from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bad image list

body:
Rob Church wrote:
>
> Leaving the fact that I don't support this behaviour in categories
> aside, I'm starting to think about whether or not we need to be
> storing this information elsewhere. A page with a bunch of regular
> expressions on it[1] that is evaluated in the manner the bad image
> list is...doesn't scale well if the administrators start adding
> several hundred/thousand odd images to it. It might be more effective
> to look at migrating this information to the database somewhere.

Actually, I rather agree.  The bad image list, as currently implemented,
is a hack that doesn't scale.  The only question is, does it need to?
As it stands, the limited usefulness of the feature rather deters anyone
from adding too many images to the list.  The patch I wrote, which
allows page-specific exceptions to the list, would likely make it a more
attractive solution, but it _still_ is only useful for a rather narrow
set of images: ones that are "good" enough that we do want to keep them,
and maybe use them on a page or two, but still nasty or shocking enough
that they can be used for massive vandalism that can cause significant
outrage before it is cleaned up.  As long as the list remains (or is
kept) short enough that the parsing time isn't significant, a database
solution isn't likely to make it any faster.

I'm not actually even convinced the list is useful at all.  The only
reason I wrote that patch, besides the fact that it has been repeatedly
requested on-wiki, was in an attempt to make the list at least somewhat
more useful given that it does exist.

(You seem to be missing a footnote up there, so I'll supply one: [1]
They're not actually regexps, just a list of image names that are read
into a hash.)

> 3. Similar to option two, but do it through an extension; don't make
> it part of the core code; expose the check via hooks in wfIsBadImage()

This would be my personal favorite, assuming we think the bad image
feature is worth spending the effort on.  I doubt most wikis really find
it useful, so making it an optional extension sounds good.  If I was
confident I could implement something like that cleanly in a reasonable
timeframe, I might've done that myself, but I still consider myself a
newcomer to the wonderful world of MediaWiki source code.

--
Ilmari Karonen


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] SPUI requesting unblock

body:
On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 18:45:52 -0400, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:

>Any admin can simply claim my actions are disruption, and, even if the
>block is overturned, it both remains for too long and creates yet
>another block in the block log for a future blacking admin to use as
>"evidence" that it's fine to block me.

Have you ever considered being less disruptive?  Just a thought.

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


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

body:
On 6/30/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> If the majority of editors on the page agree that the block quote is
> inappropriate, this is concensus.   If you disagree with this
> decision, you can initiate a discussion on the talk page, and ideally
> these editors would discuss the issue with you.
>
> I'm still trying to sort out exactly what your complaints are, so I
> don't want to accuse you of saying or advocating something you are not
> saying, as I inadvertantly did regarding the 3RR.  So I have some
> questions: What would have been the ideal outcome in this case?   Do
> you think the editors should be forced to discuss the issue with you
> before removing this block quote?  Do you think consensus should not
> be used to guide decisions regarding Wikipedia content?  If so, then
> what decision making process should replace it?

I hope I'm not putting words in Jon Awbrey's mouth by stating that he
things the problem is that when consensus can be defined as "Me and
three of my friends I IM'd to come and agree with me", there's a
problem.  Especially when a "consensus" among like-minded people on
the same side of an issue can be used to trump core Wikipedia policies
and standard Wikipedia ways of working.

Part of the issue is that there's always tension between deciding an
issue for good on the one hand, and having every single opinionated
person coming along to any article being able to re-open things for
which an adequate conclusion has already been reached.

Standard Wikipedia policy / practise here is that there are no
permanent decisions on Wikipedia apart from core policy, but that if
an issue has been decided by strong rough consensus, we're resistant
to re-opening the issue unless the one wishing to re-open it can
convince enough people that the previous rough consensus no longer
holds.

"Strong rough consensus" in my opinion means an issue that for the
vast majority of contributors has a result they can live with - even
if not outright approve - and that has been reached after a
satisfactory discussion, a satisfactory attempt at compromise, a
respect for policy, and with sufficient editors involved that are
representative on the issue.

IMO, a rough consensus is not a strong one, a good one, if it has been
arrived at without discussion, without attempts to find common ground,
without regard for over-riding policy, or without sufficient numbers
of contributors or variety of points-of-view to be truly
representative.

There are many editors on Wikipedia who want to truly do the right
thing and achieve good results.  There are enough others, however, who
want articles to say exactly what THEY wish them to say, and who will
game the rules and do everything they can to get their way.   (There
are probably other categories of editors, of course, but this is
simplifying).

I have a feeling that another issue Jon has is that some contributors
are too willing to remove things from articles if they don't like
them, regardless of the work that went into them, the usefulness of
the content, or in any way trying to achieve consensus for that
removal.

Jon, do I have your positions right?

-Matt


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

body:
On 6/30/06, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net> wrote:

> The fact is that good faith contributions by previous editors were not being
> respected, worked with, and modified, if need be, in the recommended manner,
> but simply being deleted wholesale under the guise of a "consensus" that
> was ever being declared by a small (but mysteriously growing) number of
> editors, with no real attempt at discussion except among themselves.

If the majority of editors on the page agree that the block quote is
inappropriate, this is concensus.   If you disagree with this
decision, you can initiate a discussion on the talk page, and ideally
these editors would discuss the issue with you.

I'm still trying to sort out exactly what your complaints are, so I
don't want to accuse you of saying or advocating something you are not
saying, as I inadvertantly did regarding the 3RR.  So I have some
questions: What would have been the ideal outcome in this case?   Do
you think the editors should be forced to discuss the issue with you
before removing this block quote?  Do you think consensus should not
be used to guide decisions regarding Wikipedia content?  If so, then
what decision making process should replace it?


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Interwiki/transwiki imports mostly working now

body:
On Fri, Jun 30, 2006 at 08:30:52AM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> IMHO it's a good practice. It's not like you're putting "transwikied
> image. Buy Coke!" as the description.

	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCola

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

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


subject: [Wikitech-l] New diff feature for Wikipedia

body:
On Fri, Jun 30, 2006 at 09:23:22AM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
> So performance is an issue. When is it not?

And, not to put too fine a point on it, whlie performance
considerations need to be taken into account for WMF sites, not all
MW's are MWF sites.

It would be interesting to have even a 3-sigma estimate of how many
*hits*, total, hit WMF MediaWikiae vs MW's run by others...

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

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


body:
On Fri, Jun 30, 2006 at 10:31:32AM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> I think this blame map idea is a hell of a lot more than eye candy,
> and would be a massively useful addition to Wikipedia, well worth
> investing time and effort, and possibly new hardware on.  It would
> really help dealing with vandalism, hoaxing, unsourced statements and
> probably lots of other problems we haven't even realised yet. Hell, it
> would even make it easier to attribute unsigned posts to talk pages.

Oh, and tooltip popups, for the attributions?

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

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

body:
On 6/30/06, Jesse W <jessw at netwood.net> wrote:
> I would be very curious to hear Mr. Awbrey's preference for an
> alternative, either one of the ones above, or another one I have not
> mentioned.

I on the other hand am wondering whether we shouldn't consider putting
Mr Awbrey on moderation, in an effort to increase the signal to noise
ratio on this list. I appreciate your good faith effort to get
something out of this "exit interview", but if you look at the thread
as a whole, it doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

Steve


from_name: Jon Awbrey

subject: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

body:
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

Genus:    Priority Inversion
Species:  Pseudo-Consensus Superseding the Big Three (NOR, NPOV, VER)

Case 4.

Article:  Charles Peirce.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Peirce

Section:  Pragmatism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Peirce#Pragmatism

Edit:  Revision as of 15:46, 11 June 2006 by AnnMBake
(-> Pragmatism - editing for clarity and appropriateness
to audience of generally educated as identified by Blainster)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charles_Peirce&diff=next&oldid=58043347

Edit by "new user" AnnMBake (incept date 8 June 2006).

There is no question that the clarity of any article in WP can be improved,
and some of the edit here is well-conceived, but in the process of trying
to be concise it converts several accurate statements into misleading ones,
many of them recognizable from pop philosophy books and non-peer-reviewed
sources.  In addition, it wholesale deletes the most important quotation
from Peirce to have in any article about his philosophy, namely, his most
often cited statement of the so-called "pragmatic maxim".  All of these
features of the edit violate principles of Verifiability and Reliability
that are stated in the pages hanging off of [[WP:VER]] and [[WP:CITE]].

Jon Awbrey

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Jon_Awbrey
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o


subject: [WikiEN-l] Redlinks or redirects?

body:
On 6/30/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Gah, hate those. I also particularly dislike ones that hide external
> links; "for more information, click [http://www.gorgonzola.com/ here]."
> That combines several pet peeves; directions to "click" somewhere (what
> if I've printed the page?), uninformative link names, and external links
> embedded in the article's text rather than at the end in a references or
> external links section.

Yep. I feel that external links should always be displayed as either:
* Raw URLs (quite appropriate for references sections)
* Quasi-footnote style ("...according to the official website
[www.foo.com]") which renders as "...[1]"
* The official name of the page or website in question, like "New York
Times" or "How to use Wiki markup". I make an exception for the stock
phrase "Corporate website".

Even more than I don't like pipe linking for normal links, I really
object to it for external links. Thanks for reminding me. :)

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] SPUI requesting unblock

body:
On 6/30/06, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have been blocked for a week (initially indefinitely, then unblocked
> by another admin and reblocked for a week by the initial admin) for the
> contents of a page I made in January *2005* -

You again!

Steve


body:
On Fri, Jun 30, 2006 at 10:36:45AM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
> On 30/06/06, Domas Mituzas <midom.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It was not an insult. I know you have a problem and you think whole
> > world is against you. Well, maybe it is, but that is offtopic.
>
> That statement is completely unacceptable and I would like an apology.

<referee>
Domas, I've been watching this list for the last year, and Rob is the
*last* person of whom I, personally, would have acquired that
impression.  I have to agree with him; you might want to think about
why you think that, and why you said it.
</referee>

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

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


from_name: Rosa, Michael

subject: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

body:
On 29 Jun 2006 at 14:14, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net> wrote:

>For example, under the proper ordering of priorities a
>statement that is relevant and sourced should not be deleted
>in favor of an opinion that is unsourced just because the
>source is not the favorite writer of 2 or 3 editors or because
>the sourced statement contradicts the personal POVs of 2 or 3 editors.
>But this is actually the routine way that things are done in WP.

Cite please - preferable at least a dozen or so of examples, they should
be easy to find if this is really the "routine way" of doing things on
WP.  This is a persistent, recurrent and systematic pattern in your
emails that I have observed, you describe something that you claim is
taking place without giving any specific and real-life examples.

Cheers,
Michal


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Sanity check on image uploads

body:
Rob Church wrote:
> On 30/06/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Anyway this is the wrong direction to be heading. There are countless
>> ways we can massively reduce the addition of good-faith copyright
>> violations, by restricting uploads to registered users etc etc etc.
>>
>
> Education, education, education. But with less Blairite incompetence
> and more up-front, honest, "look dude, we can't accept this, and
> here's why".
>
>
>> Focussing on the few bad eggs who deliberately upload copyrighted
>> images is wasting our time...
>>
>
> Well, it's not a waste of our time to stop them. Frequent, persistent
> uploading of copyright infringing material is blockable, no? If it's
> not, then why the hell not?
>
>
> Rob Church
Hoi,
I would not be surprised that a fair percentage of dubious content comes
from a group of people who persist in their habit of seeing everything
as fair game. Blocking these people after the appropriate first steps
leading up to it makes sense, it would make better sense if this were
not only true for Commons but also for their "home" project. This is
where they would really feel the pain of withdrawal.

In a similar way, people who troll on other projects should at some
stage feel the pain in their own back yard.
Thanks,
     GerardM


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Require confirmed email address to upload images?

body:
On 6/28/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>
> In a message dated 6/28/2006 10:13:27 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> marudubshinki at gmail.com writes:
>
> I don't think this is as clear cut as you think it is. In the case of
> requiring users to register to start articles, and we had solid
> evidence that our openess was actively harmful- pace Siegenthaler.
> I've seen no reason to believe that our current level of openness
> w/r/t images is actively harmful, and not merely a nuisance on the
> level of vandalism by IPs.
>
> Do you not consider the amount of images deleted because they are
> potentially copyright violations harmful?
>
> Danny

Yes, and a fine example of copyright paranoia. I don't see how
cracking down on users will minimize this harm, however.

~maru


body:
On 6/28/06, Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sf.net> wrote:
> So about 40% of useful contributions come from users without confirmed
> emails, and we would be throwing them away ?

There's no evidence of what percentage of these uploaders would be
willing to provide a confirmed email address if required to do so.

There are many editors who entered an email address ages ago before
confirmation was required, and now do not have a confirmed email
address because of this.  Despite sitenotices, most have probably  not
gone and fixed the problem, since there's been no pressing personal
need to do so.

-Matt


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 6/30/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Perhaps an alternative would be a system which doesn't tell the user
> the results of their quiz until after the image is uploaded, then we
> have no situation where a change of mind before the upload results in
> a record.

That would be fine too.  It would probably be the easiest choice,
actually; I think I was semiconsciously imagining something Ajax-y,
where you had to click through dialogs and fetch stuff from the
server, but unless the list of questions is *really* long, it would
probably be more efficient to just send all of them at once.  In that
case, I can see why people would be weirded out by the idea of
clicking the wrong radio button for one second and then changing it
back before submitting, only to have their screw-up be recorded
forever.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Redlinks or redirects?

body:
On 6/29/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>  When discovering a redlink, which is better: to leave it as a
> redlink, or redirect it to the "closest" topic? Eg, a redlink to the
> name of a book - best to leave it that way, or create it as a redirect
> to the book's author? Or, create a substub "X is a book by
> [[Author]]"?
>
> Steve

Substub it unless you want to insert the substub into the author's
page; substubs are acessible to everybody for editing, and besides,
many people who wouldn't dare create an article because the
responbsiblity or effort is just too much would be perfectly happy to
add a sentence to the article or summarize some of the contents of an
ext. link.

~maru


subject: [WikiEN-l] A course in walled gardens?

body:
I've been looking round the articles relating to [[A Course In
Miracles]] (ACIM).  One article details a court case pertaining to
authorship, under the rather bizarre premise that since authorship was
claimed to be Jesus, "channeled" through Helen Schucman, copyright did
not apply. I've asked for some citations from sources outside the ACIM
movement for this and other articles in this collection, and received
this reply:

  "But it is quite a challenge to find comments from people outside of
the ACIM "world" when most outside of that insular world have never
   even heard of ACIM. Most non-ACIM students couldn't be concerned
   with whether Jesus is the literal or symbolic source, because most
   non-ACIM students think the whole thing looks insane, cultish,
   weird, etc."

Now to my mind if there are no sources outside the movement we ought
to be very wary about covering the subject at all.  This same editor
added a section to [[forgiveness]] detailing ACIM's view of the
concept which was larger than the section devoted to Bhuddism and
about the same size as the one for Islam.  My view is that unless we
have some reputable secondary sources external to the movement to draw
on, we should not include it there at all (else we'll have to have a
paragraph for Methylated Wesletarians and Jagism).

Back to the article on the court case: I'd say it's a footnote to the
book unless it's been covered extensively in the mainstream media,
discussed in the Harvard Law Review as a ground-breaking case, cited
as precedent in other cases or whatever.  The only cited source we
have in that section is from the Foundation for A Course In Miracles,
which was one of the parties to the dispute.  I am minded to merge.

I don't want to let my natural scepticism run away with me here, how
do others view this kind of apparent walled garden?

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

body:
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

Genus:    Priority Inversion
Species:  Pseudo-Consensus Overturning the Big Three (and the Five Pillars)

Case 5.

Article:  Charles Peirce.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Peirce

Section:  Formal perspective
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Peirce#Formal_perspective

Edit:  Revision as of 16:09, 11 June 2006 by Wylie Ali
(-> Formal perspective - deleting long intro. See talk.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charles_Peirce&diff=next&oldid=58049452

The entire contents of the section introduction, the part
between a [==head] and a [===head], was deleted by the
"new user" Wylie Ali (incept date 8 June 2006).

The explanation given on the talk page was as follows:

| ==Removing intro to Formal perspective==
| I am going to remove the whole of the intro to the
| Formal perspective section for these reasons:
|
| It begins with two long (and too long ;-) ) quotations that
| won't be understandable to the audience of generally educated.
| Also, we are writing a secondary source, so it is our job to
| interpret and paraphrase so that the reader doesn't have to
| decode original material.
|
| The rest of it is original research about a "crisis" and the "life cycle"
| of a "symbolist perspective" that is not about Peirce.  Looks like somebody
| has a thesis about symbolism, but they should submit it to a journal;  not
| put it here. It suffers from the same writing problems mentioned above.
| I am not going to copy it here, since you can get it in the history.
| --[[User:Wylie Ali|Wylie Ali]] 16:08, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

This section had quite a long history that had been discussed with previous editors.
It purpose was to place some of Peirce's projects in logic within the context of his
times, partly by comparing one of his important statements about mathematical symbols
with similar statements by George Boole, and other mathematicians of that era who had
emphasized the role of mathematical symbolism.  The rest of the section was written in
response to a reader who had explicily asked editors to make up a concrete illustration
of the very abstract ideas that were being taken up in this section.  At a time when I
still imagined that the newly arrived editors were going to help improve the article,
I had already pointed to this section as one of the "known bugs" in the article that
could stand improvement, both in writing introductions and transitions for the long
quotes from Boole and Peirce, and also in improving the concrete example given.

The help that came was simply a deletion of the whole section.

Jon Awbrey

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Jon_Awbrey
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o


from_name: mdd4696 at gmail.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] Detecting deleted articles

body:
Hi all,

I'm generating a few lists of articles on the Toolserver, and I can't
seem to figure out how to detect if an article has been deleted. I
don't want to include those articles in my lists. Is there an easy way
detect this?

I did see the unused rev_deleted in the revision table, and I found a
previous post in mediawiki-l
(http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2006-April/011330.html),
but it'd be nice to know how MediaWiki detects them...

~Mdd4696


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Redlinks or redirects?

body:
I'm very late to this conversation but I just wanted to chime in
(since I don't think I saw anybody say it yet) that I always see red
links as an invitation to create an article (blue links, on the other
hand, are an invitation to read another article). I don't put red
links in anywhere I don't think a full, new article would be
warranted. This is obviously a personal call (is it ever not one?),
but as a guiding principle it works for me pretty well in ambiguous
situations.

FF

On 6/29/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>   When discovering a redlink, which is better: to leave it as a
> redlink, or redirect it to the "closest" topic? Eg, a redlink to the
> name of a book - best to leave it that way, or create it as a redirect
> to the book's author? Or, create a substub "X is a book by
> [[Author]]"?
>
> 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: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia, again

body:
> > Rig? No. I just deleted votes that were invalid,
> > like Pavel did.
>
> Really? Your rules were that every account made before
> the vote is valid. Why did you delete my vote?
> BTW, your attempt to justify this by changing the
> rules of the vote *after* the vote ended was pitiful.
> This can be checked, and I provided the link in my
> initial post:

The rules also stated that the vote ended after one day. This rule was
changed post ipso facto by Bonaparte.
http://mo.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrator&diff=11128&oldid=11127

You may protest that this is a ridiculous rule. But then you should
challenge the results on those grounds, not on the grounds that I
"fixed an election".

> Actually, I'm following this *very* closely.
> Could you, please, tell me who these editors are?
> And don't start with "I have said it before". This is
> your favourite excuse. Just list some user names.

"Have not been... for very long" implies that you started doing this
very recently, and you didn't properly check archives. Normally, I
would not tell you and make you check archives but I suppose that
wouldn't be constructive here, so...

1) Vertaler -- made a few edits; e-mail correspondence with him
indicated that while he was interested in the idea of a Moldovan
Cyrillic Wikipedia, he was pessimistic about the possibility of it
ever growing
2) Elnoel -- made no edits but did register; his personal website
makes clear that a) he is an ethnic Moldovan and b) that he has a
strong dislike for Latin script
3) Jeorjika -- while he did not like the idea of Moldovan Wikipedia
using Cyrillic, he said he would hold a vote on whether it should be
closed or not, and if the vote turned out that it should be kept open,
he would help build articles in Cyrillic as well
4) Oleg Alexandrov -- He made some minor corrections to a few
articles; his personal opinion that he made clear is that while he
does not oppose the idea of a Moldovan Wikipedia in Cyrillic, he feels
that in its current state it is too small to be useful.

Mark

> :en:Dpotop
>
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 30/06/06, Jacky PB <dpotop1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hm, interesting, so you want another criterion to
> > > measure the "genuine interest" in mo.wikipedia.
> > >
> > > Then, I suggest some rules for this measurement:
> > >
> > > 1. Take into account only hits to actual articles
> > >    (main namespace) having more than 5 lines of
> > text.
> > >    Otherwise said, the articles copied from the
> > >    Romanian wikipedia.
> > >
> > > 2. Make the measurement on a period when there was
> > >    no full-scale revert war (for instance, before
> > the
> > >    current one started).
> > >
> > > 3. Do not count IPs of Romanian wikipedia users,
> > nor
> > >    IPs of Russian wikipedia users. These users
> > (like
> > >    me) are just inspecting mo.wikipedia to spot
> > >    the current status of the revert war (it's full
> > >    scale and never stops). One week ago, for
> > instance,
> > >    Mark (User:Node_ue) tried to organize, and then
> > rig
> > >    some elections to get back his sysop status (he
> > has
> > >
> > >    been desysopped some time ago for bad
> > behavior).
> > >
> > > If you think you can do this, then ask yourself
> > what
> > > this measures. Remember: you cannot assume that
> > the
> > > traffic has the same structure here as in
> > > en.wikipedia.
> > >
> > > Yours,
> > > Dpotop
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --- mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > What I'm actually interested in is the number of
> > > > hits on that wikipedia.
> > > >
> > > > mboverload
> > > >
> > > > On 6/30/06, Jacky PB <dpotop1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > But you are not Moldovan. You are not able
> > to
> > > > write Moldovan.
> > > > > > You pretend helping some people that did not
> > ask
> > > > for your help.
> > > > > > No native Moldovan expressed an interest in
> > your
> > > > wikipedia.
> > > > >
> > > > > I am Moldovan. It is your _opinion_ that I am
> > "not
> > > > able to write
> > > > > Moldovan", especially given that you attach no
> > > > adverb. "Native
> > > > > Moldovans" (assuming you mean Moldovans living
> > in
> > > > Moldova) have
> > > > > expressed an interest, although in very
> > limited
> > > > numbers.
> > > > > The "limited number" is currently 0. :)
> > > > >
> > > > > And anyone can check this by looking at the
> > number
> > > > of users registered
> > > > > (with Babel) as speakers of Moldovan (code
> > mo). On
> > > > the whole wikipedia,
> > > > > there is a single "mo" user, which is Mark,
> > a.k.a.
> > > > User:Node_ue. And he's
> > > > > level mo-2, meaning that he's making basic
> > grammar
> > > > and spelling errors.
> > > > >
> > > > > :en:Dpotop
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > ---------------------------------
> > > > > Do you Yahoo!?
> > > > > Next-gen email? Have it all with the  all-new
> > > > Yahoo! Mail Beta.
> > > > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > >
> > >
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > __________________________________________________
> > > Do You Yahoo!?
> > > Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam
> > protection around
> > > http://mail.yahoo.com
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > >
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

body:
On Fri, 30 Jun 2006 10:18:44 -0400, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net>
wrote:

>Citing cases of "Priority Inversion", in this case
>where a few editors declare their "consensus" as an
>excuse for deleting relevant and sourced information.

Why invent a new term for this, especially one which does not actually
appear to bear any relation to the supposed problem?

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bad image list

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
>
> At the Commons we occasionally get irate requests to delete certain
> images because they've been used in vandalism attacks. We are somewhat
> hesitant to delete them, assuming they're licensed correctly, for the
> likely backlash of "censorship!". So once we found out about the
> existence of this, we have been advising wikis to use the Bad image
> list. But we still delete some images when they seem particularly
> superfluous and particularly confronting.

Good point.

Of course, projects that _really_ don't want to see a particular Commons
image anywhere on their pages could always upload a red X on top of it
locally and protect that.

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] SPUI requesting unblock

body:
On 6/30/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> > I support the (one week) block being upheld for the time
> > being, at least until you acknowledge this.

> A week seems rather mild. SPUI is rather good at chewing up energy
> regarding minor disputes. He actually restored that page on June 26.
> Then he comes on here and claims he was blocked over a page he
> created in 2005.

SPUI has now been unblocked after a discussion on WP:ANI. I think we
need to avoid having unblock discussions in multiple places at the
same time -- perhaps when we start using unblock-en, we can try to
more systematically centralize all discussion there.

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] A course in walled gardens?

body:
On 6/30/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> I've been looking round the articles relating to [[A Course In
> Miracles]] (ACIM).  One article details a court case pertaining to
> authorship, under the rather bizarre premise that since authorship was
> claimed to be Jesus, "channeled" through Helen Schucman, copyright did
> not apply.

As a historical footnote, it should be noted that the question of
whether "inspired" works are applicable to intellectual property
protections goes back to the very origins of the concept of
intellectual property. It is part of two different (and competing)
definitions of the author as being with a craftsman or being
"inspired." During the Renaissance proponents of authorial rights
turned the "inspired" notion around so that the author was inspired by
their own "original genius" rather than God (or a muse) and thus gave
them more of a claim to their own property. It is interesting that it
continues to play out in some small way today when the legal
definition of intellectual property is much more codified than it was
in, say, the eighteenth century.

Anyway, this little tidbit has nothing much to do with your query in
particular, I'm afraid...

FF

(The reference for this, for those interested, is available on JSTOR
as Martha Woodmansee, "The Genius and the Copyright: Economic and
Legal Conditions of the Emergence of the 'Author'," _Eighteenth
Century Studies_ 17:4 (Summer 1984): 425-448. I feel something like a
parody of an academic at the moment, but perhaps that's just fine.)


subject: [WikiEN-l] A course in walled gardens?

body:
On Fri, 30 Jun 2006 09:53:27 -0400, "Lord Voldemort"
<lordbishopvoldemort at gmail.com> wrote:

>Quick request for clarification: Are you looking for any articles
>relating to ACIM or articles specifically relating to the court case?
>Or both?

I want to start at the outside and work back.  So: first, see if the
case is verifiable and significant, and if not prune and merge back,
then see if the Foundation is, and so on.  There are rather a lot of
articles with a great deal of verbiage on what is, from the
perspective of an outsider, a very small movement of no verifiable
significance.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

body:
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

Genus:    Priority Inversion
Species:  Pseudo-Consensus Overturning the Big Three (and the Five Pillars)

Case 6.

Article:  Charles Peirce.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Peirce

Section:  Logic as formal semiotic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Peirce#Logic_as_formal_semiotic

Edit:  Revision as of 16:25, 11 June 2006 by Wylie Ali
(-> Logic as formal semiotic - removing two long quotes. See talk)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charles_Peirce&diff=next&oldid=58049955

Actually, the "new user" Wylie Ali deleted 4 blockquotes and all
of the associated text.  One of the quotes + explanatory text,
added by me, was a quotation from Peirce where he defines in
his own words one the absolutely essential concepts of his
entire philosophy.  The other 3 quotes, added by another
editor, I am less certain of how important they are.
But the point is that the wholesale deletion of 2/3
of a section, all of it sourced, and some of it
of surpassing relevance to the whole article,
with no prior discussion, just plain goes
against the spirit of collaboration that
is supposed to be the hallmark of WP,
not to mention eroding the quality
of the article as to its accurate
representation of its subject.

Jon Awbrey

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Jon_Awbrey
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o


subject: [WikiEN-l] Offline submissions?

body:
While this sounds like a nice, lofty, all-inclusive notion -- the sort
which would be popular amongst white, male, technically-inclided,
middle class, intellectual-pursuing English speakers -- I'm not so
sure it would be worth the trouble to establish an infrastructure to
accomodate it.

How are these participants supposed to know about Wikipedia, much less
be able to read it and integrate their content into it in a useful
way? How are we supposed to solicit their contributions? Do we have
evidence that this is actually a problem that needs to be solved in a
systematic way? Is this a problem looking for a solution or a solution
looking for a problem?

I'm all for inclusivity and being aware of our biases and trying to
encourage working around them.* I'm not sure this is really the best
use of our (human) resources. I'll be frank and say it sounds a little
half-baked to me.

FF

*I'll also say that I think the idea that content is necessarily
determined by the demographics of your contributors is also a bit too
reductionist, and mimics some of the really tragic movements in
academia in the 1960s and 1970s which let in a lot of really bad
scholarship and really wooly thinking under the banner of inclusivity.
I think we should always take care to judge our contributors on the
quality of what they actually produce, not on who they are as
individuals or groups.

On 6/25/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> According to the WikiProject Countering Systemic Bias, "The average
> Wikipedian on English Wikipedia (1) is male, (2) is
> technically-inclined, (3) is formally educated, (4) speaks English to
> an extent, (5) is White , (6) is aged 15-49, (7) is from a
> predominantly Christian country, (8) is from an industrialized nation,
> and (9) is more likely to be employed in intellectual pursuits than in
> practical skills or physical labor."
>
> The problem with this is the unfortunate gap in coverage that results
> from a lack of interest from the typical demographic of Wikipedians
> described above. While this demographic is definitely interested in
> contributing to a free, online encyclopedia, that doesn't mean the
> others aren't. One particular problem is that in order to contribute
> to Wikipedia, you'll need to use a computer. There are others who
> would probably be interested in contributing to our global effort,
> too, but don't understand technology. We need to allow them to
> contribute.
>
> For that purpose, I would like to start a project where people without
> access to computers (or people who voluntarily choose not to use them)
> can -write- their own Wikipedia entries and mail them in. The first
> phase of this plan, of course, would be spreading the word. The least
> expensive way would probably be distributing fliers in frequented
> areas. People could then write their own articles, and mail them in to
> the Wikimedia Office. Someone at the office (maybe Monica?) could open
> the letters, scan them in, and email them to an offline submissions
> mailing list. From there, people interested in the project would
> transcribe the article into Wikipedia (if applicable, see below) and
> mail back a corresponding letter featuring a print-out of the new
> article. Very simple process, plus it would allow people from
> non-typical-of-Wikipedia-editor backgrounds to put in their word.
>
> What if their entry is redundant? Not to worry. If the written
> submission has content the Wikipedia article doesn't, we add it in. If
> it doesn't, that's okay. We don't necessarily have to tell them what
> made it in and what didn't, but either way, a reply will be sent to
> the writer with a print-out of the article.
>
> ----
>
> I'm passing the above on for en:User:Messedrocker, since he's not
> subscribed to the list. My thoughts:
>
> a) This has certainly been done before on a local level with minor
> languages - was it in West Africa somewhere? My mind is failing me,
> but I've certainly seen it mentioned on wikipedia-l before - the
> writing was done by a local elder, transcribed and put online by a
> volunteer.
>
> b) It might well work, but would probably require careful thought and
> planning - who are we targeting? what sort of articles are we
> targeting them for? how do we deal with unwanted and inappropriate
> submissions without causing more badwill than we started with?
>
> c) Copyrights. This might get fun.
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Krotoum Ouattara

subject: [Wikitech-l] Demande d'une petite faveur

body:
Please,can you send me differents message in french.
  thank you.

---------------------------------
 Yahoo! Mail r?invente le mail ! D?couvrez le nouveau Yahoo! Mail et son interface r?volutionnaire.


body:
  Je suis heureuse et tres heureuse pour la grande consideratin que vous portez a mon attention.Vous ne pouvez pas savoir quel effet j'ai eu en voyant vos message.Je vous remercie de tout mon coeur.

---------------------------------
 Yahoo! Mail r?invente le mail ! D?couvrez le nouveau Yahoo! Mail et son interface r?volutionnaire.


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Detecting deleted articles

body:
On 30/06/06, mdd4696 at gmail.com <mdd4696 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm generating a few lists of articles on the Toolserver, and I can't
> seem to figure out how to detect if an article has been deleted. I
> don't want to include those articles in my lists. Is there an easy way
> detect this?

Psst...in future, common queries like this are best directed to

* the schema, which is covered in notes, and can be found in the
maintenance/tables.sql file of any MediaWiki installation

* the toolserver-l mailing list

* the #wikimedia-toolserver IRC channel

Deletion entries can be found in the archive table. DESCRIBE archive
ought to expose the columns in the view.

Rob Church


from_name: djafer3107 maatallah

subject: [Wikitech-l] RE :  Demande d'une petite faveur

body:
salut
  quel message que voulez vous en fran?ais

Krotoum Ouattara <ouatyeli at yahoo.fr> a ?crit :

Please,can you send me differents message in french.
thank you.

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Mail r?invente le mail ! D?couvrez le nouveau Yahoo! Mail et son interface r?volutionnaire.
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

---------------------------------
 Yahoo! Mail r?invente le mail ! D?couvrez le nouveau Yahoo! Mail et son interface r?volutionnaire.


from_name: Claudi Meneghin

subject: [Wikitech-l] paper counter at lij.wikipedia.org

body:
Hello,
  the counter of articles at Ligurian wikipedia seems not to run properly: it shows some delay (not depending on the cache of the browser), and it counts only 33 papers, instead of about 45. Could you please take a look? Many thanks,
  Claudi

---------------------------------
 Yahoo! Mail r?invente le mail ! D?couvrez le nouveau Yahoo! Mail et son interface r?volutionnaire.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

body:
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

Genus:    Priority Inversion
Species:  Pseudo-Consensus Overturning the Big Three (and the Five Pillars)

Case 7.

Article:  Charles Peirce.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Peirce

Section:  Relationships, relations, relatives
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Peirce#Relationships.2C_relations.2C_relatives

Edit:  Revision as of 08:12, 12 June 2006 by MengTheMagnificent
(-> Relationships, relations, relatives -
removing as per editor agreement in discussion page)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charles_Peirce&diff=next&oldid=58054308

Entire section deleted by "new user" MengTheMagnificent (incept date 10 June 2006).

Copied here is the entire pretense of discussion that preceded this deletion:

| ==The Relationships and relatives stuff should go==
|
| It seems to me that all of the stuff on relationships and relatives
| at least up to the section "Theory of categories" is way too advanced
| for a generally educated reader.  It is also unmotivated.  We are told
| that a reader of Peirce must understand how Peirce used these terms,
| but we are not told why.  Finally, it is unsourced original research.
| There's a reference to a Peirce article in Monist, but it is detached
| from any particular sentence.  At any rate, this is obviously somebody's
| original interpretation of Peircean thoughts about relations.  (If I'm
| wrong about that, then references to the secondary sources where these
| interpretations come from should be added.)  But I'm going to wait to
| see if there is a concensus among others that it should be removed.
| Would everyone please give me an opinion yay or nay on removing this?
| --[[User:Wylie Ali|Wylie Ali]] 16:56, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
|
| : I vote to delete it.
| --[[User:LogicMan|LogicMan]] 16:59, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
|
| : Delete for the reasons Wylie Ali gives.
| --[[User:AnnMBake|AnnMBake]] 19:02, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
|
| : Me too.
| --[[User:MengTheMagnificent|MengTheMagnificent]] 08:08, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

It is of course the knee-jerk response of WP editors who are novices
in a given subject area to declare anything they haven't heard of to
be "Original Research".  Normal practice is to ask for citations of
things that you may have doubts about.  All of this stuff has been
in print for 100 to 130 years.  If setting some of this stuff into
the form of Wiki Tables constitutes "originality", then I worry
about the wrath of the gods for all our sakes.

Jon Awbrey

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Jon_Awbrey
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o


subject: [WikiEN-l] SPUI requesting unblock

body:
On 6/30/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> SPUI has now been unblocked after a discussion on WP:ANI. I think we
> need to avoid having unblock discussions in multiple places at the
> same time -- perhaps when we start using unblock-en, we can try to
> more systematically centralize all discussion there.

I don't see that you can ever stop people attempting to contest their
blocks on the wikipedia itself (to whatever extent it's technically
possible). Nor is it reasonable to force people to "out themselves" on
email, to whatever extent writing a public email is outing yourself...

Steve


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Broken MUAs and netiquette

body:
Drini (writing as "Pedro Sanchez") wrote:
> On 6/29/06, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 6/29/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>>
>> something strange is that it shows images I've reverted as mine
>> (several fair-use images I didn't upload, merely reverted some
>> vandalism) ~~~~
>>
>
> Also, what do "shadow commons" do? It seems to attemp to insert
> {{ShadowCommons}} on the en: image, but suchtemplate doesn't exist.
> --Drini
>

Bloody hell, what MUA are you using? It's not inserting a user agent,
and it's setting the "from" address (and everything else for that
matter) to that of whoever you reply to.

--
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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subject: [WikiEN-l] Moderation

body:
mboverload wrote:
[Bloody top poster. You'll be first against the wall, you will...]
> On 6/29/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 6/29/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
>>> On Jun 29, 2006, at 12:48 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
>>>
>>>> If people want, we could raise the minimum standards, and be more
>>>> proactive about moderating trolls.
>>> Please do. The fact that a thread titled "suck it wiki" has seen
>>> several dozen messages on this list is enough proof that such action
>>> is needed.
>> There's nothing much we can do about that particular case: someone
>> posts "please unblock X" - seems reasonable, we unmod. His next post
>> is "suck it wiki".
>>
>> But I'll take your comments into account in future.
>>
>
> Hey, if you need a moderator:
>
>  I'm a loser with no life =D
>

We need people who care about making knowledge freely available to
everyone more than we need another listmod.

--
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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subject: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

body:
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

Matt,

There's a still-outstanding request to cite "at least a dozen or so of examples",
it's a Major PITA to document this data right, and there's this Big !-Up Holiday
coming up Stateside, so it may be well into next week before I can catch up with
my homework on this score.  I have to run now, but a quick scan of what you have
written below tells me that it's probably worth the pain to lay out all the gory
details in this way.

Back later,

Jon Awbrey

Matt Brown wrote:
>
> On 6/30/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If the majority of editors on the page agree that the block quote
> > is inappropriate, this is concensus.   If you disagree with this
> > decision, you can initiate a discussion on the talk page, and
> > ideally these editors would discuss the issue with you.
> >
> > I'm still trying to sort out exactly what your complaints are, so I
> > don't want to accuse you of saying or advocating something you are not
> > saying, as I inadvertantly did regarding the 3RR.  So I have some
> > questions: What would have been the ideal outcome in this case?   Do
> > you think the editors should be forced to discuss the issue with you
> > before removing this block quote?  Do you think consensus should not
> > be used to guide decisions regarding Wikipedia content?  If so, then
> > what decision making process should replace it?
>
> I hope I'm not putting words in Jon Awbrey's mouth by stating that he
> things the problem is that when consensus can be defined as "Me and
> three of my friends I IM'd to come and agree with me", there's a
> problem.  Especially when a "consensus" among like-minded people on
> the same side of an issue can be used to trump core Wikipedia policies
> and standard Wikipedia ways of working.
>
> Part of the issue is that there's always tension between deciding an
> issue for good on the one hand, and having every single opinionated
> person coming along to any article being able to re-open things for
> which an adequate conclusion has already been reached.
>
> Standard Wikipedia policy / practise here is that there are no
> permanent decisions on Wikipedia apart from core policy, but that if
> an issue has been decided by strong rough consensus, we're resistant
> to re-opening the issue unless the one wishing to re-open it can
> convince enough people that the previous rough consensus no longer
> holds.
>
> "Strong rough consensus" in my opinion means an issue that for the
> vast majority of contributors has a result they can live with - even
> if not outright approve - and that has been reached after a
> satisfactory discussion, a satisfactory attempt at compromise, a
> respect for policy, and with sufficient editors involved that are
> representative on the issue.
>
> IMO, a rough consensus is not a strong one, a good one, if it has been
> arrived at without discussion, without attempts to find common ground,
> without regard for over-riding policy, or without sufficient numbers
> of contributors or variety of points-of-view to be truly
> representative.
>
> There are many editors on Wikipedia who want to truly do the right
> thing and achieve good results.  There are enough others, however, who
> want articles to say exactly what THEY wish them to say, and who will
> game the rules and do everything they can to get their way.   (There
> are probably other categories of editors, of course, but this is
> simplifying).
>
> I have a feeling that another issue Jon has is that some contributors
> are too willing to remove things from articles if they don't like
> them, regardless of the work that went into them, the usefulness of
> the content, or in any way trying to achieve consensus for that
> removal.
>
> Jon, do I have your positions right?
>
> -Matt

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Jon_Awbrey
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [WikiEN-l] A course in walled gardens?

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
>
> Now to my mind if there are no sources outside the movement we ought
> to be very wary about covering the subject at all.

Being wary is always a good thing, but I doubt there's consensus for a
blanket prohibition on such topics; this is essentially the definition
of [[WP:CRUFT]], and we've all seen _that_ debate before.

Some obscure topics, especially religious ones, are very hard for anyone
to study in depth without forming an opinion for or against them, or at
least being seen as having one.  Often this is compounded by an "if
you're not with us you're against us" mentality on one or both sides of
the debate.  Thus, there are few if any generally accepted neutral
secondary sources, and the best a tertiary source like Wikipedia can do
is balance the arguments from both sides.

Given that the authorship of ACIM seems like a very typical example of
such a topic, I'm in fact quite positively surprised by the quality of
the article in question.

> added a section to [[forgiveness]] detailing ACIM's view of the
> concept which was larger than the section devoted to Bhuddism and
> about the same size as the one for Islam.

That certainly seems like a case of undue weight.  If the concept is
that important to ACIM, the proper place for expanding on it is in the
ACIM article (or, indeed, in a subarticle thereof).  We can even provide
a link to it from the forgiveness article, for those who are interested.

> Back to the article on the court case: I'd say it's a footnote to the
> book unless it's been covered extensively in the mainstream media,
> discussed in the Harvard Law Review as a ground-breaking case, cited
> as precedent in other cases or whatever.  The only cited source we
> have in that section is from the Foundation for A Course In Miracles,
> which was one of the parties to the dispute.  I am minded to merge.

I've looked into this a bit, being the one who closed the first AfD.  As
I wrote in my closing summary, there were several opinions in favor of
merging, but also some good arguments for keeping the articles separate.
  I thus chose to close the debate as "keep", with the understanding
that the option to merge was still open if anyone chose to do that.

One argument worth considering is that apparently the authorship section
was originally deliberately split from the main ACIM article in order to
keep the main article of reasonable length.  One might reasonably argue
that this gives the authorship debate undue weight, but merging it in
its entirety back into main article would give it even _more_ undue
weight.  This strategy of splitting long sections on obscure subtopics
into separate articles is one that has served us well, and as long as
the sub-articles are well written and neutral, they do us little harm.

Of course, if one managed to condense the entire sub-article into one or
two paragraphs that said everything that needed to be said about the
subject, things would be different.  I personally tend to take an "I
believe it when I see it" approach to such plans, not because I'd be
particularly skeptical about them, but simply because their success
depends on so many factors that it's hard to predict in advance.  But
it's definitely not something I'd oppose, if someone can pull it off
without throwing away encyclopedic information in the process.

The court case does seem notable to me; it may not be a landmark case,
but it's certainly unusual.  We probably should have an article on it in
some form, if only to link from [[Wikipedia:Unusual articles]].

--
Ilmari Karonen


body:
On 30/06/06, Claudi Meneghin <clamengh at yahoo.fr> wrote:
> Hello,
>   the counter of articles at Ligurian wikipedia seems not to run properly: it shows some delay (not depending on the cache of the browser), and it counts only 33 papers, instead of about 45. Could you please take a look? Many thanks,

First, let's check you're not misinterpreting a value. For a page to
count towards the "article total" in Special:Statistics, MediaWiki has
to acknowledge it as an article. For this, it must meet three
criteria:

1. Be in the main namespace, or another designated content namespace
2. Not be a redirect
3. Contain at least one internal [[link]]

Please confirm pages matching these criteria are not affecting the
article total.

Rob Church


from_name: Nicholas Moreau

body:
Message: 1
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 14:06:22 -0700
From: Stan Shebs
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l]
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <44A2EF4E.1000202 at apple.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>
>* Many people won't be uploading images if it requires email registration
>
>
Please please please let it be so! After having to mark several
thousand bad uploads for deletion, and realizing it was just a
tiny percentage of the total problem, I'd agree to anything that
would stop the deluge of sh!t.

I think it's hard for people who haven't worked on image cleanup
to realize how much grunt work is created by the hundreds and
sometimes thousands of bad uploads that accumulate each and every day.

Stan

Agreed. Tried it out again, for the first time in months, and it's amazing how many junk images are uploaded.

Nick/Zanimum

---------------------------------
 Inbox full of spam? Get leading spam protection and 1GB storage with All New Yahoo! Mail.


from_name: SPUI

subject: [WikiEN-l] SPUI requesting unblock

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> On Jun 30, 2006, at 3:37 AM, Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>
>>I support the (one week) block being upheld for the time
>>being, at least until you acknowledge this.
>>
>>Erik
>
>
> A week seems rather mild. SPUI is rather good at chewing up energy
> regarding minor disputes. He actually restored that page on June 26.
> Then he comes on here and claims he was blocked over a page he
> created in 2005.

I'm not an admin - Freakofnurture restored it for the VFU.


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Public Domain Works DB

body:
The Open Knowledge Foundation, together with Free Culture UK, is
developing a database of public domain works:

http://www.publicdomainworks.net/

Still very early stages, but could eventually become useful for Wikimedia.

Erik


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Public Domain Works DB


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 6/30/06, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, my idea was simpler. While this new system would be superb in giving
> the attribution, and an exapmple of GFDL-compliance, on everyday use, you
> won't need to know 'who added each piece', but 'who added that quote' on
> Jimbo Wales user page (~3000 edits) OffTopic: interesting how Jimbo ip was
> hidden
[snip]

The proposed system would be completely inadequate for attribution
purposes, too easy to confuse the computer even in obvious cases...
plus not all cases are obvious, someone can still hold a significant
copyright interest in the work even if every word they wrote has been
replaced.

(Not that I don't think it would be a useful tool, but don't advertise
it as something that it is not :) )


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Redlinks or redirects?

body:
On 6/30/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> > Yep. I feel that external links should always be displayed as either:
> > * Raw URLs (quite appropriate for references sections)
> > * Quasi-footnote style ("...according to the official website
> > [www.foo.com]") which renders as "...[1]"
>
> Of late I've often combined these two approaches by wrapping the URL in
> <ref> tags. Not as tidy as using a {{cite web}} template, but very fast
> and easy to do.

Yep, that's actually my preferred approach. <ref> tags are so easy to
use, I love them.

Steve


from_name: Jesse W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

body:
On Jun 30, 2006, at 4:26 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 6/30/06, Jesse W <jessw at netwood.net> wrote:
>> I would be very curious to hear Mr. Awbrey's preference for an
>> alternative, either one of the ones above, or another one I have not
>> mentioned.
>
> I on the other hand am wondering whether we shouldn't consider putting
> Mr Awbrey on moderation, in an effort to increase the signal to noise
> ratio on this list. I appreciate your good faith effort to get
> something out of this "exit interview", but if you look at the thread
> as a whole, it doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
Re-reading the whole thread, I've come to agree with you.  Mr. Awbrey
seems to be upset that he attempted to convince some people that
certain parts of an article should be changed, failed, and was thereby
unable to make his changes stick.  This is painful for him, but not a
problem for Wikipedia.  This will be my last message in this thread.

Jesse Weinstein


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] A course in walled gardens?

references:
<6b9aa2hoo4t6s16d0glck2c63df29amnui@4ax.com>
	<aa62d5b70606300653y77acc878k216488ecbe7b2db3@mail.gmail.com>
	<8kdaa2t1e3j712dvon8980noqr9qjeo9d8@4ax.com>
	<aa62d5b70606300805w2f7346dbh3acec4deed48fe29@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On Fri, 30 Jun 2006 11:05:21 -0400, "Lord Voldemort"
<lordbishopvoldemort at gmail.com> wrote:

>So it looks like it has been used, but to what extent required for
>notability, I am not sure. The case is verifiable. Does any of this
>even help... I wrote this email in bits and pieces, so it may be
>choppy or rambling, my apologies.  Let me know if you need more info.

Well done, thanks.  We can take this to Talk, I guess, at the (now
updated form your sources) article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorship_of_A_Course_in_Miracles.

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


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bad image list

body:
On 30/06/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> I'm not actually even convinced the list is useful at all.  The only
> reason I wrote that patch, besides the fact that it has been repeatedly
> requested on-wiki, was in an attempt to make the list at least somewhat
> more useful given that it does exist.

Well, en.wp insists on having explicit and confronting images for
certain topics, so...

At the Commons we occasionally get irate requests to delete certain
images because they've been used in vandalism attacks. We are somewhat
hesitant to delete them, assuming they're licensed correctly, for the
likely backlash of "censorship!". So once we found out about the
existence of this, we have been advising wikis to use the Bad image
list. But we still delete some images when they seem particularly
superfluous and particularly confronting.

And by "we" I mean like, me and two other guys who follow these
deletion requests on Commons.

I'm not a big advocate for the list, but this is my interaction with it.

Brianna
en.wp,commons:User:pfctdayelise


from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Where are the decision makers?

body:
Brion Vibber schrieb:
> Jacky PB wrote:
>
>> Where are the decision makers? Isn't there nobody
>>
>
> No one else is interested in this issue, and getting involved would mean wasting
> a lot of time with people fighting a lot over something unimportant. The safest
> course is thus to leave a rarely-used wiki sitting there, same as we do with
> dozens of other rarely-used wikis and nobody minds.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
Thank you Brion! This is the answer most of us can sign.

Don't know if this saying is the same in English, but I try to
translate: live and let live ...

And I say: help where you can - if you cannot: do nothing. If something
is not good enough to your opinion you need to help to make things
better, not to make things worse ...
.
Have a great week-end!

Sabine

Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale!
 http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

body:
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

> I on the other hand am wondering whether we shouldn't consider putting
> Mr Awbrey on moderation, in an effort to increase the signal to noise
> ratio on this list. I appreciate your good faith effort to get
> something out of this "exit interview", but if you look at the thread
> as a whole, it doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

General: Away, away!
Police: Yes, yes, we go!
General: These pirates slay!
Police: Tarantara!
General: Then do not stay!
Police: Tarantara!
General: Then why this delay!
Police: All right, we go! Yes forward, Yes, forward on the foe, on
the foe, Yes, forward on the foe!
General: Yes, but you _don't_ go!
Girls: They go, they go!
Police: We go, we go! Yes forward, Yes, forward on the foe, on the
foe, Yes, forward on the foe!
General: Damme, you _don't_ go!
Girls: At last they go,
Police: We go, we go,
Girls: At last they go, at last they go!
Police: We go, we go,
Girls: At last they really, really go!
Police: We go, we go, we go, we go!

--W. S. Gilbert, "The Pirates of Penzance"


from_name: Jon Awbrey

subject: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

body:
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

Genus:    Priority Inversion
Species:  Pseudo-Consensus Overturning the Big Three (and the Five Pillars)

Case 8.

Article:  Truth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth

Section:  Correspondence theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth#Correspondence_theory

This is a complex series of edits and requires a bit of background.

Some time ago I placed a POV tag on the article, asserting that the article
is biased toward (1) a particular POV and (2) a particular theory of truth.

1.  The POV in question is the POV of analytic philosophy, which
    from its beginning and to this day relies almost exclusively
    on the methods of linguistic analysis, consequently ignoring
    or dismissing almost every problem of philosophy that is not
    especially well handled by its favorite method.  In short,
    it suffers from a "have screwdriver, try to screw everything"
    variety of POV myopia.

2.  The theory of truth in question is the "correspondence theory of truth"
    that is being discussed in this section.  The complaint that I have made
    is that even several other theories of truth are discussed, they are all
    described and evaluated only in so far as they can be characterized from
    the POV of the correspondenc theory.  In short, the discussion of other
    theories examines them through "correspondence theory-colored glasses".

Correcting this bias depends on a critical examination of every theory in view,
including the correspondence theory.  In addition there were many errors of fact
in the article when I first came to it, some of them maintained even though they
contradicted each other.  For instance, there were the unsupported attributions of
a correspondence theory to numerous Classical philosophers, but also the POV claim
that Bertrand Russell either invented it "was substantially responsible for helping
to make correspondence theory widely known under this name".  These claims are all
controversial at best, deriving as they do from the belief system of a single POV,
and it is easy to find both primary sources and reputable secondary sources that
either refute them or express a contrasting POV.

In the process of tracking down primary sources and second opinions,
I found a highly pertinent remark that Immanuel Kant made in 1800,
where he discusses the Classical history of correspondence theories
of truth and also gives a critical appraisal of the problems that
they have in being fully satisfactory.  So I naturally added the
quotation to the section, and, because of its complexity, added
preliminary and post hoc translations of what it says into more
contemporary and idiomatic English terms.

The deletion of this entire contribution was accomplished in two steps:

1.  First the quotation and its analyis are paraphrased:
Edit 1.  Revision as of 19:20, 30 June 2006 by Jim62sch
(-> Correspondence theory - rewrite of presentation
of Kantian views -- quote now used as a ref)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Truth&diff=61421673&oldid=61409516

2.  Then the entire paraphrase + analyis is deleted:
Edit 2.  Revision as of 20:12, 30 June 2006 by Kenosis
(-> Correspondence theory - Here goes Kant, per talk, for now at least.
Too much else could be here in this section in addition to Kant, such
as Tarski and others sectioned elsewhere)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Truth&diff=next&oldid=61425725

The end result is that an important correction of historical fact
plus a modicum of POV-counterbalancing material has been excised.

Oh, the POV-based assertion about Russell remains intact in a footnote.
This is one of the ways that WP maintains its reputation in philosophy
circles as a dumping ground of popular errors.  The fact is that the
Star Trek Universe pages exhibit more devotion to accurate detail
and responsible scholarship than the whole WP Philosophy Project
put together.

Jon Awbrey

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Jon_Awbrey
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o


subject: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

body:
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

daniel,

please provide guidance,
is what you added the
very modern model
of signal,
or noise?

ja

Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
>
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey
>
> > I on the other hand am wondering whether we shouldn't consider putting
> > Mr Awbrey on moderation, in an effort to increase the signal to noise
> > ratio on this list.  I appreciate your good faith effort to get
> > something out of this "exit interview", but if you look at the
> > thread as a whole, it doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
>
> General: Away, away!
> Police: Yes, yes, we go!
> General: These pirates slay!
> Police: Tarantara!
> General: Then do not stay!
> Police: Tarantara!
> General: Then why this delay!
> Police: All right, we go! Yes forward, Yes, forward on the foe, on
> the foe, Yes, forward on the foe!
> General: Yes, but you _don't_ go!
> Girls: They go, they go!
> Police: We go, we go! Yes forward, Yes, forward on the foe, on the
> foe, Yes, forward on the foe!
> General: Damme, you _don't_ go!
> Girls: At last they go,
> Police: We go, we go,
> Girls: At last they go, at last they go!
> Police: We go, we go,
> Girls: At last they really, really go!
> Police: We go, we go, we go, we go!
>
> --W. S. Gilbert, "The Pirates of Penzance"

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Jon_Awbrey
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o


from_name: mboverload

body:
I think the bigger problem is all the crap images that are never used.
(Especially on the commons).  If you won't provide full and complete
metadata and add it to the proper page, you shouldn't upload it.

On 6/30/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/28/06, Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sf.net> wrote:
> > So about 40% of useful contributions come from users without confirmed
> > emails, and we would be throwing them away ?
>
> There's no evidence of what percentage of these uploaders would be
> willing to provide a confirmed email address if required to do so.
>
> There are many editors who entered an email address ages ago before
> confirmation was required, and now do not have a confirmed email
> address because of this.  Despite sitenotices, most have probably  not
> gone and fixed the problem, since there's been no pressing personal
> need to do so.
>
> -Matt
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Offline submissions?

body:
Wait...what's wrong with white people? =D

On 6/30/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> While this sounds like a nice, lofty, all-inclusive notion -- the sort
> which would be popular amongst white, male, technically-inclided,
> middle class, intellectual-pursuing English speakers -- I'm not so
> sure it would be worth the trouble to establish an infrastructure to
> accomodate it.
>
> How are these participants supposed to know about Wikipedia, much less
> be able to read it and integrate their content into it in a useful
> way? How are we supposed to solicit their contributions? Do we have
> evidence that this is actually a problem that needs to be solved in a
> systematic way? Is this a problem looking for a solution or a solution
> looking for a problem?
>
> I'm all for inclusivity and being aware of our biases and trying to
> encourage working around them.* I'm not sure this is really the best
> use of our (human) resources. I'll be frank and say it sounds a little
> half-baked to me.
>
> FF
>
> *I'll also say that I think the idea that content is necessarily
> determined by the demographics of your contributors is also a bit too
> reductionist, and mimics some of the really tragic movements in
> academia in the 1960s and 1970s which let in a lot of really bad
> scholarship and really wooly thinking under the banner of inclusivity.
> I think we should always take care to judge our contributors on the
> quality of what they actually produce, not on who they are as
> individuals or groups.
>
> On 6/25/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > According to the WikiProject Countering Systemic Bias, "The average
> > Wikipedian on English Wikipedia (1) is male, (2) is
> > technically-inclined, (3) is formally educated, (4) speaks English to
> > an extent, (5) is White , (6) is aged 15-49, (7) is from a
> > predominantly Christian country, (8) is from an industrialized nation,
> > and (9) is more likely to be employed in intellectual pursuits than in
> > practical skills or physical labor."
> >
> > The problem with this is the unfortunate gap in coverage that results
> > from a lack of interest from the typical demographic of Wikipedians
> > described above. While this demographic is definitely interested in
> > contributing to a free, online encyclopedia, that doesn't mean the
> > others aren't. One particular problem is that in order to contribute
> > to Wikipedia, you'll need to use a computer. There are others who
> > would probably be interested in contributing to our global effort,
> > too, but don't understand technology. We need to allow them to
> > contribute.
> >
> > For that purpose, I would like to start a project where people without
> > access to computers (or people who voluntarily choose not to use them)
> > can -write- their own Wikipedia entries and mail them in. The first
> > phase of this plan, of course, would be spreading the word. The least
> > expensive way would probably be distributing fliers in frequented
> > areas. People could then write their own articles, and mail them in to
> > the Wikimedia Office. Someone at the office (maybe Monica?) could open
> > the letters, scan them in, and email them to an offline submissions
> > mailing list. From there, people interested in the project would
> > transcribe the article into Wikipedia (if applicable, see below) and
> > mail back a corresponding letter featuring a print-out of the new
> > article. Very simple process, plus it would allow people from
> > non-typical-of-Wikipedia-editor backgrounds to put in their word.
> >
> > What if their entry is redundant? Not to worry. If the written
> > submission has content the Wikipedia article doesn't, we add it in. If
> > it doesn't, that's okay. We don't necessarily have to tell them what
> > made it in and what didn't, but either way, a reply will be sent to
> > the writer with a print-out of the article.
> >
> > ----
> >
> > I'm passing the above on for en:User:Messedrocker, since he's not
> > subscribed to the list. My thoughts:
> >
> > a) This has certainly been done before on a local level with minor
> > languages - was it in West Africa somewhere? My mind is failing me,
> > but I've certainly seen it mentioned on wikipedia-l before - the
> > writing was done by a local elder, transcribed and put online by a
> > volunteer.
> >
> > b) It might well work, but would probably require careful thought and
> > planning - who are we targeting? what sort of articles are we
> > targeting them for? how do we deal with unwanted and inappropriate
> > submissions without causing more badwill than we started with?
> >
> > c) Copyrights. This might get fun.
> >
> > --
> > - Andrew Gray
> >   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Yes, please, you should only upload an image if you're actually dedicated to
doing something with it.

mboverload

On 6/30/06, Nicholas Moreau <beaubeaver at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 14:06:22 -0700
> From: Stan Shebs
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l]
> To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <44A2EF4E.1000202 at apple.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
>
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>
> >
> >* Many people won't be uploading images if it requires email registration
> >
> >
> Please please please let it be so! After having to mark several
> thousand bad uploads for deletion, and realizing it was just a
> tiny percentage of the total problem, I'd agree to anything that
> would stop the deluge of sh!t.
>
> I think it's hard for people who haven't worked on image cleanup
> to realize how much grunt work is created by the hundreds and
> sometimes thousands of bad uploads that accumulate each and every day.
>
> Stan
>
> Agreed. Tried it out again, for the first time in months, and it's amazing
> how many junk images are uploaded.
>
> Nick/Zanimum
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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> New Yahoo! Mail.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-07-01

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

Running test Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test Language converter: output gets cut off unexpectedly (bug 5757)... FAILED!
Running test HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!

Passed 394 of 407 tests (96.81%) FAILED!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

body:
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

JA = Jon Awbrey
MB = Matt Brown

Matt,

I will have to work my way through your comments bit by bit,
as my time on line will be very intermittent over the next
few days.

Matt Brown wrote:
>
Rob: On 6/30/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
>  > If the majority of editors on the page agree that the block quote
>  > is inappropriate, this is concensus.   If you disagree with this
>  > decision, you can initiate a discussion on the talk page, and
>  > ideally  these editors would discuss the issue with you.
>  >
MB: I'm still trying to sort out exactly what your complaints are,
> > so I don't want to accuse you of saying or advocating something
> > you are not saying, as I inadvertantly did regarding the 3RR.
> > So I have some questions:  What would have been the ideal outcome
> > in this case?  Do you think the editors should be forced to discuss
> > the issue with you before removing this block quote?  Do you think
> > consensus should not be used to guide decisions regarding Wikipedia
> > content?  If so, then what decision making process should replace it?

JA: I've been presenting the sequence of events in the Charles Peirce case
    roughly in the order that I actually experienced it.  People who want
    to skip ahead can look at the subsequent discussion on the talk page.

JA: A more savvy observer eventually raised the possibility of a sock puppet
    or meat puppet group.  I had heard only the first term before, and until
    this learning experience had always thought it was a rare phenomenon.

JA: Any savvy observer would, of course, naturally ask themselves:
    What was I doing at the age or two or three days in my WP life? --
    Was I deleting whole sections of established and documented text
    from articles?  Was I reporting other editors for 3RR violations
    on Admin NoticeBoards?  If you answer yes to these questions, then
    they will have to invent a whole new format of bold text for you.
    Moi?  I didn't even know about Admin NBs until I got pasted on one.

JA: I have agonized with conflicting feelings about this issue for a long time,
    and I still don't know for sure what to think about it, but here is how it
    sits with me at the moment.  I'm not sure I want to be a part of a project
    where Admins have the right to be checking what computer you are using
    at a given moment.  So I've decided that the puppet issue, although
    it was naturally mystifying at first and still distressing, is not
    the main problem.  The real problem is logically the same even if
    it's a bona fide group of 2 or 3 genuine, independent individuals
    who take a drop-of-the-hat straw poll and outvote an editor who
    may have spent a month adding a section to an article but who
    happens to be traveling that day, and who would at any rate
    be outvoted 2 or 3 to 1.

JA: The real problem is that a poll like the ones that are routinely taken in WP,
    despite all the written recommendations to do that only as a last resort,
    in no stretch of a normal person's imagination constitutes a "consensus"
    under the normal definition of the word, whether it's in an English,
    Legal, or Philosophical dictionary, or in conformity with any of
    the WP Policies that discuss consensus.  And people who imagine
    otherwise have simply not taken the trouble to look up the word
    in the relevant sources, or ignored what they read if they did.

JA: That is the problem here.

Jon Awbrey

> I hope I'm not putting words in Jon Awbrey's mouth by stating that he thinks
> the problem is that when consensus can be defined as "Me and three of my friends
> I IM'd to come and agree with me", there's a problem.  Especially when a "consensus"
> among like-minded people on the same side of an issue can be used to trump core
> Wikipedia policies and standard Wikipedia ways of working.
>
> Part of the issue is that there's always tension between deciding an
> issue for good on the one hand, and having every single opinionated
> person coming along to any article being able to re-open things for
> which an adequate conclusion has already been reached.
>
> Standard Wikipedia policy / practise here is that there are no
> permanent decisions on Wikipedia apart from core policy, but that if
> an issue has been decided by strong rough consensus, we're resistant
> to re-opening the issue unless the one wishing to re-open it can
> convince enough people that the previous rough consensus no longer
> holds.
>
> "Strong rough consensus" in my opinion means an issue that for the
> vast majority of contributors has a result they can live with - even
> if not outright approve - and that has been reached after a
> satisfactory discussion, a satisfactory attempt at compromise, a
> respect for policy, and with sufficient editors involved that are
> representative on the issue.
>
> IMO, a rough consensus is not a strong one, a good one, if it has been
> arrived at without discussion, without attempts to find common ground,
> without regard for over-riding policy, or without sufficient numbers
> of contributors or variety of points-of-view to be truly
> representative.
>
> There are many editors on Wikipedia who want to truly do the right
> thing and achieve good results.  There are enough others, however, who
> want articles to say exactly what THEY wish them to say, and who will
> game the rules and do everything they can to get their way.   (There
> are probably other categories of editors, of course, but this is
> simplifying).
>
> I have a feeling that another issue Jon has is that some contributors
> are too willing to remove things from articles if they don't like
> them, regardless of the work that went into them, the usefulness of
> the content, or in any way trying to achieve consensus for that
> removal.
>
> Jon, do I have your positions right?
>
> -Matt

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Jon_Awbrey
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o


from_name: Platonides

body:
Rob Church wrote:
> It's worth noting that someone else has registered an intention to do
> something similar and provide it as a script on the toolserver. That
> sounds infeasible to me, however, since we all know that, right now
> (and likely, for some considerable time), Zedler does not have access
> to the text of pages.
>

Well, my idea was simpler. While this new system would be superb in giving
the attribution, and an exapmple of GFDL-compliance, on everyday use, you
won't need to know 'who added each piece', but 'who added that quote' on
Jimbo Wales user page (~3000 edits) OffTopic: interesting how Jimbo ip was
hidden
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Jimbo_Wales&diff=7476787&oldid=7476786]

So you would ask 'when was this phrase [at revision y] introduced?',
getting:

a) You must be wrong, article doesn't have such phrase
b) Three edits before, by Foo [diff]

I don't think it to be very expensive. I calculate that most changes would
have been introduced on last 10 edits (average 4 edits or so). Of course
then you should try to guess if it was a blanking + reversion and complicate
things a little more ;)

The worst case would be where the page has a lot of edits and the token has
been there for a lot of edits. The first time it will be slow, but next
times the cache will fast it a lot, so you'll have to go looking for another
biggy article.

Your problem is that toolserver (zedler) doesn't have direct access to
stored text due to external storage (which we were told will be solved.....
one of this years) and text queries need to do a hit to the pmtpa server.
Yeah, this can reduce perfomance, but
-we only want raw text. No need to _stress_ wikimedia servers with page
rendering.
-if the revision was queried before, it will be cached on toolserver :-)
-<s>we</s> I expect to need little revisions per query (as stated above).

It could be watched on real conditions the problems which may arise, or if
it's needed to reduce  frequence of queries/set a timewait. Until then,
everything is speculation :-)

As a side note, there's currently a script on toolserver querying every
change on wikipedia. Ask for some revisions when a user calls the php
shouldn't matter in comparison ;-)
External storage is a toolserver problem so i don't know why you complain to
me so much about it. Morevoer, there're worse methods of implementating it,
what about doing it on javascript? hahaha.

Platonides


list: commons-l

subject: [Commons-l] Flag copyright

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
> Can someone explain to me how this is supposed to work?
>
> If a flag design is PD, and I make a faithful representation of it
> (intended to be a duplicate), do I have any copyright over it or not?
>
> Ditto COAs.
<snip>
> Some of these images have been marked as copyvios because they're from
> Flags of the World (FOTW) website. Is FOTW even right to claim
> copyright?
>

Um. I saw a bunch of these on bad_old_ones for [[Category:Against
policy]]...

--
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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subject: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

body:
On 6/30/06, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net> wrote:
> It is of course the knee-jerk response of WP editors who are novices
> in a given subject area to declare anything they haven't heard of to
> be "Original Research".  Normal practice is to ask for citations of
> things that you may have doubts about.  All of this stuff has been
> in print for 100 to 130 years.  If setting some of this stuff into
> the form of Wiki Tables constitutes "originality", then I worry
> about the wrath of the gods for all our sakes.

Am I right in saying you're unhappy because people keep removing text
on the grounds that it goes over the heads of Wikipedia's editors?
What else should they do with it? Leave it, taking on good faith the
fact that it is indeed substantiated by some uncited sources?

I don't see that we can, in good faith, leave material we can't
comprehend, which we suspect of being totally original research.
Moving it to the talk page with a detailed explanation of why is
exactly the right thing to do.

Steve


subject: [Commons-l] Flag copyright

body:
Can someone explain to me how this is supposed to work?

If a flag design is PD, and I make a faithful representation of it
(intended to be a duplicate), do I have any copyright over it or not?

Ditto COAs.

Some examples:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Ked.gif
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Coa_cote_d_ivory.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Lombardia-Bandiera.png
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Miranda_flag.png
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Martina_Franca-Stemma.png
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Petrzalka_erb.gif
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Ph_seal_guimaras.png
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Pommernwappen.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Provincia_Huesca.png
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Puglia-Bandiera.png
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Russia_coa.svg (some discussion)
 plus a whole bunch linked to
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:SlovakCityCOA

Some of these images have been marked as copyvios because they're from
Flags of the World (FOTW) website. Is FOTW even right to claim
copyright?

See, this ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Russian_Empire_1914-17_Flag.png
) is tagged as copyvio because it's from FOTW. Yet it's also listed as
being superseded by
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Russian_Empire_1914_17.svg
which is licensed CC-BY-SA!!! What gives??

I would have thought that either a flag design is PD or it's not.
(generally decided by the laws of the country.) If it's PD, it doesn't
matter how much time you spend on your SVG, you can't license it any
other way than PD. (And PD-self is *wrong* in such cases.) If it's
not, then it's gonna be copyrighted as we can't host it anyway.

Feedback please, and if you want to delete/retag any of the above
images that'd be great.

Brianna
commons:User:pfctdayelise


subject: [Commons-l] Flag copyright

body:
On 01/07/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Um. I saw a bunch of these on bad_old_ones for [[Category:Against
> policy]]...

Yes, they're all from there. Which is rather why I'd like to know...

Brianna


subject: [Wikitech-l] Ligurian counter

body:
Hello, many thanks. Maybe in some papers internal links are still missing. I'm going to check, but almost surely this is the matter. If so, I will fix it as soon as possible.
Sincerely yours,
Claudi

Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 17:34:54 +0100
From: "Rob Church"
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] paper counter at lij.wikipedia.org
To: "Wikimedia developers"
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed

On 30/06/06, Claudi Meneghin  wrote:
> Hello,
>   the counter of articles at Ligurian wikipedia seems not to run properly: it shows some delay (not depending on the cache of the browser), and it counts only 33 papers, instead of about 45. Could you please take a look? Many thanks,

First, let's check you're not misinterpreting a value. For a page to
count towards the "article total" in Special:Statistics, MediaWiki has
to acknowledge it as an article. For this, it must meet three
criteria:

1. Be in the main namespace, or another designated content namespace
2. Not be a redirect
3. Contain at least one internal [[link]]

Please confirm pages matching these criteria are not affecting the
article total.

Rob Church

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