subject: [WikiEN-l] Lauritsen speedy deletion??

body:
On 11/22/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> You're a Wikipedia editor, not a jobsworth.  Of course research is demanded.

I think we are probably crossing wires about what I would delete.  I
would only delete something that was plainly outside policy.  Remember
that I generally am just as keen to keep stuff as you are.  I am just
saying that I don't research every deletion I make, because there
simply isn't time.  Note that I don't take A7 to mean "this guy isn't
notable" but "this article doesn't claim this guy is notable".  I
consider myself very generous in this point of view.

But researching every deletion needn't be necessary.  If people don't
want articles deleted, they should make it plain why the article's
being written.  Housecleaning is an essential part of Wikipedia.  I
don't intend to waste my time proving that this guy is someone
notable.  That's the author's job.  I consider my role as a cleaner as
entirely separate from that as an editor and writer.

--
Sam


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] User Jcb deleting articles in ia.wikipedia.org

body:
On 22/11/05, ilooy <ilooy.gaon at gmail.com> wrote:
> This behavior will not be tolerated.
> I have blocked the Trojan-horse
> admin and his IP address.
/
> Iste comportamento non sera tolerate.
> Io ha bloccate iste admin Cavallo-Trojan
> e su adresse de IP.

Unacceptable.
/
Inacceptabile.

> This person is not the only one
> who has done this type of activity
> at the ia.wiki ...and... to substain
> this type of abuse is just intolerable.
/
> Iste persona non esseva le unic
> qui ha facite iste typo de activitate
> in le ia.wiki ...e... supportar iste
> typo de abuso es intolerabile.

If he's not the only one, then maybe there's some solid reasoning behind it?
/
Si ille no es le unic, ergo forsan hay alicun rationamento solide pro ille?

> Hundreds and hundreds of articles
> have been deleted since this wiki
> reached its highest amount of
> submitted articles. Since then
> many contributors have walked
> away from the project disgusted
> that the articles they were working
> on were deleted.

"Articles they were working on"... last time I checked, the Great
Purges at ia.wiki were all of itty-bitty articles, some less than 5
words. Find me one that was more than a paragraph, and I'll be
surprised.

> Many of the articles were deleted
> because they were "mere stubs".
> The reason they are stubs is because
> many folks are still working on these
> articles... Is this the situation in other
> Wikipedias... to delete stubs willy-nilly?
> I think not!

It depends on the Wikipedia. I posted a stub on the Zu?i language to
the Japanese WP. A month later, it was deleted for being a stub,
despite the fact that it was a few sentences long. Different WPs have
different thresholds of quality.

> I consider this attack on the ia.wiki
> to be akin to vandalism. It has got to
> stop and it better stop soon.

You consider? You? And remind me how many people there are at ia.wiki?
Your only type of authority is that you are an admin.

Rather than BLOCKING HIM, which is utterly inappropriate, you
should've REQUESTED HE BE DESYSOPPED for what you considered to be
inappropriate actions on his part.

> Whatever I can do to halt this form
> of abuse I will do. And so would any
> other reasonable member of this
> community. I'm sure.
/
> Qualcosa que io pote facer pro poner
> un halto a iste forma de abuso, io lo
> facera. E tamben facerea assi qualcunque
> membro rationabile de iste communitate.
> De isto io es secur.

So anybody who disagrees with you isn't reasonable? I'm sure.
/
Assi alcuno qui disaccorda no es rational?? De _isto_, io es secur.

Mark

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


list: wikien-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] How is validation supposed to work?

body:
Ilya N. wrote:

> The only problem I was seeing with the validation feature is large-scale
> vandalism on large articles and no way to detect it.

Uh? I don't understand what you mean ...

- d.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Galwaygirl

subject: [Wikitech-l] Dutch Main Page

body:
Roy Ben-Baruch wrote:
> On 11/21/05, Galwaygirl <galwaygirl at xs4all.nl> wrote:
>
>>Sabine Cretella wrote:
>>
>>>I don't think that there are real problems with that page - and to tell
>>>the truth: I like it - where did you get the icons from?
>>
>>I have no idea. :-) Ask Rex
>>(http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebruiker:Rex), he designed the new main page.
>>
>>Galwaygirl
>
> In fact, it was originally designed for the Hebrew Wikipedia, but was
> later copied to other Wikis. The icons were designed by a Hebrew
> wikipedian as well.

Ah, right, thank you. I thought Rex designed it all by himself. Sorry
for the misinformation!

Galwaygirl


list: foundation-l

from_name: David Newton

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikisource Licence Terms

body:
As has become apparent recently there is considerable confusion
possible when reading the text of the Wikisource copyright page at
[[Wikisource: Copyright]]. It is not clear whether only GFDL works,
GFDL-compatible works and public domain works can be posted at the
site, or whether any licence that allows relatively free reproduction
can be used. We need this situation cleared up. I am therefore
proposing to re-write the offending bits of the Wikisource copyright
page to remove the ambiguity.

Since this is a serious step for the project I thought it sensible to
post here and see what the level of agreement is with what I am
proposing to do. I will also post an equivalent message to the
Scriptorium.

What I am proposing to do is to re-word the licensing page to make it
clear that the documents themselves are licensed separately from the
content of the site. That means that things on talk pages, the
Scriptorium, Community Portal and similar will be under the GFDL as
per Wikipedia. However, the documents themselves will be licensed
according to conditions appropriate to their source. That means that
works that are public domain in the United States should be noted as
such with a template at the top or bottom of the page, whichever is
felt most appropriate. It means that works that carry different
licensing conditions from the GFDL and that have licences that are
incompatible with the GFDL can be noted as such.

Such a step will open up Wikisource to a large number of possibilities
of hosting that are currently not open and it will also clear up a
considerable amount of confusion. What do you think?

David Newton


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikisource Licence Terms


from_name: ilooy

body:
Dear fellow wikipedians,

The regrettable situation at ia.wikipedia.org
has gone on for too long.

Numerous articles have disappeared...
...editors were not told about this in
their discussion pages... Articles
were deleted at the whim of someone
who acquired administrator access
and has gone on with this behavior
despite the warnings and even pleadings
of several users in the ia.wikipedia.org
community.

This behavior will not be tolerated.
I have blocked the Trojan-horse
admin and his IP address.

This person is not the only one
who has done this type of activity
at the ia.wiki ...and... to substain
this type of abuse is just intolerable.

Hundreds and hundreds of articles
have been deleted since this wiki
reached its highest amount of
submitted articles. Since then
many contributors have walked
away from the project disgusted
that the articles they were working
on were deleted.

Many of the articles were deleted
because they were "mere stubs".
The reason they are stubs is because
many folks are still working on these
articles... Is this the situation in other
Wikipedias... to delete stubs willy-nilly?
I think not!

I consider this attack on the ia.wiki
to be akin to vandalism. It has got to
stop and it better stop soon.

Whatever I can do to halt this form
of abuse I will do. And so would any
other reasonable member of this
community. I'm sure.

Sincerely,
Jay B.
[[ia:Usator:ILVI]]

In Interlingua

Car collegas wikipedian,

Le situation regrettabile al ia.wikipedia.org
ha continuate pro troppo tempore..

Numerose articulos ha disparite...
...redactores non esseva informate de isto in
su paginas de discussion... Articulos
esseva delite al gusto de alcuno qui
obtineva accesso como administrator
e ha sequite con iste comportamento
abusive non obstante le appellos per
varie usatores in le communitate de
ia.wikipedia.org

Iste comportamento non sera tolerate.
Io ha bloccate iste admin Cavallo-Trojan
e su adresse de IP.

Iste persona non esseva le unic
qui ha facite iste typo de activitate
in le ia.wiki ...e... supportar iste
typo de abuso es intolerabile.

Centos e centos de articulos esseva
delite desde que iste wiki habeva
colligite su numero plus grande de
articulos submittite. Desde tunc,
multe contributores ha vadite via
disgustate del projecto proque le
articulos con le quales illes
laborava esseva delite.

Multes de iste articulos esseva
delibe pro que illos esseva solmente
un "semine de articulo". Le ration
que illos es solmente un "semine"
es que multe gente ancora labora
con lor redaction... Es iste le situation
in altere Wikipedias? ...deler le
semine de articulos a gusto proprie?
Io non lo crede.

Io considera iste atacco contra le ia.wiki
esser quasi un forma de vandalismo. Isto
debe stoppar e illo debe stoppar tosto.

Qualcosa que io pote facer pro poner
un halto a iste forma de abuso, io lo
facera. E tamben facerea assi qualcunque
membro rationabile de iste communitate.
De isto io es secur.

Sincermente,
Jay B.
[[ia:Usator:ILVI]]

--
ilooy.gaon at gmail.com


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Licensing for community images

body:
Thue Janus Kristensen wrote:

>I have created a proposal which would allow the use of non-free images
>in special cases outside the encyclopedia.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Licensing_for_community_images
>
>Please CC any replies to me, I am not on this mailing list
>
>Regards
>en:User:Thue
>
I would support this unless some sort of justification for "free images
only at all times" policy is provided. The existing photo of me on my
userpage is released under a free licence, and I have no intention of
changing that barring extenuating circumstances. I would just like for
other users to have the freedom to use an unfree-image as long as it is
not used in the encyclopedia itself. There is no point for mirrors to
keep our userpages anyhow, and many users when relicencing their
contributions under another licence add a notice to the effect of "I
relicence all my contributions except my userpage under the following
licence". I believe the right exists for non-free content (as long as
it's not a copyvio) to be used on userpages.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


subject: [WikiEN-l] Lauritsen speedy deletion??

body:
Sam Korn wrote:

>On 11/21/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Is research more difficult to perform during those hours for some
>>reason?  Is Google less accessible, perhaps, or do your arms tire and
>>becom unable to lift books from the shelf and open them?  Assuming
>>that both of those circumstances pertain, perhaps you should refrain
>>from performing RC patrol at that time of day.  Especially if it may
>>lead to your deletion of articles without bothering to perform any
>>research.
>>
>>
>
>If pages filling the speedy criteria during those hours, I will not be
>doing research to rescue them.  At other times, the amount of
>vandalism is far lower, so there's more time to research.  My method
>is fully within policy.
>
>--
>Sam
>
>
This debate strikes me as being one, at its core, about eventualism
versus immediatism. Tony is arguing that the encyclopedia will clean
itself up eventually, and that if in doubt, it's better to leave
possible CSDs alone. Sam and geni are arguing from an immediatist
perspective, that if it can't be cleaned up immediately and is of no
encyclopedic value *as it is now*, then it's best junked. Sam is right
in that his approach is compliant with existing policy, as he is
deleting articles of no encyclopedic value. Tony is also justified in
saying that it may be better to clean up the article and replace the
unencyclopedic material instead of outright deleting.

I'd say it depends on how much time you have, and what you prioritise:
an enyclopedia with minimal chance of someone hitting the random page
button and receiving an article consisting of "dis d00d is kewl", or an
encyclopedia where the article says "{{cleanup}} dis dood is kewl". Both
types of people, IMO, should just go ahead and doing what they feel is
right, as this seems to be a matter of pure personal preference. In the
end, things will work out: people will come along and recreate a proper
version of the article if it's deleted, and if the article was pure
junk, then not much has been lost.

As Dpbsmith has often said on VfD/AFD, in the long run, it matters
little whether these articles are kept or deleted. Nobody should lose
too much sleep, if any, over this issue.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Google Alert - Wikipedia

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:

>On Mon, 21 Nov 2005, Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
>
>
>>--- Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>For those of you who were around when it kicked off... when it
>>>went live, was it intended to become a reference tool *on the
>>>web* like it has now, or was the web process intended to be
>>>somewhat less obvious than it became (a top-40 site, eek)?
>>>Open, yes, freely editable, yes, but a live "proper"
>>>encyclopedia from Year One?
>>>
>>>
>>My first edit was on 2 January 2002. Boy was the place a mess (have you seen
>>UseMod ; ugly ; en.wikipedia had less than 20,000 articles and Larry Sanger was
>>still around). But I loved it since there was so much to do. Almost every
>>article I saw was obviously a work in progress. We were still working out basic
>>rules and conventions. WikiProjects were just getting underway. Just about
>>anybody could have a major influence on policy formation and the direction of
>>WikiProjects.
>>
>>At the time we thought it would take us 5 years to to reach our initial goal of
>>100,000 articles. All the focus I saw was on development, not use in the near
>>to mid term. I don't think anybody, except maybe Jimbo, could have dreamed we
>>would get so popular so fast, or so useful.
>>
>>Now when I look around, most articles that cover subjects encyclopedias should
>>cover look fairly complete. Articles on technology, popular culture, and
>>current events are even better on average.
>>
>>Wikipedia becoming useful; well, that is something that kinda snuck up on me
>>while I was helping make it useful. I'm sure it also surprised many other old
>>timers as well. The idea seemed too far in the future to even think about.
>>
>>
>I haven't been around as long as Mav (I still kinda consider him one of the
>"authentic original Wikipedians"), but much of what he says above
>could be my words.
>
>But if I could build on what he wrote, one thing worth noting is the speed
>of change in this project. I've mentioned in the past the problem that some
>important policies are proposed & adopted before some of us who have been
>on Wikipedia for a while notice. Usually there is no problem: give me a
>little time to understand & adjust, & I will accept any new proposal that
>is based on common sense.
>
>Another point is that I feel compelled to defend the quality of Wikipedia
>because, in part, it is my baby, but also because I know that the
>professional experts are guilty of more acts of botched analyses & bad
>writing than they want to admit to. Wikipedia is not only reinventing
>the idea of an encyclopedia but also the (excuse me) paradigm of academia:
>while our structure makes it easy for cranks, kooks & partisans to push
>their own agendas here, it also frees us from the abuse of authorities
>who expect us to accept their biasses as profound new discoveries or
>insights.
>
I've been here only slightly less long than Mav, and I amaze myself to
know that I have stuck it out for nearly four years.  Like Geoff and Mav
I have bought into an idea that is both an encyclopedia and more than an
encyclopedia.  I would probably call myself an eventualist, but around
here eventually comes around awful fast.  I am concerned about the
quality of Wikipedia, but I'm not worried about it.  I don't read into
the presence of an embarassingly bad article a projection of a huge
number of such bad articles.  Considering the resource restraints  we
have an excellent product.  I don't feel that the quality is brought
down by having a few seemingly trivial articles.  I do not see obsessive
rulemaking as the solution to our woes.

Paradigm shifts are not brought about by repeating experiments of the
past.  Rules want to put the new paradigm into a bottle so that it can
be marketted, but you can no more do that than you can put a lit candle
into a closed bottle without have it go out for lack of oxygen.  When
others dwell on having the perfect article, or on setting up Wikiversity
with the same educational patterns of courses, exams and essays I'm left
with the impression that they don't understand the paradigm shift at
all.  A real paradigm shift is painful for a society, because the old
ways don't work anymore; those who relied on old ways for sustenance can
no longer do so.   I sometime find the cranks and kooks easier to deal
with than the people who are trying to set up elaborate systems for
dealing with those same cranks and kooks.

Ec


from_name: geni

body:
On 11/22/05, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
> Thue Janus Kristensen wrote:
>
> >I have created a proposal which would allow the use of non-free images
> >in special cases outside the encyclopedia.
> >
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Licensing_for_community_images
> >
> >Please CC any replies to me, I am not on this mailing list
> >
> >Regards
> >en:User:Thue
> >
> I would support this unless some sort of justification for "free images
> only at all times" policy is provided. The existing photo of me on my
> userpage is released under a free licence, and I have no intention of
> changing that barring extenuating circumstances. I would just like for
> other users to have the freedom to use an unfree-image as long as it is
> not used in the encyclopedia itself. There is no point for mirrors to
> keep our userpages anyhow, and many users when relicencing their
> contributions under another licence add a notice to the effect of "I
> relicence all my contributions except my userpage under the following
> licence". I believe the right exists for non-free content (as long as
> it's not a copyvio) to be used on userpages.
>
> John Lee
> ([[User:Johnleemk]])

Database dump includes user namespace.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Lauritsen speedy deletion??

body:
On 11/22/05, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Nov 22, 2005, at 10:59 AM, geni wrote:
> >
> > It doesn't matter how alert you are. At certain times (ok pretty much
> > anytime except sunday morning) RC patrol is all about speed. Those ten
> > minutes you spent reseaching were ten minuites which could have been
> > spent keeping out vandalism.
>
> I would rather let vandalism accidentally survive for ten extra
> minutes than delete good content.
>
> -Phil

Ok lets have a look at how RC patrol really works. Assume that you are
not useing any bots because I don't you go to the page and load up a
load of recent changes in tabs. Assuming you have it set to hide loged
in users that means that at this time of day you can load up about a
miniutes worth.

That lot takes me about 4 minutes to process which means we probably
need about 5 admins on RC patrol to catch most stuff at this time of
day. I caught two bit of vandalism when I just did this.

Now lets look at what happens if we through a vandlilised article into
the system. Hopefuly it will get caught but suppose 3 of our 5 admins
are off doing research and it gets through. If it survives more than
say two minutes then RC patrol is not going to see it. So how long
does it last then? Well it depends. Our next line of defence is
watchlists. A while back I had an article on my watchlist that was
getting vandalised once a day at a pretty regular time. It was
probably on a few people's watchlists and the vandalism normaly lasted
about an hour (latter it got less beacuse I knew when to expect it).
For the watchlist system to pick stuff up we are probably talking
hours not 10 minutes. But what if it isn't on the watchlist of any
regular editor (hardly unlikely my watchlist is only has 1.5K items on
it)? Well then we are relying on someone stubling apon it. This can
take days. I know cases where it took months. The increaseing size of
wikipedia only makes things worse in this respect.

So all in all your ten minutes analysis is completely flawed.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Lauritsen speedy deletion??

body:
On 11/22/05, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:

> This debate strikes me as being one, at its core, about eventualism
> versus immediatism. Tony is arguing that the encyclopedia will clean
> itself up eventually, and that if in doubt, it's better to leave
> possible CSDs alone. Sam and geni are arguing from an immediatist
> perspective, that if it can't be cleaned up immediately and is of no
> encyclopedic value *as it is now*, then it's best junked.

Oh nothing that simple. Eventualism gives two ways to analyise the situation:
Leveing rubish doesn't matter becuase it will improve
Deleting rubish doesn't matter becuase there will be plently more
along in five minutes.

Thus eventualism doesn't ultimately support either side.

--
geni


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

body:
It appears the spam I keep deleting from the help desk uses ivory coast.

--
geni


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Lauritsen speedy deletion??

body:
On 11/22/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>  I
> would only delete something that was plainly outside policy.

...is the wrong answer.  We only delete rubbish.  Stuff that isn't
rubbish doesn't need a policy to justify us not deleting it.

>
> But researching every deletion needn't be necessary.

If you don't do your homework, you won't know whether you're deleting
rubbish.  Of course you need to do research!


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikisource Licence Terms

body:
I would completely agree with you on that. The simple exemple of the UN
texts shows that there is enough space for concurrent interpretations
and that we need a good basis to discuss and get an evolving, but
reasonable policy.

David Newton wrote:
> As has become apparent recently there is considerable confusion
> possible when reading the text of the Wikisource copyright page at
> [[Wikisource: Copyright]]. It is not clear whether only GFDL works,
> GFDL-compatible works and public domain works can be posted at the
> site, or whether any licence that allows relatively free reproduction
> can be used. We need this situation cleared up. I am therefore
> proposing to re-write the offending bits of the Wikisource copyright
> page to remove the ambiguity.
>
> Since this is a serious step for the project I thought it sensible to
> post here and see what the level of agreement is with what I am
> proposing to do. I will also post an equivalent message to the
> Scriptorium.
>
> What I am proposing to do is to re-word the licensing page to make it
> clear that the documents themselves are licensed separately from the
> content of the site. That means that things on talk pages, the
> Scriptorium, Community Portal and similar will be under the GFDL as
> per Wikipedia. However, the documents themselves will be licensed
> according to conditions appropriate to their source. That means that
> works that are public domain in the United States should be noted as
> such with a template at the top or bottom of the page, whichever is
> felt most appropriate. It means that works that carry different
> licensing conditions from the GFDL and that have licences that are
> incompatible with the GFDL can be noted as such.
>
> Such a step will open up Wikisource to a large number of possibilities
> of hosting that are currently not open and it will also clear up a
> considerable amount of confusion. What do you think?
>
> David Newton
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikisource Licence Terms


body:
On 11/23/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> Oh, come on. If you go with my "feed them in slowly" suggestion, then
> you never get 5000 links in the queue to begin with. If you go with my
> "put big surges in a backlog so there's time to process them at liesure"
> suggestion, you can just use the same tried and true approaches that are
> used in the high-volume AfD process to manage them (eg., split them up
> over multiple pages). These are perfectly simple answers that you should
> have thought of considering how long you've been involved in
> deletion-related discussions here.
>

The lists are bot generated. No system we normaly use has shown the
ability to kill 1000s of items fast. It was a one off event. No point
in trying to fit it into normal processes when we don't have to. All
in all we got the job done and very few people complained.

On nov 18 IFD had 14 images added. Now lets assume we decide to delete
those 5000 images (the true number is greater) over 50 days. That is
stupidly slow but even then we increase the load on IFD by an order of
manitude.

> As far as I can tell this is a non sequitur. My text above was in
> response to speedy-deleting orphaned fair-use articles on the basis that
> they're _orphaned_, after I pointed out that orphanhood can be a result
> of vandalism on other articles that you can't detect at a glance when
> you're only examining the image information page. Are you suggesting
> that changing the fair use notice templates would somehow prevent
> vandals from deleting the images from articles that use them in valid
> ways? Vandals, by their very nature, don't pay attention to such things.
>

Vandals don't seem to have much effect on this area. Most vandalism I
see does not ivolve fair use images.

> My basic point remains. An image should never be speedy-deleted soley
> because it's an orphan, because with the current software there's no way
> to tell whether its orphanhood is a temporary state. Such images should
> be given more careful consideration, at the very least a time delay to
> allow for the possibility that its orphan status will change in the near
> future.
>

As and when you find us enough admins to do the above we will. Untill
then mass deletion is the only tool in the box.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Lauritsen speedy deletion??

body:
On 11/23/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/22/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> >  I
> > would only delete something that was plainly outside policy.
>
> ...is the wrong answer.  We only delete rubbish.  Stuff that isn't
> rubbish doesn't need a policy to justify us not deleting it.

It's a bit hard to fit CSD without being rubish

> If you don't do your homework, you won't know whether you're deleting
> rubbish.  Of course you need to do research!

Research? Ah yes. How much RC patrol have you done lately?
--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Lauritsen speedy deletion??

body:
On 11/23/05, Brian Haws <brian at bhaws.com> wrote:
> But eventualism does support a tag and bag
> system...during high volume periods, if garbage gets
> through, the vast majority of it will end up in orphan
> or lonelypage special pages. Now, there's a large
> backlog there but they are filtered in that way and
> can be examined, they are not lost in the vastness of
> Wikipedia. (if I understand those special pages
> correctly)
>

No it doesn't since eventualism position allows you to conclude there
is nothing to be lost by deleting rubish

> I see invalid speedy deletions everytime I look, valid
> content is lost, good new users are confused, annoyed
> and in some cases lost. If we're not going to honor
> speedy criteria then why even have them?

I gives people a lovely warm feeling.

>Garbage
> content hurts us as does losing valid content...but we
> have control over deleting garbage...once good content
> is lost, for the most part it's just gone, we don't
> know when or if we'll ever get it back...
>

Eventualism means that you don't have to worry about when and juding
by the number of new pages that surface on my watchlist there is no
real question of if.

> I think there's a way to make tag and bag work if we
> want to, keeping encyclodpedic content is what we're
> supposed to be doing...anyway, sorry for the rant....
>

Encyclodpedic content is a subjective term and therefor useless.

--
geni


body:
2005/11/23, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> On 22/11/05, ilooy <ilooy.gaon at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This behavior will not be tolerated.
> Unacceptable.

Ah, so you are the kind that tolerates this stuff, eh?
Mark, I thought I knew ye!

> > This person is not the only one
> > who has done this type of activity
> > at the ia.wiki ...and... to substain
> > this type of abuse is just intolerable.
> If he's not the only one, then maybe there's some solid reasoning behind it?

No it just means there are others who shouldn't
perhaps have been given adminship to work on
a wiki whose language they don't speak nor
post in. Severeal times he was asked to post
in Interlingua or English but not in Dutch which
few understood at the ia.wiki

> > Hundreds and hundreds of articles
> > have been deleted since this wiki
> "Articles they were working on"... last time I checked, the Great
> Purges at ia.wiki were all of itty-bitty articles, some less than 5
> words. Find me one that was more than a paragraph, and I'll be
> surprised.

Ah, so you check the ia.wiki as well, that's
all good, Mark. And why is an article with
five words that one's been working on to
be deleted at someone's whim? Now you
know if you've been frequenting the ia.wiki,
as you say, that there were many articles
which had indeed many many paragraphs
and which were deleted. Articles which showed
a lot of edits and personal work... case in point
Paolo's work and Jasef's work. These two
folks aren't in the habit of just writing 5 words
as you say. And if the articles were deleted
how is it you knew that some had just 5 words
unless you were one of the "saboteurs" who
deleted tons of articles yourself???

Only because I know you stand up for minority
languages that I would ever doubt you'd do
something like that, Mark. But if I see it's
you by another username I'm halting your
editing priviledges as well until this matter
is resolved.

I and a lot of other ia.wiki contributors find
this situation intolerable.

> It depends on the Wikipedia. I posted a stub on the Zu?i language to
> the Japanese WP. A month later, it was deleted for being a stub,
> despite the fact that it was a few sentences long. Different WPs have
> different thresholds of quality.

Again, since when do we simply delete
articles people are working on only because
we deem them "mere stubs"... Isn't the English
wiki filled with many articles claiming to be
"stubs" and requesting a visitor to help out?
You know it's true, Mark, are you simply
trying to be the Devils Advocate or are you
seriously saying here that all stubs should
be deleted?

> > I consider this attack on the ia.wiki
> > to be akin to vandalism. It has got to
> > stop and it better stop soon.
> You consider? You?

I do. And since when should you question
my own right to an opinion?

> > And remind me how many people there are at ia.wiki?
> Your only type of authority is that you are an admin.

You may, and I should remind you that
if you bring this type of attitude to the
interlng list there would be quite a vociferous
outcry requesting you'd be kicked out. I'm sure.
You don't gain any friends by kicking down
folks who've been victimized by such abuse
as the ia.wiki has had to undergo... you may
call them "purges" I call them "abuse" and
vandalism.

> Rather than BLOCKING HIM, which is utterly inappropriate,

Somewhere in your mind you may believe that.
But I'm not putting up with it and I'm sure many
others who've volunteered to work on the project
and who've reached out to help by giving of their
time and effort would also have done likewise.

> you
> should've REQUESTED HE BE DESYSOPPED for what you considered to be
> inappropriate actions on his part.

Well, you may have done it differently. But you
don't, obviously don't, get the emails from people
crying out that their work has disappeared, that
someone has been deleting articles, that there's
no record of there being such articles in any log
and that it feels like someone is definitely
sabotaging the progress of the ia.wiki.

No, you probably don't see such emails, do you?
And when you're totally fed up with the situation
what does someone do? Well, I did what I felt
would be the right action. I quarantined the user
name on this particular wiki and I made mention
of it on this list. You, Mark, may handle things
differently, that is your prerogative. But if I catch
you sabotaging a wiki I'm a sysop in you're rear
is canned until the situation gets resolved. ...to
put it plainly.

> > Whatever I can do to halt this form
> > of abuse I will do. And so would any
> > other reasonable member of this
> > community. I'm sure.
> So anybody who disagrees with you isn't reasonable? I'm sure.

No, Mark, not whoever disagrees with me.
Whoever deletes other peoples' work and
sabotages the progress of a wiki I've
dedicated to help out as a sysop.

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

That's right, so please don't start acting like Stalin
and don't support vandals who think ia.wiki should
be an "animal farm" either. There are good people
there, good people with feelings, who've devoted
many hours of editing articles for this fine project.
Please Mark, consider whose side you're on and
why you're defending this intolerable situation.

Since,
Jay B.
[[ia.User:ILVI]]


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: New language policy

body:
2005/11/23, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>:
> Hi Jay,
> In your analysis, would you consider it a problem if some of the (N)
> native speakers do not have any accounts on any wikimedia project and
> are likely to be sockpuppets ? Or not at all ?

Hi Anthere,
I find it of interest that everytime the
number of supporters increases by one
so does the number of opposers (and
by one at that), and if there is a problem
with sockpuppetry, that it is happening
on both sides.

I feel this is a very politically charged
situation. I only want to add my voice
in support of the right of Andalusians
to have their own voice in this Wikipedia
project. I am not interested in politics
of any sort. And regret the situation
which has developed with the Andalusian
language request.

The matter should be about granting
folks who want to contribute in their
own language to this project the priviledge
to do so, I'm sure you'd agree. And not
about how people are bypassing conventions
on voting practices.

I do not like the sockpuppetry concerning
this request for a new language, but I think
it is indeed happening on both sides, and
not just on this respective language request
but also with others on the same page.

Strong guidelines would alleviate some
of this, but may create other problems.
For example the rule that languages must
have an established standard written form,
it may give guidance in respect to Andalusian,
but it would also mean calling into question
some already started wikipedia languages.

It is definitely not an easy situation. I don't
want to get involved in politics. And I believe
fairness, growth and quality would be the
goal for this project.

With best regards,
Jay B.
[[User:ILVI]]

--
ilooy.gaon at gmail.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: New language policy


subject: [Foundation-l] RE:New language policy

body:
2005/11/22, pikola Thierry <pikola24 at yahoo.fr>:
> According to the point 2 in
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposed_policy_for_wikis_in_new_languages
> the language proposed must have a standard writing
> system.

And yet, there are some languages which have
more than one system of writing and which are
now very active Wikipedias. For example Esperanto
which has the "hatted" letters and yet which one
can read online spelled with the "h" convention or
the "x" which is very popular on the net.

> If we approve the creation of Wikipedias such as
> Andalusian Spanish, we would create a Wikipedia where
> the users will have to create their own standard.

Actually there are 2 well documented ways of
writing in Andalusian to showcase the difference
between it and Castilian. These are published
both in printed forma and online.

> written form of the Spanish speech from Andalusia.

If by "Spanish" you mean "from the Spanish area
of historical domain" this would also mean Catalan is
Spanish and Portuguese and Basque are "Spanish".
Of course you wouldn't look at matters this way.
Andalusian is distinct from Castilian.

Don't get hung up on the word "Spanish". Spain
is a nation of "autonomous" regions.

> Another problem of creating such Wikipedia is that the
> great majority of Andalusian speakers don't feel that
> they talk a different language than the rest of the
> Spanish speakers. Therefore, Wikimedia would become a
> non neutral part on the sociolinguistic discussion
> about language identity of Andalusian speakers. If we
> create an Andalusian Wikipedia we would agree on the
> claim that Andalusian is a separate language from
> Spanish.

This just sounds like a bit of "silly" talk to me.
Andalusian is distinct from Castilian. Yes they
are both spoken in the Iberian Peninsula but
the vast majority of Andalusian speakers if not
every single Andalusian is painfully aware that
their form of speech is considered substandard
to Castilian, which is a form of abuse and obvious
prejudice and discrimination. Do you want to
support this type of behavior?

> Another funny thing which should happen is that,
> taking into account that latinoamerican Spanish has
> significantly evolved from Andalusian Spanish, then,
> all the latinoamerican Spanish speakers should learn
> this special new writing system used in Wikipedia,
> adopting it to their local Spanish variation.

Funny? Perhaps to you, but I regard it as "silly"
talk once again. You seem to enjoy talking about
what "will" happen "if". The present is far different
from this "silly" idea.

> Therefore they should actually be members of the
> Andalusian Wikipedia. Then Andalucian will become one
> of the largest languages of the world ;oD (half
> kidding)

Mexican Spanish is markedly different from Andalusian.
Actually Puerto Rican, Cuban and Dominican and
others in the Caribean are much more like Andalusian.
They exhibit similar language traits and are historically
descended from Andalusian.

> Anyway, what I wanted to say is that I really think
> that Wikimedia Foundation should take much into
> account two points:
> Speakers identity and existence of a standard writing
> on that language.

In both cases, Andalusian would qualify for a distinct
and separate identity from Castilian. It has speakers
who are aware of their own separateness and it has
a working written form which is published both online
and on hard copy.

> I think that Wikimedia should not be active part of
> language creation, neither of language identity
> discusion.

Then other language wikipedias would need to be
halted. The issue isn't so simple. And politics in
many areas of the world not just Spain is sadly
a big problem in this regard. Francisco Franco
squelched the use of other languages in Spain
and promoted Castilian in order to give union to
his dictatorship. If someone hasn't lived in Spain
and does not know Andalusian it would perhaps
be difficult to appreciate the facts of the situation.

With regards,
Jay B.
[[User:ILVI]]

--
ilooy.gaon at gmail.com


subject: [Foundation-l] RE:New language policy


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Deletion and the Sabbath (was Wikipedia's provable
	anti-expertise bias)

body:
"Michael Snow" <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote in
message news:4383F256.4060705 at earthlink.net...
> Phil Boswell wrote:
>>AFD is like the Sabbath: it was intended to serve Wikipedia, not the other
>>way around.
> So, perhaps we should simply delete every seventh article?

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=48&chapter=2&verse=27&version=31&context=verse

In other words, the rules were intended to help the project; if mindless
following of rules fails to help the project, then those rules should be (at
least temporarily) ignored.

So you might say that Jesus invented [[WP:IAR]] :-)

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


from_name: stevertigo

body:
Without having read anything specific yet (why speak
from knowledge, when I can speak for the much larger
opposing constituency):

The arbitrary functional values and how to process
them are not really significant as long as they remain
consistent within the timeframe that they are active.
But because changes in the processing directly and
immediately alter the nature of the program, its not a
trivial problem that a data collection test would be
drastically different from an actual implementation.

I kind of agree with Brion's criticism in this regard,
that having some data doesnt do anything useful and
therefore lacks purpose. In that regard, such a thing
in and of itself can be dangerous to even test -- if
only because it sours the concept in people's minds
without actually putting into a functional
implementation. Even if vandalism isnt the problem,
its still a problem of a proposed major functionality
being in actuality only 'free spinning wheels without
any traction.'

Its clear that there are some general ideas for how to
use the data, but what to do with the data is
something that needs to be part of the test
implementation; What's the point of taking a car to
the test track if its just a shell with suspension,
and the engine still back at the shop?

Ie. its not clear that any effort spent now on pushing
it uphill wouldnt just end up with it rolling further
back down the hill. The first point of any test run is
to test the engine -- the other stuff is secondary.
Such a 'spinning wheels' test wouldnt even be suitable
for simple -- meta maybe -- and would be expected to
fail in giving any accurate results which could be
applied to a functional model.

Stevertigo

__________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - Make it your home page!
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Cleaning up Wikibooks

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>
>>There is a general tolerance of new content that goes onto Wikibooks, in
>>part because it is a smaller project and we are trying to attract and
>>keep contributors even if they add content that perhaps should be there.
>>
>>
>
>This is a mistake, actually.  The best way to attract and keep new
>contributors is to have a clean and passionate mission which is kept as
>simple as possible.  Seeing tolerance for a "white power" racist tract
>(which went through a long vfd before finally being deleted after I saw
>it and complained, rather than deleting on sight and banning the creator
>as a racist vandal...) is a great way to drive away contributors -- the
>same goes for other cruft like "How to get a girl".
>
This is one area that we very much disagree.  I did not like this
Wikibook in particular, and I'd also like to note that the time from
when the VfD discussion started to when it ended was among one of
shortest in the history of Wikibooks, not the longest.  I think this is
a classic example of precisely how the Wikibooks community is working
rather than how it is failing, as you seem to mention.  Also, I don't
remember you complaining about this Wikibook at all until after it was
already deleted.  BTW, have you seen the Wikipedia article on [[w:White
nationalism]]?  Using this same logic, this article on Wikipedia should
be deleted on the spot and all of the participants banned as well.

The "How to get a girl" debate is more a good example of how a VfD
should not be handled, as it was against a particular section of a
Wikibook than the whole project, and only part of it was deleted.  Most
of the debate over that Wikibook was from before I became an admin and a
regular participant on Wikibooks.  In many ways I'm sorry you were
dragged into that argument.

>>"I'm happy to give more time, but these books are already candidates for
>>speedy deletion. The point is that, to give on example which was
>>thankfully already deleted, a racist white-power book is not a textbook,
>>never will be a textbook, and should have been deleted on site and the
>>creator banned for vandalism on site. --Jimbo Wales
>><http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales> 21:03, 13 November 2005
>>(UTC)"
>>
>>The user that added this white power book has otherwise done Wikibooks
>>quite a bit of good, and banning him would only make an enemy rather
>>than a useful contributor.
>>
>>
>
>I very strongly disagree.  Wikibooks does not need such books, and it
>was an is an embarassment to see such a thing.
>
>--Jimbo
>
>
So, do you have a personal beef against [[b:User:Zondor]]?  He has been
active on both Wikipedia and Wikibooks, making some very useful
contributions.  Perhaps a warning on his user talk page would be
warrented, but to out right ban him ignoring the rest of his
contributions?  I admit that the way he started this particular Wikibook.

Also, are you aware of the firestorm that this whole action has caused?
 I want to share a couple of comments that have come my way from users
looking to me for some leadership on Wikibooks:

    Future of Wikibooks...

Okay, I really /did/ get here at the wrong time. When Jimbo comes in to
say something like he did, I assume he speaks for the entire Board.
Unless another member of the Board comes in to refute Jimbo, I will
continue to assume that this is the way the Wikimedia Foundation wants
Wikibooks to go. I will not fight for something that I cannot see a good
point fighting for. There is just so much /crap/ here. Even the mailing
list couldn't provoke a Board member's opinion on the matter. I am just
so fed up with all this crap. I /do/ think that you fail to assume good
faith on Jimbo's part by saying it may be financially motivated. I just
hate all this infighting and can't really keep it up. But until there is
a definite ruling, I can't completely give it up either. I am so torn on
this issue. And I am not sure that the community at-large can "overrule"
Jimbo on this matter either. If we overrule him, why wouldn't he just
say, "Okay, there is no more Wikibooks. Sorry. Shoulda played by the
rules." and then just shut it off? Who knows. I'll be back later I
guess. This whole thing stinks on ice. --LV
<http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Lord_Voldemort> ^(Dark Mark)
<http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User_talk:Lord_Voldemort> 16:04, 21
November 2005 (UTC)

    Settle this!!

You guys (Horning and friends) appear to be about as close to the center
of decision making as we peons can access. I have't figured out how to
contact Mr. Wales. At this point I almost don't care what the decision
is about what is allowed and what is not, but I think in fairness to
everyone, we need a decision and a clear definition of where lines will
be drawn /*and enformcement from day one.*/ Any other way, we get people
like myself wasting our time. What can I do to press for a decision????
Frog One <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Frog_One> 00:43, 23 November
2005 (UTC)

I'm just a humble admin trying to keep this project together and to make
this community something that we can all be proud of.  I have been
vocal, and indeed I even went and deleted one of the Wikibooks that you,
Mr. Wales, railed against and suggested that it be deleted at once?  Do
you know what I got for my efforts at trying to delete [[b:Naturism]]?
 The book was undeleted and now I am in an edit war with another admin
over wheither this Wikibook should be restored.  My status as an admin
is even being called into question, for enforcing a decision that _YOU_
made.  I guess I should have let you use your newly given admin status
and waited for you to do the deletion yourself rather than taking arrows
in my own back.

The #1 complaint I have here about this whole thing is not so much what
you've done, but how you've done it, particularly in regard to changing
policy without really explaining this policy change.  These decisions
seem arbitrary, and now the community really doesn't know where to go
from here.  I am asking you, Mr. Wales, to try and help smooth down the
discussion, and help to determine just who and how community decisions
to keep or delete content on Wikibooks should happen.  If you want to
become more involved in that process, you are welcome, but I do think
you should trust the participants who have spent many years working on
this Wikimedia project.  Know that the future of this project is at
stake as well, based on your actions here.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] Cleaning up Wikibooks


from_name: Jim Trodel

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: New language policy

body:
On 11/23/05, ilooy <ilooy.gaon at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 2005/11/23, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>:
> > Hi Jay,
> > In your analysis, would you consider it a problem if some of the (N)
> > native speakers do not have any accounts on any wikimedia project and
> > are likely to be sockpuppets ? Or not at all ?
>
> Hi Anthere,
> I find it of interest that everytime the
> number of supporters increases by one
> so does the number of opposers (and
> by one at that), and if there is a problem
> with sockpuppetry, that it is happening
> on both sides.
> ...

Since I voted immediately before this comment - I am supposing you mean to
include me in your accusation of sockpuppetry. If you check my accounts I
have consistently edited under this username - just not frequently on Meta -
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tr?del.

I normally stay completely out of the language issues since I find it
completely boring and I know very little about the languages in question;
however, the arguments *in favor* of this language on the list convinced me
that I should *oppose*. I do know something of Andalusian - having had a
missionary companion for 4 months from Cadiz.

Jim
--
Jim (trodel at gmail.com)


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: New language policy


from_name: Filzstift

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] wikisign.org supports all wikipedias with over 10'000
	articles

body:
Hello wikipedia-l,

FYI: The SQL query tool http://www.wikisign.org now supports all
wikipedias with over 10.000 articles, including the en-wikipedia. The
jp- and co-dump seems do be wrong, I hope I can add those wikipedias
with the next dump.

A great thank again to the translators which translated the interface
of Wikisign into 12 languages. I would also be happy if someone can
check the english interface (I made it myself with my quite poor
english).

Improvements:
The LIMIT of the query records was 500, now the LIMIT is 2000. Queries
with a output size of over 2MB will be dropped, so a stupid query like
"select * from cur" doesn't go Wikisign in trouble.

The mail function isn't working well (Problem: many providers doesn't
accept mails from a dynamic IP address or mail relays).

If you have questions or ideas for improvements, you can leave a message at
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer_Diskussion:Filzstift/wikisign.org
or send me a mail

Filzstift

--
www.wikisign.org - SQL-Abfragen durchf?hren


subject: [Foundation-l] A proposal for new language creation

body:
ilooy wrote:

>I'd like to suggest that taking into
>consideration ISO codes or SIL
>codes may be one solution. This
>would mean that an outside group
>which is well established and has
>looked into the matter has deemed
>a certain language important enough
>to be assigned a separate code.
>
>
I guess there are some who think this is perhaps a little bit too lax of
a policy in some regards.  There are ISO codes for completely fictional
languages like Klingon or Tolkein Elvish, and there is some opposition
to the current Klingon language Wikipedia as a result, even though it
was created using this argument you are making.

In general, even with the group that assigns these ISO codes you are
talking about, there is even opposition to constructed languages like
these, so that does give more support to your argument.  There are new
ISO codes that are being added as well, and if you speak a dialect like
Cornish or some other very little-know language you would do both your
culture and the international community in general a good service by
trying to get a new ISO code established for your language, going beyond
just the Wikimedia Foundation.  It is far easier to add an ISO code for
a German dialect from Bavaria than to add one for a constructed language
like Pig Latin.

The only real issue at that point is if you can get a reasonably large
group of people to support something like Wikipedia.  There are many
very ambitious people who have started a Wikipedia for their language,
only to have it become the target of spammers and vandals after it
wasn't updated for several months with any new content.  This is the
dilemma really.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Wikimedia Foundation

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Ticket#2005112310000293] School Apology from Wesley
 Christian Academy

body:
Greetings,

Thank you for your mail. We really appreciate your reaction as well as your
comment today. I hope we stay a useful resource for you and your students and
welcome your participation.

Yours sincerely,

Florence/Anthere

--
Florence Devouard
Wikimedia Foundation
http://wikimediafoundation.org/

<ldodham at wesleysps.ca> ?crit:

> To whom it may concern:
>
> On behalf of our school, we would like to apologize for the actions of one of
> our students in vandalizing a particular article about George W. Bush.   The
> page was temporarily protected due to this student's actions.  Although on
> your website, it is mentioned that "clueless newbies" may edit pages
> inappropriately or in the wrong manner, we feel very strongly that what our
> student did was inappropriate.  We have spoken to the student involved and
> have provided a consequence not just for the action but that it was done on a
> school computer.
>
> We have also spoken to the whole class regarding the ethics of using the
> internet and free resources.  Thank you for your kind attention to this
> matter.
>
> XXX
> Administrative Assistant
> Wesley Christian Academy
>


from_name: J.F. de Wolff

subject: [WikiEN-l]@doctors.net.uk Fwd: Google Alert - Wikipedia

body:
Geoff mentions "cranks, kooks & partisans". Apart from being a
nuisance, these also destabilise perfectly fine articles. Number five
of Raul654's laws of Wikipedia
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Raul654/Raul%27s_laws) is that
articles with a strong consensus base are crashed into by
agenda-pushers. While the edit warring takes place, and the new
contributors are taught the importance of NPOV, original research and
verifiability, the articles look like a shambles and often remain
pockmarked by the attempts to accomodate fringe views.

While I have no immediate solution for this problem, this is
important issue that will need to be addressed. It is certainly a
massive waste of time for long-term dedicated contributors to be
warring with anons/newbies who think their pet theory should really
be mentioned, or that a featured article is {{totallydisputed}}. This
process does not bring quality to encyclopedia articles, it brings
mayhem. And the dispute resolution process is not geared for dealing
with it. For one thing, if I were to RFC every difficult POV-pusher
(let alone RFM or RFA), there would be no more time left to actually
work constructively on articles. Is this what we want?

User:Jfdwolff

PS I share Mav's observation that Wikipedia has grown in quantity and
certainly in quality over a surprisingly short period of time.

>Message: 5
>Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 20:05:56 -0800 (PST)
>From: Geoff Burling <geoff at agora.rdrop.com>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Google Alert - Wikipedia
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0511221943510.1413-100000 at joan.burling.com>
>Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
>
>On Mon, 21 Nov 2005, Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
> > --- Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > For those of you who were around when it kicked off... when it
> > > went live, was it intended to become a reference tool *on the
> > > web* like it has now, or was the web process intended to be
> > > somewhat less obvious than it became (a top-40 site, eek)?
> > > Open, yes, freely editable, yes, but a live "proper"
> > > encyclopedia from Year One?
> >
> > My first edit was on 2 January 2002. Boy was the place a mess
> (have you seen
> > UseMod ; ugly ; en.wikipedia had less than 20,000 articles and
> Larry Sanger was
> > still around). But I loved it since there was so much to do. Almost every
> > article I saw was obviously a work in progress. We were still
> working out basic
> > rules and conventions. WikiProjects were just getting underway. Just about
> > anybody could have a major influence on policy formation and the
> direction of
> > WikiProjects.
> >
> > At the time we thought it would take us 5 years to to reach our
> initial goal of
> > 100,000 articles. All the focus I saw was on development, not use
> in the near
> > to mid term. I don't think anybody, except maybe Jimbo, could
> have dreamed we
> > would get so popular so fast, or so useful.
> >
> > Now when I look around, most articles that cover subjects
> encyclopedias should
> > cover look fairly complete. Articles on technology, popular culture, and
> > current events are even better on average.
> >
> > Wikipedia becoming useful; well, that is something that kinda
> snuck up on me
> > while I was helping make it useful. I'm sure it also surprised
> many other old
> > timers as well. The idea seemed too far in the future to even think about.
> >
>I haven't been around as long as Mav (I still kinda consider him one of the
>"authentic original Wikipedians"), but much of what he says above
>could be my words.
>
>But if I could build on what he wrote, one thing worth noting is the speed
>of change in this project. I've mentioned in the past the problem that some
>important policies are proposed & adopted before some of us who have been
>on Wikipedia for a while notice. Usually there is no problem: give me a
>little time to understand & adjust, & I will accept any new proposal that
>is based on common sense.
>
>Another point is that I feel compelled to defend the quality of Wikipedia
>because, in part, it is my baby, but also because I know that the
>professional experts are guilty of more acts of botched analyses & bad
>writing than they want to admit to. Wikipedia is not only reinventing
>the idea of an encyclopedia but also the (excuse me) paradigm of academia:
>while our structure makes it easy for cranks, kooks & partisans to push
>their own agendas here, it also frees us from the abuse of authorities
>who expect us to accept their biasses as profound new discoveries or
>insights.
>
>Perhaps most of these changes will have worked their way out in the ten
>years that Andrew mentions above. I can only hope that, unlike Moses,
>I will be permitted to enter that Promised Land when they have finished,
>& see what this experiment has led to.
>
>Geoff

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.5/178 - Release Date: 22/11/2005


from_name: charles matthews

body:
"Geoff Burling" write

>Wikipedia is not only reinventing
> the idea of an encyclopedia but also the (excuse me) paradigm of academia

Is that the right comparison?  I thought we were doing 'distance learning',
really.  Hey, if we offered degrees in two weeks, like other Florida
institutions, we could charge enough to buy servers ...

Charles


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject:
[Foundation-l] Cleaning up Wikibooks (was Re: Incubator Wiki for
	New Wikimedia Projects)

body:
On 11/22/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> > Still, as a Wikibook admin I am scratching
> > my head to understand the full impact of this official policy change. In
> > particular, it means that non-textbooks like the Cookbook may have to
> > go, at least if we have a consistant textbook-only policy.
>
> In legitimate, accredited cooking schools, cookbooks are textbooks.  I
> see no reason why a cookbook should not be considered a textbook in this
> context.
>
> > There is a general tolerance of new content that goes onto Wikibooks, in
> > part because it is a smaller project and we are trying to attract and
> > keep contributors even if they add content that perhaps should be there.
>
> This is a mistake, actually.  The best way to attract and keep new
> contributors is to have a clean and passionate mission which is kept as
> simple as possible.  Seeing tolerance for a "white power" racist tract
> (which went through a long vfd before finally being deleted after I saw
> it and complained, rather than deleting on sight and banning the creator
> as a racist vandal...) is a great way to drive away contributors -- the
> same goes for other cruft like "How to get a girl".
>
SJ made a good post about this one.  Call the book "Dating Skills" or
"Developing Healthy Relationships" and it's more clearly not cruft.
In fact, you could probably even call it a textbook.

> > "I'm happy to give more time, but these books are already candidates for
> > speedy deletion. The point is that, to give on example which was
> > thankfully already deleted, a racist white-power book is not a textbook,
> > never will be a textbook, and should have been deleted on site and the
> > creator banned for vandalism on site. --Jimbo Wales
> > <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales> 21:03, 13 November 2005
> > (UTC)"
> >
> > The user that added this white power book has otherwise done Wikibooks
> > quite a bit of good, and banning him would only make an enemy rather
> > than a useful contributor.
>
> I very strongly disagree.  Wikibooks does not need such books, and it
> was an is an embarassment to see such a thing.
>
> --Jimbo

I agree that Wikibooks doesn't need such books, and I'm sure you were
embarassed to see it.  But that doesn't mean you need to ban the
person who added it.

Anthony


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Justin Cormack wrote:

> And you (not geni, bryan) didnt bother to read my email that pointed
> out that
> the current process notifies the uploader and waits a week after tagging
> the image is orphaned fair use and then checks it is still orphaned.

I did read it, but that's exactly the sort of "tag and bag" system Geni
was claiming was too slow or unweildy to use. He was arguing that in
this case the process should just delete those orphaned images the
moment it notices them, and I was telling him why that's a bad idea. I
didn't respond to your email because doing it that way is a _good_ idea.

As happens from time to time in these Internet discussions, we're in
argumentative agreement with each other. :)


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: New language policy

body:
2005/11/23, Jim Trodel <trodel at gmail.com>:
> > and if there is a problem
> > with sockpuppetry, that it is happening
> > on both sides.
> Since I voted immediately before this comment - I am supposing you mean to
> include me in your accusation of sockpuppetry. If you check my accounts I
> have consistently edited under this username - just not frequently on Meta -
> see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tr?del.

Hi Jim,

If you voted immediately before this comment,
I can guarantee you that I had no idea that
you had voted. Do you seem to believe that
the problem with sockpuppetry is only one
sided? Please note that the numbers keep
increasing side by side. If one "Supports"
there is always a following "Oppose", you
don't find this strange? I definitely do.

> I normally stay completely out of the language issues since I find it
> completely boring and I know very little about the languages in question;

How can you then "vote" concerning a new
language wiki???

> however, the arguments *in favor* of this language on the list convinced me
> that I should *oppose*. I do know something of Andalusian - having had a
> missionary companion for 4 months from Cadiz.

I wonder what your "missionary companion"
would say? Is he born and raised in Cadiz?
Then he definitely knows that he speaks
way differently from Castilian. I lived most of my
early life in Seville, and for two years in
Alcala de Henares near Madrid. I can
definitely tell you that the differences are
quite obvious to someone who has lived
in both places and heard the language
spoken. If you can, rent the movie "Poligono
Sur" las tres mil viviendas and then tell
me if the language there sounds to you
like Castilian :-)))

BTW I've visited Cadiz and my family
used to vacation near Cadiz almost
every Summer. I can tell you that
Cadiz speech and Castilian speech
are quite different.

I find it interesting that for someone
who is bored by this issue, and who
knows little about the language difference
would go to the trouble to visit the
Requests for new languages page
and actually vote against a proposed
language. Why would you be so inclined?

With regards,
Jay B.

--
ilooy.gaon at gmail.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: New language policy


from_name: Joseph Reagle

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

body:
On Tuesday 22 November 2005 08:31, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> That's exactly what I always say.  We strive to be (and sometimes, but
> not yet nearly as much as we'd like) Britannica or better quality.  But
> even at that level of quality, frankly, it's just not appropriate to
> cite any encyclopedia at the university level.  That's not the role of
> an encyclopedia in the process.

I find this argument about usage in school settings to be (interestingly)
bogus and encouraging of plagiarism. Clearly, encyclopedias have a function
in the schools: encyclopedia = circle of learning -- and paideia, is
something you do as a pais, a child (Fowler 1997:15). Even at the graduate
level IMHO. Pang (1998) -- even before the WP -- noted that this is was
EB's big market. The Britannica CD had extremely strong sales in the home
market, and with public schools and libraries with limited Internet access.
Institutions were the largest subscriber to the Britannica online. And new
CD editions were typical released about now, at the start of the Christmas
season. It's interesting EB markets itself to this community, claims
authority, but also plays this dance of acceding to not being cited.

In any case, some might say students should use Britannica, but not
Wikipedia; or cite one's use of an encyclopedia, or not. I think students
should use what is most appropriate and cite it.

[[ http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/culture/wikipedia/usage-and-citation?showcomments=yes
...
If a reference work points me to a more authoritative source, should I at
least not acknowledge this bit of help? Particularly, if I'm more likely to
be influenced by the summary provided by the reference? Additionally why
would any book among the thousands published a year be any more
authoritative than a general reference work on the sole basis of its form?
I could compile a multipage bibliography of books denying the Holocaust,
but find few -- if any -- general-purpose reference works that did the
same. The generality of the reference work insulates it from partisan
pressures because it must appeal to a wide audience over many topics. It is
unlikely that neo-Nazis would publish a useful general reference work for
the sole purpose of shifting articles on Jews towards their perspective.
However, this is not to say that reference works have no bias. Only, that
if we look at the formal genre of a text only -- which is what this rule
does -- any given reference work is less likely to be "eccentric" than any
book taken at random.
...
]]

Not citing reference works serves the pretense of the academic and the
marketing of the masked authority of traditional reference work publishers.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: new language policy

references:
<dlsuat$ieb$1@sea.gmane.org> <dlt0so$rhf$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<43831834.6050709@wikia.com>

body:
On 11/22/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
> >
> > The same problem exist for andalousian language. Many anon votes.
> > Sockpuppetry chances raise high as well.
> >
> > In short, the voting system as is is a pure joke. What do you suggest ?
>
> Currently everyone seems to acknowledge that the existing system is no
> longer functional.  When Angela came up with it, it was a very good
> solution to the problem that we faced at that time, but as time has gone
> on, and we have more and more Wikipedias and we are more and more well
> known, that system has broken down.  We run the risk of making very poor
> judgments, being hoaxed, etc.
>
> 1. I do not support the concept of a "seed wiki" because the test of
> what is a proper decision in this area does not depend solely on the
> ability of a motivated group of people to push their agenda.  I have no
> doubt whatsoever but that we could have a successful (in the sense of
> article count and participation) wiki in "pig latin dialect" (a joke
> language seen in many humorous machine translators on the net) if a
> group of funny people decided to make it.  A seed wiki is not the answer.
>
This is a strawman.  Having a "seed wiki" doesn't imply that we allow
small groups to push their agenda nor does it imply that a "pig latin"
Wikipedia would develop.

A "seed wiki" is not a wiki where anything goes, it's simply a wiki
where a developer doesn't have to get involved in trying out a new
project idea.  Should Wikipedia limit new article creation to
developers, because otherwise we'll wind up with articles written in
pig latin?  There will always be rules in a seed wiki.  If you don't
want "pig latin" wikis, then you set the rules so that they aren't
allowed.

> (For non-native English speakers who don't know what 'pig latin' is, it
> is a way of speaking English practiced mostly by either parents trying
> to say things in front of children in a way that children don't
> understand, or spoken by children for fun once they learn the trick.
>
> Orfay Onnay-ativenay Englishay eakerspay oohay  on'tnay ownay atwhay
> igpay atinlay isay....]


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: new language policy


body:
"J.F. de Wolff" wrote

> And the dispute resolution process is not geared for dealing with it.

The fact that dispute resolution has no 'remedy' in the case of POV pushers
who are well-behaved, or even just contrite and flexible, is a 'known
problem' for WP.  We have ducked, really, the idea of resolution of content
disputes, rather than behavioural issues.

That, one can say, is one of the wiki aspects that gives Wikipedia its
character.  Edit wars have to find their own resolution.

I have thought for a while that the ArbCom ought to look into POV pushing.
I don't know what the solution is, though.  Some system of public cautions,
without other sanctions, for example.  Of course there are many thousands of
POV-pushing editors, and it is not clear what impact can be made.

Charles


from_name: ilooy

subject: [Foundation-l] RE:New language policy

body:
2005/11/23, Pawe? Dembowski <fallout at lexx.eu.org>:
> > Mexican Spanish is markedly different from Andalusian.
> > Actually Puerto Rican, Cuban and Dominican and
> > others in the Caribean are much more like Andalusian.
> > They exhibit similar language traits and are historically
> > descended from Andalusian.
> Are the differences much bigger than between British and American
> English? Are texts in Andalusian intelligible to Castilian speakers?

Hi, Pawe?,
The difference is quite obvious to
someone who hears both Andalusian
and Castilian. I truly believe an Andalusian
language wiki should be formed.

Both American and British English have
their own forms of speech, and there are
quite varied regional differences, but most
are usually understandable, there are of
course some regional forms of speech
in the UK that I have a really hard time
understanding. I'm sure you probably do
as well... maybe...

In the case of Mexican and Andalusian
I can tell you my grandmothers experience
in going shopping in Phoenix Arizona...
She came home complaining that she
was not understood nor did she understand
what a lot of people said to her... interestingly
one situation had to do with buying a "guajolote" which
is quite different from standard spanish "pavo"
meaning "turkey".
:-)))

Also, in the U.S. the speech of Mexican
Americans is peppered with English borrowings.
This makes it also difficult for Andalusians and
even Castilians to understand.

But I think I've already given you more than
what you were asking for, I'm sorry if I wrote
too much.

With regards,
Jay B.

--
ilooy.gaon at gmail.com


subject: [Foundation-l] RE:New language policy


body:
geni wrote:

>The lists are bot generated. No system we normaly use has shown the
>ability to kill 1000s of items fast. It was a one off event. No point
>in trying to fit it into normal processes when we don't have to. All
>in all we got the job done and very few people complained.
>
>
But those who _did_ complain that images were incorrectly deleted were
out of luck, I take it, since image deletion is unrevertable.

We're just going around and around in circles, here. I've explained why
I think it's a good idea to take things slow, and also pointed to
examples of how we could configure the system so that taking things slow
would work, but I don't recall reading an explanation of why it's a good
idea to take these things _fast_. What harm is done by having junk stick
around for a week or two longer?

>On nov 18 IFD had 14 images added. Now lets assume we decide to delete
>those 5000 images (the true number is greater) over 50 days. That is
>stupidly slow but even then we increase the load on IFD by an order of
>manitude.
>
>
Why is 50 days "stupidly slow?" What's happening 50 days from now that
we have to get this done by?

On November 18 AfD had 151 articles added, so these systems can clearly
scale up to handle that amount (discounting of course the fact that many
people are arguing that AfD isn't handling that amount _well_. :)

>Vandals don't seem to have much effect on this area. Most vandalism I
>see does not ivolve fair use images.
>
>
"Most" implies that some of it _does_. I've seen plenty of
page-blankings, it's not like the vandals that do that are going to
first check to see if the images on that page are fair use.

>As and when you find us enough admins to do the above we will. Untill
>then mass deletion is the only tool in the box.
>
>
I _always_ tag images for deletion rather than delete them directly
myself. That's usually the case with articles too, the only ones I just
outright delete are history-free redirects that are in the way of a move
operation.


from_name: Philip Sandifer

body:
On Nov 22, 2005, at 8:31 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> That's exactly what I always say.  We strive to be (and sometimes, but
> not yet nearly as much as we'd like) Britannica or better quality.
> But
> even at that level of quality, frankly, it's just not appropriate to
> cite any encyclopedia at the university level.  That's not the role of
> an encyclopedia in the process.
>
> The proper role is what Tony describes here -- you use the
> encyclopedia
> to get started, to get an overview, and *then* you do your
> homework, and
> hopefully a lot more effectively than you would if you took a random
> stab at the library catalogue.

I think I'm just going to quote Jimbo verbatim next time I tell my
students not to cite Wikipedia in their papers, but to go and use it
to find better sources.

-Phil


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Brute force image server upgrade

body:
J?rgen Herz wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> There's 2.5 terabytes free on the server's disk array so we should be
>> set for a few more months at least. ;)
>
> That reads fine and the experience is quite fast. Thanks for the work!
> What I don't understand is why Ganglia only shows ~ 3.3 TB of disk_total
>  while there should be about 4.8 TB.

The RAID eats up some of the raw disks' space with the redundancy. Either that
or I've lost track of something. ;)

>> When we rearrange the image storage system there should be much less
>> need to hit the disk over NFS, so that should go down in the future to
>> make further room for real growth.
>
> Can I read something about that planned rearrange anywhere?

There's some notes scribbled at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/1.6_image_storage

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20051123/ab8a9f88/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Joanot Martorell

subject: [Foundation-l] RE:New language policy

body:
Hi to all!

First of all, I apologize for any inconvenience because my English isn't quite
fine. In spite of my handicap on language skillness, I want to participate in
this debate from my own point of view. I've supported the creation of a
Wikipedia in Murcian, but I've opposed another one for Wikipedia in Andalusian,
because several reasons. I would like tell us my reasons which perhaps may be
contribute in the point of view about a revision of the policy on new
wikipedias in another language.

For people who doesn't know yet who I am, I'm presenting myself as a high
contributor on Wikipedia in Catalan. I like also naming it as Wikipedia in
Valencian, as I often do it sometimes in somewhere. But I wouldn't support the
creation of a separate version of any Wikipedia in Valencian. Why?. When you
have a Wikipedia in a language wich is being "inclusive", you don't need
another Wikipedia in your own language/modality/dialect. Actually, valencian
particularities are a lot (i.e. lexicon, morphology on verbs, etc.), and some
of them are little known for Catalan-speaker and non-Valencian people. But
today it isn't being any kind of problem on Wikipedia in Catalan, because not
only all of this Valencian varieties are welcome, but also there is a policy
language wich are encouraging to use (and demanding to respect the existing of)
particularities in articles about specific Valencian subject.

So, if someone was proposing a separate Valencian version, I would oppose it
because it's needed, and because the only one difference between
"Catalan/Valencian" and "Valencian separated" would be only a different
writting norms, but the same words, the same contents, etc... It would be a
duplicated content of the same cultural matter. These were the same reasons
that I've opposed a Wikipedia in Andalusian, but I've supported a Wikipedia in
Murcian.

In my own opinion, actually Andalusian varieties are being (and could be)
welcome in Wikipedia in Spanish (Castillian). By exemple, the word in
Castillian Spanish "charcuter?a" (chorcery) in Andalusian Spanish is "chacina",
and this word is admitted generally as a Spanish word. The only difference would
be the pronounciation, and because of it the proposers are remarking on a
different writting norms. It isn't needed a wiki in Andalusian because there is
already a wiki wich is being inclusive with Andalusian varieties.

In front of it, I've supported a Wikipedia in Murcian because these varieties
aren't (and could'nt be) welcome in Wikipedia in Spanish. In fact,
Spanish-speakers always are rejecting the Murcian varieties because it's
generally considered as a "bizarre" form of Spanish language. In any dictionary
of Spanish language you could find words in murcian such as "boria" (fog,
"niebla" in Spanish), "bez?n" (twister, "gemelo"), etc... (neither in Wikipedia
in Spanish). In adding of Valencian language, I'm also a Spanish-speaker, and I
wouldn't accept those words as Spanish. And the proposers of a wiki in Murcian
aren't saying anything about a different writtin norms, actually the principal
promoter was saying that ***it would be written in Spanish writting norms***,
altough adapted a bit to their pronounciation. It is needed a wiki in Murcian
because there aren't any wiki wich would be able to be inclusive with Murcian
varieties. In fact, Wikipedia in Spanish are being exclusionist on it, as it
was exclusionist also with another dialects/languages such as Aragonese and
Asturian (have already their own wiki), wich are more closest to Spanish than
Murcian.

Concluding, I think that the wikimedia should be inclusionist to every
language/dialect/modality in the case these are being rejected in all projects
of Wikimedia, specially if these are rejected by the projects wich are in the
most nearest languages. And wikimedia should be exclusionist if a
language/dialect/modality are being included already on one of its projects.

Cheers!

Joanot Martorell
(not real name, but real person)

--
Viquip?dia, l'enciclop?dia lliure.
http://ca.wikipedia.org


subject: [Foundation-l] RE:New language policy


body:
2005/11/22, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>:
> In my last email, I detailed some of the broad principles that we follow
> (or should follow) in the creation of new language editions of
> Wikipedia, and in this email I will sketch a basic proposal for a
> solution to our problems in this area.
>
> [...]
> Therefore, I propose that we have a two-tier system and a formal
> committee formed of experts (or some outside language standards body if
> we can find one which is suitable) which will declare if a proposed
> language is an actual language or merely a dialect.  This committee will
> issue for us an advisory opinion.  We are not required, as a community,
> to follow the advisory opinion, but the advisory opinion will set a
> differential threshold for creation.

Hi Jimbo,
I appreciate your willingness to help
solve the problems with new language
wiki creation and also applaud your
commitment to supporting minority
languages, such as those in Europe
like Cornish that you mentioned. I
too feel that culturally these minority
languages are a worthwhile addition
to Wikipedia.

I'd like to suggest that taking into
consideration ISO codes or SIL
codes may be one solution. This
would mean that an outside group
which is well established and has
looked into the matter has deemed
a certain language important enough
to be assigned a separate code.

In the case of Andalusian which I
mentioned in a previous post this
situation would result in it not being
open for consideration since it does
not yet have it's own ISO or SIL code.
I would see this as a fair situation,
although I'd want the Andalusian wiki
formed, I'd see that the guidelines
would not have been met, yet anyway
to request such a wiki.

With regards,
Jay B.
[[User:ILVI]]

--
ilooy.gaon at gmail.com


from_name: James D. Forrester

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

charles matthews wrote:
> "J.F. de Wolff" wrote
>
>> And the dispute resolution process is not geared for dealing with it.
>
> The fact that dispute resolution has no 'remedy' in the case of POV pushers
> who are well-behaved, or even just contrite and flexible, is a 'known
> problem' for WP.  We have ducked, really, the idea of resolution of content
> disputes, rather than behavioural issues.

The Committee has found people to be intransigent POV warriors without
them behaving in specifically "bad" ways, IIRC.

> That, one can say, is one of the wiki aspects that gives Wikipedia its
> character.  Edit wars have to find their own resolution.

That's one way of looking at it, I suppose. :-)

> I have thought for a while that the ArbCom ought to look into POV pushing.
> I don't know what the solution is, though.  Some system of public cautions,
> without other sanctions, for example.  Of course there are many thousands of
> POV-pushing editors, and it is not clear what impact can be made.

Hmm. I for one (and I'm sure that I'm not alone) am very wary of the
Committee getting stuck in to content disputes. It would impinge on the
editing process unduly, and would probably end up with us making Bad
Decisions(tm).

A community-based system might be a better idea, yes, but runs the risk
of being hijacked by one, both, or all n-teen parties as a bitch-fest
against one another. C.f., erm, every other "community" process, in
places at least.

Yours,
- --
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFDhEg+kn3kUxZyJx0RAp44AKCPwYPxkGvBCkkFEXrlr9Yx3AwIWgCgjMBV
ROQnA1PYGg67okTSgXJVXQI=
=kPrQ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Ilya

subject: [WikiEN-l] Administrative power misuse

body:
Hello!

Hi!

The user Dbachmann blocked me for two days using his administrative powers
for contributing to an article Proto-World language, where he is also a contibutor.

He argued that I had violated the 3RR rule.

This is not true because I added in my version the phrase that he insisted,
but he refused to dicuss and talk in the talk page.

Another user, probably, his friend continued to revert my contibution,
without any comment, in spite I asked him to discuss the revertion in the talk
page.

Dbachmann did block me for the second time in two or three days, first
time for the Proto-Indo-European language article, also without
violation of the 3RR rule, in that artisle ha was also a contributer.
As so, he received warning for edit warring in his talk page by another administrator.

It seems he just reverting any edits of mine.
Also, he commited some personal attacks on me in the
Proto-Indo-European language talk page.

Please, unblock me and make him to discuss the edits.

Sincerely yours, Ilya.  E-mail: neptunia at mail.ru


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 23/11/05, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> Consider a bot (or many humans) going into the validation system and sending
> totally bogus (or even offensive) entries into it.

My understanding of the validation feature was that it was a
"0,1,2,3,4,5 - pick one" type system, rather than a "Please leave
comments" one, meaning that whilst you could game it with a bot - and
no doubt that'll be attempted by a rather cunning linkspammer or three
- you couldn't fill it with offensive entries. (Or will there be a
comments field? My connection seems to be a bit unfriendly with meta.
this morning, and I haven't been checking lately...)

But that's what the testing phase is for. We _want_ people to try and
spam it, try to vandalise it, do all this stuff. Then we can figure
out what's good in the validation system and what's bad - perhaps we
could only make comments visible to logged-in users, or to admins, if
there's a problem with junk filling them up, or implement a filter to
only show "useful" comments.

(How do we define "useful"? I don't know. Maybe we have a problem with
people spamming links in comments fields, so only make anything
without a URL publicly visible. Maybe we have a problem with people
just writing "fucking crap", so we put in a seven-words filter. We
don't know yet, but it doesn't seem beyond the wit of man to solve
what results...)

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


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: New language policy

body:
ilooy wrote:
> Hi to all fellow wikipedians,
>
> When considering the case of an Andalusian
> Wikipedia and how the vote is going at:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
> Here are some highlights:
>
> 1. A lot of (N) native speakers support it
> 2. Opposers are non-speakers.
> 3. Many opposers are Castilian speakers.
> 4. Andalusian pre-dates the Reconquest of Spain by the "Catholic
> Kings" (Castile-Aragon) it is not a "new dialect of Castilian".
> 5. There are actual writing systems already in use on the internet
> which represent Andalusian speech and showcase its differences with
> Castilian.
>
> These reasons alone would speak well
> for the creation of an Andalusian Wikipedia.
> Give it a try, I say, maybe a "try-out" and see.
>
> With regards,
> Jay B.
> [[en:User:ILVI]]

Hi Jay,

In your analysis, would you consider it a problem if some of the (N)
native speakers do not have any accounts on any wikimedia project and
are likely to be sockpuppets ? Or not at all ?

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: New language policy


from_name: stevertigo

body:
--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

> That's really stupid. You've probably wasted half an
hour and several
> paragraphs on something you've given good reasons to
ignore.
> (This is an assumption of good faith, AGF
> being a rephrasing of "don't assume malice when
stupidity will suffice.")

I tend to lead with an admission of bias toward the
majoritarian view, which is largely skeptical and
uninformed. A "fresh view" if you like. If you can't
get past any humorous introductory self-deprecations
to whatever was written, and instead choose to tread
over WP:DBAD, then that would show a flaw in your
design --perhaps not unrelated to the actual topic --
and not just in my rare sense of humor.

By the way, thanks
Stevertigo

__________________________________
Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.
http://farechase.yahoo.com


from_name: Justin Cormack

body:
On 22 Nov 2005, at 16:27, John Lee wrote:

> Thue Janus Kristensen wrote:
>
>> I have created a proposal which would allow the use of non-free
>> images
>> in special cases outside the encyclopedia.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Licensing_for_community_images
>>
>> Please CC any replies to me, I am not on this mailing list
>>
>> Regards
>> en:User:Thue
>>
> I would support this unless some sort of justification for "free
> images only at all times" policy is provided. The existing photo of
> me on my userpage is released under a free licence, and I have no
> intention of changing that barring extenuating circumstances. I
> would just like for other users to have the freedom to use an
> unfree-image as long as it is not used in the encyclopedia itself.
> There is no point for mirrors to keep our userpages anyhow, and
> many users when relicencing their contributions under another
> licence add a notice to the effect of "I relicence all my
> contributions except my userpage under the following licence". I
> believe the right exists for non-free content (as long as it's not
> a copyvio) to be used on userpages.

There is a point in mirrors having userspace. user talk includes
documentation of the process of building
the encyclopaedia outside article talk, and User is just like the
biographical info about contributors
that you get with a traditional encyclopaedia.

If people dont want their pictures free, they dont have o add them.
They can always link to an external site.

Justinc


body:
On 23 Nov 2005, at 02:51, geni wrote:
>
> Vandals don't seem to have much effect on this area. Most vandalism I
> see does not ivolve fair use images.
>
>> My basic point remains. An image should never be speedy-deleted soley
>> because it's an orphan, because with the current software there's
>> no way
>> to tell whether its orphanhood is a temporary state. Such images
>> should
>> be given more careful consideration, at the very least a time
>> delay to
>> allow for the possibility that its orphan status will change in
>> the near
>> future.
>>
>
> As and when you find us enough admins to do the above we will. Untill
> then mass deletion is the only tool in the box.

And you (not geni, bryan) didnt bother to read my email that pointed
out that
the current process notifies the uploader and waits a week after tagging
the image is orphaned fair use and then checks it is still orphaned.

This isnt written in the policy but its the current process, because it
is easier to operate in fact.

See http://tools.wikimedia.de/~gmaxwell/cgi-bin/
report_orphan_fair_use.py
and discussion on WP:FU

Justinc


body:
ilooy wrote:
> I'd like to suggest that taking into consideration ISO codes or SIL codes may
> be one solution. This would mean that an outside group which is well
> established and has looked into the matter has deemed a certain language
> important enough to be assigned a separate code.

This is exactly the policy we adopted several years ago, which has proved
insufficient.

Relying on existence of ISO codes brings us:
* split Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian replacing Serbocroatian [controverial]
* Klingon
etc

and denies various languages/dialects/whatever which don't have their own codes
but which are oft asked for.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20051123/a18f3286/attachment.pgp


body:
ilooy wrote:
> I'd like to suggest that taking into consideration ISO codes or SIL codes may
> be one solution. This would mean that an outside group which is well
> established and has looked into the matter has deemed a certain language
> important enough to be assigned a separate code.

This is exactly the policy we adopted several years ago, which has proved
insufficient.

Relying on existence of ISO codes brings us:
* split Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian replacing Serbocroatian [controverial]
* Klingon
etc

and denies various languages/dialects/whatever which don't have their own codes
but which are oft asked for.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20051123/a18f3286/attachment-0001.pgp


body:
ilooy wrote:
> I'd like to suggest that taking into consideration ISO codes or SIL codes may
> be one solution. This would mean that an outside group which is well
> established and has looked into the matter has deemed a certain language
> important enough to be assigned a separate code.

This is exactly the policy we adopted several years ago, which has proved
insufficient.

Relying on existence of ISO codes brings us:
* split Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian replacing Serbocroatian [controverial]
* Klingon
etc

and denies various languages/dialects/whatever which don't have their own codes
but which are oft asked for.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/attachments/20051123/a18f3286/attachment.pgp>


body:
ilooy wrote:
> I'd like to suggest that taking into consideration ISO codes or SIL codes may
> be one solution. This would mean that an outside group which is well
> established and has looked into the matter has deemed a certain language
> important enough to be assigned a separate code.

This is exactly the policy we adopted several years ago, which has proved
insufficient.

Relying on existence of ISO codes brings us:
* split Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian replacing Serbocroatian [controverial]
* Klingon
etc

and denies various languages/dialects/whatever which don't have their own codes
but which are oft asked for.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/attachments/20051123/a18f3286/attachment-0001.pgp>


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: New language policy

body:
ilooy wrote:
> 2005/11/23, Anthere <Anthere9-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>:
>
>>Hi Jay,
>>In your analysis, would you consider it a problem if some of the (N)
>>native speakers do not have any accounts on any wikimedia project and
>>are likely to be sockpuppets ? Or not at all ?
>
>
> Hi Anthere,
> I find it of interest that everytime the
> number of supporters increases by one
> so does the number of opposers (and
> by one at that), and if there is a problem
> with sockpuppetry, that it is happening
> on both sides.

Nod. I think the whole vote is unclear. I absolutely agree.

> I feel this is a very politically charged
> situation. I only want to add my voice
> in support of the right of Andalusians
> to have their own voice in this Wikipedia
> project. I am not interested in politics
> of any sort. And regret the situation
> which has developed with the Andalusian
> language request.

So do I :-(

> The matter should be about granting
> folks who want to contribute in their
> own language to this project the priviledge
> to do so, I'm sure you'd agree. And not
> about how people are bypassing conventions
> on voting practices.

nod.

> I do not like the sockpuppetry concerning
> this request for a new language, but I think
> it is indeed happening on both sides, and
> not just on this respective language request
> but also with others on the same page.

nod

> Strong guidelines would alleviate some
> of this, but may create other problems.
> For example the rule that languages must
> have an established standard written form,
> it may give guidance in respect to Andalusian,
> but it would also mean calling into question
> some already started wikipedia languages.
>
> It is definitely not an easy situation. I don't
> want to get involved in politics. And I believe
> fairness, growth and quality would be the
> goal for this project.
>
> With best regards,
> Jay B.
> [[User:ILVI]]

Agree all along with you... sigh

So, is there someone to start a proposal on meta and maybe we can hack
it out there ?

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: New language policy