subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: LiquidThreads

body:
Jan-Paul K?ster wrote:

>I think the core question in this discussion is not "Can people change
>other peoples comments so that they contradict the original poster's
>point of view?" but the question is "Do people actually change other
>peoples comments so that they misstate the original poster's point of
>view, and are they successful or are those changes quickly reverted
>wiki-style?"
>The answer to the first question is clearly "yes" which sufficiently
>explains why many people are afraid of it happening (one side of the
>posters here). The answer to the second question cannot be given very
>easily but from my experience the wiki system generally works also in
>discussions. So can the wiki system be abused? Yes! Is it actually being
>abused? I don't see it.

It's rare enough on en: that people are outraged if refactoring is
abused. Changing others' comments tends to just not happen - not
because of technical constraints, but because it's considered rude to
change others' signed comments. So yeah, assuming good faith works
here.

I'm really not convinced this whole forum idea isn't a solution in
search of a problem. Every web forum I've ever seen is a bad
recreation of Usenet. And for Usenet, we already have the mailing
lists through gmane.

- d.


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Thomas Gries

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: How to change time?

body:
Set

	$wgLocalTZoffset = 1;

for Netherlands time.
See http://cvs.defau.lt/cvsweb.cgi/phase3/includes/DefaultSettings.php?annotate=1.387
for explanation of this setting.

Remark:
Users must have their personal settings (Timezone offset) empty !

Tom

Servien Ilaino schrieb:

>Was already like that but doesn't work. In date and time it displays
>my time correct but not in my signature, then it just displays the
>normal CET.
>
>Serv
>
>
>2005/11/2, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net>:
>
>
>>Servien Ilaino wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Does anyone know how you can change the time settings (NL wiki)? I've
>>>tried to go to Preferences and then to Daten and time settings, I
>>>entered "add from browser"... it doesn't work, I entered it by hand +2
>>>hours... doesn't work... I entered +8 hours, still doesn't change...
>>>c'est tr?s irritant! Please hellup mii!!
>>>
>>>
>>Type in "02:00".
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>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
>
>
>
>


list: wikien-l

from_name: Peter Mackay

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Press badges

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Jason Y. Lee
> Sent: Wednesday, 2 November 2005 15:13
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Press badges
>
> The Accreditation policy below requires someone to be a
> writer for several articles on Wikinews.  It doesn't quite
> fit for any person who wants an accreditation for a press
> badge as a photographer.  The reason behind my wondering over
> press badges is that I live in Southern California, a place
> where there is opporunity to meet a celebrity.  I have no
> doubt, the same applies to anyone living in other parts of
> the world when it comes to sports figures and the like.  The
> thing is that a photograph of a famous person on the English
> Wikipedia is usually a press or licensed photograph from a
> professional photographer... unless the copyright has
> previously expired on the photograph or they are a public
> figure of government, which of course means their photograph
> we get is public domain.  But how do deal with trying to get
> a photograph of a television star without having any of the
> copyright restrictions?  The only answers I can think of is
> to ask the publication to copyleft it, or take a picture of your own.

> > http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Accreditation_policy

The same policy could (and should) be expanded to cover photographers. It is
an excellent policy.

Having photographs taken with free use on WikiNews (and Wikipedia) in mind
is certainly something worth striving for. However, we should pay some heed
to quality of product. It is easy enough to "clean up" an article, but there
are limits to how much a photograph can be improved after it has been taken.

A request for photographer accreditation should be accompanied by a
"portfoliio" of images already on WN/WP, and possibly the same sort of
people who routinely look at Featured Image Candidates could cast an expert
eye over them.

Peter (Skyring)


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: LiquidThreads

body:
On 02/11/05, Jan-Paul K?ster <Jan-Paul at jpkoester.de> wrote:
> So what's my opinion? I am in favor of keeping the discussion pages wiki
> style, refactorable, editable by all but as Timwi proposed adding a
> "This comment was last edited on <timestamp> by <username> which will
> allow other users to easily spot any abuse while keeping all
> wiki-advantages.

Well, the problem is, you can't have a page which is both "completely
refactorable" and consists of comments which can be labelled
automatically by the software. Either, as currently, pages are
essentially atomic to the software (it can't "see" individual
comments, just lots of versions of the whole page), or the concept of
"a comment" is given significance to the software, and edits to it can
be tracked, locked, or whatever. The challenge, surely, is to come up
with a compromise between these two positions - just making individual
comments into wiki pages is not enough, because you can't, in general,
refactor one comment.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Tels

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: LiquidThreads [WAS: Re: the discussion page:
	summary and better display of the treats, mbox format?]

references:
<877jbu2avo.fsf@mat.ucm.es> <200511011826.56652@bloodgate.com>
	<dk8gep$ic3$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,

On Tuesday 01 November 2005 20:42, Timwi wrote:
> > I do think these are two seperate points:
> >
> > * how to improve the discussion pages on a wiki
> > * whether each author own his/her comment or not.
>
> But the point is that the answer to the second influences whether the
> solution proposed for the first is seen as an "improvement". I feel
> that if the ability to edit other people's comments is taken away from
> me, I can't label it an "improvement".

I have to disagree (because I am not opposed to locking comments).

> > Discussions, OTOH, also involve personal opinions. Danger lies ahead
> > when the opionion can be changed, but is still labeled (or signed, if
> > you wish) with the original authors name.
>
> We already have this "danger", and we've had it since the beginning of
> Phase II, and it has not turned out to be a great problem, so this is
> not an argument.

I consider it a (current) problem, maybe not at wikipedia, but on other
wikis.

> > Just imagine that this discussion we have is on a wiki, this is the
> > latest edition (you would need to check the history, aka mailing list
> > archives to see the full revisions) and it contained:
> >
> > On Tuesday 01 November 2005 17:36, Timwi wrote:
> >>>Any model, if over applied, is harmful.
> >>
> >>Agree.
> >>I am strongly in favour of LiquidThreads.
> >
> > See the danger?
>
> A fallacious argument by false dilemma, or by lack of imagination, or
> whatever you wanna call it. You almost provided the answer to this one

Yes I did. That was intentional. I never said that comment locking is the
only solution, but also that comment labeling (like "last edited by") is
a method.

> yourself:
> > (for the record, the above quote of three lines was
> > written/shortened by me, not Timwi).
>
> And that is what it should say.
>
> 	COMMENT #328645		by [[User:Timwi]]
>
> 	Agree. I am strongly in favour of LiquidThreads.
> 	(This comment was last edited by [[User:Tels]] <date/time>.)
>
> If <date/time> is a minute ago, I better check the diff. If it was an
> hour ago, I can probably assume that your edit was harmless.
>
> Therefore, again, your "danger" is not an argument against the ability
> to edit comments.

I think you misunderstood me. I said that we should improve the discussion
page:

 #1 with threads etc
 #2 doing something against falsely labeled comments
	#2a by locking them
	#2b OR by labeling them with the last change
	#2c whatever else we can come up with

You say that you cannot accept improvements on #1 when 2a is implemented
and therefore would rather do nothing.

I disagree, for me either 2a OR 2b would be good. But my point is, that no
matter what we choose, we should do SOMETHING. E.g. either 2a, 2b or
something else should be done, preferable in conjunction with #1 (doesn't
make much sense, technically, anyway).

> > If we can improve the discussion page itself, *and* prevent
> > misrepresentation at the same time, well, that would be great :)
> It's really easy.

 <flame>Then why wasn't it done already? :-P </flame>

(Yes, that was a joke, laugh, it is funny.)

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Wed Nov  2 17:24:39 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Any sufficiently rigged demo is indistinguishable from an advanced
 technology."  -- Don Quixote, slashdot guy

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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] prbls with external editor

references:
<877jbu2avo.fsf@mat.ucm.es>
	<dk83h4$4hr$1@sea.gmane.org>	<dk85j5$c6m$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<200511011826.56652@bloodgate.com>	<dk8gep$ic3$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<874q6vgutc.fsf_-_@mat.ucm.es>

body:
Uwe Brauer:
> Another important point. Recently I wrote a comment in another
> discussion page (that one quite huge), again using an external
> editor. By accident it seems that I changed the coding of the page so,
> some non ASCII symbols changed.

This happens if you use an editor which is not capable of editing UTF-8.
You can set

	Transcode UTF-8=true

in ee.ini under [Settings], but your editor will still mangle characters
that are not part of the iso8859-1 character-set. The best thing to do
is to use a UTF-8 editor (or, if you already do, set the encoding to
UTF-8 when editing wiki pages). I personally use Kate for KDE, which I
have found to be an excellent editor for both text and code.

Best,

Erik


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia + culture differences on different wikis

body:
Bjarte S?rensen wrote:

> On this note, I would also like to ask a broader question to the
> community: How different do you think are the cultures of the
> different languages' wikipedias? In particular I'm interested in
> inclusivist/deletionist matters, dispute resolution, administrator
> "powers" and I suppose general feeling of welcome.

I observed that the debates in many wikis are quite similar. You'll find
the repeating deletionist/inclusionist debate in en, de, fr... as well
as you find - justified and unjustified - complaints about censorship
and abuse of admin powers. The complaint from this spanish user was
posted on de as well, someone gave a summary in german which made
everyone instantly loose interest - just because all this sounded so
familiar to the standard complaint of our trouble makers (all the key
words included).

Dispute resolution is a tricky point because when a wiki is still small,
there's usually no need for a dispute resolution process. This only
becomes necessary when it reaches a certain level. Then people often
look at other wikis - they may copy the concept of the english
arbitration committee, or develop an anarchical community based dispute
resolution process like the german wikipedia.

Same for the general feeling of welcome: In a small wiki, users are glad
about almost any new contributor. In a big wiki like german wp, many
users feel that we should be more selective about who is welcome or not
(This is for example reflected in the description on the german main
page. It still says "is an encyclopedia to which everyone can contribute
with his knowledge" but it continues with "good authors are always
welcome").

It would be interesting to know how many wikis share the custom of
individually welcoming new users. I've seen it on almost any wiki I
visited.

> And, not
> specifically with Spanish Wikipedia in mind, how well do we monitor
> aberrance from our common goal of wikilove and NPOV on the more
> "peripheral" wikipedias?

We don't monitor at all. The whole system is based on trust and a naive
believe that the core values of wikimedia spread automagically to new
wikis set up. ehm. The strange thing is, this mostly works quite well
(as far as I can tell).
I found everyone I've talked to from other communities familiar with the
concept of NPOV. There was always a notion to respect copyright and
delete copyright violations etc.pp.

However, based on the many wrong answers I've seen even from experienced
german wikipedians, I'm unsure about how many misinterpretations of GFDL
and free licenses are floating around in the wiki world (Our request for
permission email templates for example contained horrible nonsense about
the requirements of the GFDL for more than a year...).

It would be an interesting project to go through all the wikis and check
for such things but probably nobody has the time to do this - and the
community seems to consider it more important to found new wikis and new
projects than to care that all is working well in the existing ones.

greetings,
elian


from_name: Jan-Paul Köster

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: LiquidThreads

body:
Hello everyone,

I think the core question in this discussion is not "Can people change
other peoples comments so that they contradict the original poster's
point of view?" but the question is "Do people actually change other
peoples comments so that they misstate the original poster's point of
view, and are they successful or are those changes quickly reverted
wiki-style?"

The answer to the first question is clearly "yes" which sufficiently
explains why many people are afraid of it happening (one side of the
posters here). The answer to the second question cannot be given very
easily but from my experience the wiki system generally works also in
discussions. So can the wiki system be abused? Yes! Is it actually being
abused? I don't see it.

The fear of abuse is the prime argument that critics of wikis in general
bring forward and the general answer to it is to look at what actually
happens and be amazed that it does in fact work by just trusting people
and assuming good faith. I feel the same arguments apply to the
discussion pages.

So what's my opinion? I am in favor of keeping the discussion pages wiki
style, refactorable, editable by all but as Timwi proposed adding a
"This comment was last edited on <timestamp> by <username> which will
allow other users to easily spot any abuse while keeping all
wiki-advantages.

Just my 2c,
JP


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] change of templates

body:
Andrew Dunbar wrote:
> On 11/2/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>> On the Dutch wiktionary it has been proposed to change the
>> template for adjective -adj- to -adjc-. The reason for this change
>> is that adj is an ISO 639 code for a language. I am happy to
>> change this template and the places where it is used on your
>> wiktionary..
>>
>> Please let me know if you have any problems with this.

>>
>> This is just a suggestion. I think using prefixes similar to Hungarian
>> notation would be a perfect idea for wiki template naming policies.
>> If all languages were prefixed with lang_ or even l_ then you could
>> have say pos_adj for "adjective" and l_adj for "new exotic
>> language".
>> You can also think of the prefix as a kind of namespace. Or
>> perhaps use : instead of _ to make it seems ever more namespace-
>> like.
>>
>> The downside is longer template names, the upsides are that it's
>> easier to see what unfamiliar templates are for and easier to
>> prevent name clashes.
>>
>> Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)
The ideas of having the same templates everywhere is that unfamiliarity
is not an issue as the templates are everywhere the same. The problem
here is that it was not a brilliant idea to have within the current
system three character acronyms for something other than languages. This
is remedied with this change.

Changing the system completely does not make sense as the system is in
use on many wiktionaries. From my perspective the Ultimate Wiktionary
cannot come soon enough ..

Thanks,
   Gerard


list: foundation-l

from_name: SJ

subject: [Foundation-l] Requests for bot status

body:
Good move, Dariusz.     Bots are getting awfully popular...

On 11/2/05, Dariusz Siedlecki <datrio at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just wanted to notify the Wikimedia community, that [[Requests for bot
> status]] on Meta was created a few minutes ago.
>
> Of course, [[Requests for permissions]] is still active - please put
> all the requests for sysop/bureaucrat status on that page.


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Requests for bot status


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Requests for bot status


from_name: Kat Walsh

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: LiquidThreads

body:
On 11/2/05, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> Might I suggest an additional feature for mediawiki? How about
> [{here}] which becomes a difflink to the edit where that tag was
> inserted? People could add that to their signatures and thus every
> post of their would be equipped to a handy difflink to an original
> version.

I wouldn't mind seeing the timestamp on signatures be a diff link ,
actually: makes it easy to see what was originally posted and doesn't
add more to the standard sig.

-Kat
[[en:User:Mindspillage]]

--
"There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily
escaped the chronicler's mind."  --Douglas Adams


from_name: Brett Gustafson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Shock site bot

body:
I recently recieved this message from a user:
"I'm a regular wikipedia user although i don't have an account here. I think
this site is great and it really helps me with my college work. But I
recently heard of these people that were talking about wikipedia that they
were all programming a hack for it. So after a little while I found it was a
spider to hunt down all the pages links and change them to shocks site links
or something along those lines. I didn't know who to tell so I just thought
I'd tell an administrator as they might know who to tell or what to do. Just
giving an advanced warning so you might be able to do something to protect
this wonderful resourse. Apparently they permenantly change their ip address
using some thing (a bit beyond me). Something like that. I just didn't know
what to do. I hope I didn't embaress myself here. Thanks for your time."

Brett


from_name: Uwe Brauer

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: prbls with external editor

references:
<877jbu2avo.fsf@mat.ucm.es> <dk83h4$4hr$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<dk85j5$c6m$1@sea.gmane.org> <200511011826.56652@bloodgate.com>
	<dk8gep$ic3$1@sea.gmane.org> <874q6vgutc.fsf_-_@mat.ucm.es>
	<4368EA71.2030803@gmx.de>

body:
>>>>> "Erik" == Erik Moeller
>>>>> <erik_moeller at gmx.de> writes:

   Erik> Uwe Brauer:
   >> Another important point. Recently I wrote a comment in another
   >> discussion page (that one quite huge), again using an external
   >> editor. By accident it seems that I changed the coding of the
   >> page so, some non ASCII symbols changed.

   Erik> This happens if you use an editor which is not capable of
   Erik> editing UTF-8.  You can set

   Erik> 	Transcode UTF-8=true

I know, the problem is (X)emacs has no full UTF-8 support, however it
supports iso8859-1. I think my error was not to restrict that set to
the german symbols and thats why the error occurred.

   Erik> in ee.ini under [Settings], but your editor will still mangle
   Erik> characters that are not part of the iso8859-1
   Erik> character-set. The best thing to do is to use a UTF-8 editor
   Erik> (or, if you already do, set the encoding to UTF-8 when
   Erik> editing wiki pages). I personally use Kate for KDE, which I
   Erik> have found to be an excellent editor for both text and code.

Another option would be to use recode. I might try that.


from_name: steve v

subject: [WikiEN-l] status correction

body:
--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> I sympathize with this POV for two reasons:
>
> 1. Because Steve was recently taken down a peg (he
> lost his sysop
> rights) but he STILL is contributing to the
> encyclopedia and trying to
> find ways to improve the community.

I have not "lost [my] sysop rights." Anthere
(properly) acted to remove my sysop rights on a
request (a premature and perhaps partisan one) after
the "vote was closed." I had my "RFA" reopened because
I thought it should benefit from my input. Hence
Anthere's decision to desysop was neutral, and the
decision to not immediately resysop was nominal one,
and one that I did not object to while the RFA
continued.

The RFA failed to find consensus to desysop, and more
correctly it rejected the Arbcom's use of the RFA (and
its 70% threshold) to render a decision which it
(admittedly) could not come to --"deadlocked" case,
etc. Though I could have waited, I have asked Anthere
to restore my sysop status per the "unsuccessful
de-RFA  aka my "successful RFA", aka the "remand
decision."

Sincerely,
SV

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Jack Lynch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: block

body:
Not liking the way people say things is no grounds for a block. This
was a wrongful block, and I find it unfortunate that you took the time
to scold this individual, but not the time to investigate the matter
or unblock him.

Of course he could have spoken better in his reply, but blocks for
personal attacks are controversial in the clearest of cases. If I said
"F*ck off, you ignorant rat bastard" to someone on tbheir talk page, I
would not expect to be blocked, and if I were I would appeal based on
the block not having been in accordance w our policies. Admins should
follow the rules more closely than anyone else, particularly when they
are attempting to use these rules in order to punish others.

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 11/2/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> hideki yukawa wrote:
> > freestylefrappe sent me a msg to the following effect
> > on my talk page:
> >
> > I suspect you are a sockpuppet of Aldirma's.  [...]
>
> You really shouldn't take this as an insult. It says "I suspect you
> are..." and not "Clearly you are...". When people say something like
> that, they're not making it up out of thin air; they usually have
> grounds to believe this. They have a right to make mistakes every now
> and then and be wrong about it. Since, as you state, you aren't a
> sock-puppet, just continue as normal and everything will be fine. Just
> don't be reckless, or else people might conclude that you are trying to
> push an agenda, which in turn strengthens the belief that you may be a
> sock-puppet.
>
> > However, in the offchance that you are not, if you go back and look
> > at the different versions of the page you'll notice that he is trying
> > to paste in the entire Bektashi jokes page. Assuming good faith,
> > happy editing.
>
> Note how the user is explaining to you rationally and calmly how they
> arrived at their suspicion of you being a sock-puppet. They even
> explained to you how you can prevent yourself from appearing like a
> sock-puppet again. Lastly, they clarify that they are assuming your good
> faith.
>
> It was unfair of you to say this:
>
> > I suspect you start all your messages with offensive accusations like
> > "I suspect you're a sock puppet of so-and-so."
>
> because there is no basis for you to believe this, and it's just
> polemics anyway, and not an attempt at helping improve the encyclopedia.
>
> > After this short exchange, Wikipedia indicated that I
> > was "blocked for personal attacks" by freestylefrappe.
>
> I agree this action was a bit harsh, but I find it understandable.
> Please note that "blocked" means temporarily (usually just 24 hours, I'm
> too lazy to chcek now). Cool down for that amount of time and then just
> come back and continue as normal.
>
> > I suggest that freestylefrappe didn't like
> > the fact that I pointed out his message implicating
> > users being sock-puppets is HIGHLY OFFENSIVE
>
> I suggest that freestylefrappe didn't like the WAY you said it. You
> didn't just say "it's highly offensive", you wrapped it into an
> unncessary personal attack. (And he didn't implicate that you are a
> sock-puppet, only that he is suspecting it).
>
> Timwi
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Don't call them "anon"

body:
Ed Poor wrote

>We are not
storming the citadel of Academia by the gates, but we are (like bloggers
rebutting TV networks and Matt Drudge scooping news magazines) LEVELING
OUT the playing field. This is democracy in action.

Well, it is actually populism.  The populist streak in Wikipedianism is
important.  I'd like to think we do buttals, not rebuttals.  I'd like to
think we are co-opting academia rather than treating it like the Bastiille.

Charles


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Slipping quality as Wikipedia gets bigger(formerlyCan
	you trust W

body:
On 02/11/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:

> >Please put this feature into effect immediately! If we don't like it, we
> >can always turn it off afterwards. But we will NEVER know if thousands
> >of Wikipedians will like it if we wait for an overwhelming clamor on
> >this mailing list.
>
> If it does anything to further degrade Wikipedia's performance, I'd
> recommend not putting it in.

Is there any desire for (or even discussion about) it among one of the
smaller language communities? If so, it might be useful to try rolling
it out there first and seeing what happens - something that trebles
the load on, say, nl.wiki will be less horrendous to cope with than
something which trebles the load on en.wiki.

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


from_name: Timwi

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: LiquidThreads [WAS: Re: the discussion page:
 summary and better display of the treats, mbox format?]

body:
Note this:

>>>* how to improve the discussion pages on a wiki
>>>* whether each author own his/her comment or not.

and this:

>  #1 with threads etc
>  #2 doing something against falsely labeled comments

is not the same thing. That's where the misunderstanding came from.

> You say that you cannot accept improvements on #1 when 2a is implemented
> and therefore would rather do nothing.

No, I said that I wouldn't consider #2a ("locking comments") an
improvement. I would consider #1 (threads) an improvement.

> for me either 2a OR 2b would be good.

There doesn't seem to be any disagreement between us then. It was only a
misunderstanding.

Timwi


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia & Original Research

body:
On Mon, 31 Oct 2005, rex wrote:

> I think that photos, which are intended to make a specific point,
> should not be uploaded to Wikipedia unless they have been
> previously published by a disinterested, reputable 3rd party.
> Flikr.com, weblogs, partisan political web sites (dailykos,
> freerepublic, etc) and such are not acceptable, but commercial
> news organizations and commericial publishers and to a lesser
> extent, non-profits would be ok. There is simply too much opportunity
> out there to stage photos, for example:
>
The more I ponder your proposal, the more I am convinced that it
causes more problems than it solves -- assuming that it solves *any*
problems.

Pick the most partisan editor on Wikipedia that you know, & assume
that she/he uploads a badly-needed image under the GFDL license that
she/he has created: for example, a photo of a rare animal, automobile,
or celebrity. Should we be so concerned with the possibility of POV
that we would speedily delete any of these because they have not
been "previously published by a disinterested, reputable 3rd party"?

And assume that a partisan image is uploaded to Wikipedia -- say of a
well-known politician seated between two prostitutes of the wrong sex
indulging in illegal drugs. It will quickly be determined whether the
image is (a) a hoax; (b) a fiction of topical notability; or (c) the
real deal. And once the image falls into one of those categories, it
will be appropriately handled: either respectively (a) deleted; (b)
considered whether Fair Use covers it; or (c) kept as relevant.

I say this because a month ago I uploaded to Commons about 20 different
photos I took while visiting Crater Lake National Park. My only intent
was to share information under the terms of the GFDL: one can be
of any political persuation, hold any POV, & I still am willing to
share these images with that person. If by looking at a picture of a
log that has been floating in Crater Lake for over 100 years somehow
instantly converts you to my political POV, I'll take that as a
windfall -- but that was entirely irrelevant to my intent of contributing
the art.

Geoff


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: LiquidThreads

body:
Ivan Krstic wrote:
>
>>No, the purpose of this was to test your reaction. You fell right for it
>>exactly the way I expected: you picked up only on the emotional side of
>>the paragraph (taking it as an insult)
>
> Do you understand how conceited this makes you sound?

No, apparently not. But your reply shows the same thing about you that I
was trying to demonstrate about Ryan. You, too, have not replied to what
I said, and instead digressed into a treatise on the emotional/social
effects of my tone.

> You need to relax, and start spending less time writing
> borderline-offensive e-mail to people who are trying to reason
> constructively,

I'm disappointed that you (and others) find that I am not trying to
reason constructively, because I am. I would rather consider your
accusation of my lack of constructiveness "borderline offensive", but as
I said before, this kind of bickering is not going to get us anywhere.

> and more time thinking about what they're saying. I can tell you
> exactly why it *is* wrong: comments are not Wikipedia articles, even
> if you seem to be constantly confounding the two.

Everything you say in the rest of your posting was already said
elsewhere in the thread. You seem to think that I don't understand it,
but in fact I do, and you don't seem to understand my refutation of it.
I am not contradicting any of the things you say (comments aren't like
articles, comments are signed by a particular person, etc.etc.). All I'm
saying is that this is a fallacy:

> Comments [...] represent only that person's views, have no requirement
> of adherence to a NPOV, and that means that essentially none of the
> reasons that Wikipedia articles are editable by everyone apply to them.

It is the "and that means" that is wrong. It DOESN'T mean that. Or, more
precisely, it doesn't mean that comments shouldn't be editable. This is
a fallacy.

It is also a fallacy to state that we should do it like all other
web-forums. It is not true that they would have changed if there was
reason to do so, in the same way that encyclopedias haven't gone wiki
long before Wikipedia.

Timwi


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.5.2, 1.4.12, 1.3.18 released

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

MediaWiki 1.5.2 is a bugfix maintenance release.

A change in PHP 4.4.1 and PHP 5.1.0RC broke handling of extension and
<pre> sections, causing garbage data to be inserted in output and saved
edits. This version works around the change.

Several other glitches with MySQL 5.0 and PHP 5.0.5 were also fixed;
see the change log below for a complete list.

1.4.12 and 1.3.18 include the PHP 4.4.1 fix as well as the Internet
Explorer CSS JavaScript injection fixes from 1.5.1.

Release notes:
1.5.2 http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=368103
1.4.12 http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=368102
1.3.18 http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=368101

Download:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.5.2.tar.gz?download
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.4.12.tar.gz?download
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.3.18.tar.gz?download

MD5 checksums:
3aedde46937494bc21a5e493ea6a8ffd mediawiki-1.5.2.tar.gz
246aa2a830b63f5be48fc7ad499fc3ca mediawiki-1.4.12.tar.gz
7fb4100839ff5ab2ea9e2e86c0bd9aa0 mediawiki-1.3.18.tar.gz

SHA-1 checksums:
6fd9519d102e1954997774e50bd95d490f03778f mediawiki-1.5.2.tar.gz
9ff1222d168241f2dc06ef4e91420d8cb4ca348e mediawiki-1.4.12.tar.gz
75258724080311ac1938468c0a9bfd39128c2b1a mediawiki-1.3.18.tar.gz

Before asking for help, try the FAQ:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_FAQ

Low-traffic release announcements mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce

Wiki admin help mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

Bug report system:
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/

Play "stump the developers" live on IRC:
#mediawiki on irc.freenode.net

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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from_name: Neil Harris

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Slipping quality as Wikipedia gets bigger	(formerlyCan
	you trust Wikipedia?)

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Magnus Manske [mailto:magnus.manske at web.de]
>>Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 3:56 AM
>>To: English Wikipedia
>>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Slipping quality as Wikipedia gets
>>bigger (formerlyCan you trust Wikipedia?)
>>
>>
>>Well, as the author of said feature, I've been asking for a
>>long time what's the holdup. I'm fairly certain it is, at the
>>very least, ready for the planned test phase. I keep asking
>>people what should be fixed, but so far (that is, in the last
>>few month) noone could tell me the reason it remains turned off.
>>
>>If parts of it are broken or not up to MediaWiki standard or
>>Evil(tm) in some other important way, please, PLEASE tell me
>>so I can fix it.
>>
>>Should I backport it from CVS HEAD to some other branch?
>>Which one? Anything!
>>
>>So far, I've been mostly ignored.
>>
>>Magnus
>>
>>
>
>Please put this feature into effect immediately! If we don't like it, we
>can always turn it off afterwards. But we will NEVER know if thousands
>of Wikipedians will like it if we wait for an overwhelming clamor on
>this mailing list.
>
>Ed Poor
>
>
>

I really think that ratings are vital, in order to deal with improving
and maintaining Wikipedia's quality as its size and audience scales. If
the ratings code is a performance, hog, at least trying it
experimentally will find out how bad the problem is, and perhaps
illuminate how it could be fixed to make it better. I can think of lots
of potential strategies for doing this, but it would be nice to see the
problem in reality, rather than in theory, before trying to fix it.

Perhaps the rating code could be turned on only for admins, or users
with usernames beginning with 'E' to 'J', or only during non-busy
hours... or automatically turned off if load rises over a pre-set limit?

Or perhaps just turned on for a few hours one weekend, to see what the
effect on load really is?

-- Neil


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: LiquidThreads

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:
> On 02/11/05, Jan-Paul K?ster <Jan-Paul at jpkoester.de> wrote:
>
>>So what's my opinion? I am in favor of keeping the discussion pages wiki
>>style, refactorable, editable by all but as Timwi proposed adding a
>>"This comment was last edited on <timestamp> by <username> which will
>>allow other users to easily spot any abuse while keeping all
>>wiki-advantages.
>
> Well, the problem is, you can't have a page which is both "completely
> refactorable" and consists of comments which can be labelled
> automatically by the software.

I've thought about this, and my idea here is to keep the Talk namespace
the way it is (as a wiki-editable article-like page), but re-define its
purpose as containing a summary (refactoring) of past and on-going
discussions (which, of course, would be taking place in the threads).


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: LiquidThreads

body:
> The losses are major: The community could prevent speech that they deem
> offensive, which is an violation of free speech in general, (especially
> since people often consider differing viewpoints "offensive" and would
> edit them out) and people would not have their comments represented as
> written, which makes the discussion difficult to follow at best and
> pointless at worst.

Jan-Paul K?ster already pointed out to you that you have not shown that
this would actually happen enough to be a significant problem. Moreover,
I would like to add that you can go to any Talk page right now and
verify (pardon me, falsify) your theory.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: How actually usable are audio captchas?

body:
Evan Martin wrote:
> On 11/2/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Does anyone have or know of *actual data* (rather than hypothesis or
>>anecdote) on whether non-visual captchas are any good as yet?
>
> Anecdote, again, but it is a success story: when we launched CAPTCHAs
> on LiveJournal which included audio support, we got a surprising
> response of thank-you letters from blind users (maybe two or three,
> which is pretty significant in comparison to the feedback about other
> features...).

I was going to mention LiveJournal. :-) I have personally seen one of
those "thank you" support requests from a blind user.

But I was going to add: David, you can try it yourself. Just go to
http://www.livejournal.com/create.bml and take the audio test.
Personally I actually found it easier to pass than the visual one - the
letters in the visual captchas are sometimes warped enough to make them
ambiguous even for humans (e.g. g vs. q).

Timwi


from_name: Michael Bimmler

subject: [Foundation-l] Swiss Wikipedians Meeting Zurich 13 November 2005

body:
*** This message is crossposted to several lists, if there are responses,
please direct them to Wikimediach-l (even if you're not subscribed). Thank
you!***

French version below

Dear Wikipedians,
we'd like to invite you to the Swiss Wikipedians Meeting in Zurich. The main
topic will be the discussion of the foundation of Wikimedia Switzerland, the
Swiss local chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation. The meeting will be at
November 13th, 2.00 pm (Swiss time) in the "Schweizerische
Epilepsie-Zentrum", Zurich. A more detailed description of the meeting,
including a description of how to get there, may be found at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CH/Meeting_Zurich_13_November_2005<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Schweiz/International>(in
German, English, French and Italian). Mineral water and some snacks
(chips etc.) will be provided. We look forward to seeing you!
Kind regards,
Michael Bimmler Nando St?cklin J?rg Studer

Cher wikip?diens,

Nous souhaiterions vous inviter ? la r?union des Wikip?diens suisses qui
se tiendra ? Zurich. Le but principal de cette r?union est de discuter
de la mise en place d'une association suisse (Wikimedia CH),
aassociation fille de la Fondation Wikimedia. La r?union aura lieu ?
Zurich le 13 novembre 2005 ? 14.00h au "Schweizerisches Epilepsie-Zentrum".
Une description plus d?taill?e de la rencontre, ainsi que les
indications pour s'y rendre, se trouve sur
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CH/Meeting_Zurich_13_November_2005(en
allemand, anglais, fran?ais et italien). Eau min?rales et chips au
programme. Nous vous
attendons avec impatience.

A tr?s bient?t.

Michael Bimmler Nando St?cklin J?rg Studer


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: LiquidThreads

body:
> I'm really not convinced this whole forum idea isn't a solution in
> search of a problem. Every web forum I've ever seen is a bad
> recreation of Usenet. And for Usenet, we already have the mailing
> lists through gmane.

My opinion exactly; except that I believe that making comments editable
is the major difference that makes it not be like Usenet.

I think most people acknowledge that the lack of technical structure to
the discussion threads /is/ a problem.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: LiquidThreads

body:
Jan-Paul K?ster wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I think the core question in this discussion is not "Can people change
> other peoples comments so that they contradict the original poster's
> point of view?" but the question is "Do people actually change other
> peoples comments so that they misstate the original poster's point of
> view, and are they successful or are those changes quickly reverted
> wiki-style?"
>
> The answer to the first question is clearly "yes" which sufficiently
> explains why many people are afraid of it happening (one side of the
> posters here). The answer to the second question cannot be given very
> easily but from my experience the wiki system generally works also in
> discussions. So can the wiki system be abused? Yes! Is it actually
> being abused? I don't see it.
I am sorry to say that I have seen misrepresentations occur on several
occasions. Problematic is that when you start adding comments like I do
now in this post, you are likely to have follow up reactions and as a
consequence you may not appreciate what was said later in the Wiki
format. Certainly when a comment is over several paragraphs this is
often seen. The worst case of splitting is when paragraphs are split up
resulting in something that that can really be badly read. Asking people
to refrain from doing this resulted in the statement that it is allowed
by the GFDL and that it is old style Internet working method (as if this
is an excuse).
>
> The fear of abuse is the prime argument that critics of wikis in
> general bring forward and the general answer to it is to look at what
> actually happens and be amazed that it does in fact work by just
> trusting people and assuming good faith. I feel the same arguments
> apply to the discussion pages.
>
> So what's my opinion? I am in favor of keeping the discussion pages
> wiki style, refactorable, editable by all but as Timwi proposed adding
> a "This comment was last edited on <timestamp> by <username> which
> will allow other users to easily spot any abuse while keeping all
> wiki-advantages.
>
I do not have opinion as to what to do differently. With technical
solutions you do not take away the core problem. Behaviour acceptable to
some is not acceptable to others. I think we do a reasonable job at
keeping things reasonable. By raising the threshold for nuisance you
only get worse nuisance.. I think we are fortunate that things are as
good as they are. So to express my opinion.. let's be conservative :)

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: block

body:
Jack Lynch wrote:
> Not liking the way people say things is no grounds for a block.

You seem to be thinking that I supported the block. May I remind you
that I said this:

>> I agree this action was a bit harsh, but I find it understandable.

In hindsight, I shouldn't have said the last bit. I only said it because
I think I understand what the blocking admin was thinking, not because I
think he was right or anything.

> This was a wrongful block, and I find it unfortunate that you took
> the time to scold this individual, but not the time to investigate
> the matter or unblock him.

I did not scold anyone, I was trying to be helpful. I recognise that you
don't appreciate me trying to help, but the more people misinterpret my
help as "scolding" the more I'm inclined to just think it's their own
fault for assuming my bad faith.

 From what I hear from people who have blocked or unblocked people, I
get the impression that there is a high risk of getting scolded for it,
and as a result I have so far never blocked or unblocked anyone, and I
wasn't in the mood to get started.

Timwi


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Edit bailouts

body:
Don't think that would happen at Wikipedia. You could certainly try it
at Wikitravel, though... perhaps it would be better-accepted if it
only popped up for every 3rd bailout? (not per person, but total).

Mark

On 02/11/05, Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-02-11 at 11:24 +1100, Tim Starling wrote:
>
> > I suspect a lot of the hits on edit pages are due to readers following red
> > links, rather than people clicking the edit tab.
>
> That's a very good point.
>
> >  About 16% of edit form requests result in a save attempt.
>
> That's the number I was looking for.
>
> I guess there's not an easy way to find out how many people are bailing
> out of edits that they really want to make... except maybe to ask them.
> Perhaps a pop-up poll for folks who navigate away from an edit page in
> some way besides saving? Kind of intrusive but it might have interesting
> results.
>
> ~Evan
>
> --
> Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
> Wikitravel (http://wikitravel.org/) -- the free, complete, up-to-date
> and reliable world-wide travel guide
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
If you would like a gmail invite, please send me an e-mail.
Si ud. quiere que le env?e una invitaci?n para juntar gmail, env?eme un mensaje.
Si vous voulez que je vous envoie une invitation ? joindre gmail,
envoyez-moi s.v.p un message.
Se vce. gostaria que lhe envie um convite para juntar gmail, favor de
envie-me uma mensagem.
Se vuleti chi vi manu 'n invitu a uniri gmail, mandatimi n messaggiu.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Fwd:Shock site bot

body:
Using Wikipedia, to me at least, means reading, learning from.
Editing, on the other hand, means making changes.

You'd say the same for any other encyclopaedia -- I have used EB, but
certainly never _edited_ it.

Mark

On 02/11/05, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Forwarded from Wikien-l.
>
> I wonder if it would be useful to have an index of external URLs that
> supports throttling of the # of times per day a given base URL can be
> added to WP sites...
>
> SJ
>
>
> PS - this is my favorite part --  "I'm a regular wikipedia user
> although i don't have an account here"  I wonder how many people
> consider themselves 'regular uers' -- and how many of those actually
> read user and policy pages...
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Brett Gustafson <brett.gustafson at gmail.com>
> Date: Nov 2, 2005 7:22 PM
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Shock site bot
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>
>
> I recently recieved this message from a user:
> "I'm a regular wikipedia user although i don't have an account here. I think
> this site is great and it really helps me with my college work. But I
> recently heard of these people that were talking about wikipedia that they
> were all programming a hack for it. So after a little while I found it was a
> spider to hunt down all the pages links and change them to shocks site links
> or something along those lines. I didn't know who to tell so I just thought
> I'd tell an administrator as they might know who to tell or what to do. Just
> giving an advanced warning so you might be able to do something to protect
> this wonderful resourse. Apparently they permenantly change their ip address
> using some thing (a bit beyond me). Something like that. I just didn't know
> what to do. I hope I didn't embaress myself here. Thanks for your time."
>
> Brett
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
> --
> ++SJ
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
If you would like a gmail invite, please send me an e-mail.
Si ud. quiere que le env?e una invitaci?n para juntar gmail, env?eme un mensaje.
Si vous voulez que je vous envoie une invitation ? joindre gmail,
envoyez-moi s.v.p un message.
Se vce. gostaria que lhe envie um convite para juntar gmail, favor de
envie-me uma mensagem.
Se vuleti chi vi manu 'n invitu a uniri gmail, mandatimi n messaggiu.


from_name: Alphax

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Slipping quality as Wikipedia gets bigger (formerly
	Can	you trust Wikipedia?)

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Magnus Manske wrote:
> Bryan Derksen wrote:
>
>
>>The "version rating" feature that's been put in Wikimedia software but
>>not yet optimized to the point where it can be used in a production
>>Wikipedia would be ideal for reducing backsliding without limiting the
>>ability to edit or otherwise making things difficult. I've been
>>looking forward to this feature for quite some time myself. If the
>>problem is simply one of not having developers with the right
>>combination of free time, interest, and skills to complete this
>>feature, might it perhaps be a reasonable idea to spend some of the
>>money raised in the fund drives to provide a reward to get it done?
>>Spending money to improve the software's scalability could be worth it
>>for the reduced cost of hardware upgrades and the reduced "cost" in
>>terms of the volunteer effort of editors keeping articles clean.
>
>
> Well, as the author of said feature, I've been asking for a long time
> what's the holdup. I'm fairly certain it is, at the very least, ready
> for the planned test phase. I keep asking people what should be fixed,
> but so far (that is, in the last few month) noone could tell me the
> reason it remains turned off.
>

If it's safe to turn on, turn it on!

> If parts of it are broken or not up to MediaWiki standard or Evil(tm) in
> some other important way, please, PLEASE tell me so I can fix it.
>

I guess we will find that out when we turn it on... turn it on!

> Should I backport it from CVS HEAD to some other branch? Which one?
> Anything!
>

Turn it into an extension in case it doesn't work?

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
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from_name: Ting Chen

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia + culture differences on different
	wikis

body:
> I observed that the debates in many wikis are quite similar. You'll find
> the repeating deletionist/inclusionist debate in en, de, fr... as well
> as you find - justified and unjustified - complaints about censorship
> and abuse of admin powers. The complaint from this spanish user was
> posted on de as well, someone gave a summary in german which made
> everyone instantly loose interest - just because all this sounded so
> familiar to the standard complaint of our trouble makers (all the key
> words included).

I can confirm that this is the same in the chinese Wikipedia. Actually we
have just had a very intensive debate about how to handle substubs and if
anime figures could have their own article. We have also had debates about
how to handle articles which is marked as fast deletable, and the criterians
of fast deletable articles, and natually complaints about this or that
decision of this or that sysop.

Ting.

--
Highspeed-Freiheit. Bei GMX superg?nstig, z.B. GMX DSL_Cityflat,
DSL-Flatrate f?r nur 4,99 Euro/Monat*  http://www.gmx.net/de/go/dsl


from_name: Ryan Lane

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: LiquidThreads

body:
Timwi <timwi at ...> writes:

> It is also a fallacy to state that we should do it like all other
> web-forums. It is not true that they would have changed if there was
> reason to do so, in the same way that encyclopedias haven't gone wiki
> long before Wikipedia.
>
> Timwi
>

You know... I don't even understand why we are arguing over such a mundane
thing. There isn't any reason why we can't have an option in the code allowing
admins to choose whether a wiki allows editing of comments or not.

Shouldn't it be the decision of the users, or community leaders, whether they
would want comments edited or not? Put it up to a vote if this piece of software
is ever written.

Anyway, not everyone using this software is wikipedia. I know the software is
aimed at wikipedia, but there are many pieces of the software that were added by
those who use the software internally. I use mediawiki internally, and I (and my
users) would prefer if their comments were not editable. Disallowing the feature
just because it goes against your views is holding back functionality from those
who could truly use it.

Ryan Lane


from_name: SJ

subject: [Wikitech-l] Fwd:Shock site bot

body:
Forwarded from Wikien-l.

I wonder if it would be useful to have an index of external URLs that
supports throttling of the # of times per day a given base URL can be
added to WP sites...

SJ

PS - this is my favorite part --  "I'm a regular wikipedia user
although i don't have an account here"  I wonder how many people
consider themselves 'regular uers' -- and how many of those actually
read user and policy pages...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Brett Gustafson <brett.gustafson at gmail.com>
Date: Nov 2, 2005 7:22 PM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Shock site bot
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org

I recently recieved this message from a user:
"I'm a regular wikipedia user although i don't have an account here. I think
this site is great and it really helps me with my college work. But I
recently heard of these people that were talking about wikipedia that they
were all programming a hack for it. So after a little while I found it was a
spider to hunt down all the pages links and change them to shocks site links
or something along those lines. I didn't know who to tell so I just thought
I'd tell an administrator as they might know who to tell or what to do. Just
giving an advanced warning so you might be able to do something to protect
this wonderful resourse. Apparently they permenantly change their ip address
using some thing (a bit beyond me). Something like that. I just didn't know
what to do. I hope I didn't embaress myself here. Thanks for your time."

Brett
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

--
++SJ


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject: [Wikitech-l] Question re. MediaWiki_FAQ

body:
The entry on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_FAQ#How_do_I_delete_a_user_from_my_list_of_users.3F
says
"MediaWiki does not support the deletion of user accounts. To prevent an
account from being used, either scramble the password or set up an
indefinite block on the account.
Do not remove users from the user table in the mySQL database; this
causes problems with other parts of the wiki due to the relational
structure of the database."

My question:
is the last sentence "Do no remove ..." still valid and important ?


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: check user policy/Tor

body:
On 11/2/05, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:

> For the same reason Wiki projects do not allow "public" accounts, there
> is no reason to use anonymizing techniques when editing. You may
> instantly and anonymously receive an account. Your IP will not be
> examined except in unusual circumstances, and then will be handled under
> a stringent privacy policy which protects your information even in the
> case of wrong doing. For these reasons, I would personally be in favour
> of blocking access, or at least editing, to all anonymizing services.

I would say that more important than trying to identify each user's IP
and disallowing anonymity -- which strikes me as the wrong way to go
-- would be asking users (presumed anonymous) to verify their goodwill
and interest in the projects by working in a sandboxed area, or
submitting time-delayed changes, until they had demonstrated a
reasonable threshhold of good faith; at which point they could
vandalize and be quickly blocked, having spent much more time getting
to that point than the vandal-fighters did blocking them.

Anonymity serves useful purposes; we should try to preserve those
while promoting the productive development of the projects.

To be mergist about these ideas... one could offer users both options.
1) edit under a privacy policy which disallows anonymity, or
2) edit anonymously, first passing through a sandbox stage to
demonstrate that you are not a bot and are acting in good faith.

+ SJ +


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Edit bailouts

body:
On Wed, 2005-02-11 at 11:24 +1100, Tim Starling wrote:

> I suspect a lot of the hits on edit pages are due to readers following red
> links, rather than people clicking the edit tab.

That's a very good point.

>  About 16% of edit form requests result in a save attempt.

That's the number I was looking for.

I guess there's not an easy way to find out how many people are bailing
out of edits that they really want to make... except maybe to ask them.
Perhaps a pop-up poll for folks who navigate away from an edit page in
some way besides saving? Kind of intrusive but it might have interesting
results.

~Evan

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel (http://wikitravel.org/) -- the free, complete, up-to-date
and reliable world-wide travel guide


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: LiquidThreads

body:
> Shouldn't it be the decision of the users, or community leaders, whether they
> would want comments edited or not?

Yes. And at least some of those users are reading this mailing list :)

Timwi


body:
On 11/2/05, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> Rui: "Oh no. Not just anyone can get a barnstar. The community must vote on it!"
>
> :)
>
> http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?BarnStar

Mmm, barnstar subterfuge.

As for cultural differences across wikis, it would be fun to have a
wiki-community survey, and ask certain questions of each wiki.  "How
do you say inclusionist/deletionist[/mergist?] on this wiki?  What are
typical 'keywords' that identify troublemakers?"   Also to pick
certain useful comparative statistics -- creation/deletion/undeletion
ratios; anon/other editing ratios; vandalism frequency; admin
activity; density of internal, external, and interwiki links; types of
NPOV/disputed tags, and proportion of articles using them; frequency
of page protection; &c.

elian writes:
> It would be an interesting project to go through all the wikis and check
> for such things but probably nobody has the time to do this - and the
> community seems to consider it more important to found new wikis and
> new projects than to care that all is working well in the existing ones.

There are people who hang out on small wikis (for instance, gathering
other multilingual/cross-project statistics), who might be interested
in doing this. However it is hard at present to organize or contribute
to a project across many wikis.

If this kind of project were phrased in the right way, this kind of
feedback loop could be part of setting up a new project, just as
creating other local policies is.

--SJ


from_name: Dariusz Siedlecki

subject: [Foundation-l] Requests for bot status

body:
Just wanted to notify the Wikimedia community, that [[Requests for bot
status]] on Meta was created a few minutes ago.

Of course, [[Requests for permissions]] is still active - please put
all the requests for sysop/bureaucrat status on that page.

Nothing has changed with the current bot policy besides that. Please
update the local request pages on your Wikis to reflect the page
change on Meta.

--
Pozdrawiam,
Dariusz "Datrio" Siedlecki


subject: [Foundation-l] Requests for bot status


subject: [Wikitech-l] Requests for bot status


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Question re. MediaWiki_FAQ

body:
Thomas Gries wrote:
> The entry on
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_FAQ#How_do_I_delete_a_user_from_my_list_of_users.3F
>
> says
> "MediaWiki does not support the deletion of user accounts. To prevent an
> account from being used, either scramble the password or set up an
> indefinite block on the account.
> Do not remove users from the user table in the mySQL database; this
> causes problems with other parts of the wiki due to the relational
> structure of the database."
>
> My question:
> is the last sentence "Do no remove ..." still valid and important ?

Yes. Loads of database tables contain references to users, including
(but not limited to) article revisions (i.e. edits).

If you feel *reeeaaally* confident, you can track down all of those
references and remove them (or change them to point to another user),
and then delete the user row. But seriously, it would be easier to
follow the suggestions you quoted from the FAQ. Don't do it the
complicated way _just_ because you think it will make your database
"cleaner". :-)

Timwi


from_name: Amgine

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

> Personally I just started using Tor. So CheckUser doesn't affect me any
>more. As an added bonus I don't have to worry about Google tracking me
>either. Fortunately, most Tor exit nodes aren't currently blocked, though.
>If this changes, this workaround might go away. Hopefully the other policy,
>to allow (at least some) logged in users to edit through blocked proxies,
>will pass by then.
>
>
>

Having just spent a couple of evenings dealing with a Tor-using vandal,
I would personally immediately suspect any account using Tor of
sock-puppetry simply due to guilt by association. Secrecy and anonymity
are laudable, but since their primary visible use is to engage in
unethical and/or illegal behavior vis-a-vis Wikimedia projects they are
immediately deserving of suspicion.

For the same reason Wiki projects do not allow "public" accounts, there
is no reason to use anonymizing techniques when editing. You may
instantly and anonymously receive an account. Your IP will not be
examined except in unusual circumstances, and then will be handled under
a stringent privacy policy which protects your information even in the
case of wrong doing. For these reasons, I would personally be in favour
of blocking access, or at least editing, to all anonymizing services.

Amgine


from_name: Chris Howells

subject: [Wikitech-l] Question re. MediaWiki_FAQ

body:
On Wednesday 02 November 2005 20:27, Thomas Gries wrote:
> My question:
> is the last sentence "Do no remove ..." still valid and important ?

I'd imagine so, see
http://www.google.com/search?q=sql+deletion+anomaly&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

--
Cheers, Chris Howells -- chris at chrishowells.co.uk, howells at kde.org
Web: http://chrishowells.co.uk, PGP ID: 0x33795A2C
KDE/Qt/C++/PHP Developer: http://www.kde.org


from_name: valdelli at bluemail.ch

body:
Hi Michael,
I'm not sure that I could be in Z?rich at 13 november. I hope and I try,
but I had already reserved hotel, taken leaves, etc. for the next italian
Wikipedia's meeting in Brixen when the meeting in Z?rich had been fixed.
I can decide only 12 november, but I will be present certainly at the next
meeting.

I hope that to the next meeeting there will be the signature of the charter,
in this case we are certainly two persons from Ticino.

Best Regards

Ilario

>French version below
>
>Dear Wikipedians,
>we'd like to invite you to the Swiss Wikipedians Meeting in Zurich. The
main
>topic will be the discussion of the foundation of Wikimedia Switzerland,
>the
>Swiss local chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation. The meeting will be at
>November 13th, 2.00 pm (Swiss time) in the "Schweizerische
>Epilepsie-Zentrum", Zurich. A more detailed description of the meeting,
>including a description of how to get there, may be found at
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CH/Meeting_Zurich_13_November_2005<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Schweiz/International>(in
>German, English, French and Italian). Mineral water and some snacks
>(chips etc.) will be provided. We look forward to seeing you!
>Kind regards,
>Michael Bimmler Nando St?cklin J?rg Studer


from_name: Brian

subject: [Wikitech-l] Fwd:Shock site bot

body:
I do know of one anon that has refused to start an account and has
contributed extensively to evolution/species-related articles. He has
turned his user page into a detailed watchlist (linked below; each of
those dots is a watched page). He also appears to grasp policy and
guidelines more than most Wikipedians. Check out an old copyedit of
his:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Lakes_Storm_of_1913&diff=10227257&oldid=10225881

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:68.81.231.127

Several people have pleaded on his talk page for him to start an account.

SJ wrote:

>Forwarded from Wikien-l.
>
>I wonder if it would be useful to have an index of external URLs that
>supports throttling of the # of times per day a given base URL can be
>added to WP sites...
>
>SJ
>
>
>PS - this is my favorite part --  "I'm a regular wikipedia user
>although i don't have an account here"  I wonder how many people
>consider themselves 'regular uers' -- and how many of those actually
>read user and policy pages...
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>From: Brett Gustafson <brett.gustafson at gmail.com>
>Date: Nov 2, 2005 7:22 PM
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Shock site bot
>To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>
>
>I recently recieved this message from a user:
>"I'm a regular wikipedia user although i don't have an account here. I think
>this site is great and it really helps me with my college work. But I
>recently heard of these people that were talking about wikipedia that they
>were all programming a hack for it. So after a little while I found it was a
>spider to hunt down all the pages links and change them to shocks site links
>or something along those lines. I didn't know who to tell so I just thought
>I'd tell an administrator as they might know who to tell or what to do. Just
>giving an advanced warning so you might be able to do something to protect
>this wonderful resourse. Apparently they permenantly change their ip address
>using some thing (a bit beyond me). Something like that. I just didn't know
>what to do. I hope I didn't embaress myself here. Thanks for your time."
>
>Brett
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>--
>++SJ
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


body:
Sorry, I made a mistake with e-mail adresses :(

Ilario

>
>
>Hi Michael,
>I'm not sure that I could be in Z?rich at 13 november. I hope and I try,
>but I had already reserved hotel, taken leaves, etc. for the next italian
>Wikipedia's meeting in Brixen when the meeting in Z?rich had been fixed.
>I can decide only 12 november, but I will be present certainly at the next
>meeting.
>
>I hope that to the next meeeting there will be the signature of the charter,
>in this case we are certainly two persons from Ticino.
>
>Best Regards
>
>Ilario


from_name: Muke Tever

subject: [Wiktionary-l] change of templates

body:
Jim Breen <Jim.Breen at infotech.monash.edu.au> wrote:
> [Andrew Dunbar (Re: [Wiktionary-l] change of templates) writes:]
>>> On 11/2/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > On the Dutch wiktionary it has been proposed to change the
>>> > template for adjective -adj- to -adjc-. The reason for this change
>>> > is that adj is an ISO 639 code for a language. I am happy to
>>> > change this template and the places where it is used on your
>>> > wiktionary..
>
> Exactly why should templates, codes, etc. be chosen to avoid
> overlapping with ISO 639 codes?

Many of the Wiktionaries that are not en.wiktionary.org use ISO 639 codes to
name the templates that call language names and categories.

> ISO 639 has about 500 2 and 3 letter
> codes, including: ace ale arc arm map art bad bra cat car cop ....
> We can't avoid all of those.

We can avoid them easily.  There's _no_ pressing need for any template name
to sit on a lowercase three-letter page name.  I mean, even assuming you were
itching to name a template, say, [[Template:map]] there's nothing to stop
you from putting it at [[Template:MAP]], say.   The current ISO 639 code use
scheme only calls for [[Template:xx(x)]] and [[Template:-xx(x)-]] to be reserved.

> What is the problem with "adj"?

adj is Adioukrou, a Niger-Congo language spoken in C?te d'Ivoire.

	*Muke!
--
website:     http://frath.net/
LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
deviantArt:  http://kohath.deviantart.com/

FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
http://wiki.frath.net/


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Shock site bot

body:
On 11/3/05, Brett Gustafson <brett.gustafson at gmail.com> wrote:
> I recently recieved this message from a user:
> "I'm a regular wikipedia user although i don't have an account here. I think
> this site is great and it really helps me with my college work. But I
> recently heard of these people that were talking about wikipedia that they
> were all programming a hack for it. So after a little while I found it was a
> spider to hunt down all the pages links and change them to shocks site links
> or something along those lines. I didn't know who to tell so I just thought
> I'd tell an administrator as they might know who to tell or what to do. Just
> giving an advanced warning so you might be able to do something to protect
> this wonderful resourse. Apparently they permenantly change their ip address
> using some thing (a bit beyond me). Something like that. I just didn't know
> what to do. I hope I didn't embaress myself here. Thanks for your time."
>
> Brett

We get these kind of things sent to us all the time most don't amount
to anything. For a number of reasons I would not expect that style of
attack to be effective.
--
geni


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Vote to create Wikiversity Vote

body:
Cormac Lawler wrote:

>On 11/1/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
>
>>This is a reminder/formal notice that the voting period for the creation
>>of Wikiversity is now over, and that the proposal to create Wikiversity
>>as a new Wikimedia sister project is now being submitted to the
>>Wikimedia Foundation board for a formal review..[snip]
>>
>>
>It is clear that many people are afraid that the idea is too
>half-baked or not ready enough to be started. This is currently true -
>Wikiversity exists as many different ideas in many people's heads,
>with plenty of enthusiasm but not much to actually to show for it. But
>my counter argument to this is: *every* wiki project has developed
>from a similar position. Every wiki is an idea which is generated and
>created through the combined energy of its participants - you only
>have to look at the various listings of people at the vote or on the
>proposed projects page or on the meta Wikiversity talk page amongst
>others, to see that there is so much energy there waiting to be
>tapped, and rearing to go. That, surely, is the main thing. I think
>the crucial point is that Wikiversity, if created now, will not (in
>the main) be ready to actually go live as a learning centre *just
>yet*. It needs to have a creation period, it needs to be widely known
>about to generate a learner base - and *then* it can flourish. Just
>don't expect results yet (though some courses could be created quite
>quickly - and who's to say that we need to constuct whole courses in
>the first place? What about single lesson plans? What about
>collections of flash cards? etc.)
>
When I first suggested the name Wikiversity in an exchange with Mav it
was only semi-serious.  While I sincerely believe in the idea, I also
see that no-one has yet appeared with the vision needed  to really take
this idea forward.  The vision that Jimbo provided to the development of
Wikipedia is simply not there for Wikiversity.  The "Vision" section of
the proposal starts with "Wikiversity could ...".  Great visions do not
start with a conditional verb.

The vision must go further than a mere listing of proposed courses or
textbooks.  Relying too much on our experiences with established
universitie (or our rebellion against them) is nothing more than a
recipe for "same old, same old".  If a Wikiversity is to really succeed
it must offer something different.  An electronic version of traditional
techniques is not different enough.  Nothing in what I have read in
these discussions shows that anybody has any idea about the nature of
education and how people learn.  Has anyone considered why it is that
critical thinking can only start when the prejudiced logic of earlier
education has been unlearned?  How does Wikiversity adapt to NPOV?

>Another major concern is resources - both human and electronic (ie.
>financial). ... I have a hunch that not only could
>we get a whole lot more poeple involved in setting up this project,
>but we could also get some major funding. UNESCO's ecucation for all
>campaign comes to mind - and I'd appreciate any other suggestions.
>
With a  clear sense of vision and purpose I don't see these as a big
problem.

Ec


from_name: Joe Del Senno

subject:
[Foundation-l] Proposal for New Wiki Project - WikiCharacter,
	a database of all fictional characters

body:
Hello All-

I am emailing the foundation list to propose a new wiki project.

*Wikicharacter* will be a database of every character in every published
work of fiction, ever. The database will contain pages for each character,
with links to related characters. The page for each character will be in the
form of a biography, consisting of a "history" gleaned completely from the
published materials in which the character appeared. The database will cover
books, films, television, video games, advertising, and theater.

I have made a page with details of my proposal on Meta-Wiki:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiCharacter

Please, if you are interested in this project, add your name to the proposed
projects page, and either email me directly or respond to this message.

I have thought about this project for a long time, and put it aside due to
the difficulty involved in amassing such data. Only recently did I realize
that Wiki will be an excellent way to bring it to life. I am excited about
the possibilities. Thank you all for your consideration, and I'd appreciate
any and all comments regarding the project. - Joseph Del Senno


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

> It's good to see universal debates we can learn from, but I enjoy
> discovering the tasty differences among Wikipedias.
>
> My favorite - at Wikimania, I was moderating a panel, and one
> presenter (CathyMa) talked about barnstars. I explained to the
> audience that barnstars originated to be given by anyone to anyone for
> appreciation.
>
> Rui Silva of Portugeuse Wikipedia dissented, saying it wasn't so on pt:
>
> Me: "You don't just give out barnstars to anyone?"
>
> Rui: "Oh no. Not just anyone can get a barnstar. The community must vote on it!"
>
> :)

And in the german wikipedia we decided against rusty barnstars and
introduced the golden Gummibear instead:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorlage:Gummib%C3%A4rchen
(can be given by anyone to anyone)

;-)

elian


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Hebrew Wikinews

body:
Following the launch of Russian Wikinews <http://ru.wikinews.org/>
yesterday, the Hebrew edition has now been created, in accordance with
requests at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Start_a_new_edition
and the previous announcement on foundation-l.

http://he.wikinews.org/

Angela.


subject: [Foundation-l] Hebrew Wikinews


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Stevertigo's RFA or whatever trigram

body:
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RFA/SV, I have restored
Stevertigo sysop status.

...

Ant

Anthere wrote:

> Dear fellow wikipedians,
>
> Yesterday, stewards received a request to unsysop
> Stevertigo, after a failed reconfirmation of
> sysophood, following an arbcom decision.
>
> Jtkiefer also asked me privately by irc to carry on
> the request.
>
> I consequently unsyoped Stevertigo.
>
> Today, Steve post on my talk page, this comment :
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anthere#Request_for_permissions
>
> As a reminder, stewards are not here to judge, but to
> carry on the decision of the community. I have no idea
> why Steve was brought in front of the arbcom (well,
> right, it is a 3RR issue, but I do not know the
> details, and I do not want to get in this).
>
> Now, I think in this case, the "judges" are
> * the arbcom
> * the voting community
>
> And the steward is just to carry on the decision the
> "judges" made.
>
> If there is something unclear in the final decision,
> it should not be my job to go reading all the
> discussions around this case, so as to figure out
> myself the "correct" conclusion. I think Stevertigo is
> a honest editor, and he would not try to cheat on the
> decision, so if he feels the outcome has not been
> fair/clear, it is probable that there is a little
> something unclear somewhere.
>
> So, what I would like you to do, is to clarify the
> current situation, so that the correct decision, to
> desysop or not to desysop, is taken.
>
> I give it 48 hours without doing anything, and if
> there is no clarification by then, I will revert to
> the previous stable situation (ie, Steve sysop) till
> an agreement is reached between yourselves.
>
> Ant
>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> 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: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia + culture differences on different wikis

body:
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

> Bjarte S?rensen wrote:
>
>> On this note, I would also like to ask a broader question to the
>> community: How different do you think are the cultures of the
>> different languages' wikipedias? In particular I'm interested in
>> inclusivist/deletionist matters, dispute resolution, administrator
>> "powers" and I suppose general feeling of welcome.
>
>
> I observed that the debates in many wikis are quite similar. You'll find
> the repeating deletionist/inclusionist debate in en, de, fr... as well
> as you find - justified and unjustified - complaints about censorship
> and abuse of admin powers. The complaint from this spanish user was
> posted on de as well, someone gave a summary in german which made
> everyone instantly loose interest - just because all this sounded so
> familiar to the standard complaint of our trouble makers (all the key
> words included).
>
> Dispute resolution is a tricky point because when a wiki is still small,
> there's usually no need for a dispute resolution process. This only
> becomes necessary when it reaches a certain level. Then people often
> look at other wikis - they may copy the concept of the english
> arbitration committee, or develop an anarchical community based dispute
> resolution process like the german wikipedia.
>
> Same for the general feeling of welcome: In a small wiki, users are glad
> about almost any new contributor. In a big wiki like german wp, many
> users feel that we should be more selective about who is welcome or not
> (This is for example reflected in the description on the german main
> page. It still says "is an encyclopedia to which everyone can contribute
> with his knowledge" but it continues with "good authors are always
> welcome").
>
> It would be interesting to know how many wikis share the custom of
> individually welcoming new users. I've seen it on almost any wiki I
> visited.
>
>> And, not
>> specifically with Spanish Wikipedia in mind, how well do we monitor
>> aberrance from our common goal of wikilove and NPOV on the more
>> "peripheral" wikipedias?
>
>
> We don't monitor at all. The whole system is based on trust and a naive
> believe that the core values of wikimedia spread automagically to new
> wikis set up. ehm. The strange thing is, this mostly works quite well
> (as far as I can tell).
> I found everyone I've talked to from other communities familiar with the
> concept of NPOV. There was always a notion to respect copyright and
> delete copyright violations etc.pp.
>
> However, based on the many wrong answers I've seen even from experienced
> german wikipedians, I'm unsure about how many misinterpretations of GFDL
> and free licenses are floating around in the wiki world (Our request for
> permission email templates for example contained horrible nonsense about
> the requirements of the GFDL for more than a year...).
>
> It would be an interesting project to go through all the wikis and check
> for such things but probably nobody has the time to do this - and the
> community seems to consider it more important to found new wikis and new
> projects than to care that all is working well in the existing ones.
>
> greetings,
> elia
> n

Nod,

A point I noted about differences is about the hierarchical structure.
On some small starting projects, and in particular projects which are
not wikipedia, once one or a couple of editors became sysops, they
somehow "highjack" the power.

This may result in different situations

Two I have observed in the recent months were

* an administrator blocking pages on who he is himself in disagreement
with another editor (in his preferred state naturally). And this in all
good faith. When I asked him how on earth he could do that, his most
innocent reply was "but... I am the admin, I need to protect the project
against editors who have it wrong".
And.... well....

* on another project, only admins have the right to vote for admins, and
if the rule needs to be changed, only admins votes are counted in the
decision making.

I suppose this comes quite naturally from human nature. Making your way
between monarchy, democracy... And this is more bound to happen on small
projects started by editors who have never been in contact with the
other projects (or very little). What many of us will consider common
culture... is actually not common culture.
On en, Jimbo can decide who is an arbitrator or who has checkuser
access... this would not work at all on the french wikipedia. Could it
be due to the political systems of the countries where the editors
mostly come from ?

Still, once the small project grows... there is always a moment when
some glue people go wandering on other projects and bring other types of
management. So, after a while, it seems to equalize quite well despite
some differences.

One of the things I always find interesting to observe is "boldness".
Generally, most english editors make changes without asking beforehand
in the talk page, while french editors might be more hesitant.
Generally, french admins happily (or not happily) revert other admins
actions (such as blocking a person or protecting a page) while on the nl
wikipedia, it seems that there is a rule to respect other admins acts
much more (even if the decision is not supported). I was quite surprised
to see japanese editors telling themselves the worst things... but in
very kind and polite manners (while a french could just tell another
person he is an ass).

Levels of bureaucracy are quite funny as well. The number of rules to
define how the community should or should not work is differing widely.
Are they other wikis than enwiki with the 3R rule ? I would be curious
to know...

For the understanding of license, I completely agree with Elian that
this is largely varying.... this is also why I would support that we
work on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/How_to_use_or_reuse_our_content
(sorry, that is an ad...), or more generally on translation of some of
our biggest policies.


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Shock site bot

body:
> I recently recieved this message from a user:
> "I'm a regular wikipedia user although i don't have an
> account here. I think this site is great and it really helps
> me with my college work. But I recently heard of these people
> that were talking about wikipedia that they were all
> programming a hack for it. So after a little while I found it
> was a spider to hunt down all the pages links and change them
> to shocks site links or something along those lines. I didn't
> know who to tell so I just thought I'd tell an administrator
> as they might know who to tell or what to do. Just giving an
> advanced warning so you might be able to do something to
> protect this wonderful resourse. Apparently they permenantly
> change their ip address using some thing (a bit beyond me).
> Something like that. I just didn't know what to do. I hope I
> didn't embaress myself here. Thanks for your time."
>
> Brett

I'd like to suggest a standard where admins can block any account on
"suspicion of being a bot". This would be an assumption of guilt pending
proof of innocence, so let's talk about it.

Ordinarily, we assume good faith. But if, AFTER making that initial
assumption (and leaving the door open for anyone - human or bot) to come
in and edit - if we become suspicious, we ought to be able to "stop them
for questioning".

Here's how it might work.
1. Admin gets suspicious of a pattern of edits.
2. (optional step, try to engage user in any number of ways, e.g.,
article talk pages, edit summaries in reverts, etc.)
3. Block account
4. At this point, user / bot can only post to their / its user talk
page.
5. Post a message on the user talk page which (in your opinion) only a
human being could respond to.
6. If they refuse / fail to answer, the presumption stands.

Drawbacks:
A. User might be shy about interacting. For example, just wants to
correct spelling - but not talk to other Wikipedians. Maybe they're
embarassed that their English isn't perfect, or they have Asperger's or
are autistic.
B. Evil admin might abuse this policy (gaming the system) to challenge
someone that they KNOW is a legitimate user.

Advantages:
C. Shoot first, ask questions later - saves time in an emergency
D. No real harm done to legitimate user: they say the bold "You have
messages" notice and can click on the link; and simply say, "Jeez,
relax, I'm not a bot."

Uncle Ed


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

subject: [Wikitech-l] How actually usable are audio captchas?

body:
On Wednesday 02 November 2005 13:38, David Gerard wrote:
> With various discussions around Wikipedia of captchas to impede
> vandalbots, I was wondering how usable audio captchas actually are for
> those who can't see images. Most sites with visual captchas offer an
> audio option ... but what's the actual usability of these? Are they a
> minor impediment, as a visual captcha is, or a major usability
> problem? Is there data on this?

How actually needed are audio captchas? Regardless of usability, you may have
deaf users with Lynx, or non-impaired users with Lynx and no sound, so there
has to be e-mail fallback. If there has to be e-mail fallback, it could be
used by blind users as well, as they are relatively small percentage.


body:
Timwi schrieb:

> Thomas Gries wrote:
>
>> The entry on
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_FAQ#How_do_I_delete_a_user_from_my_list_of_users.3F
>>
>> says
>> "MediaWiki does not support the deletion of user accounts. To prevent
>> an account from being used, either scramble the password or set up an
>> indefinite block on the account.
>> Do not remove users from the user table in the mySQL database; this
>> causes problems with other parts of the wiki due to the relational
>> structure of the database."
>>
>> My question:
>> is the last sentence "Do no remove ..." still valid and important ?
>
>
> Yes. Loads of database tables contain references to users, including
> (but not limited to) article revisions (i.e. edits).
>
> If you feel *reeeaaally* confident, you can track down all of those
> references and remove them (or change them to point to another user),
> and then delete the user row. But seriously, it would be easier to
> follow the suggestions you quoted from the FAQ. Don't do it the
> complicated way _just_ because you think it will make your database
> "cleaner". :-)
>
> Timwi

Thanks.
A last question:
It appears to be safe to delete user entries from table user for users
who haven't made edits (can you confirm this ?)
T.


from_name: Jim Breen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] change of templates

body:
[Andrew Dunbar (Re: [Wiktionary-l] change of templates) writes:]
>> On 11/2/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > On the Dutch wiktionary it has been proposed to change the
>> > template for adjective -adj- to -adjc-. The reason for this change
>> > is that adj is an ISO 639 code for a language. I am happy to
>> > change this template and the places where it is used on your
>> > wiktionary..

Exactly why should templates, codes, etc. be chosen to avoid
overlapping with ISO 639 codes? ISO 639 has about 500 2 and 3 letter
codes, including: ace ale arc arm map art bad bra cat car cop ....
We can't avoid all of those.

What is the problem with "adj"?

Jim

--
Jim Breen                                http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
Clayton School of Information Technology,               Tel: +61 3 9905 9554
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia                  Fax: +61 3 9905 5146
(Monash Provider No. 00008C)                ???????@??????


from_name: Matt Brown

subject:
[WikiEN-l] RFA idiocy (was Slipping quality as Wikipedia gets
	bigger (formerly Can you trust Wikipedia?))

body:
On 11/2/05, Michelle <jareth at crimsonblade.net> wrote:
>
> I was seriously considering becoming an admin, but after a quick view of
> RFA, I decided it wasn't worth that.
>

Exactly the result I feared, and I'm sure you're not the only one who's
decided that. Heck, I might have decided not to go for adminship in the
current climate.

-Matt (User:Morven)


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
On 11/3/05, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
> Bjarte S?rensen wrote:
>
> > On this note, I would also like to ask a broader question to the
> > community: How different do you think are the cultures of the
> > different languages' wikipedias? In particular I'm interested in
> > inclusivist/deletionist matters, dispute resolution, administrator
> > "powers" and I suppose general feeling of welcome.
>
> I observed that the debates in many wikis are quite similar.

It's good to see universal debates we can learn from, but I enjoy
discovering the tasty differences among Wikipedias.

My favorite - at Wikimania, I was moderating a panel, and one
presenter (CathyMa) talked about barnstars. I explained to the
audience that barnstars originated to be given by anyone to anyone for
appreciation.

Rui Silva of Portugeuse Wikipedia dissented, saying it wasn't so on pt:

Me: "You don't just give out barnstars to anyone?"

Rui: "Oh no. Not just anyone can get a barnstar. The community must vote on it!"

:)

http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?BarnStar

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] change of templates

body:
Jim Breen wrote:
> [Andrew Dunbar (Re: [Wiktionary-l] change of templates) writes:]
>
>>> On 11/2/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On the Dutch wiktionary it has been proposed to change the
>>>> template for adjective -adj- to -adjc-. The reason for this change
>>>> is that adj is an ISO 639 code for a language. I am happy to
>>>> change this template and the places where it is used on your
>>>> wiktionary..
>>>>
>
> Exactly why should templates, codes, etc. be chosen to avoid
> overlapping with ISO 639 codes? ISO 639 has about 500 2 and 3 letter
> codes, including: ace ale arc arm map art bad bra cat car cop ....
> We can't avoid all of those.
>
> What is the problem with "adj"?
>
> Jim
Hoi,
For use in many of the Wiktionaries we use the 2 and 3 letter codes to
indicate languages, it does not make sense to have 2 and 3 character
codes with another function than the indication of languages. Our aim is
to have ALL languages ALL words so we should avoid all of those.

The problem with adj is, that there is a language that is indicated by
this code.

Thanks,
GerardM


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Webcomics/Deletion again

body:
JAY JG wrote:

>> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
>>
>> JAY JG wrote:
>>
>>> Sean, I'm very rarely on AfD, but from what I've seen (and what
>>> others have said here) the AfD appears to make reasonable decisions
>>> 95-98% percent of the time - it's the last 2-5% of controversial
>>> decisions that are causing all the angst here, combined with concern
>>> over a "poisonous atmosphere" on the page.
>>>
>>> The page deals with over 100 articles a day, so it's easy enough to
>>> find examples of bad decisions.  However, no system is perfect, and
>>> the error-rate at AfD does not appear to be particularly
>>> unreasonable for a human intensive process working under fairly
>>> loose guidelines.  It certainly has not been demonstrated that the
>>> any other system would have a lower error rate.  Furthermore, it
>>> should be kept in mind that "hard cases make bad law".  Finally, as
>>> has been pointed out by Tony, AfD itself has a limited capacity, so
>>> the overall "harm" it can do Wikipedia, at least in terms of
>>> articles deleted in error (or, for that matter, kept in error), is
>>> miniscule.
>>
>> Your ratio of controversial articles seems about right.  The problem
>> is in the tenacity with which controversial deletions are protected.
>> No damage would be done by allowing the controversial ones more time,
>> or allowing them to be easily undeleted for further discussion for as
>> long as it takes.
>
> So what you're suggesting is that AfD simply needs to be modified a
> little to allow longer decision periods for, say, articles in the
> 65-75% delete range, and that the rules for VfU need to be loosened
> somewhat?  These don't seem to me to be insurmountable obstacles, or
> indications of a completely broken process.
>
> By the way, my (admittedly limited) experience in this area tells me
> that articles voted for deletion often take many more than 5 days to
> be deleted, and that many VfU nominations consist of disgruntled
> article authors complaining that "my article is the truth, you're just
> censoring the truth!!!"

More or less.  But it's not even a percentage issue.  Many of the
deleted articles may have 5 votes to delete and no comments to keep.
The original contributor may not even know that the process has been
applied until long after the article has been deleted.  Measuring the
discussion period in days alone doesn't help in obscure subjects that
get very little traffic.  At the same time it's easy to get five people
together with a common agenda of cleaning out what they see as
non-notable articles.

The average contributor cannot undelete anything.  He still needs the
agreement of one sysop to revive the article.  It is still conceivable
that a sysop who wants an article undeleted could act alone.  Even the
disgruntled author whom you describe needs one kick at the cat.  He will
still need the assistance of a sysop.  To delete the article again would
require some adequate number of NEW voices to want it deleted.  The
process could be repeated indefinitely with the key requirement being
that each such action requires new participants, whether as ordinary
users or sysops.

This all assumes that in course of this cycle of deletions and
undeletions there have been no major improvements to the article, or
there have been no acceptable alternative solutions.

There will always be articles that need deletion.  Scrapping the process
entirely will mean that another one will have to be found.  I view the
change from VfD to AfD as something of the sort.  I would scrap VfU as a
redundant process.  If someone wants an article undeleted it should be
enough to let those views be known by adding comments to the existing
AfD page, which would never be closed.  Starting a separate VfU
discussion just means that we end up with a fragmented discussion with
the same arguments in two different places.

The biggest flaw in the existing process is perhaps the tone of finality
that accompanies these deletions.  It is understandable that when you
sweep the dirt ou the door you want it to stay out.  On the other hand,
stories abound of old comic books or baseball cards that were thrown out
in one of mom's clean ups but which were retrospectively determined to
have great value.  I think that we can still have any article that goes
through AfD could easily be undeleted, but I suspect that 95% of these
will in fact stay deleted without any fuss at all.

Ec