subject: [WikiEN-l] The admin problem

body:
Kelly Martin (kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com) [060302 10:54]:

> Robert was surely aware of the early evolutionary development of
> parliamentary procedure in the English House of Lords resulting in a
> movement from "consensus," in its original sense of unanimous
> agreement, toward a decision by majority vote as we know it today.
> This evolution came about from a recognition that a requirement of
> unanimity or near unanimity can become a form of tyranny in itself. In
> an assembly that tries to make such a requirement the norm, a variety
> of misguided feelings--reluctance to be seen as opposing the
> leadership, a notion that causing controversy will be frowned upon,
> fear of seeming an obstacle to unity--can easily lead to decisions
> being taken with a psuedoconsensus which in reality implies elements
> of default, which satisfies no one, and for which no one really
> assumes responsibility.
> This paragraph really describes what I think is going on at Wikipedia.
> I think it's time we reconsider whether "consensus" is a valid
> principle of governance in as large and contentious a community as
> this one has become, and whether we need to make more of an effort to
> move to parliamentarianism as a method of governance.

I'd question this given Kim and Gmaxwell's numbers showing almost all
articles on Wikipedia aren't contentious at all and consensus works fine.
The pathological articles are the bits you hear about, not the majority.

We must take care not to fuck up the good bits to deal with the broken
bits.

- d.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] The new verifiability policy

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm (macgyvermagic at gmail.com) [060301 19:29]:

> What about online sources that go off-line?
> I've had it happen several times, turning a completely verifiable article
> into something that can't be verified through said sources anymore. How are
> we supposed to fight that?

Or editors who remove references they don't like from articles then
nominate them for deletion as unverifiable. When bailed up on it, they say
"but the sources are crap." What can practically be done about this?

- d.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Giuseppe DAngelo

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Adding articles to small wikipedias

body:
I took a quick poll amongst the adminstrators of scn.wiki (all 4 of us!) - the feeling was quite unanimous - we pride ourselves on having got up to 4,500 odd articles without any assistance from a bot and we much prefer to continue going down that route.

  I agree with Slavik on all counts - adding tens of thousands of articles to a small wikipedia just because you can is of no real value.  A handful of people are never going to get through a fraction of that quantity of articles in terms of checking them, adding to them, etc.  On the other hand, covering all countries and major cities of the world (approx.  500 articles?) does not seem such a bad idea.  However, for the moment, scn.wiki is quite happy to continue plodding along at our  unspectacular, but steady, rate.
  Salutamu.
  pippu d'angelo

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

Message: 11
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2006 06:17:01 +0300
From: "V. Ivanov"
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] RFC: Principles of mass content adding on
small Wikipedias
To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <39ef24b40603031917jb668864j at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Well, what should the people from a smaller Wikipedia do to become a
testing place for the new project? I am ready to cooperate about the
Ossetic (and probably also Chuvash and Udmurt) wikipedia. Really,
thousands of new articles might be a not so good idea, but creating
stubs about all countries and probably about the largest cities of the
world sounds good.

So, what is the algorythm?

Slavik IVANOV
os, ru, udm: User:Amikeco

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi, antispam, antivirus, POP3


from_name: V. Ivanov

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] RFC: Principles of mass content adding on small
	Wikipedias

body:
Well, what should the people from a smaller Wikipedia do to become a
testing place for the new project? I am ready to cooperate about the
Ossetic (and probably also Chuvash and Udmurt) wikipedia. Really,
thousands of new articles might be a not so good idea, but creating
stubs about all countries and probably about the largest cities of the
world sounds good.

So, what is the algorythm?

Slavik IVANOV
os, ru, udm: User:Amikeco


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability and Africa

body:
Sometimes when I'm really really exhausted and tired of dealing with
copyright battles, AfD battles, userbox wars, and everything else, I
wonder if we've lost our way.

And then... I see post like this one from Fastfission and Nicholas
Moreau realize that no, we're very noisy and silly sometimes, but we are
far from losing our way.

This is exactly the kind of conversation and dialogue that makes
Wikipedia great. :)

Fastfission wrote:
> This kind of stuff is actually a big concern within studies about the
> writing of history (historiography) and the philosophy and sociology
> of science -- what kinds of sources become part of "the archive", what
> sorts of systemic biases are imposed by certain "standards of rigor",
> how demarcation boundaries are really ways of imposing certain
> "regimes of truth", and so forth.
>
> In the end, though, being "an encyclopedia" already probably commits
> us to certain epistemological programs over others. We can try to
> lessen that where possible -- orals sources, can, for example, be
> transcribed -- and try not to flaunt our biases, but we should not
> feel unimpeded to draw the line somewhere.
>
> The philosopher Paul Feyerabend was known for arguing that the
> scientific method, as a method, was by definitive restrictive to what
> sorts of knowledge could be integrated into the scientific corpus. He
> was right, but I think he erred when he implied that this was not, in
> fact, the entire point of having a scientific method: it's a
> necessarily non-holistic form of knowledge, but it is reliable form of
> knowledge. You trade away some of your possibilities, but you get
> reliability and robustness in return.
>
> I think it is an apt analogy in this case as well. A verfiability
> policy of our sort might lose the elders, but it keeps what we do
> include clean.
>
> FF
>
>
> On 3/2/06, Nicholas Moreau <beaubeaver at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>Africa was brought up in discussion of verifiability. This raises an  important question, should/can we be lax references for African content  in en?
>>
>>  Suppose a tribes' elder writes an article on his village, he'll do it  based on oral history, or one-off documents. This information may be  recorded in books, but these books are stashed away in libraries miles  upon miles away.
>>
>>  What happens then? It's true information, but there's little or no available sources for the writer to cite.
>>
>>  Nick/Zanimum
>>
>>
>>---------------------------------
>>Yahoo! Messenger  NEW - crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail
>>_______________________________________________
>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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


from_name: Peter Mackay

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jordanhill media article contains errors. How to fix?

body:
"Wikipedia is considered controversial because of the novel way it collates
information. Users can open any entry and edit it at will.

There was a political scandal last month as it emerged staff at the US
Embassy had changed biographies of US senators."
http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/print/news/5049586.shtml

Pete, on track


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability - Case Study II

body:
This is about [[Mark Steyn]]. There are two types of major issue with this
page.

(I) Scope for scepticism.  As it now says immediately after the lead, there
is actually a dearth of personal details on Steyn.  No date nor birth nor
place of birth; no educational details, beyond the fact that he supposedly
left school at 16.  How do we even know he's really Canadian?  This is one
for SlimVirgin then; given no reasonable way to check, do we need to see his
passport?  :Plenty of Google hits for "Mark Steyn, a Canadian".  I'm not
going to worry about this, and sourcing it; are the fanatics for
verification, though?

As for the rest of Steyn's life, it is about his media jobs and association
with Conrad Black and Hollinger, which is all fairly straightforward.

(II) Issues around NPOV.  This is where the real meat is.  Quoting directly
from Steyn's columns is easy, but on its own is not enough for a WP article
about a figure who revels in controversy.  Just about every whisper of
criticism of Steyn on the page has been subject to close attention from fans
of his, who tend to cut first and ask for sources afterwards.  There have
been also some insertions by critics which were not well sourced.

Breaking it down by topics:

(a) USA and Europe.  There is not much left of this, just the one quote from
[[Peter Preston]] towards the end, sourced from The Observer.  There used to
be more about Steyn on Europe's attitudes to armed forces post-WWII.  It was
cut a while ago and not replaced.

(b) Steyn's long-standing claims that Bin Laden is quite obviously dead.
This is mentioned in the terms that Private Eye satirises him for that.
Someone on the Talk page said that he had dropped this, which dates from
2002 or so; no source provided, and I showed him still at it in 2004.  He's
clearly not going to retract, so how long can we claim that he continues to
think Bin Laden is dead?  Strictly, we can't.  I don't think we really need
to reference issues of Private Eye in which he is mocked for this, but
perhaps others disagree.

(c) Allegations of Islamophobia.  There are three typical areas about this,
and the material on the page appears to revolve.  The points are

- claims that Steyn reported as factual some wild rumours about Muslims in
New York shortly post-9/11, and supporting critical column by Johann Hari,
with web reference on the latter (we have had some edit-warring on whether
direct, sourced critical quotes from Hari should be on the page)
- Steyn's use of ancient anti-Islamic quotes from Winston Churchill
(seemingly from Churchill's impressions of fighting in the Sudan pre-1900)
- aggressive comparisons by Steyn of Anglospheric and Islamic cultures, in
sweeping terms.

These can all be properly sourced, so really this should be respectable NPOV
coverage and allowed to stand without mauling around.  I expect more
drive-by edits, though.

(d) 'Commitment to Democracy questioned'.  This is the active area, with a
paragraph cut out recently by User:Mitchberg (discussion on Talk page).

It was alleged in an earlier edit, that 'critics of Steyn' have questioned
his commitment to democracy; because relative to Bush-Kerry, Steyn had said
Kerry was foolish to have said that Bush should have propped up Aristide in
Haiti.  The quote from Steyn was provided, and says just that.  It was a bit
selective of that column, which has to be read in full to see what Steyn was
arguing (Martha Stewart was innocent, so state power needs opposition from
'civil society' to be legitimate).

The debate itself is for politics buffs (so, we have to say Hamas and Fatah
is more about democracy, than Aristide and the downtrodden Haitians?).  The
verifiability issue is like this, though:  to claim that 'critics of Steyn'
alleged something we should source those critics.  What are the criteria?
Well, random bloggers are not really up to the current standards.  We don't
need to doubt that people do criticise Steyn this way; but undoubtedly we
get a better article by being specific about this, and giving at least one
respectable example of such a critic.

That's why the para on this is not back on the page.  Since Steyn is such a
vocal pro-US-Republican writer, it is certainly a shame that the one quote
on the page that refers directly to US domestic politics has gone.  Could
the bit about 'critics of Steyn' be just omitted?  Yes, but then it reads
oddly, and there really does need to be a more developed discussion about
what Steyn's views are (he gets called a neocon, but this is not properly
entered into).

There are secondary points, and what User:Mitchberg says on the Talk relates
to those.  He's (I assume male and) a self-confessed newbie, so he makes one
mistake, in that he tries to refute the criticism of Steyn.  That's not a
reason for cutting out criticism (in the way that the lack of a proper
source actually is).  He also doesn't really take the point that the quote
is selective.  He goes on to say that he has interviewed Steyn, and knows
from that that Steyn is committed to democracy.  To do him justice, he isn't
putting that wrongly as an argument; but he is also apparently not seeing
that if he has an interview, and has published it, that would constitute a
proper source for the article.

This discussion is a bit stalled right now.  I don't really want to spend
for ever researching the critics of Steyn, and there is the rhetorical point
about whether 'commitment to liberty' now trumps 'commitment to democracy'
for American conservatives (with the implications for 'civil society' as  a
prerequisite).  This is interesting stuff, but needs first-rate sources.  So
there is the verifiability issue in practice, again, of What Is An
Acceptable Source?

Charles


from_name: Jonathan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily premier anonymity

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28policy%29#Daily_premier__anonymity

I'm sure if this feature described here ever gets implemented that this
section title won't be used for it. The idea sparked above with the
suggestions to divert or prevent edit wars and the users' desire to stay
anonymous.
* When you see any entry for a change made, the user's name or IP
address is not shown in that entry. After you make an edit to the page
that was changed, you then get to see who edited it in the entry, but
that view is only available for a day from your last change.

This would encourage people to focus on quality of content rather than
who made the content. The would also apply for administrators. Only
stewards and bureaucrats can see who made the change at anytime.

For example, if you have not edited a page and you view its history, you
would see something like:

* (cur) (last) 13:31, 4 March 2006 (good q!)
* (cur) (last) 13:12, 4 March 2006 (?1RR instead of 3RR for not logged
users ?)
* (cur) (last) 13:12, 4 March 2006 (?1RR instead of 3RR for not logged
users ?)
* (cur) (last) 13:08, 4 March 2006 (?1RR instead of 3RR for not logged
users ?)
* (cur) (last) 13:07, 4 March 2006 (Hmm, everyone should do it anyway :))

The watchlist would look something like:

* (diff) (hist) . . Computer system; 06:31 . . (?See also)
* (diff) (hist) . . Wikipedia talk:Stable versions; 03:39 . .
(?Semi-automation - recent stable version detector)
* (diff) (hist) . . m Computer programming; 02:04 . . (?Software
development - bypass disambig)
* (diff) (hist) . . Computer security audit; 01:01 . .

Recent changes would look something like:

* (diff) (hist) . . Fiscal conservatism; 14:33 . . (?Notable Fiscal
Conservatives)
* (diff) (hist) . . End of the Spear; 14:33 . . (replacing deprecated
{{web reference}} with {{cite web}} using AWB)
* (User creation log); 14:33 . . Lettaylor (Talk) (New user (Talk |
contribs | block))
* (diff) (hist) . . Talk:Dogon people; 14:33 . . (?Completely by Robert
Temple? - Re)

As you see, there is no significance to who made the changes in the
above views. This does not prevent somebody that reverts vandalism to
track down who made the vandalism, as, once the vandalism is reverted
the users name is then seen as we common know. Anything further
vandalism by that user can be tracked down as usual.

Of course, if anybody signs their name, who made the entry is always
revealed. If we want a feature to doublecheck if the tildes were used to
sign (in case somebody forges a name), an extra flag on the change
entries could be made to denote that.

Some worry that I don't spend enough time in article space, but I also
am a developer of a wiki.

Can I get some feedback for this kind of policy that is really more
technological?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily premier anonymity

body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:

>Jonathan wrote:
>
>
>>Can I get some feedback for this kind of policy that is really more
>>technological?
>>
>>
>
>How would rollback work?
>
>Chris
>
>
Instead of an edit summary of:
    (Reverted edit of Somebody, changed back to last version by
304.107.47.123)

There would be:
    (Reverted edit made at 03:10 20 March 2000, changed back to last
version made at 03:04 20 March 2000)

Jonathan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily premier anonymity

body:
Jay Converse wrote:

>This essentially removes a lot of the accountability of edits, though.
>What's the point of having things like 3RR when the only way to verify that
>one person is reverting multiple times is by dragging a steward or bcrat
>over to an article?  There are so many content disputes raging at any given
>time we'd either have to massively beef up the bcrat force or watch articles
>spiral into doom as a content dispute rages on without anyone being
>available to help straighten things out.
>
>--
>Jay Converse
>
Such revert wars can be checked by technological means also, so we would
not need to beef up stewards or bureaucrats. For example, if the
software detects a revert war, then it can allow admins to see who has
edited.

Jonathan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily premier anonymity

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>On Sat, 04 Mar 2006 09:09:46 -0800, you wrote:
>
>
>
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28policy%29#Daily_premier__anonymity
>>
>>
>
>I will pass this on to the POV pushers and edit warriors, it's exactly
>what they've been asking for :-)
>Guy (JzG)
>
>
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Peace_Process :)

Jonathan


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Escaping the GFDL -- can it be done?

body:
On 3/2/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/2/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > You could always mix the two.  Relicense some parts and rewrite the
> > rest.  Of course, figuring out which parts are relicensed and which
> > aren't is almost as hard as just rewriting the thing.
>
> There might be automated ways to do it -- massive database crunches to
> see who wrote one in an existing article, whether they were under the
> new scheme, what exactly would need to be rewritten/removed/whatever.
> But that's a little out of my league, technically speaking -- I don't
> know if it is feasible in terms of processing power, the amount of
> time it would take to code the whole thing, etc. (it probably isn't).
>
It'd be hard enough to do even if it wasn't for the fact that there
are certain pieces of text that are copied from one article to another
(and even a few bits that are copied from outside GFDL sources).  At
the least you'd have to analyse the sentences to try to figure out
which parts are copies from the same source.

If you're going to go through all that effort, might as well parse the
actual text itself.  Now I know this type of natural language
processing is always touted as not being very far away, but personally
I feel the technology is probably already there (between academia and
the search engines, especially the "answers engines").  It's just a
matter of applying the technology (along with some hints as to the
wiki syntax).  And the wiki syntax as well as the edit history only
serve to make this parsing easier.  So if you're going to go
automated, that's the way I'd go (hell, if I ever manage to get out of
my 9-5 job that's the way I *will* go).

> > The first approach is of course viable.  At the very worst it could be
> > done with the same amount of time it took to create the current
> > version.  But in practice it'd be easier.  Plus, you could fact check
> > and reference while you're at it.
>
> I imagine it would take a lot less time -- the number of editors has
> grown dramatically since then, so hypothetically there are already
> huge resources available. Hypothetically.
>
> FF

Yeah, I really should have used the word "effort" instead of "time".
It's a highly scalable process, double the volunteers pretty much
means half the time.  But I doubt there are enough volunteers willing
to put in the effort, just to escape the GFDL.  The GFDL just doesn't
matter that much to most people.  If a rewrite of Wikipedia is going
to happen (and personally I feel it's inevitable), it'll probably come
from the private industry.

Google could probably do it with no problem, but they're probably not
really that interested.  Answers Corporation, though - they in a sense
are already doing it to some extent (they added original content
called AnswerNotes a while ago).  And their recent purchase of
Brainboost gives them the natural language technology to do it a lot
better.

Of course that's kind of off-topic, because Answers Corporation almost
surely isn't going to release its original content under a free
license.

Anthony


body:
The thing is, even if we did agree to the GFDL, the Wikimedia
Foundation has already had its rights under the GFDL revoked, because
they don't follow the license (and the license is automatically
revoked when you break it).

Anthony

On 3/3/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> Technically, they did agree to that -- part of the GFDL is its ability
> to be updated (by the FSF, not us). But I agree that people would
> probably feel uncomfortable about it if it changed radically in any
> substantial way, which is a major element to watch out for in a
> project like this which relies upon community enthusiasm.
>
> FF
>
> On 3/3/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > You can't suddenly change the agreement by which things were licensed.
> > If we were to change the GFDL to become PD, lots of people will want to
> > retract edits it applies to, because that's not what they agreed to when
> > they edited it at the time.
> >
> > Mgm
> >
> >
> > On 3/2/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 3/2/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> > > > On Mar 2, 2006, at 9:19 AM, Fastfission wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > It is just a thought I had -- the only one I could come up with which
> > > > > seems really plausible, aside from the possibility of the FSF being
> > > > > convinced to make updates to the GFDL (which I suspect they would be
> > > > > very dubious about, especially if the edits were primarily to benefit
> > > > > Wikipedia).
> > > >
> > > > A revised version of the GFDL wouldn't help us because Wikipedia
> > > > would still be licensed under the old version.
> > >
> > > Wikipedia is licensed under all versions of the GFDL starting with
> > > version 1.2.  From [[Wikipedia:Copyrights]]:
> > >
> > > "Permission is granted to copy, distribute, and/or modify this
> > > document under the Gnu Free Documentation License, version 1.2 or any
> > > later version published by the Free Software Foundation"
> > >
> > > This means that if GFDL 2.0 comes out as a verbatim copy of the
> > > Creative Commons 2.5 Attribution Share-Alike license, then all of
> > > Wikipedia is effectively dual-licensed under GFDL 1.2 and CC-BY-SA
> > > 2.5, and anyone re-using the content can pick whichever license they
> > > want.
> > >
> > > --
> > > Mark
> > > [[User:Carnildo]]
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Escaping the GDFL -- can it be done?

body:
On 3/3/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Speaking of people objecting to our current licensing, check out
> [[Talk:Bruce Perens]]. Apparantly he objects to us having an article on
> him, because he has issues with the license we are using... oh, and
> apparantly we're neither a Free Software project *or* an Open Source
> project. Hrm.
>
I assume you're implying that the paragraph signed "Bruce" (who I now
find out is User:Bruce Perens) is supposed to be Bruce Perens?  Is
there any evidence that's actually the case?  Because a comment like
"because of the flaws in the license - it is unlawful to host the
wikipedia on a computer running any contemporary operating system"
seems to be pretty far out there.

Doing a quick Google search, I find
http://madpenguin.org/cms/?m=show&id=4921 and
http://www.oetrends.com/news.php?action=view_record&idnum=457
("Wikipedia is an example of a non software incarnation of Open
Source."), which makes me even more skeptical that this person is
indeed Bruce Perens.

Anthony (the real one)


list: textbook-l

from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Textbook-l] Who would be the right contact?

body:
Sabine Cretella wrote:

>Hi, I have someone from the Scuola Superiore per Mediazione Linguistica
>who is interested in the Wikiversity project. It can be quite a good
>contact. So could you please let me know who I can connect her to?
>Please don't tell me just to subscribe to the list. I need one or two
>persons to create a small group of people who to refer to in such cases.
>Probably there will be also an contact to the University of Rome - but
>all this takes some time and some direct contacts.
>
>So please let me know who can help me on that :-)
>
>Thank you!
>
>(I am not continuously online these days - I am with a dial-in
>connection in Germany and so answering could take some time).
>
>Best,
>
>Sabine
>
>

I hope you understand that there is no "project leader" like Jimbo
specifically for Wikiversity.  There are a few people I could strongly
suggest that are leading organizers for Wikiversity.

Most notably:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User%3AMfinney   (Michael D. Finney and the
organizer of the School of Fire and Emergency Management)
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User%3ALazyquasar
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User%3AJWSchmidt
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User%3ADragontamer
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User%3AJavariel

I know I'm missing people, but these are all very active in the
discussions of Wikiversity and some good people to contact to understand
what is going on.  All of these individuals have e-mail links from their
user pages that you can contact them privately or add a note on their
user talk pages, and are real people to contact, not just a generic
mailing list.  Some additional individuals can be found on

http://de.wikiversity.org/  (German Wikiversity... which is up and going
as a seperate project at the moment)

and there are some other individuals that work on Wikiversity in
languages besides English.  There were over 200 supporters of
Wikiversity when the formal vote for project creation was made, so there
is certainly no shortage of people with opinions on the topic.  There
also appears to be some very steady development of Wikiversity on
Wikibooks at the moment.  For formal "partnerships" and arrangements, I
would recommend contacting the Wikimedia Foundation board (notably
Jimbo, but any board member is sufficient for this).

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
It's critical to remember that we're the 800-pound gorilla in the room
of users of the GFDL.

I would bet that statistically speaking, Wikipedia is just about the
only user of GFDL. Perhaps also GNU textbooks?

In other words, we should be able to dictate terms (in a nice way)
with Stallman to get what we want -- that is, compatibility with
CC-SA. Or, as Mav put it earlier, "What we really need is a GNU FDL
2.0 with a clause stating something to the effect of 'Any documents
licensed under the GNU FDL 2.0 or any later version with no Invariant
Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts can
also be licensed under the GNU Free Content License.'"

In the meantime, I recommend a serious project to engage in cross-licensing by
a) Changing "You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL."
to "You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL and CC-SA."
so that all edits henceforth are cross-licensed.
b) Encourage the manual cross-licensing project of old contributions:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Guide_to_the_CC_dual-license#List_of_dual_licensors


subject: [WikiEN-l] The admin problem

body:
Fastfission (fastfission at gmail.com) [060304 09:15]:
> On 3/3/06, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

> > But how will you feel about it if that's the result anyway?

> Process should be followed until it is clear that it does not work.

How clear is clear?

- d.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Our Featured Article of the Day Contains Probable
	Copyright Violations

body:
On 3/3/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/3/06, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
> > Where? Not to be obnoxious, but I haven't seen any of your proposals.
> > Ever since I became properly acquainted with fair use, I've tried to
> > ensure images I upload at least comply with the American law. The
> > problem is that when I stumble across obviously not fair use pictures
> > uploaded by others, there's no good process for handling them.
> >
> > John
>
> Orphan them. Deal with anyone who disagrees then delete them after a week

The alternative is to willfully ignore the problem. Seriously -- when
things upset me on Wikipedia, I make a limited attempt to change them,
make a note on my user page that I disagree with it, perhaps engage in
some discussion, then, if I hit intransigence, drop it.

I do that with AfD, the "Counter Vandalism Unit", mergism, wacko
articles, and other instances that raise my hackles. And every so
often I just don't edit Wikipedia at all for a while.

Just remember to stay happy.

The principle of fair use is pretty much useless for Wikipedia, IMHO,
especially as it restricts downstream use of Wikipedia content. But
deleting other people's images holds no appeal for me, so I don't get
involved.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability and Africa

body:
On 3/4/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> > On 3/3/06, Zoney <zoney.ie at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>I'll point out that I think it's most sensible to rely only on verified
> >>information, but Wikipedia has not in the past seriously implemented such
> >>theoretical ideals. If people are going to start doing so, do it across the
> >>board please. I don't doubt the encyclopaedia would be a vast amount smaller
> >>and less broad if only verified information is left in it! Wikipedia has not
> >>succeeded at even beginning to conform to its ideals.
> >
> >
> >
> > You're confusing "verified" and "verifiable". All Wikipedia requires
> > is that information actually has been published or is otherwise
> > verifiable. We don't do fact checking, per se.
> >
>
> Can anyone answer me why we *don't* do fact checking? Given that we're
> so big on asking for sources/references (which we're clearly not, yet),
> who is actually checking them? Or isn't anyone?
>
> Does anyone know of a WikiProject which goes through articles and checks
> that the references actually say what people are claiming they say? If
> there's not one, who will start it? I for one would be interested in
> doing some of this stuff; I have access to at least two good libraries
> (University & State) and could easily spare an hour a week to do this
> kind of stuff.

Go forth!

I think the fact-checking phase of Wikipedia in bulk is yet to come --
right now we're in the "add the sources" phase.

Somewhat similar to the images projects -- first we uploaded images
willy-nilly, now we're adding copyright information, then we'll start
filtering/replacing. I'm waiting for the project to replace
photographic images with high-quality original drawings by
Wikipedians.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily premier anonymity

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>How does this help the vast majority of peaceful editing that goes on?
>It seems it would just lead to conusion, lack of teamwork, and lack of
>recognition for one's efforts. If you look at the history of an
>article you've worked on, you like to be able to distinguish edits
>from users who haven't edited that article before.
>
>I also believe users are already pretty anonymous - it's no effort for
>a user to get themselves a second or third account if they really want
>it.
>
>Steve
>
>
It's meant to improve quality by anonymity -- not to keep people
completely anonymous. Even if people trust another's recent edit by
their name, it would be nice to know that such work is still being
scrutinized as well as every other edit. The only argument I've seen
against it is based on a preference for convenience. One must ask --
does such convenience affect quality?

"...technology often forces us to choose between quality and
convenience." (Alan C. Kay, Computers, networks and education,
/Scientific American/, September 1991).

http://www.squeakland.org/school/HTML/sci_amer_article/sci_amer_03.html

Consider that the open content is pretty liberal, are we just peacefully
editing or peacefully tinkering? That same article has this to say about
it: "Media can also lure us into thinking we are creating by design when
in fact we are just tinkering. Consider the difficulty of transforming
clay-a perfectly malleable and responsive substance into anything
aesthetically satisfying. Perfect "debugability," or malleability, does
not make up for lack of an internal image and shaping skills.
Unfortunately, computers lend themselves to such "clay pushing"; they
tempt users to try to debug constructions into existence by trial and
error."

I don't see how anonymity can actually ruin distinguished efforts,
peaceful editing, or lack of teamwork if the anonymity is not to
completely keep people anonymous. One can always sign there user name to
an entry and reveal who they are. Given there are options to reveal who
made the change, it's not kept a secret. Just the identity of who made
the change is not obvious to the casual reader, which includes editors
that haven't edited the article for a day.

As for efforts, there are aways other means that can be developed. For
example, a stats page that reveals who contributed the most to an
article, or a page that lists all the authors of an article (which is
needed by the GFDL anyways.)

Jonathan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily premier anonymity

body:
Katefan0 wrote:

>As an aside, Dzonatas has been agitating for watering down the [[WP:3RR]]
>policy lately, so perhaps that will shed some light on this latest proposal.
>
>k
>
Surely you wouldn't want me to public ally accuse you of anything. I can
provide a link and easily make an accusation that you are against any
effort to make Wikipedia a recommended resource by an accredited
institution:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3AWikiProject_Wikidemia&diff=11996172&oldid=11896972

If there are changes of mine that you really question, please make an
appropriate page or thread for us to debate all the technical details of
them.

Unless you really care to backup and defend all your accusations against
me, then I recommend...

...Wikilove,

Jonathan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily premier anonymity

body:
Jay Converse wrote:

>But how do we code in what is and isn't a revert war?  Things like that
>usually require a judgment call, so waiting for it to get "flagged" just to
>see what's going on can waste time.
>
>Also, I'm an idiot when it comes to copyright stuff, but don't we have to
>publicly attribute everything under the GFDL?
>
>
As for revert-war detection, it was only an example I provided. The
first technological step I recommend would be to not code it; instead,
implement an option on for the admins to simply click on "reveal" (or
such) to see everyone's identity. There is no wait to get flagged in
this first implementation. However, such click would also carry an entry
to a log file. The log file provides evidence where such needs exists to
see identities. The next step would be to design a program to match the
needs.

Likewise, the first implementation of such anonymity that I recommend,
would be just a user preference option. No need to do a sweep and force
everybody to accept such a view.

As for the GFDL, I researched it and found that only a list of authors
is needed. Each authors contribution does not need to be linked directly
to their modification. The history page has indirectly satisfied the
list of authors required by the GFDL. This kind of anonymity is not to
completely keep everybody anonymous, so a list of authors is good.

Jonathan


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin Power Abuse

body:
On Mar 3, 2006, at 4:00 AM, Bacchante Maenad wrote:

> Almost immediately after creating account for what would be my
> first time
> editing wikipedia an admin blocked me indefinitely.
>
> username : Let's Get High And Edit Wikipedia
> IP : 69.60.118.148
> Reason given "stoner..." by
> "*Freakofnurture<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Freakofnurture>"
> *
>
> This admin describes himself as pissed off and also proudly displays a
> widget that says he does not do any drugs.  I had the impression,
> perhaps
> wrongly so, that wikipedia was supposed to be more of an open
> atmosphere
> where there isn't such a heavy hand with admin powers.  In other
> words, a
> place where someone's first visit isn't met with an insult (stoner) by
> someone claiming to be angry, pissed off and a judeofacist
> (whatever that
> is, but it doesn't sound too nice).  I really do not see what the
> problem
> with my username is.  It is silly, perhaps, but not offensive.
>
> Thank you

I'd like to take this opportunity to admonish Freakofnurture for
biting a newbie. That said, I don't think his user name is really
that offensive or problematic either, but I don't feel strongly
enough to think we should accept it. Still, username aside, we
definitely need to do something to make this user feel comfortable
and welcome again.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: Jay Converse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily premier anonymity

body:
On 3/4/06, Jonathan <dzonatas at dzonux.net> wrote:
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28policy%29#Daily_premier__anonymity
>
> I'm sure if this feature described here ever gets implemented that this
> section title won't be used for it. The idea sparked above with the
> suggestions to divert or prevent edit wars and the users' desire to stay
> anonymous.
> * When you see any entry for a change made, the user's name or IP
> address is not shown in that entry. After you make an edit to the page
> that was changed, you then get to see who edited it in the entry, but
> that view is only available for a day from your last change.
>
> This would encourage people to focus on quality of content rather than
> who made the content. The would also apply for administrators. Only
> stewards and bureaucrats can see who made the change at anytime.
>
> For example, if you have not edited a page and you view its history, you
> would see something like:
>
> * (cur) (last) 13:31, 4 March 2006 (good q!)
> * (cur) (last) 13:12, 4 March 2006 (?1RR instead of 3RR for not logged
> users ?)
> * (cur) (last) 13:12, 4 March 2006 (?1RR instead of 3RR for not logged
> users ?)
> * (cur) (last) 13:08, 4 March 2006 (?1RR instead of 3RR for not logged
> users ?)
> * (cur) (last) 13:07, 4 March 2006 (Hmm, everyone should do it anyway :))
>
> The watchlist would look something like:
>
> * (diff) (hist) . . Computer system; 06:31 . . (?See also)
> * (diff) (hist) . . Wikipedia talk:Stable versions; 03:39 . .
> (?Semi-automation - recent stable version detector)
> * (diff) (hist) . . m Computer programming; 02:04 . . (?Software
> development - bypass disambig)
> * (diff) (hist) . . Computer security audit; 01:01 . .
>
> Recent changes would look something like:
>
> * (diff) (hist) . . Fiscal conservatism; 14:33 . . (?Notable Fiscal
> Conservatives)
> * (diff) (hist) . . End of the Spear; 14:33 . . (replacing deprecated
> {{web reference}} with {{cite web}} using AWB)
> * (User creation log); 14:33 . . Lettaylor (Talk) (New user (Talk |
> contribs | block))
> * (diff) (hist) . . Talk:Dogon people; 14:33 . . (?Completely by Robert
> Temple? - Re)
>
> As you see, there is no significance to who made the changes in the
> above views. This does not prevent somebody that reverts vandalism to
> track down who made the vandalism, as, once the vandalism is reverted
> the users name is then seen as we common know. Anything further
> vandalism by that user can be tracked down as usual.
>
> Of course, if anybody signs their name, who made the entry is always
> revealed. If we want a feature to doublecheck if the tildes were used to
> sign (in case somebody forges a name), an extra flag on the change
> entries could be made to denote that.
>
> Some worry that I don't spend enough time in article space, but I also
> am a developer of a wiki.
>
> Can I get some feedback for this kind of policy that is really more
> technological?
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

This essentially removes a lot of the accountability of edits, though.
What's the point of having things like 3RR when the only way to verify that
one person is reverting multiple times is by dragging a steward or bcrat
over to an article?  There are so many content disputes raging at any given
time we'd either have to massively beef up the bcrat force or watch articles
spiral into doom as a content dispute rages on without anyone being
available to help straighten things out.

--
Jay Converse
I'm not stupid, just selectively ignorant.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily premier anonymity

body:
On 3/4/06, Jonathan <dzonatas at dzonux.net> wrote:
>
> Jay Converse wrote:
>
> >This essentially removes a lot of the accountability of edits, though.
> >What's the point of having things like 3RR when the only way to verify
> that
> >one person is reverting multiple times is by dragging a steward or bcrat
> >over to an article?  There are so many content disputes raging at any
> given
> >time we'd either have to massively beef up the bcrat force or watch
> articles
> >spiral into doom as a content dispute rages on without anyone being
> >available to help straighten things out.
> >
> >--
> >Jay Converse
> >
> Such revert wars can be checked by technological means also, so we would
> not need to beef up stewards or bureaucrats. For example, if the
> software detects a revert war, then it can allow admins to see who has
> edited.
>
> Jonathan
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

But how do we code in what is and isn't a revert war?  Things like that
usually require a judgment call, so waiting for it to get "flagged" just to
see what's going on can waste time.

Also, I'm an idiot when it comes to copyright stuff, but don't we have to
publicly attribute everything under the GFDL?

--
Jay Converse
I'm not stupid, just selectively ignorant.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] Mail server blacklisted by SpamCop

body:
I have been going for all my accounts to send myself the verification code.
It's not a nice, work, but i can do it as i noticed of it. However i am sure
some people at smaller wikis won't notice, specially if they are not very
active contributors.

I think that the confirmation should be automatically sent for all address,
at least if they had "Enable e-mail from other users" set. Probably some
escalated method should be used, and some filtering like requiring at least
5 edits, or the last edit after X date (so the user is quite active).

I like however, that new accounts send the confirmation automatically. Maybe
some unconfirm email could be interesting too. (Click here if you don't did
this), so some statitics could be done, between confirmed, unconfirmed
(forgot, lost acount, etc.) and those which someone refused to have asked
that.


from_name: Finne Boonen

body:
Is this set for all wikipedias or just the english one? There' a bit
of confusion :)

henna

--
"Maybe you knew early on that your track went from point A to B, but
unlike you I wasn't given a map at birth!" Alyssa, "Chasing Amy"


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Stupid bomb redux

body:
*Snicker*.

-Matt


from_name: Servien Ilaino

subject: [Wikitech-l] 13 wikipedia awaiting to create

body:
Let's hope so, I have a feeling these requests are not really taken
seriously, there has been no reaction from admins or whatever stating what
the problem is and when this will be solved. I personally think a Cantonese
wiki will do quite well, since it has a large number of speakers.

Serv

2006/3/4, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
>
> Andrew, your opposition to a Cantonese Wikipedia is seemingly
> illogical and, in addition, tiring.
>
> If some people want to create an encyclopaedia in written Cantonese,
> why can't you let them? It's not as if it marks a significant decrease
> in potential editors for zhwp, and it's not as if all Cantonese
> speakers are going to be "forced" to use a Cantonese Wikipedia
> "instead".
>
> I opposed a "Dutch Low Saxon" Wikipedia for a long time, and I still
> do oppose the idea of one, but after a while I accepted the fact that
> if some people really wanted to create a Wikipedia, even if I believed
> it wasn't even a real language, there was no harm in letting them --
> either the project will fail and they will be sad, or it will succeed
> and the entire community will ultimately benefit.
>
> As many people have said, there's no such thing as bad publicity. I
> think a Cantonese Wikipedia would be interesting to the press in the
> Chinese-speaking world, and by extension that would draw attention to
> the Wikipedia in BHW.
>
> Also, although you've tried to invalidate the vote, you still haven't
> said much about it that was really significant -- sure, maybe some
> people abstained from the vote in protest, but I doubt it could've
> been enough people to tip a 52-20 vote in your favour. And while you
> try to use the meetup (5 or 6 people IIRC) as "proof" the the majority
> does not support a Cantonese WP, it is clear that the majority does in
> fact support a Cantonese WP -- look at how many of the people who
> voted are in Hong Kong, a couple from Macau...
>
> It seems to me to be an inevitability that a Cantonese Wikipedia and a
> Dutch Low Saxon Wikipedia will be created. No matter how much either
> of us tries to prevent it.
>
> Mark
>
> On 01/03/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Please don't create the Cantonese language Wikipedia based simply on
> > that vote. It's very old and has been the root of much contention on
> > these lists.
> >
> > -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
> >
> > On 3/1/06, Henry Li <henrysyli at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Dear developers,
> > >
> > > Please create the following 13 wikipedia stated in
> > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages
> > >
> > >     * Dutch Low Saxon
> > >     * Vlax Romany
> > >     * Ligurian
> > >     * Samogitian
> > >     * Banyumasan
> > >     * Ripuarian
> > >     * Pennsylvania German (prototype)
> > >     * West Flemish
> > >     * Norman
> > >     * Franco-Proven?al/Arpitan
> > >     * Cantonese
> > >     * Tetum
> > >     * Kalmyk
> > >
> > > Best regards,
> > > Henry Li
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
>
>
> --
> "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [WikiEN-l] The new verifiability policy

body:
Those interested in verifiability, and in particular whether
"insufficiently verified" information can be rightfully removed,
might be interested in a controversy bubbling over at the
[[Jeffrey Vernon Merkey]] page.  That page contains information
critical of Merkey which was derived from the [[Linux Kernel
Mailing List]], and one editor ([[User:Waya sahoni]], who has
been accused of being a Merkey sockpuppet) is trying to delete
the material on the grounds that mailing lists aren't
authoritative sources.  (In an imaginative twist, he's also
claimed that the LKML-related material belongs not on the Merkey
page but on the mailing list page, and tried to move it there.)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily premier anonymity

body:
As an aside, Dzonatas has been agitating for watering down the [[WP:3RR]]
policy lately, so perhaps that will shed some light on this latest proposal.

k

On 3/4/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> How does this help the vast majority of peaceful editing that goes on?
> It seems it would just lead to conusion, lack of teamwork, and lack of
> recognition for one's efforts. If you look at the history of an
> article you've worked on, you like to be able to distinguish edits
> from users who haven't edited that article before.
>
> I also believe users are already pretty anonymous - it's no effort for
> a user to get themselves a second or third account if they really want
> it.
>
> Steve
>
> On 3/4/06, Jonathan <dzonatas at dzonux.net> wrote:
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28policy%29#Daily_premier__anonymity
> >
> > I'm sure if this feature described here ever gets implemented that this
> > section title won't be used for it. The idea sparked above with the
> > suggestions to divert or prevent edit wars and the users' desire to stay
> > anonymous.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Tjipke de Vries

body:
Finne wrote:

> Is this set for all wikipedias or just the english one? There' a bit
> of confusion :)

AFAIK all wikimedia projects use the same mailserver (currently
mail.wikimedia.org).

Tjipke


from_name: Milos Rancic

body:
On 3/4/06, V. Ivanov <amikeco at gmail.com> wrote:
> So, what is the algorythm?

Go to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mass_content_adding and find sub
project "Countries of the world".

Algorithm...:

1) Template infobox for countries: In this moment I added only
template infobox for countries from English Wikipedia. On the last
meeting (last Sunday) of Wikipedians from Belgrade, we were talking
about infobox for countries (they started talk not related to the
project Mass content adding) and we realized that infobox for
countries on English Wikipedia can be better. I'll try to talk with
them to improve English infobox for countries.

We need localization of this template (I think that I described that
on the page): values (so, value "capital" should not be written in
English on other Wikipedias) and left side (text from the left side of
the template; in general, phrases like "capital", "largest city"
etc.).

2) General translation: After that, we need translation/transcription
of the names of the countries, cities, languages etc. Maybe we can use
some developed localizations (like localizations of glibc, KDE, GNOME,
Unicode project etc.) But, I am not sure that Ossetic, Chuvash and
Udmurt have such localizations... However, I am sure that there are
some books from former Soviet Union with lists of countries,
languages, cities etc.

3) As I see, after "the first two steps", we would be able to start bots.

Also, note that we are at the beginning of the project. We need to
develop infrastructure (strategies, methods, programs,
localizations...). And all people with constructive ideas are welcome
not only to participate, but to drive the project.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The new verifiability policy

body:
I wrote:
> Those interested in verifiability, and in particular whether
> "insufficiently verified" information can be rightfully removed,
> might be interested in a controversy bubbling over at the
> [[Jeffrey Vernon Merkey]] page.  That page contains information
> critical of Merkey which was derived from the [[Linux Kernel
> Mailing List]]...

Never mind; the issue is a bit more subtle than I appreciated at
first.  It's not that unflattering things were said about Merkey
on the mailing list.  It's that Merkey *did* unflattering things
on the mailing list, things that have been amply documented
elsewhere.  (I remember reading about them at the time.)


from_name: Kash

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unfair Block

body:
Hello fellow Wikipedians and administrators,

I would like to invite all the subcribers to the list to know about an
on-going disputes which have
resulted to me getting blocked.

Problems have started by a conflict of opinions and ideologies between
Iranian Wikipedians and
some few Kurd contributers.

The problems were reported to the incident board, and can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#User:Aucaman_and_User:Heja_helweda_and_User:Diyako

These users have tried to push their POV and creating much hassel for
Iranian Wikipedians as they
have put up dispute tags on many Iranian articles, as mentioned on the
incident board, most importantly
on the "Iranian peoples" and "Persian people" articles.

After user Aucaman's motives were questioned in the pretty much one-sided
mediation, which can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2006-03-02_Persian_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Aucaman

Other users (the other two mentioned in the incident report beside Aucaman),
have decided to follow the same
agenda on the Iranian peoples article.

Now lets get down to the point: No admin seems to have taken part to do
anything on these issues, and instead I was blocked
because I tried to organise the disputes on the Iranian peoples' talk page.

The opposition (three Kurd (?) contributers) are trying their best to keep
these disputes up, even after clear arguments
by Iranian and non-Iranians have taken place in the Mediation link posted
above.

I think an admin should have warned me, and it was unfair of them to Block
me from Wikipedia for apparently 'blanking' the talk page.
The action referred to as blanking the talk page, can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Iranian_peoples&oldid=42137681

To conclude:

1- I would like an admin (or more admins) to look at the issue, and bring
about an end to the pointless mediation and disputes
2- I would like the admin to have a look at the articles mentioned, most
importantly Iranian peoples and Persian people and find out
the real motivation behind such disputes, which are on-going even though
hundreds of academic evidence have been provided by
both sides.
3- I would like to be un-blocked, I think me being blocked was unfair.
Although an apology would not be necessary, as I understand
my doing was perhaps wrong, but I was only warned by a user - after - I did
it (on my talk page), not by an admin, and I did not repeat
the offence. The admin blocking me could have checked the times, looked at
the situation, and could have made a better decision in
my opinion.
4- I would like admins to issue warnings to anyone they believe is doing
wrong, because if this is not sorted I think it will (and already has)
made many contributers quit Wikipedia because of huge amount of stress.
Which is not in the interest of Wikipedia, as we are all contributers
with a lot of knowledge to contribute.

I have a lot of other wiki pages as evidence to support for what I believe
is 'Anti-Iranian' action, and if you do look at the case properly
I believe you would understand that most Iranian and non-Iranian
contributers feel the same.

Thanks for your attention and have a lovely (wiki) day!

--
Kash Karimi
User:Khashayar Karimi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitrary Block

body:
On 3/4/06, Will Sceptre Noble <tintower at tintower.tk> wrote:
> Sounds like an admin bait
>
> On 3/1/06, silaslynch at aol.com <silaslynch at aol.com> wrote:
> >
> > My username, user:Please Don't Block, has been banned from editing on
> > wikipedia either for having an inappropriate username or for "vandalism." I
> > encourage any administrator to look into my editing history (which includes
> > numerous excellent edits), I have vandalized no one's page. I left a comment
> > at someone's userpage that offended another user, and therefore I was
> > blocked. However, leaving unpleasant comments is not banned according to
> > wikipedia policy. My username is additionally not offensive. I demand to
> > have the block removed immediately or some explanation as to why I am
> > blocked.
> >
My 2 cents:

1) The username is inappropriate.

2) The following
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jtkiefer&diff=prev&oldid=41218820
was rude but certainly not vandalism nor justification for blocking.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Unfair Block

body:
I think
a) Kash should be unblocked
b) Kash should take a break from contentious Iranian articles for a while
c) Some brave editors should wade in to mediate...

I also think b) shouldn't be mandatory, and I'm not volunteering for
c), so take my recommendations for what little they're worth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Iranian_peoples&oldid=42137681
was clearly done in good faith, although it may have exacerbated the
problem anyway, since I don't know how contentious the discussions
between the various editors had gotten by that point. Talk pages
should *not* be considered sacred cows.

And yes, I know that if Kash does b), if the Kurdish advocates are
being unfair (and I have no idea one way or the other) they "win" by
beating out their opposition, which is certainly no good, but it won't
last forever.

And it's just Wikipedia.

I can't stand the {{disputed}} tag, by the way.


from_name: Andreas Vilén

body:
Before rushing into this stub maniac, please think! Is it really a
good idea to massadd substubs? Is the 'pedia of higher quality because
it has more substubs about 20000 obscure regions than without them? If
this is used, I believe it should aim towards making relevant articles
that can be easily expanded by people speaking the language. We've
seen what mass content adders have done to itwiki and plwiki, they
simply rush to get many articles and completely forget about
quality... Remember http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Substub_disease !

/Andreas

On 3/4/06, V. Ivanov <amikeco at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, what should the people from a smaller Wikipedia do to become a
> testing place for the new project? I am ready to cooperate about the
> Ossetic (and probably also Chuvash and Udmurt) wikipedia. Really,
> thousands of new articles might be a not so good idea, but creating
> stubs about all countries and probably about the largest cities of the
> world sounds good.
>
> So, what is the algorythm?
>
> Slavik IVANOV
> os, ru, udm: User:Amikeco
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Hmm, this pretty much doubled what I said in the other substub mailing
thread. I believe these substub bots are not doing a very good work,
it's better to let the usual contributors work on. It's quality that
counts, not quantity. A pedia isn't of better quality with 50000
substubs, than 500 good articles.

/Andreas

On 3/4/06, Giuseppe DAngelo <pippudoz at yahoo.it> wrote:
> I took a quick poll amongst the adminstrators of scn.wiki (all 4 of us!) - the feeling was quite unanimous - we pride ourselves on having got up to 4,500 odd articles without any assistance from a bot and we much prefer to continue going down that route.
>
>   I agree with Slavik on all counts - adding tens of thousands of articles to a small wikipedia just because you can is of no real value.  A handful of people are never going to get through a fraction of that quantity of articles in terms of checking them, adding to them, etc.  On the other hand, covering all countries and major cities of the world (approx.  500 articles?) does not seem such a bad idea.  However, for the moment, scn.wiki is quite happy to continue plodding along at our  unspectacular, but steady, rate.
>   Salutamu.
>   pippu d'angelo
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 11
> Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2006 06:17:01 +0300
> From: "V. Ivanov"
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] RFC: Principles of mass content adding on
> small Wikipedias
> To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <39ef24b40603031917jb668864j at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Well, what should the people from a smaller Wikipedia do to become a
> testing place for the new project? I am ready to cooperate about the
> Ossetic (and probably also Chuvash and Udmurt) wikipedia. Really,
> thousands of new articles might be a not so good idea, but creating
> stubs about all countries and probably about the largest cities of the
> world sounds good.
>
> So, what is the algorythm?
>
> Slavik IVANOV
> os, ru, udm: User:Amikeco
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi, antispam, antivirus, POP3
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Ilya N.

subject: [WikiEN-l] School IP blocked

body:
See http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=550 I think that's quite
relevant to the situation

On 3/4/06, Will Sceptre Noble <tintower at tintower.tk> wrote:
>
> My school (217.33.207.195) is a repeat vandal. Well, not entirely my
> school,
> but a 50mile square region compassing all of Yorkshire and Humberside,
> which
> has a population of about 5-10 million. It got blocked for two weeks,
> before, even though I was promoted to admin
>
> On 3/4/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> >
> > See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:165.228.61.136
> > Guy (JzG)
> > --
> > http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> -Sceptre
> http://tintower.co.uk
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin Power Abuse

body:
Speaking of silly...

I got attacked for
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:The_Cunctator&oldid=38072376

And freakofnature's page looks like

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Freakofnurture

??

ObSheesh: Sheesh.


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> On 3/2/06, Steven Ericsson Zenith <steven at semeiosis.org> wrote:
>
>>Philip is correct.  The only way to escape the GDFL is to rewrite the
>>entire encyclopedia under a different license - or get every single
>>contributor to agree to reassign the content.  Good luck with that.
>>
>>The first approach actually seems viable to me - see
>>http://www.panopedia.org  :-)
>
>
> Why did they choose Attribution-No Derivative Works? What an awful license.
>

Because it's basically a one-man-band. Oh, sorry, 5-user site, including
one test sockpuppet of the founder.

AFAICT the Panopedia believes very strongly in article ownership; most
obviously because as soon as you edit someone else's article, you create
a derivative work of it (the original author is allowed to do so because
they own full copyright), which violates the CC-BY-ND-2.5 license.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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subject:
[WikiEN-l] Who policies images on Commons? (speaking of fair
 use...)

body:
Katefan0 wrote:
> The reason I ask is that an image was deleted on Wikipedia as lacking
> source/copyright information, but the offender just linked to the article
> from an identical image on Commons (the article is Katharine Hepburn).  The
> image has been tagged on commons as lacking source info since Feb. 10.
>

Which image? There's a list of commons admins at
<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:List_of_administrators_by_language>
(I'm one) and places to request deletion are at
<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:DeletionMenu>.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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subject: [WikiEN-l] The new verifiability policy

body:
On 3/4/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> I wrote:
> > Those interested in verifiability, and in particular whether
> > "insufficiently verified" information can be rightfully removed,
> > might be interested in a controversy bubbling over at the
> > [[Jeffrey Vernon Merkey]] page.  That page contains information
> > critical of Merkey which was derived from the [[Linux Kernel
> > Mailing List]]...
>
> Never mind; the issue is a bit more subtle than I appreciated at
> first.  It's not that unflattering things were said about Merkey
> on the mailing list.  It's that Merkey *did* unflattering things
> on the mailing list, things that have been amply documented
> elsewhere.  (I remember reading about them at the time.)

See [[Wikipedia:Verifiability/Proposed revision]] for one that boils
things down.

I think it's a good idea for the question of "what's an acceptable
source" to be distinct to the rule of verifiability. The latter is
central to Wikipedia; the former is a much more contentious and fuzzy
issue.

People need to understand that primary sources are always acceptable.
E.g. if you're referring to a mailing list archive to discuss the
mailing list archive, or (for example) the text of someone's post to a
mailing list, that's totally fine and what historians and journalists
of computer history do all the time.


from_name: drabudawood

subject: [WikiEN-l] Variable Length of Attribute

body:
Is it possible to feed weka with variable attribute length. I mean one time i
may have attribute that has 5  item, the next time i may have 13 or 17 items
for the smae attribute.
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Variable-Length-of-Attribute-t1226709.html#a3244501
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily premier anonymity

body:
Jonathan wrote:
> Can I get some feedback for this kind of policy that is really more
> technological?

How would rollback work?

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily premier anonymity

body:
On Sat, 04 Mar 2006 09:09:46 -0800, you wrote:

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28policy%29#Daily_premier__anonymity

I will pass this on to the POV pushers and edit warriors, it's exactly
what they've been asking for :-)
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Sabine Cretella

body:
Hi, I have someone from the Scuola Superiore per Mediazione Linguistica
who is interested in the Wikiversity project. It can be quite a good
contact. So could you please let me know who I can connect her to?
Please don't tell me just to subscribe to the list. I need one or two
persons to create a small group of people who to refer to in such cases.
Probably there will be also an contact to the University of Rome - but
all this takes some time and some direct contacts.

So please let me know who can help me on that :-)

Thank you!

(I am not continuously online these days - I am with a dial-in
connection in Germany and so answering could take some time).

Best,

Sabine

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


body:
Matt Brown wrote:
> On 3/3/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>AFAICT the Panopedia believes very strongly in article ownership; most
>>obviously because as soon as you edit someone else's article, you create
>>a derivative work of it (the original author is allowed to do so because
>>they own full copyright), which violates the CC-BY-ND-2.5 license.
>
>
> Sounds rather like Everything2, in which individual pieces were
> copyrighted by the authors with no rights to create derivative works
> unless specifically authorized.
>

Ah, I knew that someone /must have/ had the idea before... not knowing
enough about E2 I wasn't willing to make such a bold claim :)

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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from_name: Gareth Hughes ([[User:Garzo]])

subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability and Africa

body:
On 03/03/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> You're confusing "verified" and "verifiable". All Wikipedia requires
> is that information actually has been published or is otherwise
> verifiable. We don't do fact checking, per se.

Well, we do do the fact checking, as far as we can: it would seem
negligent not to. However, it might be useful to have "verifiable is
quite different from verified" displayed somewhere appropriate. It
seems that sometimes the policy can be taken as implying that the
'weight of evidence' lies with the defence ? guilty until proven
innocent. However, the requirement is not to make claims that are
unverifiable, and to be clear how any claims can be verified. The
population of a Malawian town, for instance, may not be verifiable on
the web, but it is verifiable. We also have to consider that easily
accessible sources may be misleading ? a website's claims about that
Malawian town may be based on the memoirs of a nineteenth century
European visitor, whereas a local Chichewa newspaper (unintelligible
to most Wikipedians) may have accurate information. In a lot of
articles, the English website may not be the best source, simply the
most accessible. I would hate to see information removed because it
isn't verified yet is verifiable, or because its verifiability is
inaccessible to monoglot English-speakers tied to their computer
screens.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitrary Block

body:
I would suggest using another username than 'Please Don't Block'.  I
doubt that such a username will reduce your chances of being blocked;
rather, if anything, it would increase them.  Furthermore, it suggests
that you believe there is a reason you might be blocked.  Don't do
things that will get you justifiably blocked, is my suggestion.

-Matt


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily premier anonymity

body:
How does this help the vast majority of peaceful editing that goes on?
It seems it would just lead to conusion, lack of teamwork, and lack of
recognition for one's efforts. If you look at the history of an
article you've worked on, you like to be able to distinguish edits
from users who haven't edited that article before.

I also believe users are already pretty anonymous - it's no effort for
a user to get themselves a second or third account if they really want
it.

Steve

On 3/4/06, Jonathan <dzonatas at dzonux.net> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28policy%29#Daily_premier__anonymity
>
> I'm sure if this feature described here ever gets implemented that this
> section title won't be used for it. The idea sparked above with the
> suggestions to divert or prevent edit wars and the users' desire to stay
> anonymous.


body:
On 3/4/06, Andreas Vil?n <andreas.vilen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Before rushing into this stub maniac, please think! Is it really a
> good idea to massadd substubs? Is the 'pedia of higher quality because
> it has more substubs about 20000 obscure regions than without them? If
> this is used, I believe it should aim towards making relevant articles
> that can be easily expanded by people speaking the language. We've
> seen what mass content adders have done to itwiki and plwiki, they
> simply rush to get many articles and completely forget about
> quality... Remember http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Substub_disease !

There is no rush. I don't expect that we would add some relevant data
in the next couple of months. For example, if we want to make articles
about all countries in the world, we need a lot of work on
localization of templates, categories and a couple of sentences.

BUT, when we are talking about stubs on, for example, Swahili
Wikipedia, for example, article about Mongolian language which would
contain that: (1) How "Mongolian language" is written in Mongolian;
(2) it is spoken in [[China]], [[Kyrgyzstan]], [[Mongolia]],
[[Russia]]; (3) it is spoken by 5,7 million of humans; (4) genetic
classification of Mongolian language is: Altaic (disputed) -> Mongolic
-> Eastern -> Oirat-Khalkha -> Khalkha-Buryat -> Mongolian; (5)
language is official in Mongolia, China (Inner Mongolia), Russia
(Buryatia); (6) the language is not regulated; (7) ISO and Ethnologue
codes are ...; (8) consonants and vowels are... etc. -- I think that
it can be treated as a stub on English Wikipedia, but it is very
informative article for a person who knows Swahili, but doesn't know
English. And it is completely possible to do with bots and
localization.

Also, a lot of languages which don't have more then 50 millions of
speakers (I think that there are maybe 20 languages with more then 50
millions of speakers!) -- don't have encyclopedias like Britannica and
similar. For example, the biggest encyclopedia in Serbian language has
almost 100.000 articles. BUT, I saw that encyclopedia maybe two times
in my life (I saw Britannica a lot often even I am living in
Belgrade!). "Ordinary encyclopedia", which can be found in almost
every house, has between 30.000-50.000 very small articles. 90% of
such articles would be stubs on Serbian Wikipedia.

In other words: Maybe people who are native speakers of English,
German, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, French and Portuguese are able to
have "higher standards" about what article is stub and what is not;
they may remove article with one sentence about some Arabic dynasty,
but our encyclopedias are full of such articles AND this sentence is
very relevant encyclopedic information. And we are not talking about
one-two sentence articles, but about articles which would not be stubs
even for English Wikipedia. (I can make one page article about
Mongolian based on information from the article on English Wikipedia.)


body:
Great! It's the "xx is a yy in zz" substubs I'm against. Informational
stubs are very good indeed.

/Andreas

On 3/4/06, Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> On 3/4/06, Andreas Vil?n <andreas.vilen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Before rushing into this stub maniac, please think! Is it really a
> > good idea to massadd substubs? Is the 'pedia of higher quality because
> > it has more substubs about 20000 obscure regions than without them? If
> > this is used, I believe it should aim towards making relevant articles
> > that can be easily expanded by people speaking the language. We've
> > seen what mass content adders have done to itwiki and plwiki, they
> > simply rush to get many articles and completely forget about
> > quality... Remember http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Substub_disease !
>
> There is no rush. I don't expect that we would add some relevant data
> in the next couple of months. For example, if we want to make articles
> about all countries in the world, we need a lot of work on
> localization of templates, categories and a couple of sentences.
>
> BUT, when we are talking about stubs on, for example, Swahili
> Wikipedia, for example, article about Mongolian language which would
> contain that: (1) How "Mongolian language" is written in Mongolian;
> (2) it is spoken in [[China]], [[Kyrgyzstan]], [[Mongolia]],
> [[Russia]]; (3) it is spoken by 5,7 million of humans; (4) genetic
> classification of Mongolian language is: Altaic (disputed) -> Mongolic
> -> Eastern -> Oirat-Khalkha -> Khalkha-Buryat -> Mongolian; (5)
> language is official in Mongolia, China (Inner Mongolia), Russia
> (Buryatia); (6) the language is not regulated; (7) ISO and Ethnologue
> codes are ...; (8) consonants and vowels are... etc. -- I think that
> it can be treated as a stub on English Wikipedia, but it is very
> informative article for a person who knows Swahili, but doesn't know
> English. And it is completely possible to do with bots and
> localization.
>
> Also, a lot of languages which don't have more then 50 millions of
> speakers (I think that there are maybe 20 languages with more then 50
> millions of speakers!) -- don't have encyclopedias like Britannica and
> similar. For example, the biggest encyclopedia in Serbian language has
> almost 100.000 articles. BUT, I saw that encyclopedia maybe two times
> in my life (I saw Britannica a lot often even I am living in
> Belgrade!). "Ordinary encyclopedia", which can be found in almost
> every house, has between 30.000-50.000 very small articles. 90% of
> such articles would be stubs on Serbian Wikipedia.
>
> In other words: Maybe people who are native speakers of English,
> German, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, French and Portuguese are able to
> have "higher standards" about what article is stub and what is not;
> they may remove article with one sentence about some Arabic dynasty,
> but our encyclopedias are full of such articles AND this sentence is
> very relevant encyclopedic information. And we are not talking about
> one-two sentence articles, but about articles which would not be stubs
> even for English Wikipedia. (I can make one page article about
> Mongolian based on information from the article on English Wikipedia.)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Will "Sceptre" Noble

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitrary Block

body:
Sounds like an admin bait

On 3/1/06, silaslynch at aol.com <silaslynch at aol.com> wrote:
>
> My username, user:Please Don't Block, has been banned from editing on
> wikipedia either for having an inappropriate username or for "vandalism." I
> encourage any administrator to look into my editing history (which includes
> numerous excellent edits), I have vandalized no one's page. I left a comment
> at someone's userpage that offended another user, and therefore I was
> blocked. However, leaving unpleasant comments is not banned according to
> wikipedia policy. My username is additionally not offensive. I demand to
> have the block removed immediately or some explanation as to why I am
> blocked.
>
> Please Don't Block
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
-Sceptre
http://tintower.co.uk


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

body:
She. (Her name is Stephanie)

On 3/1/06, silaslynch at aol.com <silaslynch at aol.com> wrote:
>
> I have twice emailed the administrator who blocked me, who has not
> responded. His name is user:Phroziac.
>
> Please Don't Block
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
-Sceptre
http://tintower.co.uk


subject: [WikiEN-l] Block policy

body:
3RR, and you were getting a bit uncivil. As Latinus stated on your talk
page, "admin discretion"

On 3/2/06, Emir <emirarven at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
>   My user name is Emir Arven, IP address 85.158.32.92.
>
>   I think that user DragonflySixtyseven blocked me for no reason for 3
> days.
>
>   Before that I had an argument with Serb users who put false
> information  in the article called Stephen II Kotromanic (see talk page of
> that  article).
>
>   I asked Serb user: HolyRomanEmperor to show me the refernece for his
> thesis.
>
>   He said it was a book which he put in the article.
>
>   When I checked, there was nothing there (it was not the first time
> that  he gave false info). I asked him again to show me the section of
> the  book. He said he was not able to do that.
>
>   So, I started to revert that article, but he asked his
> friend  user:Latinus (admin) to help him. And Latinus reported me for 3RR.
> I  was blocked for 24h.
>
>   So I said to him that he was not neutral.
>
>   But after that user:DragonflySixtyseven came and give me another block
> for 3 days. And I didnt even edit any article.
>
>   So, my question is:
>
>   Why did he block me? (According to what rule).
>
>   Best regards,
>   Emir Arven
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Mail
> Bring photos to life! New PhotoMail  makes sharing a breeze.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
-Sceptre
http://tintower.co.uk


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Stupid bomb redux

body:
    http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Stupid_bomb

Oh dear.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] School IP blocked

body:
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:165.228.61.136
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] School IP blocked

body:
My school (217.33.207.195) is a repeat vandal. Well, not entirely my school,
but a 50mile square region compassing all of Yorkshire and Humberside, which
has a population of about 5-10 million. It got blocked for two weeks,
before, even though I was promoted to admin

On 3/4/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:165.228.61.136
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
-Sceptre
http://tintower.co.uk


from_name: Minh Nguyen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Magic word for talk page?

body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> On http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Magic_words it lists all the
> various MediaWiki magic words.
>
> I'm looking for something that can be used to give the talk page for
> the current page.
>
> For example, in:
> * The main namespace (namespace 0), it would return "Talk:{{PAGENAME}}".
> * In the talk namespace ({{ns:1}}), it would return
> "Talk:{{PAGENAME}}" (since the talk page for a talk page is the talk
> page itself).
> * In the User namespace ({{ns:2}}), it would return "User_talk:{{PAGENAME}}".
> * In the User talk namespace ({{ns:3}}), it would return
> "User_talk:{{PAGENAME}}" (since the talk page for a user talk page is
> the user talk page itself).
> * And so forth...
>
> Does anyone know of a way of doing this? If not, can I maybe suggest a
> new magic word along these lines, such as "{{TALKPAGE}}", which would
> do this?
>
> All the best,
> Nick.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Talk> currently just tacks a "
talk" to the end of the namespace, but you could use the
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Switch> template to detect
whether the current page is already a talk page and refrain from adding
" talk" to the namespace.

--
Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com>
AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn at myjabber.net; Blog: http://mxn.f2o.org/


from_name: Jay Converse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitrary Block

body:
On 3/4/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I would suggest using another username than 'Please Don't Block'.  I
> doubt that such a username will reduce your chances of being blocked;
> rather, if anything, it would increase them.  Furthermore, it suggests
> that you believe there is a reason you might be blocked.  Don't do
> things that will get you justifiably blocked, is my suggestion.
>
> -Matt
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

As someone who monitors the new users log, I have to say that while "Please
Don't Block" isn't offensive, it is a poor choice for a username because the
unimplied message there is "Go ahead, I dare you."  There are plenty of
other usernames that you can have, but this particular one can just rub
people the wrong way.

--
Jay Converse
I'm not stupid, just selectively ignorant.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability and Africa

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 3/3/06, Zoney <zoney.ie at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I'll point out that I think it's most sensible to rely only on verified
>>information, but Wikipedia has not in the past seriously implemented such
>>theoretical ideals. If people are going to start doing so, do it across the
>>board please. I don't doubt the encyclopaedia would be a vast amount smaller
>>and less broad if only verified information is left in it! Wikipedia has not
>>succeeded at even beginning to conform to its ideals.
>
>
>
> You're confusing "verified" and "verifiable". All Wikipedia requires
> is that information actually has been published or is otherwise
> verifiable. We don't do fact checking, per se.
>

Can anyone answer me why we *don't* do fact checking? Given that we're
so big on asking for sources/references (which we're clearly not, yet),
who is actually checking them? Or isn't anyone?

Does anyone know of a WikiProject which goes through articles and checks
that the references actually say what people are claiming they say? If
there's not one, who will start it? I for one would be interested in
doing some of this stuff; I have access to at least two good libraries
(University & State) and could easily spare an hour a week to do this
kind of stuff.

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

subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily premier anonymity

body:
jayjg wrote:

>Not only would Jonathan's idea not have helped in this case, but the fact
>that Jonathan was blocked several times for 3RR violations, then tried to
>re-write 3RR so he wouldn't be blocked in the future, and now is trying to
>get Wikipedia adjusted somehow so that future 3RR violations will be
>extremely difficult to track, is not "poisoining the discussion", but rather
>entirely relevant.
>
>Jay.
>
Jayjg, all you have done since I met you is to accuse me also. Please,
do me the diginity of an actual argument with facts. If you want to
point out how terrible of a person that I am, take the honorable time to
do a proper anecdotal presentation. For example --

Blocks should have no relevance to punishment. What you have argued is
to try to validate a block as punishment and label anybody that has been
blocked as perimission to continually accuse them  of wrongdoing. That
is straight out libel.

- libel n. (a) false publication, as in writing, print, signs, or
pictures, that damages a person's reputation. (b) The act of presenting
such material to the public.

Let's examine the order of events more closely:

Katefan0 posted a message to wikien-l:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-February/040207.html
Katefan0 declared there was an "edit-war" at on the 3RR page after a
single edit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AThree-revert_rule&diff=40585186&oldid=40572733
The edit was done by me because I notice a redundancy. There were to
similar paragraphs that caused confusion.
Later, JzG removed and merged the same paragraph:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AThree-revert_rule&diff=41981036&oldid=41980560
However, NOBODY complained about such similar edit. BUT, they still
complain about my first edit as "watering down" or "to re-write 3RR so
he wouldn't be blocked in the future."

Let's examine more closely what has happened here.

I was blocked. I believe I was blocked unfairly. However, I read the 3RR
page and other pages that asured me that the blocks are not punitive. As
you see by this Jayjg reply, such replies do not purely reflect a "not
punitive" attitude.

Blocks are a preventative measure only. They shouldn't be used to
discredit someone. It's to easy for any admin to block a user. The ease
should not be taken advantage of to reflect on the personality.
Especially, when blocks are given out blindly just to stop an edit war.
It by no means has any justification as to actually who caused the edit war.

Jayjg, if you so desirely want to continue to ruin my reputation -- THEN
WITH DIGNITY, PLEASE -- go dig out my history and let's examine the
reasons why I was blocked. However, remember... as you threatened me...
that WAS a wp:point violation to do so:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AThree-revert_rule&diff=42035264&oldid=41986540

Jonathan


from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Daily premier anonymity

body:
On 3/4/06, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/4/06, Katefan0 <katefan0wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > As an aside, Dzonatas has been agitating for watering down the
> [[WP:3RR]]
> > policy lately, so perhaps that will shed some light on this latest
> proposal.
> >
> > k
>
> I guess this is the best argument in favour of Jonathan's idea so far.
> If Jonathan had been able to post anonymously you wouldn't have been
> able to try and poison the discussion by bringing up his character.
> Same thing applies to Wikipedia proper - contributions should be
> evaluated by what they are, not by who wrote them.

Not only would Jonathan's idea not have helped in this case, but the fact
that Jonathan was blocked several times for 3RR violations, then tried to
re-write 3RR so he wouldn't be blocked in the future, and now is trying to
get Wikipedia adjusted somehow so that future 3RR violations will be
extremely difficult to track, is not "poisoining the discussion", but rather
entirely relevant.

Jay.


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sources

body:
> I think it's a good idea for the question of "what's an acceptable
> source" to be distinct to the rule of verifiability. The latter is
> central to Wikipedia; the former is a much more contentious and fuzzy
> issue.
>
> People need to understand that primary sources are always acceptable.
> E.g. if you're referring to a mailing list archive to discuss the
> mailing list archive, or (for example) the text of someone's post to a
> mailing list, that's totally fine and what historians and journalists
> of computer history do all the time.

Absolutely.

Also, _almost_ any source is better than no source.

The most important thing is that the reader know where the
information came from--traceability.

The second most important thing is that the reader should be able to
make a rough _judgement_ about the reliability of the source.  Some
people may not feel that The New York Times is reliable (too left-
wing or too reliant on Jayson Blair or whatever), but they know what
The New York Times _is_. Similarly, if someone cites the University
of Pennsylvania's website as an authority for Penn having been
founded in 1740, the reader knows that a) it wasn't made up, b) there
is quite likely a good argument to be made for that date, but c) Penn
is not a disinterested party and universities have a motivation to
exaggerate their antiquity.

The reliability of the source is relatively less important. The only
real problem occurs when the "source" is, in fact, another entity
like Wikipedia--one in which the identity and credentials of the
contributor are not easy to assess.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Email confirmation - IMPORTANT

body:
Phil Boswell wrote:
> "Ilya N." <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:af9c32bf0603030830idd28568pbc7d4371004161a6 at mail.gmail.com...
>
>>I'm wondering if this could be a step to *something* bigger.
>
>
> You mean [looks over shoulder] <whisper>single-login</whisper>?
>
> There have certainly been rumblings, and it can't come too soon :-)

[[m:User:Brion_VIBBER/Berlin_roundup#MediaWiki_timeline]]

More details on [[m:SUL]].

It's coming...

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

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin Power Abuse

body:
I asked the admin who blocked the guy for his
reasoning, and on my talkpage, he wrote the following:

---
It's a username that promotes illegal activities and
can be seen as an invitation to vandalize the site.
Also closely resembles the disruptive "let's vandalize
wikipedia" and "let's fuck and rape admins" accounts
which are typically blocked automatically within
seconds of creation. Basically I'd block anything that
started with "Let's" on general principal, because
it's probably another sockpuppet of the same select
few individuals. ? Mar. 5, '06 [07:00]
<freakofnurxture|talk>
---

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Anittas&redirect=no

It looks like Mr. Jimbo hired cops to go after
Wikipedians that promote "illegal" activities, tho I'm
not sure where these illegal activities are illegal.
USA, Netherlands, the Moon?

Anittas.

Retrieved from
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anittas"

--- Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:

> On Mar 3, 2006, at 4:00 AM, Bacchante Maenad wrote:
>
> > Almost immediately after creating account for what
> would be my
> > first time
> > editing wikipedia an admin blocked me
> indefinitely.
> >
> > username : Let's Get High And Edit Wikipedia
> > IP : 69.60.118.148
> > Reason given "stoner..." by
> >
>
"*Freakofnurture<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Freakofnurture>"
> > *
> >
> > This admin describes himself as pissed off and
> also proudly displays a
> > widget that says he does not do any drugs.  I had
> the impression,
> > perhaps
> > wrongly so, that wikipedia was supposed to be more
> of an open
> > atmosphere
> > where there isn't such a heavy hand with admin
> powers.  In other
> > words, a
> > place where someone's first visit isn't met with
> an insult (stoner) by
> > someone claiming to be angry, pissed off and a
> judeofacist
> > (whatever that
> > is, but it doesn't sound too nice).  I really do
> not see what the
> > problem
> > with my username is.  It is silly, perhaps, but
> not offensive.
> >
> > Thank you
>
> I'd like to take this opportunity to admonish
> Freakofnurture for
> biting a newbie. That said, I don't think his user
> name is really
> that offensive or problematic either, but I don't
> feel strongly
> enough to think we should accept it. Still, username
> aside, we
> definitely need to do something to make this user
> feel comfortable
> and welcome again.
>
> --
> Philip L. Welch
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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