage of bureaucrats and admins in the future.


from_name: Amgine

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
On 15-Aug-06, at 1:14 AM, Cormac Lawler wrote:

> I very much agree with what I think Elian was saying, in that I think
> NPOV is a useless concept when applied to research. If we stick to the
> concept of NPOV (in all its ambiguity and complexity) we get nowhere
> in actually allowing someone to test and apply their learning about
> the world in an academic context. NPOV works for an encyclopedia - it
> will not work (or, at least, not the same way) for a place of
> learning.
>
> I don't know what kind of NPOV in research you were referring to,
> Amgine - there is a whole range of complexity on doing and writing
> research - and all academic research should be structured in a way
> that does not compromise ethics, with a methodology that can be
> justified, and be grounded in the appropriate literature (hopefully to
> make some contribution to that literature). That's good research
> practice - not NPOV. But yes, what we need to do, over the coming
> months, is to create a framework and guidelines for good practice in
> research, including ethical and methodological guidelines. That will
> determine what kind of research will be hosted and what we are to do
> with/about it.

A research proposal or report will address the current state of the
literature, presenting all relevant views on a given topic as well as
the current scientific consensus. It will present its hypothesis or
problem statement in a neutral manner, and justify the research. This
includes research survey articles.

After that it will explain how the research will be/was conducted,
justifying the methodology. If it is a report it will then present
the primary findings of the research, both predicted and unexpected,
and in observational research it will discuss additional findings not
part of the original hypothesis that were found while conducting the
research.

The conclusions drawn from the research in reports are carefully
presented with arguments to justify them.

In all of these elements of research NPOV is clearly an element of
good research. It may not be explicit as it is in en.Wikipedia, but
non-neutral research does not generally survive peer review at
journals which is, after all, very much like a wiki.

-------------- next part --------------


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
Anthere wrote:

>It came to my mind that we probably did not clearly announced here that
>we approved the creation of Wikiversity :-)
>
>Here is the resolution :
>http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_Wikiversity
>
>A couple of important points
>
>1) there will be a domain at beta.wikiversity.org, where all new
>languages may contribute and start working on translation of guidelines
>etc...
>
>2) those languages with at least 10 active participants can request a
>separate domain name. As of today, I presume the english language has at
>least 10 people interested, so you guys may bug Brion to ask for
>en.wikiversity.org. I am not sure if it is the case for any other language.
>
So, I'm also presuming that de.wikiversity is going to remain?  There
are also other active Wikiversities that exist on the other language
Wikibooks project besides en.wikibooks, so I presume this beta
wikiversity is to transfer the content from those other project (like
http://es.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikiversidad%3APortada or
http://es.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikiversidad%3APortada).  I would imagine
that Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French would be very early
adopters and could likely get the 10 minimum active participants that
you are suggesting.  So much so that if Brion is busy creating new
languages I would strongly recommend that those be created as well, with
formal activation being mainly a formality.  Other languages that might
be useful for the formal vote but would be likely early Wikiversity
languages as well would be Finnish, Japanese, Polish, and Serbian, who
seem to have an active Wikibooks community that would likly support
Wikiversity as well.

I'm guessing that these request should be made on meta?  aka
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages

>
>3) All sites will be flagged "beta" in the same way that wikinews has
>been for at least 6 months.
>
>4) During these 6 months, guidelines should be developped, *in
>particular* with regards to collaborative research. We would hope that
>these guidelines are as much as possible developped on the beta site (in
>particular collaborative research), so that all languages share a common
>goal and a few common non negociable rules.
>
>5) At the end of these 6 months period, the project will be reviewed, in
>particular so that the issue of collaborative research is qualified, and
>if possible to define whether the beta stage is over. Reviewal will be
>done by Spc.
>
>I hope that's clear... ;-)
>
>We wish good luck to this project.
>
>Ant
>
>
The research guidelines are certainly one of the weaker aspects of the
Wikiversity proposal, in part because such research was officially
discouraged on Wikibooks and there was considerable debate for if it
should even exist at all.  The above guidelines for how original
research would be carried out on Wikiversity is reasonable, and
something that really does need to be dealt with by the participants as
one of the early tasks to be dealt with in terms of policies.  This
won't be the only activity on Wikiversity, however, and it looks like
there are a couple of participants who are pushing head first for some
sort of degree granting program already.  I suspect that will also be a
major topic of discussion given what has happened already on my own talk
page on the topic.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


from_name: Birgitte SB

subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call) Beyond membership

body:
I find the conversation about the benefits of having
members of the Foundation really interesting and it
has me thinking about the opposite scenario.

Lets examine what *is* the WMF if it does not have
members.

According to the Bylaws update:  A group of at least 5
trustees where at least 2 are brought in from the
community at large.  These (at least 2) community
members are voted on by the community where the
"dates, rules and regulation of the voting procedures"
are set by (the at least 5) trustees of the WMF.  This
vote is overseen by two people from the community
chosen by the (at least 5) trustees.  The other
trustees not run through some form of community vote
are chosen by a vote of  the (at least 5) trustees.

A cynical view of this set-up is that it could become
easily self-selecting by a very small group.  Even the
trustees elected by the community can be pretty much
controlled by setting "dates, rules and regulation of
the voting procedures" in a certain fashion.  There
are not even any requirements for the advertising of
such an election.  I will enumerate all the ways this
could allow a corrupt board to have a large hand in
picking the (at least 2) trustees from the community
as there are more than a dozen tactics.

Also notice that any of trustees elected by the board
to fill a vacancy remain until among other things
their "removal from office".  Now a vacancy can be
created by anything including expansion of the board.
This means any new non-community elected board members
can somehow be removed by board.  There are no
specifications of limits on how they would be removed,
so any resolution that passes would probably do the
job.  This could be a board expansion seat, Tim's
replacement, basically any future trustees not from
the community elections.  The significance of this is
people could believe they are leaving the WMF in good
hands by ensuring a particular replacement or
expansion of the board, however any new trustees
elected by the board can be easily removed by any
future board even ten years later.  This could one day
apply to *all* non-community elected trustees simply
due to mortality.

After looking at this with a cynical eye, I do not
think these are a good set of bylaws to govern the
future of WMF.  It would be just too easy for a couple
of corrupt people with a little bit of patience to
effectively take control of the board at some point in
the future.  It has been pointed out that having
members would be an effective legally mandated way to
have a final check against such a possibility.
However it would be much better to write the by-laws
with internal checks and balances rather than to rely
on a last resort vote of the membership.  If it really
ever came to that vote the corrupt board could do a
great deal of damage by passing various resolutions
while the membership is being marshaled.

My personal opinion is that we should develop some
satisfactory by-laws to protect the WMF and its
mission.  After such protections have been drafted as
bylaws we should then examine what benefits would then
be gained by having members.  Right now membership
looks good because the by-laws are not.  I don't know
that once we have a good set of by-laws membership
would still be worth the hassle or the divisiveness
that it would entail.  However I am strongly against
the bylaws being modified to remove the membership
clause without other significant changes being made.

BirgitteSB

PS None of my concerns are regarding any current
trustees.  I am simply imagining worst case scenario
here.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
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body:
--- Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I find the conversation about the benefits of having
> members of the Foundation really interesting and it
> has me thinking about the opposite scenario.
>
> Lets examine what *is* the WMF if it does not have
> members.
>
> According to the Bylaws update:  A group of at least
> 5
> trustees where at least 2 are brought in from the
> community at large.  These (at least 2) community
> members are voted on by the community where the
> "dates, rules and regulation of the voting
> procedures"
> are set by (the at least 5) trustees of the WMF.
> This
> vote is overseen by two people from the community
> chosen by the (at least 5) trustees.  The other
> trustees not run through some form of community vote
> are chosen by a vote of  the (at least 5) trustees.
>
>
> A cynical view of this set-up is that it could
> become
> easily self-selecting by a very small group.  Even
> the
> trustees elected by the community can be pretty much
> controlled by setting "dates, rules and regulation
> of
> the voting procedures" in a certain fashion.  There
> are not even any requirements for the advertising of
> such an election.  I will enumerate all the ways

This should read "I will *not* enumerate all the ways"

> this
> could allow a corrupt board to have a large hand in
> picking the (at least 2) trustees from the community
> as there are more than a dozen tactics.
>
> Also notice that any of trustees elected by the
> board
> to fill a vacancy remain until among other things
> their "removal from office".  Now a vacancy can be
> created by anything including expansion of the
> board.
> This means any new non-community elected board
> members
> can somehow be removed by board.  There are no
> specifications of limits on how they would be
> removed,
> so any resolution that passes would probably do the
> job.  This could be a board expansion seat, Tim's
> replacement, basically any future trustees not from
> the community elections.  The significance of this
> is
> people could believe they are leaving the WMF in
> good
> hands by ensuring a particular replacement or
> expansion of the board, however any new trustees
> elected by the board can be easily removed by any
> future board even ten years later.  This could one
> day
> apply to *all* non-community elected trustees simply
> due to mortality.
>
> After looking at this with a cynical eye, I do not
> think these are a good set of bylaws to govern the
> future of WMF.  It would be just too easy for a
> couple
> of corrupt people with a little bit of patience to
> effectively take control of the board at some point
> in
> the future.  It has been pointed out that having
> members would be an effective legally mandated way
> to
> have a final check against such a possibility.
> However it would be much better to write the by-laws
> with internal checks and balances rather than to
> rely
> on a last resort vote of the membership.  If it
> really
> ever came to that vote the corrupt board could do a
> great deal of damage by passing various resolutions
> while the membership is being marshaled.
>
> My personal opinion is that we should develop some
> satisfactory by-laws to protect the WMF and its
> mission.  After such protections have been drafted
> as
> bylaws we should then examine what benefits would
> then
> be gained by having members.  Right now membership
> looks good because the by-laws are not.  I don't
> know
> that once we have a good set of by-laws membership
> would still be worth the hassle or the divisiveness
> that it would entail.  However I am strongly against
> the bylaws being modified to remove the membership
> clause without other significant changes being made.
>
>
> BirgitteSB
>
> PS None of my concerns are regarding any current
> trustees.  I am simply imagining worst case scenario
> here.
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________________________
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> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam
> protection around
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> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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from_name: Anthony

subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)

body:
On 8/14/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/15/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Under the Florida Statutes, the members of a non-profit have a right
> > to remove any board member upon a majority vote.  (Florida Statutes
> > 617.0808)  So no, legal membership would make a difference if a few
> > board members did something outrageously stupid.
>
> I didn't realize that (note to self: read Florida Statutes). That's a
> pretty compelling argument for membership -- it could be a long term
> safeguard for the Foundation's principles. Do you think chapter
> membership could be treated as equivalent to membership in the
> Foundation?
>
My understanding is that chapter membership is only treated as
equivalent to membership in the Foundation if the bylaws specifically
state this.  I'm not really sure if this is a good idea or not - I
tend to think it isn't.

Also, as Michael Snow pointed out, this is really a last ditch
scenario type effort.  It's not supposed to be used, and the fact that
it exists makes it even less likely that it'll need to be used.
However, I believe regularly pruning the membership records is
important, and I believe my outline of membership included this.  In
case it was just in my mind and not in my writing, the plan would be
that members would have to pay dues annually or meet the activity
requirements to have dues waived.  The activity requirements would
have to be met each year.  I suppose this would need to be spelled out
explicitly.

Michael Snow also pointed out his guess as to the number of eligible
voters actually voting.  And this is also something I think needs to
be addressed.  In case it's not clear, my idea for membership is for
opt-in membership.  In order to be a member, you have to explicitly
apply for membership (a web-form or email address would be available
for this).  Moreover, to have your dues waived we should probably
require a waiver to be filled out every year (again, submission over
the internet would be possible).

> > "If a corporation has no members or its members do not have the right
> > to vote, the directors shall have the sole voting power."  (Florida
> > Statutes 617.0721).  If "it is perfectly possible" to do so, then I
> > for one would like to see an example of a US non-profit organization,
> > with no members, that elects its directors - preferably a Florida one.
>
> I think without legal membership, the current election should be seen
> as a poll which is interpreted as binding by the Board, but which
> could be legally interpreted otherwise. That is not an ideal situation
> if our position is that we trust the many more than the few.
>
It's not just a matter of trusting the current board members, either.
Right now most likely 2 of the 5 board members are leaving.  If one
more person resigns, dies, or switches to the dark side, then that
makes a majority of the board members that we don't even know right
now.  I'd say that's not such a far-fetched scenario that we should be
thinking about it now.

And in any case, putting things in the bylaws which are not legally
enforcible strikes me as improper.  At the very least the bylaws
should make it clear that the community vote is only an advisory one,
if this is the case.

> > What would you consider too small a number of members as compared to
> > active volunteers, and why would you consider this number too small?
>
> I think that depends on exactly where membership would be relevant.
> Would there be members-only mailing lists? Would participation in the
> committees require membership?
>
I definitely think participation in the committees should require
membership.  Of course participation in the committees could in itself
be considered an activity which qualifies for waiving the fees.  So
the only issue I see would be anonymity, and I don't think there
should be anonymous committee members.

As for the mailing lists, the only thing I'd personally even consider
is moderating them so that only members can post without going through
moderation.  Even if there are only 100 members, I think that's enough
people that anything which goes out to all the members is probably
going to get out to the general public anyway.

> > Regarding anonymity, I think that keeping Wikimedia governance
> > separate from Wikipedia editing (for example) increases anonymity.  In
> > order to have elections you have to have some sense of identity,
> > otherwise sockpuppetry would run rampant.  But that identity doesn't
> > have to be connected to your edit history.
>
> Do membership records have to be public?
>
As Michael Snow said, and I'll add that this is under Florida law,
they have to be available to the other members, so they're essentially
public.  I believe they can be kept at the office so that you'd have
to come in physically to see them, though.  You also have to give 5
business days notice.

But the only thing tying your identity to your username, if you choose
to use a pseudonym, should be the request for waiver of dues.  That
wouldn't have to be public.

I wonder the feasibility of allowing people to use a Wikimedia address
for their address information.  PO Boxes and In Care Of addresses
don't seem to be prohibited.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
James Hare wrote:

>Will Wikiversity even give out diplomas? Or will it be like Wikipedia's
>"we're-good-for-learning-stuff-but-don't-use-us-for-school"?
>
>On 8/15/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Has anyone considered the possibility of actually instrumenting an
>>>online course of instruction (beyond creating the content) and applying
>>>for accredidation of the whole project and going after real funding?
>>>
>>>Jeff
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>What a frightening idea!  A helpful rule might be, "Wikiversity is not a
>>diploma mill."
>>
>>Ec
>>
>>
 From my own perspective on the topic, I think a roadmap needs to be
laid out for what is really required for granting degrees by
Wikiversity, which would also require formal approval at some point by
the WMF board of trustees before the degree programs themselves are
granted, in addition to any other accreditation standards or quality
standards that are to be set up by the participants on Wikiversity.
 There has been debate as to if courses should be taught at all, so the
process of granting a degree should certainly have some incredibly high
standards.

The reason for WMF board approval of the program is mainly because the
WMF would have legal obligations related to the granting of any such
degrees, and would be the certifying authority ultimately for any
degrees that are granted.  This isn't that the board should micro-manage
the course selection, but that a rational and well-thought out degree
program can and should be put together by Wikiversity participants first
that goes into exaustive detail to explain what it would take to grant
any sort of degree.  And this is a major step for Wikiversity if it does
occur, going beyond anything the WMF has done to date.

I would hope that some sort of "certificate of completion" could be
issued for somebody who has completed a series of courses that have been
established by participants on Wikiversity that might have some sort of
merit and academic relevance.  Even this is something that should have
some formal standards and not all Wikiversity courses should necessarily
be something that would lead to one of these certificates.

How these certificates could eventually become a formal degree is
something that I have suggested should take many years of discussion and
that Wikiversity is nowhere near ready to accomplish.  Let's get
something started first, and worry about granting degrees when we have
an idea on how courses can effectively be taught through a Wiki environment.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


list: wikien-l

from_name: Death Phoenix

subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
What you describe is a POV fork. I believe this introduces another problem
into the equation.

On 8/15/06, Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 14 Aug 2006 10:04:56 -0700 (PDT)
> stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> stevertigo, I am *very* with the problem you
> are describing. I don't think WP:CITE itself
> is the cause of the problem. WP:OWN is.
> The cause of the problem is Article Squatters.
>
> I suggest to completely change the meaning
> of WP:OWN.
>
> The Remedy I suggest is to have multiple versions
> of an article about the same topic, written each
> by different sets of people. In the way that
> NPOV on a controversial subject cannot be achieved
> in a single article, but only by using multiple
> articles that are each WP:OWNed by different sets
> of people.
>
> So, say you're writing about, uh, bunnies, and
> MisterX joins in and you quickly figure out that
> you cannot work together, then instead of sinking
> into this HELLHOLE of edit warring, you'd each get
> [[bunnies_(by_stevertigo)]] and [[bunnies_(by_misterX)]]
>
> and [[bunnies]] itself being no more than a disambiguation
> page.
>
> Alternative, turn wikipedia into a metawikipedia that
> just contains links to other free online encyclopedia's
> entries. Its about the same thing, just the branding
> is different.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Sebastian Moleski

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
Hello,

I'm *very* interested in this new project. I think it's an outstanding idea
because it might offer the benefit of a college-level education to people
who don't usually have access to that. That being said, how can I find out
more about the project and what I can do to help.

Sebastian

On 8/15/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
> Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
>
> I am already doing this with Cherokee and Uto-Aztecan textbooks. Why not
> the rest of the specialized languages and even
> english for that matter?
>
> Jeff
>
> >I went in and checked the prices of college textbooks at the BYU
> >bookstore. The books cost almost as much as the tuition, church funded
> >or not. UofU bookstore is the same. Why shouldn't we be able to create a
> >business around the Foundation Wikiversity Programs? I might be able to
> >swing this one. I'll work on it next week and let everyone know what I
> >find out.
> >
> >Jeff
> >
> >James Hare wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >>Will Wikiversity even give out diplomas? Or will it be like Wikipedia's
> >>"we're-good-for-learning-stuff-but-don't-use-us-for-school"?
> >>
> >>On 8/15/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>>Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>Has anyone considered the possibility of actually instrumenting an
> >>>>online course of instruction (beyond creating the content) and
> applying
> >>>>for accredidation of the whole project and going after real funding?
> >>>>
> >>>>Jeff
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>What a frightening idea!  A helpful rule might be, "Wikiversity is not
> a
> >>>diploma mill."
> >>>
> >>>Ec
> >>>
> >>>_______________________________________________
> >>>foundation-l mailing list
> >>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>_______________________________________________
> >>foundation-l mailing list
> >>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >foundation-l mailing list
> >foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

>Anthere wrote:
>
>
>>
>>2) those languages with at least 10 active participants can request a
>>separate domain name. As of today, I presume the english language has at
>>least 10 people interested, so you guys may bug Brion to ask for
>>en.wikiversity.org. I am not sure if it is the case for any other language.
>>
>>
>>
>
>I'm guessing that these request should be made on meta?  aka
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
>
>
I set up the request on meta, only to discover that en.wikiversity is up
and going.  The inter-project links aren't working yet, but you can
visit (and create an account on)

http://en.wikiversity.org/

I'm making a formal request to be a temporary bureaucrat on
en.wikiversity until we can vote on things like admins and such.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


from_name: xaosflux

subject: [WikiEN-l] Watching multiple talk pages

body:
What many editors do is put a soft redirect on their other pages, asking
that questions be put on [[en:User_talk:Userid]].  If we ever get SSO this
may get workable.

xaosflux
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2006 5:33 AM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Watching multiple talk pages

> On 8/15/06, zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Sorry if this is something I should know already.
>>
>> I find it tedious to keep watch over my talk pages at en.wiki,
>> commons, wikiquote, etc.  I was thinking that a nice facility would
>> be if all my talk pages could be in my watchlist at en.wiki.
>> Then whenever I'm in en.wiki, which is most of the time, I will
>> see that one of my other talk pages has been editted.
>
> There are various tools around that will automatically monitor the
> pages of your choice on the web, wherever they are. I think there are
> even tools that turn those changes into an RSS thread.
>
> Actually, for that matter, I have a vague recollection MediaWiki can
> generate an RSS feed from changes to pages, but I can't find any more
> info on that atm.
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Andrew Garrett

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Save Draft button

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

>But the problem I see with this feature is article forking (as others have
>said). Someone wants to overhaul a page and saves it as a draft, in the mean
>time other users edit the original article and... desaster :)
>Maybe only activate the feature for new articles by default?

Don't we have edit conflicts already? How would these be significantly
different?
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.4 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFE4PnGehR2FitQhwARAoT1AJ0SCMB9cndszM3sCiRE/nxmhhKc9QCcCj8n
OvO3r8+eXRRWRaeJ8u1PHS0=
=yZrh
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikitech-l] Apple's Wiki Server brings WYSIWYG to wiki

body:
On 8/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:

> Actually I'm a little confused on this Wikia business. Wikia is
> apparently testing WIKYWYG. Wikia is owned by Jimbo. Wikia is not
> GFDL. After that, things get hazy for me.

Wikia is developing Wikiwyg, not just testing it. Wikia is not just
owned by Jimbo - it's owned by its staff and investors. Wikia content
is GFDL, but that's irrelevant since this is about the software, which
is GPL (the same as MediaWiki).

Angela.


from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
On 8/15/06, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:
>
> On 14-Aug-06, at 4:35 PM, Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
>
> > James Hare wrote:
> >> A thing that should be pointed out...
> >>
> >> Don't worry about policies and guidelines, start working on things
> >> and let
> >> the policies come in later. I believe Jimbo posted something to
> >> this effect
> >> when Wikinews was new.
> >>
> >> However, things that SHOULD be noted include NPOV.
> >
> > I'm not sure if the concept of NPOV fits for a collaborative research
> > project. Maybe one of the project supporters can say something
> > about this.
> >
> > greetings,
> > elian
>
> That would be very interesting, since as I have been led to believe
> research is not a part of the project until they have developed at
> least minimal guidelines for approving it. NPOV is an element of good
> research, as is an ethics review board, and human subjects review
> board that is relevant.
>
> Amgine
>

I very much agree with what I think Elian was saying, in that I think
NPOV is a useless concept when applied to research. If we stick to the
concept of NPOV (in all its ambiguity and complexity) we get nowhere
in actually allowing someone to test and apply their learning about
the world in an academic context. NPOV works for an encyclopedia - it
will not work (or, at least, not the same way) for a place of
learning.

I don't know what kind of NPOV in research you were referring to,
Amgine - there is a whole range of complexity on doing and writing
research - and all academic research should be structured in a way
that does not compromise ethics, with a methodology that can be
justified, and be grounded in the appropriate literature (hopefully to
make some contribution to that literature). That's good research
practice - not NPOV. But yes, what we need to do, over the coming
months, is to create a framework and guidelines for good practice in
research, including ethical and methodological guidelines. That will
determine what kind of research will be hosted and what we are to do
with/about it.

Cormac


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] [WikiEN-l] accessing Wiki on cellphone

body:
Simetrical wrote:
> Do cell-phones correctly use stylesheets that are declared for
> @mobile?  Because if they do use those, then that should help at least
> as much as switching to Simple, provided someone wants to write up
> mobile CSS (do we have some already?)  Of course, ideally we'd also
> want to cut back on image resolution and whatnot (for which UA strings
> would presumably be needed if we wanted to skip preferences).
>

I just got a sidekick 3 phone, which has a nice big screen.  Wikipedia
does not look good on it.  One problem is
that I have to scroll through far too much auxiliary stuff before I can
see the articles.

I have no idea what the answer to this is, but it would be cool if it
worked better. :)


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] accessing Wiki on cellphone

body:
On 15/08/06, Anittas Hatti <anittas_of_wiki at yahoo.com> wrote:

>   The thing that makes it uncomfortable is the search option which is placed at the bottom of the last page. If you want to search for something, you'll have to browse to the last page and scroll all the way down. Since this is done on the cellphone and not on a computer, it's obviously not very userfriendly. I don't know if anyone took in consideration cellphone surfing when creating the Wiki pages, but it would be more convinient to have the search option at the top of the first page. Or at least somewhere in the middle. Just a tought.

How is it in the Classic or Simple skin?

- d.


from_name: Jim Redmond

subject: [WikiEN-l] accessing Wiki on cellphone

body:
Anittas Hatti wrote:

>Yesterday I went to check a thingy on Wiki by using my cellphone. I don't know about other cellphones, but on my model (Sony Ericsson Z530i), the mainpage is divided into four pages. You scroll down and click on Next Page to browse through the pages. Depending on article length, every page is divided into two or more pages.
>
>  The thing that makes it uncomfortable is the search option which is placed at the bottom of the last page. If you want to search for something, you'll have to browse to the last page and scroll all the way down. Since this is done on the cellphone and not on a computer, it's obviously not very userfriendly. I don't know if anyone took in consideration cellphone surfing when creating the Wiki pages, but it would be more convinient to have the search option at the top of the first page. Or at least somewhere in the middle. Just a tought.
>
They aren't official Wikimedia Foundation projects, but there are a
couple of attempts at bringing Wikipedia content to WAP devices:
[[w:en:Wikipedia:WAP access]] discusses a few of them.

Jim Redmond
[[User:Jredmond]]


from_name: Jan-Åke Larsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Using dvipng in texvc

body:
Jan-?ke Larsson wrote:
> Does anyone want to try it?

Apparently not. There are two possibilities:
a) render.ml isn't used anymore now that WikiTeX exists
b) nobody cares enough or all are immersed in the wysisyg debate
c) There is a different mailing list that discusses texvc

In any case, can someone please enlighten me as to whether the caml
syntax I used is correct, i.e., "then (if (foo) then bar else baz) else
fooo". The dvipng call is correct, I know.

/J?


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
On 8/15/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> Will Wikiversity even give out diplomas? Or will it be like Wikipedia's
> "we're-good-for-learning-stuff-but-don't-use-us-for-school"?

Wikiversity will not be giving out diplomas (or at least, not for the
foreseeable future). Some people are motivated to getting Wikiversity
to be an accredited institution, but for now, the absolutely most
important part is that we provide useful content as well as a way for
people to consolidate their learning. So, to answer your question,
James, we will attempt to be useful for people who want to self-study
- as well as for teachers who want to use our content in their
classes. So, people can use our content in their own accredited
courses, but wikiversity will not be the place that they get their
certification. (For the foreseeable future - in other words, I can't
even see the course-giving option on the horizon.)

*But*: Wikiversity is designed to allow for active learning
communities to develop around the materials it hosts. So, people can
use Wikiversity, not just for its content, but as a community of
teachers and learners to further their learning (or to help others
with their's).

Cormac


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


subject: [WikiEN-l] Norman Technologies AfD

body:
Hi folks,

MyWikiBiz (Greg) is willing to abide by Wikipedia policies, but has second
thoughts about what he agreed upon with Jimbo. He has some alternate
proposals (and opinions) on his talk page at [[User talk:MyWikiBiz]].

Thanks,

DP


from_name: wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Dartmouth College incident

body:
> >On 8/13/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> A couple years ago a professor at Dartmouth had his students put
> articles on Wikipedia as part of a class project.  These kids promprtly
> fell into the notability meat grinder.  While it would obviously benefit
> Wikipedia to generate articles from that list, I don't think that that
> many of these kids are ready for some of the abuse that's so frequently
> doled out.  Such abuse does nothing to encourage co-operative work among
> people who might never edit Wikipedia anyway.

That is emphatically not what happened. The professor was Peter C. Wayner, by the way...

What happened is that the class instructions specifically told students to stay "within the definition" and gave a link to WP:NOT. Approximately FOUR HUNDRED articles were submitted. Most of them had no obvious connections with Dartmouth College and passed more or less unnoticed.

One example is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beautifull_Cassandra , an article about a piece of juvenalia by Jane Austen. You'll notice it was never nominated for deletion.

Despite being told to read WP:NOT, perhaps forty articles were submitted dealing with fairly subtrivial aspects of Dartmouth life, such as entire articles on one relatively less notable a capella singing group, drinking games specific to one particular Dartmouth fraternity, etc. Many of these articles were written in breezy, promotional language.

Indeed, there was bad behavior on the Wikipedian side. One notably brusque admin famous for nominating many articles for deletion made snide remarks in many of the nominations, and by the time uncivil AfD-ers had gone through half a dozen of them, many people started using dismissive language. If I recall correctly an article on something about DartMOOR in England got some comment about "they're at it again." Very unpleasant. But only about 10% of the students fell into the "meat grinder," and fewer would have if they had followed the professor's directions.

Of the subtrivial articles, many of them were de-breezed and boiled down and merged into the Dartmouth College article.

Far from being discouraged, Wayner repeated the exercise the following summer. There was a little more preparation at both the Dartmouth and Wikipedia ends and there were no problems.


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)

body:
--- Tom Holden <thomas.holden at gmail.com> wrote:
> Some of the arguments why editing should not
> automatically result in
> membership have already been made.

Anyone who believes that this is a debatable point has
missed the fact that Forida law requires a "member
roll" with legal names and addresses.  If there is to
be membership it *must* be opt-in.  Automatically
granting membership would not be able to meet these
informational requirements.

Birgitte SB

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subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
On 8/15/06, Sebastian Moleski <sebmol at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm *very* interested in this new project. I think it's an outstanding idea
> because it might offer the benefit of a college-level education to people
> who don't usually have access to that. That being said, how can I find out
> more about the project and what I can do to help.
>
> Sebastian
>

Hi Sebastian,

you can get going right away at:
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Main_Page (though there's hardly
anything there yet - it's just been set up). If you want to find out
more about what Wikiversity is envisaged to be, you could try the
proposal we wrote at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/Modified_project_proposal

Looking forward to working with you (I'm User:Cormaggio everywhere :-))

Cormac


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
Cormac Lawler wrote:

>On 8/15/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Will Wikiversity even give out diplomas? Or will it be like Wikipedia's
>>"we're-good-for-learning-stuff-but-don't-use-us-for-school"?
>>
>>
>Wikiversity will not be giving out diplomas (or at least, not for the
>foreseeable future). Some people are motivated to getting Wikiversity
>to be an accredited institution, but for now, the absolutely most
>important part is that we provide useful content as well as a way for
>people to consolidate their learning. So, to answer your question,
>James, we will attempt to be useful for people who want to self-study
>- as well as for teachers who want to use our content in their
>classes. So, people can use our content in their own accredited
>courses, but wikiversity will not be the place that they get their
>certification. (For the foreseeable future - in other words, I can't
>even see the course-giving option on the horizon.)
>
>*But*: Wikiversity is designed to allow for active learning
>communities to develop around the materials it hosts. So, people can
>use Wikiversity, not just for its content, but as a community of
>teachers and learners to further their learning (or to help others
>with their's).
>
I very much agree.  I think that it would be a big accomplishment if
courses were brought to such a standard that "our students" could use
what they learned at Wikiversity as a basis for challenging courses in
their own respective schools.  It would be too easy to fall into the rat
race of granting diplomas and degrees.  Wikipedia is a success because
it dared to do things differently; I expect nothing less from Wikiversity.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 8/15/06, John Q. <johnq at wikia.com> wrote:
> * Basic in-page rich text editing (bold, italics, bullets, links, etc)
> which is saved as wikitext.
> * Recognizes when there is wikitext on the page that it can't parse and
> defaults to an in-page editor that just lets you edit the wikitext like
> normal.

This probably isn't the right place to comment, but long term, it'd be
good if it could simply mark a "blob" in place of the uneditable text,
rather than barfing on the entire section.

<snip>
> p.s., to clear up something said earlier... Wikia is primarily GFDL although a few
> wikis are Creative Commons because they started that way. Any code contributions
> made would of course be GPL.

Thanks for clarifying.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Watching multiple talk pages

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 8/15/06, zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Sorry if this is something I should know already.
>>
>>I find it tedious to keep watch over my talk pages at en.wiki,
>>commons, wikiquote, etc.  I was thinking that a nice facility would
>>be if all my talk pages could be in my watchlist at en.wiki.
>>Then whenever I'm in en.wiki, which is most of the time, I will
>>see that one of my other talk pages has been editted.
>>
>>
>There are various tools around that will automatically monitor the
>pages of your choice on the web, wherever they are. I think there are
>even tools that turn those changes into an RSS thread.
>
>Actually, for that matter, I have a vague recollection MediaWiki can
>generate an RSS feed from changes to pages, but I can't find any more
>info on that atm.
>
I suspect that this idea may be easier to implement once single sign-on
is active.  This should not prevent us from having separate talk pages
on each project that interests us.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
--- Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> So, my parting thought is: What is that concept?
> What is Wikiversity's NPOV?
>
> Cormac

That is a very good way of looking at it.  Not all
Wikimedia projects should expect their content to
adhere to NPOV.  This is quite impossible at
Wikisource, of course.  WS's equivalent of NPOV is to
only include *complete* texts.  This prevents
contitrubutors from presenting an excerpt of a text
that may come across with a different bias than the
full text did originally.  This is the main thing that
has to watched for on polictical and religious works
at Wikisource.  There have been things which were
deleted for this reason, and it is an ongoing task to
be sure the sources of certain texts are the complete
version.

As far as Wikiversity goes I am not sure what their
equivalent of NPOV or "Completeness" will be, but I
think it can be found by looking at the same issues
that lead to biased articles at WP and excerpted texts
being put up on the internet.  If we can outline the
problems, then we may be able to form a policy that
works to counteract them.

If someone wanted to research the orgins of Macedonian
Nationalism what problems would you expect to
encounter?

Birgitte SB

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subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Special:Desysop

body:
Andrew Garrett wrote:

>I've today developed an extension based on Special:Makesysop that may be a
>solution to the problems (at least on en: ) with the process of gaining
>adminship. Part of the problem with adminship is that it is somewhat
>difficult to remove. This extension may change that. The extension, as
>currently configured, allows local bureaucrats to desysop a user. I believe
>that this is sensible. If we can trust bureaucrats to set the sysop bit, why
>shouldn't we trust them to remove it? Additionally, desysopping is quite a
>political issue, and generally requires the intervention of somebody
>*familiar with the situation*, not an outsider who has simply been informed.
>Therefore, I suggest that we use this extension to allow Bureaucrats to
>desysop users in serious cases of abuse of powers. A different process for
>desysopping may need to be developed to accompany this - and a policy on
>when bureaucrats may use this ability.
>
>Questions, comments and requests for demonstrations are more than welcome.
>
I welcome this, and fully agree with your analysis.  Any project that is
big enough to have at least two bureaucrats should be big enough to
establish its own policies on this.

There are really two very different cases where the right to desysop.
Abuse of powers is one of those situations, as you have described.
Another situation might be extended absence.  In this case the
individual would only need to shoe that he is back and active to the
satisfaction of a bureaucrat to have the status restored.

Ec


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ignoring AfD results / Redirection and deletion

body:
On 8/15/06, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Surely the opposite can also be said of a "keep" consensus AfD: most
> of the voters plainly want the article to continue to exist as an
> article, not as a redirect and not deleted.

I haven't looked at the articles in question, so perhaps I'm off the
mark in this case...  But if people aren't willing to put some skin in
their participation then there isn't much cause for us to heed their
view.  If the article is in terrible need of cleanup and none of the
people arguing to keep it are willing to do the *work*, then I don't
see a problem with someone else coming by and cleaning it up by
merging it.  (And yes, sometimes the best merge adds nothing to the
merge target)...

In any case, redirecting it isn't ignoring the AfD... we consider
'merge and redirect' to be equal to 'keep' in an AfD.  Perhaps doing
so is incorrect because we really should be discussing the existence
of an article at that name, but that is what is done today.


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
--- "Jeff V. Merkey" <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com>
wrote:

> Cormac Lawler wrote:
>
> >So, my parting thought is: What is that concept?
> What is Wikiversity's NPOV?
> >
> >
>
> University == accepted standards of "Academic
> Freedom". (not MeatBall Wiki)
>
> Wikiversity == accepted standards of "Academic
> Freedom" (not MeatBall Wiki)
>
> NPOV = No such thing in an environment of "Academic
> Freedom", it's
> called "accepted standards of Academic Freedom".
>
> If it's a university of content it needs to adhere
> to these standards --
> they've been around for a couple of thousand years
> and seem
> to work governing institutions of higher learning.
> Should be no
> different if what you are creating is an open
> environment -- Free speech
> and all. The one exception to the Wiki MeatBall
> rules would be this
> project -- within the framework of established
> foundation policies of
> fair treatment and code of conduct.
>
> Jeff
>
>

The problem with "Acedemic Freedom" is it essentionaly
means "Freedom for the Academics".  It basically says
"you have passed the bar for entry into acedemia you
may now do pretty much as you like".  Wikiversity does
not have a bar for entry so it will need more
restrictive policies than general academia.

Birgitte SB

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subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


from_name: Nick Jenkins

body:
Just pulling together various snippets about quotation marks in the Neapolitan language + wikiwyg:

> > This is the adaptation to MediaWiki:
> > http://wikiwyg.wikia.com/
>
>  The double quote is used in the Neapolitan language.

...

> (I note, incidentally, that if one typed '' in WYSIWYG mode, the
> interface would presumably escape it as appropriate, fixing that
> particular issue...)

...

> people on the nap.wikipedia are
> driven away because they have to use workarounds for '' - that is '
> in whatever combination - we now uwse '' for '' to have a unique
> way to identify words and word combinations if some day we should need
> to use replace.py.

Please note that wikiwyg does not currently solve this problem (i.e. you cannot currently use Neapolitan quotes as a valid argument
in favour of wikiwyg).

As you can see from this edit :
http://wikiwyg.wikia.com/index.php?title=Testpage&diff=136009&oldid=136007#Neapolitan_double_quotes:_dsomething (which was typed in
wikiwyg mode), the '' gets converted to italics upon saving, not rendered as a literal '' (i.e. what you see in the wikiwyg mode -
two quotes - is not what you get in the rendered HTML output after saving - italics in the headline).

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
--- Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:

> stevertigo, I am *very* with the problem you
> are describing. I don't think WP:CITE itself
> is the cause of the problem. WP:OWN is.
> The cause of the problem is Article Squatters.
> I suggest to completely change the meaning
> of WP:OWN.

I think this is a valid point. The rest however fails
float test, if only because having twenty articles about the
same thing is as pointless as anything Ive ever heard.
The proplem is ownership, how does instituting *formal
ownership* solve that problem?

Somebody mentioned Wikinfo, which IIRC splits its articles
according different general points of view. That's at least
workable and in extreme cases might resemble our /draft method,
but ultimately the goal is integration according to NPOV.

A lot of people can't handle that basic old NPOV rule which
is why we have citenazis in the first place. Cite, V, etc.
are part of a static model of Wikipedia which strives for
"perfection" but fails to the dynamic communal process by
which we built the Wikipedia to begin with.

At one point, our most sophisticated policy after NPOV was the
"leave something for people to do" guideline. Wikipedia of course
has a bigger "ownership problem" than just the ownership of articles.

-Stevertigo

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from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] What *should* WikiWYG do if you hand it wikitext?

body:
On Tue, Aug 15, 2006 at 10:44:39AM +1000, Nick Jenkins wrote:
> As you can see from this edit :
> http://wikiwyg.wikia.com/index.php?title=Testpage&diff=136009&oldid=13
> 6007#Neapolitan_double_quotes:_dsomething (which was typed in wikiwyg
> mode), the '' gets converted to italics upon saving, not rendered as
> a literal '' (i.e. what you see in the wikiwyg mode - two quotes - is
> not what you get in the rendered HTML output after saving - italics in
> the headline).

Ok, now here's a completely different issue:

What should WIKIWyg *do* if you hand it something that looks like
wikitext?

My intuition is that it should *not* treat it as wikitext, and this is
the corner case that demonstrates why, but I can see arguments on both sides.

Discuss.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


from_name: Simetrical

body:
Do cell-phones correctly use stylesheets that are declared for
@mobile?  Because if they do use those, then that should help at least
as much as switching to Simple, provided someone wants to write up
mobile CSS (do we have some already?)  Of course, ideally we'd also
want to cut back on image resolution and whatnot (for which UA strings
would presumably be needed if we wanted to skip preferences).


body:
On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 09:20:04PM -0400, Evan Prodromou wrote:
> I'm so glad to hear from someone who works for Mikia on the new
> WIGGYWACK functionality. Isn't Wygiwisia also sponsoring the development
> of Mediwisyg? I though Jimbo specifically said that the GPL'd content on
> Kiwimedygo would be part of the next version of the GFDL'd license in
> WYGIWYS WediaMiki.

My ghod, I'm glad I'd had my morning coffee before reading that.

Shame it's all over my laptop now...

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On Tue, Aug 15, 2006 at 07:27:40PM +1000, Andrew Dunbar wrote:
> This kind of thing interests me greatly. I just did some Google searches
> for Neapolitan OR napolitano with alphabet OR spelling OR orthography OR
> apostrophe OR quote. I couldn't find anything. So instead I'll ask here
> in which kinds of cases this occurs. Does it represent a certain sound or
> omitted letters?

Check the archive, last month; there was an *extensive* thread on this.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On Tue, Aug 15, 2006 at 11:03:09AM +0100, Neil Harris wrote:
> Just a thought:  mobile phone and PDA users will generally be using
> specialized browser software, doing so through HTML-to-WAP gateways, or
> proxies that attempt to simplify pages for rendering on small screens.
> If we could auto-detect these by User-Agent string, and use a custom
> skin for these clients, we could greatly improve the experience for
> small-screen users.

FWIW, the standard skinnage devolves *quite* nicely on my Blackberry's
browser, with no transcoder.  That's HTML with no CSS.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


subject: [Wikitech-l] [Wikipedia-l] Special:Desysop

body:
On 8/15/06, Filip Maljkovic <dungodung at gmail.com> wrote:
> But this whole thing got me thinking: what we basically want is what
> already exists: Special:Userrights, where bureaucrats can give/revoke
> every userright possible.
>
> Now if you/anyone finetune(s) that special page, and Brion gives
> consent, voila!

Exactly my thought of a month ago:
http://bugs.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6711


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> I just got a sidekick 3 phone, which has a nice big screen.  Wikipedia
> does not look good on it.  One problem is
> that I have to scroll through far too much auxiliary stuff before I can
> see the articles.
>
> I have no idea what the answer to this is, but it would be cool if it
> worked better. :)

If you'll buy us some fancy cell phones, we'll see what we can do. ;)

In all seriousness, phone browsers are *hard* to deal with, since there's huge
huge variance in how much of which standards they obey, or try to fake, and it
seems to be hard to test on them if, well, you don't have one handy.

In an ideal world, the vendors should have fully-capable emulators available for
free download and evaluation by web developers, so their products will actually
be useful to the public. I'm not sure that's the case, though, at least the last
time I checked. If someone has more experience in this regard, please let us know.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [WikiEN-l] accessing Wiki on cellphone

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/15/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> How is it in the Classic or Simple skin?
>>
>
> Is there a way where you can get the simple view, without having to go
> through preferences? It'd be great if we had something like
> en.wikipedia.org/wikisimple/Some_Page...
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
>
Just a thought:  mobile phone and PDA users will generally be using
specialized browser software, doing so through HTML-to-WAP gateways, or
proxies that attempt to simplify pages for rendering on small screens.
If we could auto-detect these by User-Agent string, and use a custom
skin for these clients, we could greatly improve the experience for
small-screen users.

I've found lists of mobile client browser strings at

http://www.zytrax.com/tech/web/mobile_ids.html and
http://www.cantoni.org/2005/02/03/mobile-ua

Google's wireless proxy apparently reports itself as

"Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; Google
Wireless Transcoder;)", according to
http://cleverhack.com/2006/08/06/google-wap-proxy-user-agent/

and some information on the i-mode user agent is provided here:

http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/p_s/i/tag/s2.html
http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/p_s/i/spec/useragent.html

There is a sourceforge project that provides a LGPL'd Perl class for
mobile user agent sniffing which claims to work correctly for over 2000
different mobile devices:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mobileuseragent/

-- Neil


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
NPOV does apply to Wikiversity, but of course context matters in how we
understand and apply it.

For example, a course which is highly biased and pushing some POV should
be fixed, as we would quite
properly consider it to be broken.

But of course, as Cormac points out, some of what Wikiversity is going
to be about is explorations of
research, etc.  As Amgine put it, even here NPOV applies, but it applies
in a way that makes sense for this
type of content.

The danger of saying too quickly "NPOV does not apply" is that we would
thereby open the door to lunatics
(and there are lunatics!) trying to push extremely biased courses.  We
can do better than that.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


from_name: Evan Prodromou

body:
On Tue, 2006-15-08 at 00:15 -0700, John Q. wrote:
> There are many pros and cons for #1 and it looks like this is a pretty
> healthy debate to which I'm not qualified to add anything. However, I
> can definitely shed some light on #2.

John, you did a great job on explaining; thanks a lot.

> One thing I do want to clear up is that
> we're not "being paid" to do this... we have *plenty* of other stuff on
> our to-do lists. This is a really interesting project so we decided
> to volunteer some time for it... same with SocialText and good for them
> to throw in code they'd already written.

I think I was the one who mentioned payment. I hope it didn't sound
disparaging -- that wasn't my intention. Rather, I wanted to point out
that the project had momentum since Wikia and SocialText were allocating
the time of their professional programmers to it.

I'm surprised to find out that Wikia and SocialText employees are
working on wikiwyg on a volunteer basis. The impression I got from
meetings with Wikia, from Jimmy's talk at Wikimania, and from the press
notices from SocialText, was that the wikiwyg project had the backing of
the two companies and that employees were applying work hours to it.

If that's not the case, I'm sorry for the error. Thanks to all the Wikia
and SocialText employees who are doing this work and to the companies
for supporting them.

~Evan

--
Evan Prodromou -- http://evan.prodromou.name/

"By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart
of on the same terms." -- Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] giving medical advice

body:
Deon Wentworth wrote:
> Forgive me.. perhaps I missed something.. but what does this have to do with
> medical advice?
>

Ray just likes trolling me.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
On 8/15/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> Exactly my thought of a month ago:
> http://bugs.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6711

Ack, seems this comment is a few hours out-of-date.  Multiple threads!
 Confusing! . . . er, anyway, good job Rotem, now wikis that want them
can assign rollback and stuff if Brion's okay with this change.  See
the two bugs depending on the above.


from_name: aretai aretai

subject: [Wikitech-l] template question

body:
Hi,

I am a wiki newbie. I have one MediaWiki installed and would like to add the
funcitionality of the templates into it. I would like to have same templates
used on MediaWiki available on mine as well. I tried to go through manuals
available on MediaWiki:Help and just copied/pasted some of them to my
MediaWiki. This is a tedious process and still some of them are not
displayed correctly. Is there any other way to do this (change default
settings, import sql dump, ...). I would be grateful for help.

Kind Regards


body:
On 8/15/06, Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com> wrote:
> In Latin America a similar problem occurs with < and >. While those keys
> are present on Spanish keyboards, a very large number of computers
> actually use American keyboards with fewer keys. And guess which keys
> are missing? Fortunately these are not required so frequently in wiki syntax.

Hang on, in Latin America, people often use American keyboards which
for some reason are missing the < and > keys? That sounds weird - do
you have any more info on them? I notice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout doesn't have any
information on Spanish keyboards (or US keyboards in Latin America...)

Steve


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Meta discussion not about giving medical advice (was:
	Re: giving medical advice)

body:
On 8/15/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Fred Bauder replied, silently "fixing" the word "lede", after which
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> <snip quote>
> > It actually can be spelt "lede".

I should have changed the topic at this point, my apologies.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
On 8/14/06, Death Phoenix <originaldeathphoenix at gmail.com> wrote:
> I added the dreaded {{fact}} template:
<snip>
> I don't see how this would be the actions of a CITE Nazi, and indeed, it
> prevented me from simply reverting the two additions.

You've got it in one. Asking for references is one thing - and a good
thing, often. Reverting what is probably an accurate addition out of
sheer bloody mindedness is another thing altogether...

Steve


from_name: Peter Ansell

subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
On 15/08/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> > To exhaustively, regimentedly cite every well-known fact in every
> > article would be ugly, unwieldy, and overbearing.  But it's equally
> > obvious that, the bigger and more popular Wikipedia gets, the harder
> > it is to rely on "obvious" or "ought to" rules which depend on people being
> > reasonable.
>
> So are you saying AGF (a subpolicy of CIVIL, (predecessor too, actually)) is out the
> window too?

Assuming good faith does not go so far as to say that we assume
perfection of edits. As long as the person is civil and not abusive of
the editor who put in the unverified statement it should fit within
all the policies.

Peter Ansell


subject: [Wikitech-l] Open proxy blacklist

body:
On 8/15/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> We can use a dedicated IP for scanning, to make automatic blocking of that
> IP by firewalls irrelevant, and we can set up an informative reverse DNS
> entry and a webserver on that IP, to ward off some of the abuse complaints.

It was the abuse complaints that I was wondering about.  If those
wouldn't be a problem, this would seem to be the sensible course.
Assuming portscans aren't that expensive (I know that there's some
latency involved, but that's okay for this), anything listed as an
open proxy could be invisibly scanned and deblacklisted if appropriate
anytime it tried to edit, which solves the problem of outdated
entries.  Any IP that's not blacklisted as an open proxy could be
portscanned and whitelisted if appropriate when it tries to edit, with
some expiry period.  A block could force reevaluation of the
appropriate address(es), just in case something is whitelisted and
becomes compromised within the expiry period.

Now who wants to write this and set it up?  :)

On 8/15/06, Jan Kulveit <jk-wikitech at ks.cz> wrote:
> -how to develop the rbl ... I think it could be done the wiki way

That would require a ton of effort keeping the list up-to-date that's
really not needed.  You'd also have to constantly field complaints of
misblocked IPs, which would be solved in days rather than seconds.  An
automated solution is the way to go for this.


subject: [WikiEN-l] accessing Wiki on cellphone

body:
On 8/15/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> How is it in the Classic or Simple skin?

Is there a way where you can get the simple view, without having to go
through preferences? It'd be great if we had something like
en.wikipedia.org/wikisimple/Some_Page...

Steve


from_name: Rupert Millard

subject: [Wikitech-l] template question

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

Firstly, you should really ask questions like these on mediawiki-l
rather than this development list. Secondly, don't confuse the software
MediaWiki with the website Wikipedia.

Now, although you still have to choose what templates you want to
export, you can grab them all at once (wrapped in XML) here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Export

Then you can import them on your own wiki (while logged in as a sysop)
using the Special:Import page.

You'll find this considerably less tedious than copying and pasting. You
might find that the broken templates are due to unsatisfied dependencies
on other templates. You'll need to import those too.

Best wishes,

Rupert

aretai aretai wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am a wiki newbie. I have one MediaWiki installed and would like to add the
> funcitionality of the templates into it. I would like to have same templates
> used on MediaWiki available on mine as well. I tried to go through manuals
> available on MediaWiki:Help and just copied/pasted some of them to my
> MediaWiki. This is a tedious process and still some of them are not
> displayed correctly. Is there any other way to do this (change default
> settings, import sql dump, ...). I would be grateful for help.
>
> Kind Regards
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

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from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] News.com: Teen's warning on the gospel of Wikipedia

body:
Great news.com commentary piece on WP, humorous and serious at the same time:

http://news.com.com/Teens+warning+on+the+gospel+of+Wikipedia/2010-1038_3-6104446.html?tag=fd_carsl

>From the article:
"Of course, for students, Wikipedia is the miracle cure for
procrastination (and there's science to back that up; a recent poll
showed that nine out of 10 doctors suggested Wikipedia as a cure to
putting homework off. The other 10 percent were too busy uploading
spurious entries to participate in the poll)."

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


body:
On 8/15/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> Ok, now here's a completely different issue:
>
> What should WIKIWyg *do* if you hand it something that looks like
> wikitext?
>
> My intuition is that it should *not* treat it as wikitext, and this is
> the corner case that demonstrates why, but I can see arguments on both sides.
>
> Discuss.

I would say it should not treat it as wikitext *if* the wikitext would
do something that the editor can do via button, keyboard shortcut,
etc.  But if you give it something like a template that it doesn't
recognize (assuming it can't call arbitrary template source via Ajax,
which should be an eventual goal), then it shouldn't escape the
wikitext, so that you don't lose any flexibility.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Watching multiple talk pages

body:
On 8/15/06, zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Sorry if this is something I should know already.
>
> I find it tedious to keep watch over my talk pages at en.wiki,
> commons, wikiquote, etc.  I was thinking that a nice facility would
> be if all my talk pages could be in my watchlist at en.wiki.
> Then whenever I'm in en.wiki, which is most of the time, I will
> see that one of my other talk pages has been editted.

There are various tools around that will automatically monitor the
pages of your choice on the web, wherever they are. I think there are
even tools that turn those changes into an RSS thread.

Actually, for that matter, I have a vague recollection MediaWiki can
generate an RSS feed from changes to pages, but I can't find any more
info on that atm.

Steve


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)

body:
On 15/08/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:

> > I didn't realize that (note to self: read Florida Statutes). That's a
> > pretty compelling argument for membership -- it could be a long term
> > safeguard for the Foundation's principles.
>
> I think this overstates the value of such a safeguard. The statute
> actually reads, "Any member of the board of directors may be removed
> from office with or without cause by the vote or agreement in writing by
> a majority of all votes of the membership."

(...)

> The one method I can imagine of preserving this as a useful safeguard is
> to regularly prune the membership records. Considering the liberal
> eligibility being suggested for membership, and the general culture of
> openness in our community, such an approach would seem, to my mind at
> least, hypocritical in the extreme.

Remember that the requirements stipulated by the law are a minimum. In
almost all cases, it means you can't give yourselfa requirement that's
weaker ("directors can only be removed by unanimous agreement of all
members and only in even-numbered years") but you are on perfectly
solid ground adding one which is stronger ("directors can be removed
by a majority vote amongst the membership, this vote having a quorum
of five percent")

So if you want safeguards, the bylaws are the place for them; the
statutory ones are only intended as a last-ditch defensive line
against foolishness.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
Cormac Lawler wrote:

>So, my parting thought is: What is that concept? What is Wikiversity's NPOV?
>
>

University == accepted standards of "Academic Freedom". (not MeatBall Wiki)

Wikiversity == accepted standards of "Academic Freedom" (not MeatBall Wiki)

NPOV = No such thing in an environment of "Academic Freedom", it's
called "accepted standards of Academic Freedom".

If it's a university of content it needs to adhere to these standards --
they've been around for a couple of thousand years and seem
to work governing institutions of higher learning. Should be no
different if what you are creating is an open environment -- Free speech
and all. The one exception to the Wiki MeatBall rules would be this
project -- within the framework of established foundation policies of
fair treatment and code of conduct.

Jeff

>Cormac
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] Financial Times column on open content

body:
On 8/15/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/15/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > http://www.ft.com/cms/s/64167124-263d-11db-afa1-0000779e2340.html
> >
> > Full of useful phrases!
> >
>
> Dear God!
>
> "However, this is not a vindication of folk wisdom over the
> pointy-heads. The deviations from "rational behaviour" were not the
> wonderful cornucopia of humanist motivations you might imagine."
>
> I'm in fustian circumlocution hell!
>
> --Oskar

In comparison to normal human writing, this stuff's positively antipodean.

~maru
"Some of these patterns are endearing; the supposedly "irrational"
concerns for equality that persist in all but Republicans and the
economically trained, for example." <-- lolzor


from_name: MHart

body:
> My intuition is that it should *not* treat it as wikitext, and this is
> the corner case that demonstrates why, but I can see arguments on both
> sides.

I'd second that. If conversion from wikitext to wikiwyg is dynamic, then
having a "wikitext" option would be good. WordPress has a user-based
preference setting for using wysiwyg or html.

- MHart


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Special:Desysop

body:
On 15/08/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Andrew Garrett wrote:
> >
> > Questions, comments and requests for demonstrations are more than welcome.
> >
> This is obviously going to be a great help to other users of Mediawiki as
> well. It makes good sense to have a proper UI for as many of these delicate
> operations as we can manage.

Phil, MediaWiki contains a built-in rights management interface.

It makes more sense to me if we fixed up one extension for Wikimedia
which combined Makesysop, Makebot, Giverollback and now
this...thing...into something manageable and useful. Configuration can
determine what groups can grant and revoke which rights.

Four different pages to do similar tasks is pushing the boundaries.

Rob Church


from_name: Birgitte SB

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> NPOV does apply to Wikiversity, but of course
> context matters in how we
> understand and apply it.
>
> For example, a course which is highly biased and
> pushing some POV should
> be fixed, as we would quite
> properly consider it to be broken.
>
> But of course, as Cormac points out, some of what
> Wikiversity is going
> to be about is explorations of
> research, etc.  As Amgine put it, even here NPOV
> applies, but it applies
> in a way that makes sense for this
> type of content.
>
> The danger of saying too quickly "NPOV does not
> apply" is that we would
> thereby open the door to lunatics
> (and there are lunatics!) trying to push extremely
> biased courses.  We
> can do better than that.
>
> --Jimbo
>

I think everyone is not quite on the same page here.
Although neutrality is going to be an important aspect
of Wikiversity.  WP:NPOV is not going to be the policy
in use there.  Mainly this is becuse Wikiversity is
not writiing encyclopedia articles.  Bias will take a
subtley different form on that project.  Just like
bias rears its' head on Wikisource in the form of
altered texts.  I do not believe it was something
people thought of early on at Wikisource, but it is
certainly what has transpired.  I am just trying to
guess as to how bias will try and work its way into
Wikiversity.  It may not be possible, we might have to
wait and find out when it happens.  WP:NPOV is about
how to counteract bias on WP.  I do not believe anyone
is suggesting counteracting bias at WV is not of the
utmost importance, just that WV will have approach it
in a unique way.

Birgitte SB

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] accessing Wiki on cellphone

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&useskin=standard

On 8/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/15/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > How is it in the Classic or Simple skin?
>
> Is there a way where you can get the simple view, without having to go
> through preferences? It'd be great if we had something like
> en.wikipedia.org/wikisimple/Some_Page...
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Amgine

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikibooks texts and Wikiversity

body:
A comment in IRC yesterday raised a concern for me which I would like
to see addressed.

Cormac mentioned that he and Mr Horning had discussed moving
textbooks and curricula from en.Wikibooks to en.Wikiversity. He was
unsure if this meant the textbooks would be deleted from
en.Wikibooks, but he was sure any contributors who preferred working
on en.Wikibooks would be able to copy them back to that project.

This seems extremely odd to me, that deleting a textbook from
Wikibooks would even be contemplated. Educational materials are,
after all, the mission of the project. And dividing a textbook
between projects seems to be forking, both of the book in question
and the potential contributors as well, again something which should
not even be contemplated in my opinion.

Could the Wikiversity project please clarify this?

Amgine

-------------- next part --------------


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] accessing Wiki on cellphone

body:
On 8/15/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&useskin=standard

Ah, cool. I notice that this works as well (slightly simpler)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&useskin=simple

I notice that with really old browsers (my good old netscape
communicator 4 still works :)) you get an even simpler view with no
tables or CSS, and all the stuff that's normally in the left sidebar
ends up as text down the bottom. Still pretty usable...

Maybe the problem with this mobile phone is that it's actually too
smart, and is requesting a level of XHTML that it's not really capable
of displaying?

Steve


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)

body:
Tom Holden wrote:

>Anyway just my two cents, sorry for contributing to what is already an
>overcrowded discussion.
>
I beg to differ on that point.  Anthere has wanted people to be
discussing this for some time now, and it is only in the last few days
that people have started jumping in.  The discussion is not
overcrowded.  How the issues are resolved will have a profound effect on
the direction of WMF and all its projects for many years to come.  Each
of us with an interest in this should get involved.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)


body:
On 15/08/06, Filip Maljkovic <dungodung at gmail.com> wrote:
> Since the talks have continued in wikitech-l, I'll reply there.
>
> I think this is a great idea and would be of great help to big local
> communities as well as some kind of relief for stewards. I absolutely
> agree that local Bureaucrats can be trusted enough to use this function
> wisely. On the other hand, as for the technical aspect, I concur with
> Rob Church - all the special pages dealing with userrights should be
> merged and robchurch seems to be the perfect guy for that ;)

Me and my big fucking mouth.

It'll have to wait, then. Although, wasn't Rotem Liss doing something
in a branch?

Rob Church


subject: [WikiEN-l] accessing Wiki on cellphone

body:
On 8/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/15/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&useskin=standard
>
> Ah, cool. I notice that this works as well (slightly simpler)
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&useskin=simple

If you go to your preferences where you choose your skin you can see
links to previews of all of the skins. They use this format.

--Oskar


body:
wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com wrote:

>>>On 8/13/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>A couple years ago a professor at Dartmouth had his students put
>>articles on Wikipedia as part of a class project.  These kids promprtly
>>fell into the notability meat grinder.  While it would obviously benefit
>>Wikipedia to generate articles from that list, I don't think that that
>>many of these kids are ready for some of the abuse that's so frequently
>>doled out.  Such abuse does nothing to encourage co-operative work among
>>people who might never edit Wikipedia anyway.
>>
>>
>
>That is emphatically not what happened. The professor was Peter C. Wayner, by the way...
>
>What happened is that the class instructions specifically told students to stay "within the definition" and gave a link to WP:NOT. Approximately FOUR HUNDRED articles were submitted. Most of them had no obvious connections with Dartmouth College and passed more or less unnoticed.
>
>One example is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beautifull_Cassandra , an article about a piece of juvenalia by Jane Austen. You'll notice it was never nominated for deletion.
>
>Despite being told to read WP:NOT, perhaps forty articles were submitted dealing with fairly subtrivial aspects of Dartmouth life, such as entire articles on one relatively less notable a capella singing group, drinking games specific to one particular Dartmouth fraternity, etc. Many of these articles were written in breezy, promotional language.
>
>Indeed, there was bad behavior on the Wikipedian side. One notably brusque admin famous for nominating many articles for deletion made snide remarks in many of the nominations, and by the time uncivil AfD-ers had gone through half a dozen of them, many people started using dismissive language. If I recall correctly an article on something about DartMOOR in England got some comment about "they're at it again." Very unpleasant. But only about 10% of the students fell into the "meat grinder," and fewer would have if they had followed the professor's directions.
>
>Of the subtrivial articles, many of them were de-breezed and boiled down and merged into the Dartmouth College article.
>
>Far from being discouraged, Wayner repeated the exercise the following summer. There was a little more preparation at both the Dartmouth and Wikipedia ends and there were no problems.
>
I'm not about to dispute your elaboration.  My point was simply that
administrative abuse does happen more frequntly than many of us would
like.  Promoting a collaborative way of thinking is more important than
getting new articles for Wikipedia.  If some of these issues can be
practised on a local wiki there is nothing to prevent some of those
articles from being added to Wikipedia at a later time.  The students
will have learned valuable lessons in the relatively safe environment of
a local wiki.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
Birgitte SB wrote:

>--- "Jeff V. Merkey" <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com>
>wrote:
>
>
>
>>Cormac Lawler wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>So, my parting thought is: What is that concept?
>>>
>>>
>>What is Wikiversity's NPOV?
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>University == accepted standards of "Academic
>>Freedom". (not MeatBall Wiki)
>>
>>Wikiversity == accepted standards of "Academic
>>Freedom" (not MeatBall Wiki)
>>
>>NPOV = No such thing in an environment of "Academic
>>Freedom", it's
>>called "accepted standards of Academic Freedom".
>>
>>If it's a university of content it needs to adhere
>>to these standards --
>>they've been around for a couple of thousand years
>>and seem
>>to work governing institutions of higher learning.
>>Should be no
>>different if what you are creating is an open
>>environment -- Free speech
>>and all. The one exception to the Wiki MeatBall
>>rules would be this
>>project -- within the framework of established
>>foundation policies of
>>fair treatment and code of conduct.
>>
>>Jeff
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>The problem with "Acedemic Freedom" is it essentionaly
>means "Freedom for the Academics".  It basically says
>"you have passed the bar for entry into acedemia you
>may now do pretty much as you like".  Wikiversity does
>not have a bar for entry so it will need more
>restrictive policies than general academia.
>
>

Agreed. Code of Conduct. Foundation Policies. Getting folks to use the
content and get it blessed would not be hard.
It's a word game. The word is "developed under an umbrella of Academic
Freedom". This can mean to apply EXACTLY
the same rules that exist in Wikipedia, but approached from a different
angle.

i.e. Foundation policies prohibit inflamatory writings that attack
protected classes, NLT, and other restrictions. Not surprising, Universities
don;t tolerate this type of conduct either -- it's listed in the Code of
Conduct and their published standards. I had this debate with the
university
I was working with that has been historially funded in part by the
Baptist Community. We applied a template of Academic Freedom and
appropriate standards -- result, classes which attack other religions
are now banned in the cirriculum. Clubs for various groups are not,
including
highly controversial clubs at schools. Academic Freedom means a lot of
the same things Wikipedia policies esspouse, just not approached
the same way.

It would be an worthwhile goal to develop Wikiversity content under the
auspices of "acccepted standards of Academic Freedom" which is broader
than "concensus based rules and standards". It's a top down approach,
but still is open to community standards which can be input as a
Code of Conduct for conduction research, writing, and developing
curricullum.

Jeff

>Birgitte SB
>
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>
>
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


from_name: Deon Wentworth

subject: [WikiEN-l] giving medical advice

body:
Ah fair enough :)

On 8/15/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Deon Wentworth wrote:
> > Forgive me.. perhaps I missed something.. but what does this have to do
> with
> > medical advice?
> >
>
> Ray just likes trolling me.
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>

--
---
DEON WENTWORTH
97539xx6 (DONT RING ANYMORE!), 0433718467, 0419570180


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license

body:
On 15-Aug-06, at 12:17 PM, James Hare wrote:

> GFDL is really the best choice because everyone other one of our
> Wikimedia
> project does it (except Wikinews).
>
> On 8/15/06, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
>>
>> There might be already a discussion about this somewhere, dunno:
>>
>> Before wikiversity really starts, it might make sense to think
>> about the
>> license. There could be better choices than GFDL for such a project.
>>
>> greetings,
>> elian

"I now understand why the GFDL is a bad license." Eben Moglen,
Wikimania 2006

-------------- next part --------------


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license


from_name: Death Phoenix

body:
On 8/15/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/15/06, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
> [snip]
> > Surely the opposite can also be said of a "keep" consensus AfD: most
> > of the voters plainly want the article to continue to exist as an
> > article, not as a redirect and not deleted.
>
> I haven't looked at the articles in question, so perhaps I'm off the
> mark in this case...  But if people aren't willing to put some skin in
> their participation then there isn't much cause for us to heed their
> view.  If the article is in terrible need of cleanup and none of the
> people arguing to keep it are willing to do the *work*, then I don't
> see a problem with someone else coming by and cleaning it up by
> merging it.  (And yes, sometimes the best merge adds nothing to the
> merge target)...
>
> In any case, redirecting it isn't ignoring the AfD... we consider
> 'merge and redirect' to be equal to 'keep' in an AfD.  Perhaps doing
> so is incorrect because we really should be discussing the existence
> of an article at that name, but that is what is done today.
>

Exactly. And as to the other question, an AfD that is evenly-split between
redirect and delete could be closed as no consensus, but the proper course
of action would be to "default" the article to a redirect.

An AfD ultimately comes down to two results: delete, and don't delete. Don't
delete includes no consensus, redirect, merge, and anything that results in
the article history still being available to no-admins. An article with an
AfD result of "Don't delete" can go to another "don't delete" through normal
editorial actions and doesn't require an AfD to dictate. In other words,
even an article with an AfD result of Keep can be merged or simply
redirected through normal editorial actions (ie, through consensus,
discussion, even common sense).